Have you seen any bad renovations or changes to beautiful or historic houses?

What’s with all these tasteless renovations involving covering houses with neutral or grey spray-paint?

As an educated and well-known afficionado of Traditional architecture and traditional / natural building materials, I have been pleased that architects still exist who know how to use stone from the Cotswalds and antique brick from the deep south or Appalachian Virginia.

It seems that many residence designers, although they can design a reasonably artistic house, seldom really know what makes a house look and feel balanced and whole.

Because of the dubious building materials used on many of today’s houses, they are often spray-painted a neutral buff or grey.

But what is appalling me, why are they applying such ticky-tacky paint to rare, expensive materials?

In the past month I’ve seen two tacky examples I pass daily.

In one case, a brick Virginia Colonial style house, made with antique brick, with a poplar clapboard colonial addition with green shutters, and a third annex to that was antique brick again,
—someone covered this with white-buff styrofoam spraypaint. Do they think this looks good?

In another case, a sorta rural-Gothic faery-tale cottage that looks like it makes you want to drink steaming herbal tea and wait for hobbits and collegiate academia—with beautiful natural stone from gosh-knows-where— was spraypainted flat gray, losing all its character and charm.

What’s with these tasteless renovations and changes to beautiful homes?