I am of the opinion that, along with being drab (if not ugly), much of the residential home and commercial building construction in the 1970s was shoddy.
Is there an explanation that supports my opinion?
The early 1970s was an era of insane inflation rates on the heels of a recession. The sum of which was the best way to make a sale was to price it cheap. The best way to make a profit at that price was to build it even cheaper.
c.f. the $1900 Ford Pinto & Chevy Vega.
Plus after the 60s we were all kind of addled anyway.
Well, if they are built to code they should be all right. The only thing I recall about home construction back then that I did not like was the practice of only putting plywood sheathing at the corners of the house. The rest was filled in with fiber board. There were burglaries where the bad guys just cut the vinyl siding with a knife and kicked in the fiber board and drywall.
Then expanded foam insulating board became inexpensive and builders covered the entire wall with plywood or OSB and covered it with foam. Much better.
I’m not saying 70s house look great, just that they should not fall apart. Today’s homes are far more interesting in appearance
I have repaired enough older homes to realize that modern houses built to code are superior to most older homes in terms of sagging and leaning.
Dennis
My parents bought a house in 1976 that had been constructed about 5 years earlier (my parents took over the mortgage from a family whose plans to live there for 30 years had changed). My brother and I lived there for several years, and my parents lived there (save the one year we were in the Soviet Union, when it was rented) from 1976 to 1998, when my father died. Apart from replacing the roof once, the furnace one, and the dishwasher once, they had no problems whatsoever with it.
My mother knew the people she sold it to. They made some renovations to it, and it looked pretty good. It’s still standing, and holding up well, from what I understand. An older couple bought it, and now their oldest son and his family live there. The wife passed on, and they take care of their father in exchange for the house. They are planning on staying there at least until their children are grown, and probably after. It’s paid for.
That’s New York.
My aunt and uncle bought a house in 1975 that have been built in the 1960s. They made extensive renovations when my aunt’s parents went to live with them. The house has had a new roof, and new furnace, and a new water heater, but no repairs to the foundation or siding, or anything. It’s still standing, and they still live there. My cousin retired from the Israeli Army a couple of years ago, and moved back to the US with his wife and kids, and they moved into the house (it’s a big house). They will take care of my aunt and uncle as they age, and then inherit the house.
That’s Indiana.
If you think the styling was ugly, it’s a fairly easy step to say shoddy …
We did stop stapling homes together after Hurricane Andrew (1992) …
Old growth lumber is gone, the new framing lumber looks like shit …
Some of the cost saving innovations introduced then didn’t work out …
I disagree with you, this trend started in the 1950’s …
My anecdotal experience is also that they were experimenting with new technologies, some of which weren’t great, and others which didn’t stick. Such as noisy PVC soil stacks. Or pushmatic circuit breakers.
There can also be HUGE differences across regions. When I was shopping for a home in NW Indiana, I consistently encountered far shoddier construction that anything I have encountered in the Chicago area. Not sure that I was exactly comparing apples to apples, though, in terms of age of homes. Was especially evidence after the recession. With just a couple of years of deferred maintenance, a great many homes were just falling apart.
No idea what codes applied where we were looking. Ended up buying a late 50s split-level in Chicago burbs which is built like a frigging fortress - plaster walls, etc.
The building I live in now was framed with 2x4’s that actually measure 2" by 4" … quartersawn 1x12 Hemlock for siding … the rake on the window sills is over 30º … after thirty years of abuse, it’s still in great shape … do we want affordable housing, or do we want quality housing?; it’s all about trade-offs, if we only spend $100/sq ft, don’t expect the Taj Mahal …
Having done some repair work in NW Indiana let me put in my $0.02.
A LOT of cheap, crappy housing went up between 1970 and 1989. Partly, this was due to lax or absent building codes. It was built quickly at lowest cost intending to achieve the highest profit, often in areas prone to flooding. Badly poured concrete floors (concrete slabs should not have the maker’s footprints embedded into them like dino fossils), baseboards and trim made of cardboard with a cheap plastic film on top, and so on. The particle board and plywood used often had glues/resins/adhesives that broke down over time. Living in one of those is like living in a soggy cardboard box. You’d be better off in a single or doublewide trailer.
There was also some high-quality construction during the same period, but it tends not to change hands readily and it’s expensive. It’s usually in older areas less prone to flooding (because the builders gave a damn), usually contracted by the people who would eventually be living in it rather than intended for quick sale. There’s less of it, it’s up for sale less often, and it’s harder to find.
Our house was built in 1934, and the framing is from old growth trees (cedar, I think). One time I had to drive a nail into a stud, and it was like trying to hammer a nail into concrete. The wood is fairly dense. (I presume the additions did not use old-growth.)
For several years, I lived in a house built in the early 70s. It was mostly ok, except for the window frames – which were made of metal. Metal! The one type of material which is absolutely guaranteed to efficiently transfer heat!
Why on earth anybody would think that having lots of metal in simultaneous direct contact with both the inside environment and the outside weather would be a good idea is totally beyond me. Our heating bills in the winter were really something. When the temperature got down in the single digits, there would be a little ice on the inside of the windows.
Yeah, I’ve budgeted ruining three screw-guns when I get about hanging drywall …
My 1935 Craftsman house has all the upstairs walls and ceilings made of 4 inch tongue and groove wood that is now only used for expensive wainscot applications. The whole stairwell walls, bedroom walls and the ceilings.
Pieces run 20 feet or more without even a hint of a knot, not even a small birds eye. All cut by a local mill that only cut old growth fir, the real huge trees, not the 3 foot diameter trees considered old growth now, the virgin forest stuff. I don’t know where you could even get such wood anymore. If you could I hate to imagine the cost.
There is a LOT less maintenance for metal window frames as compared to wood. I’m sure at the time it seemed like a good idea.
The living room, ‘dining room’, and a wall of the kitchen had ship lath of varying widths (6-8 inches) that’s at least an inch thick.
[puffs up] … MY house has 3 foot by 8 foot solid wood doors; except for the parlor, that door is the full 6 foot wide … it’s a good fit with all the 2’6" x 6’8" windows …
Living in it now, embrace the suck, develop your handy skills and invest a good screw gun and a relationship with a contractor who is willing to act as a consultant for your diy repairs to your house that was certified by a cadre of blind inspectors who were taking bribes from the builder.
A neighborhood was built across the street from us in the 1970s. I was around 8 years old.
I collected beer cans. (At the time, it was a common hobby for children.) And I learned the best place to find cans was on construction sites. So I’m guessing a lot of the construction workers were somewhat drunk when they were building the houses. I don’t know if this had anything to do with poor construction quality in the 1970s, but it’s certainly possible.
Yeah, I should have acknowledged that we DID see some well built homes. It was just quite different from what we had experienced in the Chicago area, where construction would be more consistent within neighborhoods. In the areas we were looking - generally Valparaiso and N to the lake W to Crown Point, The building quality was much more varied.
There were some very nice newer subdivisions. But anything older was very hit-or-miss.
Also different - in Chicago, neighborhoods tend to be more economically homogenous. In Valpo, you could have a very nice houses interspersed with shacks. Not saying one is better than the other - just different.
For well over a century Chicago has had much more strict and uniform building codes.
Indiana not so much.
You observed the difference. Which is why I have some objection to the “get rid of regulations!!!” braying from politicians. I’ve seen the benefits of better codes, and the results of lax codes.