Today’s entry was sent in by regular reader Urbanrat. His email to me read as follows:
I know how much you love stucco! I found this stucco palace at 809 Bruce. The house is vacant, it must be the place the stucco boys of Windsor apprenticed!
The last photograph is of the rear of the building, look to the unfinished stucco work on the centre wall, they didn’t even use a square or a plumb line to match the wall at the left.
Also notice the infilled in ground pool.
It has to be nominated for the worst attempt at stuccoing in Windsor!
Yikes! This one is pretty bad… Thanks to Urbanrat for sharing this mess with the rest of us!
AH HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!! they didn’t even take out the ladder to the pool!!!!! HA!
my lord is that horrible! nice find Urbanrat!
but let’s not stop with the pool:
picture 1: a) is that a peice of plywood in the 1st floor window?! lol
b) i think they actually tried to make the “stone” “design” match on either side of the door!
c) at least they kept the front steps….and sidewalk!
picture 2: a) incomplete evestrough
b) incomplete trim on the roof
c) i think they painted the chimney like that on purpose. makes it look old, as opposed to it being old making it look old.
picture 3: a) all this “work” and havn’t even replaced the shingles.
b) more missing trim at the roof.
c) fake brick paint scheme ain’t workin…..paint it all grey!!!!!!!
andrew, you should have a bi-monthly no prize contest for us to go out and find the uglyest stucco homes and buisnesses in the city!
My God, what the @#$% ?? Who did this? It’s all @#$% wrong. It’s all gotta come down. @#$%.
quite clearly; he didn’t have his Nescafe.
There is no making this thing right. Sort of blows my unpublished stucco-submissions to pieces, though they all sucked too. Good find, Rat!
I went though this house before. What a disaster. It definitely wins the award. You missed the basement glass block windows done in the past year–they didn’t even bother to clean the mortar off with a wet sponge, so there’s dried up mortar all over the place. You can tell it has that beautiful red brick underneath like the ones next to it and must have been something in it’s day. I remember that boarded up window being like that since early spring.. And the inside. This is one of those slumlord landlords really let this duplex/rooming house go bad kind of deals. It looks like a handyman with the IQ of a 10 year old did a number on it inside and out. It makes me sick to my stomach seeing what happened to this former century old gem. I bet an important contributor to this city once lived there.
Were permits taken out for this kind of blight? Are there standards involved? The new skin on this house will probably cause more problems than it’s worth down the road. ie. Mold, mildew, etc. Not to mention the flamability factor. This is one building method that has to cease. It’s worse than pressure treated lumber being used to build front porches etc.
I must have been a grand home at one time, elevated on the corner like that. I think that stucco should be put under a Material Hazards Act and users must be licensed after a four year Architectural degree/diploma, two year graduate Art History in Architecture and then a five year apprentice work study program then a final examine in front a board of citizens, then licensed.
Oh no, DO have prizes. Finds like these deserve something! I’ll even donate one. 😀
And M.O.M., besides the problems you mentioned, the best one is where someone bores a hole in the stucco and then pulls some off so you see what was beneath and all the gubbings that made the facade and it just looks craptacular because no one will fix it.
I have driven past this house many times. I even took my girlfriend past one day to show her the ‘worst stucco job’ ever done in this city. Everyone should walk, ride or drive past this one and see it in all of it’s glory. The pictures can’t do this place justice. The awfulness of the either unmixed stucco, or ample application of pink paint make this 100x worse.
I have some submissions I will send in if we do a worst stucco contest. Maybe the prize should be dinner at Chanoso’s! ; )
Three years ago I lived two blocks away from this gem. I’ll never forget the first time I walked by, turned my head, and witnessed what they were doing. I couldn’t hide my shock and disgust as I took it all in, even though the guys doing it were staring right back at me. I kept looking at them, then looking up at the house, then looking back at them in disbelief!
I’m not surprised that three years later it’s still incomplete.
It’s kinda sad actually, ugly or not someone put money into this house and now it’s sitting unfinished and vacant. I wonder if they just ran out of money.
This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen…..no wonder they didn’t finish it…
maybe it didn’t get finished because everyone on the crew turned out to be blind and had no thumbs.
maybe there’s hope if we all go throw rocks at it. i don’t forsee any trouble knocking that stucco off lol
20+ years ago when I lived for a short time in this neighbourhood, this house always caught my eye. It was overgrown and derelict but it was still very impressive. Obviously, at one time it was magnificient. It was exciting to see someone had taken an interest in it and very dissappointing to see what actually happened. I guess not everyone shares the same vision.
Very bizarre indeed. It looks Disney-esque in their attempt at stucco.
Is this truly what our city has become? Burned-out houses and stucco on buildings that shouldn’t have stucco? Interesting that other cities have guidelines (in certain areas) for houses or commercial buildings but Windsor doesn’t have one!
It’s sad, my babysitter and her family lived in this house between 1980 and approx. 1999, the exterior was marvelous before, yet was falling apart in many places. Whoever the new owners are, they really wrecked this place.
I kinda like it!