19 Centennial Avenue, Brunswick West, VIC, Australia

A renovator's dream!

This charming little hellhole has been on our list of potential properties for some time now, but for some reason or another, we hadn't quite got around to writing about it until today. I don't know why, because this place just exemplifies the abandoned buildings side of his blog. The first time we went past it, I very nearly drove off the road in shock, because up until that point all the surrounding houses had been quite nice. This just hurts my eyes. Usually when you see something in this state of disrepair, it's surrounded by a wire fence with demolition orders up. But no, this one is just chillin', clearly without having seen any love or attention since it was first built. It clearly hasn't been painted since then - the original coat has just flaked off over time to expose the bare boards underneath. It seems that the plaster rendering on the upper section of the house has just fallen off, exposing a tasteful sort of wood skeleton underneath. In fact, those sections remind me forcibly of the huts I used to build in my back garden, which were made of bit of old trellis fence. The roof tiles are falling like autumn leaves, and I think the house has shifted a little on its foundations, because those windows certainly don't fit as snugly in their frames as they once might have. The garden is messy with a crumbling fence, and there is a lot of accumulated rubbish shoved down between the house and the fence.

I'm sure it was nice 100 years ago.

Now, let me draw your attention to the pictures taken through the windows. We examined these after our first visit here, and were surprised to see that there was actually some stuff inside. A fan is clearly visible, as well as some other random clutter. We assumed that the residents had just left, leaving all their old furniture to fester. I mean, seriously, out of all the houses we've collected for this blog, we were quite sure that this place was totally, absolutely abandoned. We assumed it must have been sitting there for years with just that horrible, fetid old caravan for company.

That poor, poor fan!

Here's why we should never assume anything ever again. Recently, we drove past this place at night. We had been keeping our eyes peeled, since we thought it might be quite hard to find in the dark. Well, this wasn't the case at all. You want to know why? Because there was a light on. A proper fluorescent light, not the torchlight of vandals or squatters. The place is actually in use. I couldn't fucking believe it. This is probably the closest we've come to finding something worthy of a Dot Dot Curve rating, and it turns out that people actually USE IT, perhaps even live in it. Out of all the places we've found for this blog so far, this was one of the few cases where we didn't even have a flicker of doubt about the "abandoned" status we gave it. Even if this is just someone's workshop rather than their residence, you'd think they'd at least fix the roof. I would be genuinely worried about this place staying up in a high wind, so I certainly wouldn't leave anything I'm working on in there unattended. In addition to that, it looks so easy to break in to. All you'd need to do is tap on the wall and you'd probably make a gap big enough to crawl through. I'm not even going to think about someone actually living here, but after seeing that light on, it's a troublingly plausible thought. I hope that they move out before that wonky chimney falls through their bedroom roof!

You win the "worst house on this blog" award. Well done.

To be honest, I would rather live in that caravan for a year than spend a week in that house. You might not quite understand how momentous that is, but I am massively ill-disposed towards caravans. They creep me out and they're dirty and horrible and get in the way while you're driving. Caravans are the crows of the mechanical world. I hope that helps you understand how bad these place actually is. I hope for the sake of everyone living on that street that the termites and the elements get rid of this place sooner rather than later. Perhaps then the mystery residents can move somewhere nicer - I think even this would be luxurious compared with their current wreck.

Rating: Cellar floor.

A real estate translation guide

Besides critiquing whatever properties - for good or bad - catch our eye, one of our favourite past-times here at MYL is to flick through real estate magazines and have a right old laugh at some of the shonky claims and horrendous writing. In the spirit of this, here is my guide to what the blurbs really mean, because if we know one thing about real estate agents, it's that they are full of shit and often are paid to hock off houses that they think are a total load of shit.

What they say: "Under instructions from state trustees."
What they actually mean: Somebody died here. The curtains, wallpaper, and carpet date from about the same year as Cliff Richard and are even more undesirable. James May probably has a shirt that looks like this house's interior, but unlike James May, the house can't quite get away with it any more.

Bet when 39 Barry St comes up for sale, it'll be a "renovator's delight"!

What they say: "Exciting options to renovate", "renovator's delight", "so much potential", or any variation upon this theme.
What they actually mean: It's shit. It's so shit that the agent can't even think of an admirable quality to highlight.


What they say: "Continuously owned by the same family since [any decade prior to the Cold War]."
What they actually mean: We're sorry about the hideous carpet and all the wares and keepsakes and generic knick-knacks that will undoubtedly catch your eye during the open home.

