Yeah. Those awful porch columns are clearly a product of being able to buy cheap off-the-shelf molded plastic columns and wrap them around equally cheap metal p

Yeah. Those awful porch columns are clearly a product of being able to buy cheap off-the-shelf molded plastic columns and wrap them around equally cheap metal posts. They're trying to look "impressive", but they just look unbalanced, at the scale of the house. Then again, each generation has its own problems. Housing for all but the rich is built around cheapness and available technology. Ours is a bungalow neighborhood because in the early 1900s, that was the cheap way to build houses. Balloon-frame construction with 2x4s and factory nails would have been anathema to previous generations - how could that possibly last? (Answer? About a hundred years.) My kitchen door is crooked because the door frame was crooked, built by relatively low-skilled laborers with poor measurements and tools, and the guy putting in the door just trimmed it to fit. No replacing that.