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.

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.

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.

5 Bent Street, Brunswick West, VIC, Australia

Click for a larger version that shows the flakiness and tardiness in detail.

Charlotte's been terribly slack and lazy (by which I mean not lazy at all, and certainly busier than me), so the job falls again to me to provide today's dose of man-made failure.  I'm going to stick very close to yesterday's entry and this empty lot and stay on Bent Street in Brunswick West.  Now, poor Bent Street, I don't mean to knock it or make it sound like some miserable slummy road.  In fact, three of my favourite properties in Brunswick West can be found along its length, one of which is home to a couple of adorable cats.  However, in its three short blocks, Bent Street also has five properties worthy of this blog; the previous two, this one, a fourth I'll cover in due course, and this Murray St shitbox is on the intersection with it.

Now, you may think 5 Bent Street is adjacent to yesterday's subject at number 7.  That's too logical.  In between them is Cumming Street (yes, we laugh at that all the time) and two properties that are numbered in Cumming's sequence.  Not long after moving to the area, this property made me just as curious as 7.  While 7 was evidently abandoned, this one signs of being lived in, of which one was big and obvious - a clean, fairly modern car normally parked in the driveway (see picture above).  And that just caused me even more confusion.  The car was clearly in decent mechanical and aesthetic condition, yet this place is falling apart.  Now, I'm sure we've all met guys who'll let their house fall apart while they masturbate with their car for hours, but as you can see in the picture at right, this is hardly a car-lover's car!  If you're taking reasonable care of your vehicle, wouldn't you also keep your property at least vaguely presentable?

This house isn't ever going to be the most exceptional piece of real estate, but you could tidy it up and make it look neat and presentable.  As it is?  The paint appears to have gone untouched since it was first applied so many years ago, alongside the footpath is a sad excuse for a fence, the lawn is ratty and has been threatening to lose all control for as long as I've known the property, and the roof actually looks like it has grown a layer of mould or even guano to keep it company.  Actually, maybe this isn't some Mafia den or meth lab after all, but somebody cannily starting their own guano mine.  They're patient!

Rating: Damnable.

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