What they say: "In a league of its own", "something different", and "a rare opportunity".
What they actually mean: Just like everywhere else. We're pretending it's unique so that you'll be interested.

What they say: "Feature wall."
What they actually mean: We're trying to re-cast the most architecturally abhorrent aspect of this place as something somehow desirable and exclusive.

243 Mansfield Street, Thornbury, VIC, Australia

When I first came across this place, my immediate reaction was to rip into it for being another ridiculous example of the modern architecture I hate so much. However, that was a little while ago, and I've had time to think about it and realise that for once, I might not be writing a hate-filled rant about something modern.

Yes, it's a funny shape. It's painted in colours more suited to a Teletubbies set. It doesn't have a roof. It has racy angles all over the place. It shouldn't work! But it a weird way, it's actually kind of endearing. I mean, I would be pretty happy to live here. With the right maintenance, those bright colours will stay bright and attractive (now I sound like a washing powder advert), and let's face it, no-one would ever get lost looking for your house. The only trace of mushroom-coloured paint lies around the front door, on a surface which looks troublingly like corrugated concrete from a distance. Still, that is a much better effort than pretty much all the other new places around here have made - generally, the only deviation in their "mushroom" paint scheme is a nice stripe of black or brown. I'm very impressed.

To be honest, I think the biggest flaws with this place are not with the house, but with the garden. Firstly, that fence has to go. Sure, it's not quite as bad as those fences around here that look like level crossing barriers, but it's pretty bland all the same. It looks more like a barrier at the side of the road to stop unruly children dashing out into the traffic than a tasteful residential fence. And the garden needs some serious work. It's bright enough as it is, but some nice flowerbeds would ensure that this thing could be seen from space! The trees on the left need a serious trim - surely if you're going to paint your house that bright, you're going to want people to see it. Still, unlike the flaws you find in most modern places, these things are all very easily fixed. Perhaps when this place gets leased, the new tenant will fix it up a little.

For the first time in the history of Mow Your Lawn, I am quietly optimistic about a modern place. A truly momentous occasion.

Rating: Kind of quirky but not too offensive, really. Probably equates to a lick o' paint.

69 Albion Street, Brunswick, VIC, Australia

Sorry for the lack of posts over the last few days - it's a busy time, so we may not quite be able to maintain daily posts. However, today I bring to you a place that just baffled me.

Initially, it just seems like a run-of-the-mill example of a house suffering from a lack of maintenace. It's the bread and butter of Mow Your Lawn!, the sort of thing that I casually swore at on the day I coined this blog's name. The paint is peeling, flaking, and just generally decaying; this is so extreme on the side that you would be hard-pressed to tell what the wall's original colour even was. The crappy front fence is an aesthetic displeasure that belongs in front of an underfunded school rather than a house; it has been knocked over at right, and appears to have been left knocked over for so long that the foliage has adapted and grown around it.

"There ain't no awning here and there never was!"

Worst of all, the awnings that used to be over both of the front windows at the front ... are no more. There are just a couple of bits of tatty old splintery wood poking out from the walls above the windows, indicating where awnings used to be. Weeds have even started to make a home on the walls, not in the majestic way of ivy but in the ragtag way of, well, weeds. This place isn't quite coming apart at the seams like dear old 39 Barry Street, but it looks like that is what's in its future.

... then you notice the front lawn. Go back to that first photo. Yeah, that's right, the lawn is neatly mown. The flowers seem to have been given some care. The shrubs are in order. The letterbox is clean. The tree at right may be shrouding one side of the house and there may be growth settling on the wall and the remnants of an awning, but the garden itself is perfectly orderly. The house may be a disgrace, far away from its glory days, but the people here have actually mown their lawn! The fence may be kicked over and the plants growing around it, but the plants themselves are being helped to thrive!

Well the shrub doesn't seem unhappy about having a fence foisted upon it.

We can't make heads nor tails of this. While the garden is neat, it's not a showpiece; it's hardly the garden of somebody so obsessive about their plants that they've put all their love and affection into it at the expense of their home's structural integrity. The best explanation I have is that they really couldn't give a shit about maintaining their house or their fence, but they have an outright fear of snakes and spiders and don't want an overgrown front lawn that would host such things. Otherwise, what? This house seems to me a bit beyond the "oh we'll fix it up when we've got the time/money/inclination".

Rating: That neat front lawn means this place just falls on the Damnable side of the Damnable/Condemnable divide.

89 Wilson Street, Moonee Ponds, VIC, Australia

It's just a little ugly but nothing too bad, right? Right ...?

