Half-timbered houses are houses that have a wooden frame built up of lots of thick timber pieces that are generally quite short. The timbers are arranged in a pattern with lots of diagonal pieces to act as braces. The strong wooden frame is then filled in with all sorts of other material. In some houses the ""infil"" is mainly of brick. In other houses, ""wattle and daub"" is used between the timber. Other houses have infil of ""rubble"" (rough stones) in clay or mud. The ""infil is generally plastered over and painted white (or in some places a colour) while the timbers are often stained black. If they are not stained, they turn pale silvery grey. Hundreds of these houses exist, including some that are quite grand. In the 1800s and early 1900s, there was a fashion to copy ""half-timbering"" on modern brick houses.