White plastic blandness
Ok, Firstly, I have to admit that I don’t like white PVC trims. There …I’ve said it.
Well, thats not true either, Its ok about 20% of the time. The other 80% it just looks like a cross between a nursing home and something a 5yr old would make at ‘art day, with your new best friend, glue!’. For a tooth analogy they are the ‘Veneers’ of buildings.
If they arent maintained well enough they then go all green and black with dirt and mold. (Repeat: It needs to be cleaned once a year, it needs to be clea…) I’m sure you will notice many a white uPVC fascia or soffit board covered in green or black moldy colours, or perhaps just the fact that you can often see more white downpipes on a modern residential house facade than you can shake a stick at. If there are going to be lots of downpipes can they at least be SUBTLE in their appearance? Or how about the tiny canopy over a doorway or pitched roof on a small shed that has an over-sized roof buildup with chunky white uPVC eaves detail ? maybe like this below
Ready for take off. Small pump house with wings
close up of eaves on pump house
All that for a couple of roof tiles?…
It reminds me of Dumbo, or Simon Cowells Veneers…or something with wings…
In any case they often look bad. An eaves treatment is a simple detail but it is one that seems to be overlooked much of the time or designed with the premise that we humans dont actually have eyes on the front of our faces!!
Check these out below.
Fascia board over canopy
Pretty terrible stuff! How can the canopy be left like this? The fascia pieces don’t fit. The white sloping eaves piece doesnt even meet the front fascia correctly, a narrow ‘in-between’ piece is stuck in the middle as marked on the picture, and even this doesn’t fit correctly. No attempt to hide this poor workmanship. But its not just here. I see it day in day out. It seems to be the norm to just let it like this, I’m just not really sure why.
Next up is this puzzle. Drainage style.
Close up of eaves and chimney
Slightly deceptive angle on this but the problem here firstly is the short gutter below the chimney at the top of the picture. No drainpipe was put in due to the tiny roof area covered by this little gutter so it is drained sideways onto the adjacent roof. It looks like it is draining upwards but this is simply an illusion due to the angle of this picture.
At least a gutter is provided here but it still doesn’t look the prettiest as a solution. Surely the extra roof bit to the side of the chimney could have been redesigned and I wonder if it was neccessary for the gutter at all. This little pointless bit of roof at the outside edge of the house could probably have been omitted, so that the roof eaves would rise up and meet the chimney stack front on and rise around the inside and up again from the back face of the stack. rather than zig-zagging around the outside creating a need for it to be drained by a gutter .
However its not as bad as this house next which has either no gutters in the first place or they were taken down at some point!
Non Guttered!
Similar situation to the house above but this one isn’t joined to another premises, but separated by a lane from the house next door in the picture. As you can see above the bit of roof around the chimney has no drainage whatsoever but check out the ugliness of whats left. It looks like a gutter was pulled down, seeing the membranes come out under the roof tiles like that. Most of the houses around had this done to them aswell, zig zag roofs around chimneys with these exposed roof eave edges.
The other thing I don’t like is, again, the joining of the PVC eave trims. From the straps that cover the edges to the pieces that join the fascias to other parts, I dislike the overall look in most cases.
Another example of the joining straps that I think look so bad.
Black PVC cover strips over eave boards
Ok it isn’t white but its still plastic and deserves its mention here!
As you can see it doesn’t look great. (big surprise there) and usually because the boards or pieces themselves lightened over time quicker than the cover strips did. They were originally wood eave trims but after these rotted in parts they were replaced by the PVC ones which will probably age better but with less grace.
I’m probably not the only one to dislike PVC in its current uses so please, feel free to email me some pics of your own architectural nightmares whether PVC or otherwise!
