walls of pain.

While our pal Antoinette was in the Peace Corps, she learned the term "wall of pain". It referred to a side of a house, the side that everybody just wanted to finish while they were building said house. She said "they told me that every house has a wall of pain".

Here in McMansion-ville, we have walls of pain too:

You've got your 4500-square-foot house that goes for nearly a million dollars. It's brick in front, becuase brick looks spendy, but building a house this big out of brick is spendy. So to save money, the sides and back are vinyl siding. And to tie it all together, at least one wall is pretty much devoid of windows... just a big vinyl monolith.

Bradee's brother is a volunteer firefighter. He says that when houses like these burn, it's just a question of when the brick facade will fall over -- there's nothing to hold them up.

I guess these houses are designed to be crammed fifteen feet from each other, on tiny lots, where the sides really aren't visible. But the lots in our neighborhood are big enough, and the neighboring houses are small enough, that the walls of pain are, er, very clearly visible.