Anyone who has ever toured a lot of houses with a real estate agent has probably had at least one of them point out the windows in the home and make a comment something like "Windows are the eyes of a house," intending to communicate something like "Look at the view," or so we would hope. Sadly, often the comment could be a little too literal because some houses have faces! Okay, you have to use your imagination, but if you look around, especially in new developments, you will see the symmetry of the human face on the facade of quite a few homes--two eyes, one on either side of a nose or mouth. An alien has landed in the neighborhood and it is waiting...waiting for some landscaping to soften the disconcerting effect observant passers-by might have of being watched by an inanimate object.
Dormers can be especially scary when they are too large and rise up a little too high--it can be the mutant frog effect if the dormers are rounded on the top. Pointy, skinny dormers can make the house look haunted, possessed by a tortured soul. If the dormers are too small or the roof too large the effect might be that of little pimples popping up on a large forehead. Yeah, you have to use your imagination, but if you see a house that strikes you as ugly, when it is obviously trying very hard to be impressive, just look at it and try to figure out why. Often it is a matter of proportion that is out of scale with everything else. Don't get us started on fake dormers--all we can do is ask "Why, why?" All dormers should be real, functional and add light and space to the room they are in and charm to the home's exterior.
An example of a house trying to be something it is not is what we call "The Tract House Palace." This is a little house on a little lot trying to be a big house. Some features of this house are the double-height entryway with a giant light fixture hanging like the pendulum of doom from the entry roof, huge multi-paned windows that extend all the way to the roof line and all the way to the corner of the house with no grace space around them--every feature is large and overpowering in scale. Think of those cute little dolls that are so popular with little girls right now that have the big heads, big eyes and lips, and big hair on top of an impossibly skinny little body.
Speaking of dolls, we have heard some tract houses referred to as "Doll Houses" and many of them are virtually identical to all the houses around them. Some are in developments with covenants that obviously require the use of the same roof-lines, shingles and brick color. With the curvy, confusing street layouts, how would you ever find your own house? Even the mail boxes are the same. The obvious solution is to park a Hummer in the driveway or a sexy little red sports car, perhaps--a car that says "This Is Me!"
Seriously, we know that tract houses have their place in providing affordable housing that can be quickly built to serve areas that are experiencing a surge in population and that some are better than others. But there should be some rules--No fake dormers, no fake shutters, no ripple roofs just for the fun of it, watch your symmetry and proportion so that your house doesn't look like an alien from outer space. That's all.
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