This place simply confuses me. From the side, it just looks like somebody has taken an old shop/light industry and done it up into a residence. There's nothing wrong with it, though it's not really to my tastes - besides being a bit bricky and blocky, it commits the sin of glass bricks, and corrugated iron really shouldn't be used for much beyond garden sheds. Though I suppose it does stick with the building's industrial heritage. It's honestly a welcome bit of urban renewal, and we need more of this sort of thing. If this particular renovation is to your tastes, then more power to you.

Well as long as you don't walk around the front ...

But then go around the front. It looks like an absolutely dingy abandoned shop! The brick wall across the front is totally uninviting, splotchy, graffitied, and in urgent need of a lick o' paint and some repairs. To add to all that, although its structural integrity seems fine, the windows are perplexingly at a slight angle to the wall.  I don't know about you, but I would be completely embarrassed if this were the front of my house. What is this, a residence or an abandoned hardware shop? Make up your mind!

A closer view, just in case you had any doubts about its dinginess.

Perhaps the front is heritage listed? Well, no amount of Googling indicated anything of the sort, and even heritage protection wouldn't prohibit some cosmetic repairs. However, Google did turn up a couple of interesting results. Firstly, a Government Gazette of 3 March 1948 (pdf) reveals some of this building's heritage; it wasn't a hardware shop but the home to "Dynamic Engineering", who had applied to the Transport Regulation Board to register a commercial goods vehicle in conjunction with their work as building and civil engineering contractors. Secondly, well, this is just a bit weird. It's some new age-y sort of group's newsletter, and it gives this address for the "New Environmental Technologies Annual Conference Administration Centre", complete with an appeal for more office staff to help out with the organisation. Zuh? The building doesn't much look it to me. Then again, I suppose they are the sort of people who are likely to engage in the renovation of an old building. And that newsletter is from February 1998. Not sure what the deal is here; if it is or was some group's offices, there is no indication these days of that function.

Whatever the case, I think the key point here is: if you're going to engage in a bit of urban renewal, at least go all the way and spruce up the whole damn thing. This decaying and neglected front wall, along with an abandoned shop on the corner with Fanny Street, are unsightly blemishes on Wilson Street, otherwise one of the nicest streets in Moonee Ponds. Walking along it in summer is an absolute joy; it has so many beautiful old houses with well-kept, fragrant front gardens. It's one of those streets that illustrates why I love this part of the world so much. It's just a shame #89 is one of the first impressions when you come in from the east.

Rating: Damnable.

Update: 377 Albion Street, Brunswick, VIC, Australia

Well, well. Remember the very first property we featured on this blog? Ah, the nostalgia. Well, we took a wander past it yesterday. Back in early February's entry, I suggested they could pick up a lawnmower cheaply from eBay or pay a local child an utter pittance of small change to make the lawn all nice and tidy. And what do you know? They actually have mown their lawn!

Here's the proof. Before (i.e. 18 January):

And after (i.e. 19 March):

No weeds, no spiders, no snakes.

Yes, it's a somewhat half-hearted attempts at lawn mowing, what with all those epic weeds still sprouting merrily, and I sure hope they didn't PAY for it, but it's a bloody good start. It's obviously not a lawn you could tackle in just one go by yourself anyway. I suppose they got sick of being unable to reach their front door; now the path is clear and nobody's going to accidentally step on a brood of vipers on their way out to the letterbox.

Now you can more readily see the front of the house and the somewhat rundown paintwork, which needs a clean at the least and possibly a nice new coat. I wonder, is somebody preparing this place to renovate or sell? Because it could be so gorgeous. Spruce up the front, get rid of all of those weeds, and plant a nice little front garden and it would look wonderful. This is proven by some nearby houses built to the same plan - they are stunning.

Rating: Revised down from Damnable to Unpleasant.

528 Albion Street, Brunswick West, VIC, Australia

I would love to know what happened to this house, located on Albion Street almost at the point where Brunswick West becomes Essendon. Despite living not too far away from it, I only started walking past it regularly in late 2008; if I'd gone by before, I'd not noticed it - possibly because it hadn't yet suffered its fateful calamity. As you can see in this capture from Google Streetview (this area was done before April 2009, but I'm not sure how far before), it was once a very plain sort of place:

Aerial view from sometime before October 2010.

