alt Hacker NewsI've never wanted to adapt a house that significantly. But yeah, I much prefer the cinderblock homes and miss them. Something about the wood and drywall houses just feels incredibly cheap, and I don't like the aesthetic (de gustibus et coloribus..)
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Ultimately houses are built in the way that works for the region they're built in.
Europe has few trees and few earthquakes (outside of Romania, Italy, etc). Masonry houses make sense.
In California unreinforced masonry is illegal and trees are plentiful. Making houses out of sticks is rational even if it's unsightly.
Those asphalt roofs though...
To each their own I guess. I’ll happily move walls, add or remove a bathroom, add windows, etc.
Terrible carbon footprint for concrete too.
I know modern structures are better but I also don’t entirely trust block in an earthquake. Obviously less of a concern in most (not all!) of Europe.
Houses change over time. A house could have been build in 1920 without a toilet or central heating. Then over time it got a fireplace on the second floor, an indoor toilet, indoor bathroom, then central heating with gas, extra insulation, a couple decades later double paned windows, hybrid heating with a heat pump, then full electric heating, underfloor heating, solar panels, home battery.
Houses change a lot over time, it is nice to be adaptable and not need to carve out stone and concrete every time you add a feature to a home.
The most beautiful homes I have been inside in Europe were wooden cabins in Sweden. The exposed wood ceiling beams, the unpainted wooden panels everywhere, the little details. I never had that with stone or brick buildings. Mainly because they got plastered and painted over, you almost never see the raw materials on the inside.