Brick Houses (was: Rupert! What were you thinking?

[Geoff]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "zanooda2" <zanooda2 at ...> wrote:

Catlady:
> > The stucco houses in California are wood-framed. 

zanooda:
> That's what puzzled me a little in Julie's post :-). After stucco was mentioned, I looked it up and I was under an impression that stucco is only used as a wall-covering material, not as a structural material (for construction itself). I was just going to ask about it when your post came along, LOL.

Geoff:
You've raised a similar thought to mine. My dictionary defines 
stucco as "fine plaster used for coating wall surfaces or moulding 
into architectural decorations."

Is the US definition different to mine? Because even if houses are 
wooden-framed, I cannot see how the wall between the frames 
can be made of a coating plaster.

Referring back to UK houses, most houses up to about the 1960s 
were brick, including internal walls. External walls were - and still 
are - double rows of bricks which were cavity walls, i.e. with a gap 
between the two rows. Nowadays, owners of such houses often have 
the gap filled with foam to improve the heat retention. Most modern 
houses have external brick walls but internal walls are sometimes 
wooden framed with materials such as chipboard as filler - which 
makes it darned awkward to hang pictures and such things.

We are just putting our 1935 house on the market and hope to buy 
something in the same age range because they are usually considered 
better than modern houses.