And now I'm just so curious. When I first remember laying eyes on it, it was the shell of a house. Its twin next door, seemingly a mirror image, is fine, structurally at least; its windows seem permanently sealed like a prison, but that's a rant for another time. This collection of walls with vacant windows, however, was just standing around forlornly, evidently showing the effects of fire. You can see what I mean in the Google Satellite screenshot at right. Compounding the fire damage was exposure to the elements, the streaks from the flames now joined by streaks from the rain. The "elements" in this neck of the world tend to end up including graffiti too, in this case some pretty scratchy and pissweak tagging. A wire fence was along the street frontage with a builder's sign, but it didn't look like much had happened in a while.

Then suddenly, I went past one day in the second half of 2010, and as you can see in my pictures - it had the skeleton of a roof! Some work seems to have gone on inside too, and the property was in general tidied up a bit. Then the mystery deepened: nothing has happened since and the property is becoming less orderly by the day. The skeletal roof is starting to cop the elements. The house looks more forlorn than ever; rather than a phoenix rising from the ashes, it's giving the impression of the ashes just moving around a bit.

Is this a sad case of an insurance company not paying up, or an educational lesson about the perils of not being insured? Is it a buyer or builder struggling for funds? Is this just renovations being carried out on a sort of geological timespan? Why didn't they just knock over the smouldering remnants and start anew? Well, I can at least answer the last question; it appears to have some sort of heritage protection. In my search for information here, hoping to come up with a relevant newspaper example, I found something mildly creepy - somebody died in this house. But not when it burnt down! As this births and deaths page from The Argus shows, a Margaret Spicer died here on 29 December 1945, with her funeral proceeding from this address to Fawkner Cemetery two days later. However, I can't seem to find any news about how Mrs Spicer's house ended up in this state over half a century later! My Google powers have failed me.

Rating: At present, condemnable! Before the fire? Lick o' paint. If it's ever fully rebuilt? I'll let you know!

39 Barry Street, Brunswick, VIC, Australia

The Barry Street frontage.

OK, this house is one of the reasons why this blog exists. It raises so many questions, though most of them are permutations on "how the fuck did this even happen?!", and if anybody out there can sate our curiosity, we'd be most delighted. Because holy shit, we had to look twice (or three times) when we first saw it just to believe it was real.

Dawson St side, seen through gigantic fence gap.

Let's go through the more minor points first. What colour was this house originally? White? Cream? Light brown? Something in between? Or a tasteful flourescent pink? Your guess is as good as mine! The paint has flaked so incredibly much that it's hard to tell; just look at the Dawson Street side (at right) and it's more the colour of mud and mushrooms due to the paint having worn away to an incredible extreme. And how about that fence? It's not fencing in much any more, that's for certain. On both the Dawson and Barry Street frontages, it is collapsing, splintered, and missing legs. You can stroll into the back yard effortlessly; there is such a large gap in the fence that you needn't duck or dodge anything. Never mind the rusty nails poking out too. And how about the drainpipe? Snapped and broken.  The lawn? Mow your lawn! Though we've actually seen worse lawn at occupied properties; not quite sure what to make of this.

Click for a large copy to see how warped the southern (left) wall is.

Now for the major point. The house has lost its structural integrity! Look at it: one half of the house is visibly and alarmingly slumping and subsiding. Check out the windows, which now don't even fit in the windowframes and a visible gap has opened up at the base. The southern wall has actually warped. And never mind that the wall beneath the verandah has gone a charming poo-stain brown just to ram home the decrepitude. This is simply depressing.

The rear of the house. Thanks, collapsed fence.

Once upon a time, this would have been another charming old house, cut from the same basic mould as many in the area. Now it's just, uh, mouldy. It's clearly suffered decades of neglect, and I am at a loss to understand how. The house is in a rather handy spot: it's on the corner of a moderately significant road (Dawson Street), it's close to Union Square, only slightly further to the wares and wonders of Sydney Road's shops, and there is plenty of public transport. Houses with those sorts of nearby amenities go for fucking heaps. What I think is depressing is that whoever let this place fall into such an abject state could make a heap of money by selling this to a developer, who'll probably knock it over and build something from the hideous contemporary templates that seem to be the basis for every new house and apartment block around here.

Rating: Cellar floor, and if that southern end loses much more structural integrity (i.e. in a strong breeze!), we may be looking at our first Dot Dot Curve here.

460 Albion Street, Brunswick West, VIC, Australia

The drug house was for sale for a very long time. Wonder why?

Brunswick West does have a lot of nice places. It really does. But you can never quite get rid of properties like this, loitering incessantly like a bunch of underage youths outside a liquor store. This place is probably just as dirty, but a hell of a lot more fascinating. Like many of the properties around these parts, we initially thought this one was most definitely abandoned. It looks as if it hasn't been painted since it was first built - and if you think the front looks bad, you should see around the sides and the back! There are a couple of outbuildings which I believe were once a shed and garage. Both are now falling to pieces and literally unrecognisable. So, who in their right mind would actually live here? Nobody, right? WRONG.

Complete with nice car.

We had taken to calling this place "the drug house" due to to the fact that we would quite often see very nice cars parked incongruously in the driveway. We assumed that nobody would have a car that nice and a house that shitty, so we naturally jumped to the conclusion that the falling down shed out the back was actually a sophisticated hydroponic setup. Mystery solved! We would smirk knowingly to ourselves as we wandered by, sure that we had uncovered yet another house of illicit wares. However, as always, things were to take a surprising turn.

One day around Christmas, we were lucky enough to be walking past the drug house when the front door was open. Up until this point, we had never had so much as a glimpse inside, since the curtains are always drawn. But today we were in luck. One of the very nice cars that we had been seeing regularly was outside, and there was a couple who appeared to be dropping a few things off at the house. But here's where the shock set in - this decrepit, falling down heap of turds is actually furnished. It would appear that despite all evidence to the contrary, people actually live here. I'm not just talking about a couple of garden chairs here, either. I'm talking large sideboard (complete with mirror and Christmas decorations), reasonably well-kept floorboards, bookcases and soft furnishings.

The original ad for the drug house.

This is bizarre in the extreme. The place had actually been advertised for sale up until just a few days ago when the sign disappeared. Given that they were asking over a million dollars for the site (they pretty much said "just knock this place down and build massive apartments"), I'm not surprised it hasn't sold. Still, this place didn't look too bad inside. If someone has been living there over a long period of time, why the hell haven't they done ANYTHING to the outside? People would probably be interested in this place if it was fixed up - it's a pretty big house on a full section. A clever estate agent would be able to get close to a million for it quite easily. But no, it's been left to fester and now nobody even wants the land it stands on. I'm not surprised; that shed probably full of cockroaches and rats and used syringes. I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.

Rating: Condemnable

121 and 123 Dawson Street, Brunswick West, VIC, Australia

121 and 123 Dawson Street, on the corner with Ferriman Street.

Remember my original post about horrid, soulless boxes around Melbourne?  It's about time that we featured another one of these miserable attempts at medium density housing.  Dawson Street in Brunswick West is home to a couple of adjacent examples, one of which has now fortunately been renovated to bring it kicking and screaming ... well, not into the 21st century, but at least a decade closer to the present than its forlorn neighbour.
 

Closer view of 123 Dawson Street.

Let's start, however, with 123 Dawson Street, which retains its original exterior.  I cannot fathom who designed this or why they thought anybody would want to live here.  How do you give directions to this place?  "Yeah, you turn onto Dawson Street, then I'm at number 123; just keep an eye out for the ugly orange brick place with no charm whatsoever."  Wherever you go, you're destined to spot eyesores along these lines, and I have to say they are the very low point of architecture.  Even your modern wanky bollocks with windows at funny angles, feature walls that look like they are plastered with mould, and an exterior painted the colour of mushrooms and despair are more appealing than this.

At least in the case of modern wank, somebody has put some effort into the design, however misguided that effort may be.  123 Dawson Street is functional and nothing more.  It's just four walls of the most plain variety with some windows in them.  Forget a proper roof.  Forget eaves.  Forget anything more than the barest essentials - four walls around you and a ceiling above.  Utterly thoughtless design for thoughtless developers who just wanted to throw up a block of flats as quickly as possible, cram in hapless sods, and make off with their money.

Closer view of 121 Dawson Street.

A few years ago, somebody recognised the folly of this design and renovated one of the two blocks - 121 Dawson Street.  Unfortunately, this turned out to be a fairly thoughtless renovation.  The walls were slapped with a new cladding, a bizarre "feature" was whacked around the upstairs middle window (straight from Pissweak Feature World), and ... that's about it.  Worst of all, it was painted the colour of mushrooms and despair!  Seriously, who paints their building so that it is reminiscent of a drizzly English day?  The renovator spent all this money on a renovation, and instead of using a tasteful colour scheme to highlight their work and make the place stand out, they have painted it so that it looks bland and sinks from view and memory immediately.  At least it looks about a decade younger than its neighbour now, so I guess the owner can fleece people for a higher rent on the basis of the most superficial work.  It's the rental equivalent of music companies charging you $30 for the "deluxe edition" of an album that normally retails for $18 but has a whopping one extra track and liner notes from a sufficiently sycophantic journalist or associate.

Rating: Unpleasant (121) / Damnable (123)

194 Dawson Street, Brunswick West, VIC, Australia

Or, "how Mow Your Lawn! got its name".

It was 31 December 2010 and time for that annual celebration when the entire planet joins weirdos like me and Charlotte to be number nerds and celebrate something as basic as one number changing to another. I mean, I think interesting dates are a perfectly good reason to get drunk and set off fireworks, and it's comforting that once a year, everybody else joins in.  What, you're telling me there's a bit more to it than that, something called "culture" and all that?  Oh, well then.  That's not the point!

The point is that, on this particular New Year's Eve, Charlotte and I were going to meet my mother and her partner for dinner.  Classy souls that we are, we got smashed on delicious cider before even getting out the door.  So we stumble onto the tram, and I'm trying not to be one of those obnoxious, overly loud tram drunks talking about totally inappropriate subjects (cf Charlotte when we took Helen to see Alpine in November).  I don't think I entirely succeeded.

We already had some budding curiosity about decrepit buildings and crankiness about shonky modern architecture.  See, for example, this post and another post on this topic from Charlotte's blog.  On this particular trip, we'd already - and fairly quietly - noted a couple of Melville Road's more curious places (like Gibbi's Pizza and the shop next to Con's).  But then the tram pulled onto Dawson Street, I laid eyes on #194, and blurted:

"Mow your lawn!"

Because, christ, this thing really does need a mow, soon.  The property is otherwise lovely, and with a nicely mown lawn would attract a considerable amount of approval from me, not that this hasty shot shows much beyond the overgrown lawn:

I spent the next ten minutes critiquing unmown lawns and even urging one concrete paradise to "get a lawn!", which just made me think of a line from the Late Show's sketch about things wogs would never do.  Charlotte finally forcibly got me to shut up, or perhaps it was the urgent call of my bladder, parlously overloaded with cider.

Anyway, all I was getting at that night, and all I'm getting at now, is that you should mow your lawn.  You can't do a whole lot on an unmown lawn (except pass out in it, or hide power bills you don't want to read), and it's probably going to wind up home to things that want to kill you.  Especially in Australia.  And since this country is only three quarters of a mile from the sun, it's a bushfire risk too.

Rating: MOW YOUR LAWN!, or on our oh-so-formal scale, "lick o' paint".

185 Blyth Street, Brunswick East, VIC, Australia

For this entry, I thought I would shift the focus from derelict old houses to the worst of modern architecture. Behold, the luxurious new model of garden shed! Big enough for the whole family!

What kind of awful drugs was this "architect" on when he decided that corrugated iron shouldn't just be restricted to the roof of the house? In this case, they appear to have done away with the roof altogether. Having a roof on your house is so last century, don't you know? The stylish object to base your house around these days is in fact a shoebox.

Seriously, everything about this house is unappealing. Apart from perhaps the cheery red door, but the utter hideousness of the rest of it somewhat negates that. The boxy shape, the harsh lines, the truly awful windows that look like the architect just couldn't find a pane of glass the right size and so instead had to use a lot of smaller ones for a piecemeal effect ... the list just goes on and on. Oh, and the proportion issues - that garage is probably the same size as the house itself. If they don't watch out, Walshe and Whitelock will come and start renting the garage out to foreign students at $400 per week. You could fit at least six people in there and call it "cosy".

It's really something when even the abandoned shop next door to you looks more appealing than your house. At least the shop is intriguing and makes me want to go inside. The house, on the other hand, just makes me want to set my eyes on fire. I guess someone liked their modern office block so much that they decided to live in it. And of course, you know what really helps to add to the appeal of a house? A really nice fence. Preferably a wooden or stone one. This house fails almost as hard as possible when it comes to fences. That belongs at a railway level crossing to control pedestrians, not in front of a suburban home. However, at least it's not one of those godawful common wire netting fences that you see around school playgrounds and in front of houses in South Auckland. Clearly this house can still sink to further depths!

Oh, and for the record, the picture at right shows what used to be here. Even though behind all that greenery it looks pretty dingy, at least it's readily recognisable as a house. With a lick o' paint and some serious garden work, it could probably be quite a nice one. Instead, someone just couldn't be bothered and knocked it down and replaced it with an upmarket tool shed. Just another way to make me lose even more of my faith in humanity!

Rating: Condemnable

1 Fitzgibbon Street, Brunswick West, VIC, Australia

I spotted this one one day when I was coming home on the tram and was almost blinded by it. I thought it looked like somebody got a catering pack of tinfoil and just wrapped up their house, as if they were trying to keep it warm. However, further inspection shows that this house isn't actually finished - look inside and you can see that there are no interior walls. This has been sitting like this for over a year now, and there is no evidence of further construction in or around the house. This seems very odd to me - how can you get this far with a house, to the extent that you've got a proper roof on it and even a TV aerial, only to find that you can't quite finish it off? Did they just suddenly run out of money? Or perhaps it is lived in and finished, and walls just aren't as necessary as I thought they were.

We actually have a theory that this might be the Australian residence of conspiracy theorist and Muse frontman Matt Bellamy. He doesn't seem the type who would bother with walls, and it would make the silver foil exterior much more logical - Matt can't let the aliens get to him! But Christ, if anything, this is going to attract the aliens rather than scaring them off. Maybe the owners are simply trying reach the niche conspiracy theorist market. Because that totally exists and everything.

This tinfoil giant is attached to the perfectly normal (if in need of a lick o' paint) older house in front of it. I think that's very queer indeed - why attach another rather large house to yours in the first place (especially when you need to buy some paint for the existing one already), and if you're going do it, why not at least keep with the same style of house? I don't understand at all. As a charming finishing touch, it seems that recently some of the tinfoil on the side of the house has actually deteriorated and has been replaced with some tasteful black binliners. Lovely! Still, I think I prefer decorating your house with materials from the cleaning aisle of the supermarket than having a peeling weatherboard exterior. In case you haven't figured it out yet, I have quite a grudge against weatherboard houses that are anything less than immaculate.

Perhaps one day they'll finish this off. Until then, maybe I'll speed things up by supplying them with other useful building materials such as baking paper and catering-grade food wrap. Maybe they're just waiting for more binliners to arrive to serve as the interior walls. When that happens, the place will probably be featured in interior design magazines. It'd be better than most of the shite in those at the moment!

Rating: Truly bizarre, lying somewhere around Unpleasant.

11-17 Evans Street, Moonee Ponds, VIC, Australia

Meet 11-17 Evans Street. One day, I was innocently taking a stroll through the side streets of Moonee Ponds, admiring the old houses and enjoying the gardens and suchlike, as you do. And on this stroll, I unwittingly made the fateful turn onto Evans Street. It is otherwise a nice street, like most in Moonee Ponds … but then I rounded a bend and was confronted with the sight of #11-17. I did not know quite what to do. It was quieter than usual, and a sense of depression and destitution hung in the air. I felt like I'd walked into a fucking slum. I just quietly walked on by, trying to sneak a peek without looking too obvious, and then got the fuck around the next corner.

Seriously, this place is hideous and desperately needs to be fixed up. It would benefit even from a couple of token gestures like replacing the missing bricks in the fence and rectifying the askew letterbox. But I can understand why nobody there seems tremendously houseproud: if I lived here, I'd be too damn depressed to set foot outside and attempt to set things right. It just looks like the sort of crummy development for people down on their luck to be herded into so that they can stay down on their luck, or for poor students to be herded into and fleeced of their money while living in a mouldy, dank flat unfit for a dog. The swirly, pseudo-fancy script of "Evans" above one entryway isn't fooling anybody. I must admit I'm hardly surprised that one of the neighbouring lots has been empty for some time.

Was there ever a time when this was attractive? When it was new, could it have possibly been anything other than undesirable? I can't see it. It's sunken, it's bland, it looks cheap and shoddy, and those gates between the units look like the sort of place where you'd get raped on your own property. Did the developers actually employ an architect?

This is a Walshe & Whitelock property if ever I saw one. They'd lap this shit up, and charge you $1,000 a month for the privilege of having a “security entrance” in which you get mugged, “nearby shops” so you can stay out and never go home to the flat you're renting, “nearby public transport” so that you can get even further away, and “close to parks” - i.e. the reservation along Moonee Ponds Creek, an open stormwater drain. Aren't you just signing the lease now?

Rating: Condemnable

1017 Beach Road, Torbay, North Shore, New Zealand

It's time this blog featured an architectural failure, to complement the rundown and mysterious properties already here.  A few weeks ago, we paid a visit to the North Shore in New Zealand.  As a Wellingtonian, I feel better about my life and my relationship with the planet as long as I say I went to the "North Shore" instead of admitting I set foot in Auckland.*  However, I felt much worse about my eyesight and my relationship with architects the moment I set eyes on this monstrosity.  Trust me, the blurry photograph above is for the best; a nice, sharp one might do damage to your vision.

*Warning: sentence may contain high dose of exaggeration.

When we last passed through here, this was a vacant lot.  Now, as part of all the unnecessary development taking place along the fringe of Long Bay Regional Park, a house has cropped up here.  And not just any house, but a truly bleak, boxy piece of rubbish. Seriously, it looks like one box precariously balanced on top of another.  The colour is confronting, sinister, and about the last thing that should be beside a pleasant park.

The windows add to the sinister feel. Some walls have all too few, creating the impression more of light industry than of somewhere homely and inviting.  Others are just slits high on the wall, as you can see in this also mercifully blurred photo:

I cannot fathom what the architect was thinking, or perhaps more to the point, what gave him such a bad trip to design this or how he persuaded anybody to accept the design and build it.  The house itself is presumably perfectly liveable, so I can't award it one of our lower ratings, but I'm coming down on it like a sack of bricks - and maybe, if we're lucky, it'll be condemned not as structurally unsound but as aesthetically unsound.

Rating: Damnable, with a stern eye to Condemnation the moment any wear and tear develops.

364 Albion Street, Brunswick West, VIC, Australia

Here is where the blog takes a bit of a bizarre turn. I am just as confused by this place today as I was the very first time I walked past it, and for very good reason. I mean, imagine it. You're just walking along an ordinary suburban street, with some lovely houses and few ramshackle ones, and all of a sudden you stumble across a localised forest. I reckon the owners could run a kind of safari on their roof - god knows what's living up there!

I have no idea how to explain this sudden influx of foliage. Underneath, you can see that it's a pretty bland place that would probably invoke a cry of "paint your house!" Still, it's not the worst house in the world. Are the owners really so embarrassed by it that they have to cover it in something resembling the Amazon rainforest? I know having a peeling weatherboard house is pretty humiliating, but even I wouldn't go this far. Or if I did, I'd at least get some nice flowers or something to cover it up. This just looks like something from The Day Of The Triffids. Clearly these people wanted gardens (yes, this enchanted woodland fantasy continues at the back of the house), and they weren't going to let the trifling fact that there aren't any gardens stop them. Or perhaps they're too stingy to get a nice hydroponic setup for their weed and are trying to get away with growing it on their roof. If this is so, they're succeeding so far! 

This is certainly one of the more inventive houses we've come across around here, but that still doesn't make it appealing. Please, keep your plants at ground level and just paint your goddamn house. It'll still be a an ugly house, but at least you won't get snakes dangling above your driveway anymore.

Mow your roof!

Rating: Unpleasant, in the most mysterious way possible.

377 Albion Street, Brunswick, VIC, Australia

To start this blog, here is a quintessential example of what Mow Your Lawn! is all about. It may not be the most ramshackle property we've seen, and it's not an architectural abomination, but it has so many of the classic qualities of a neglected, intriguing property.

Firstly, the lawn. Mow your lawn! There is just no excuse for a lawn being this overgrown. You can easily pick up a lawnmower for $50 on eBay and it'll use just a few precious moments of your weekend to make your house look presentable. If you aren't physically up to mowing a lawn, I sympathise, but if you can forego a couple of stubbies a week, you can get yourself a gardener to do it cheaply and quickly. Or even cheaper, put an annoying local child to good use behind their father's lawnmower for a ludicrously low amount of spare change.

Secondly, the incongruity of the house. The front looks neat enough – the paint isn't hopelessly dull or peeling away, in stark contrast to the lawn or to the miserable letterbox. So is somebody looking after this place? It's hard not to be intrigued. But if they are, well, you can't exactly get to that front door.

Thirdly, the neglected rear of the house. Through a gate that's just lazily resting open, you can see all kinds of stuff lying around at the back. Including a hose that's still connected. I'm just even more mystified. It's hard to tell if somebody's living here and has no sense of tidiness or lawnmowery, or if the property has – fairly recently – been left to fend for itself against nature and the triffids. Whatever the case, a bit of lawnmowery, some fence repairs, and a big old tidy-up could make this place a star on Albion Street.

Rating: Damnable.

So with our quintessential example established, join us to see more fascinating places from inner Melbourne and elsewhere, including a few forays to New Zealand.

Update (20 March 2011): The rating for this property has been revised down to Unpleasant after the lawn was mowed; see this entry for details.