houses
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Moving
I read a bit in The New Yorker today about how photographs “can freeze time, but never stop it.” To that end, we sold our townhouse, and this is one of the listing pictures we took.
You are viewing stuff tagged with houses.
I read a bit in The New Yorker today about how photographs “can freeze time, but never stop it.” To that end, we sold our townhouse, and this is one of the listing pictures we took.
We’re thinking about moving houses soon. It’s been a great run at our little duplex spot here on Warwick in Minneapolis, but we moved here out of necessity back when I was in school. Five very short years later and we’ve outgrown the space. I’ll have quite a bit to say about it when we actually move, I really enjoyed my Cretin retrospective, and I think I’ll enjoy writing a Warwick one, too.
The ex-potato field felt empty but not desolate—lot stakes, light posts, and the bafflingly windy streets of modern suburbia were all in place. Ours was the second house in Brighton’s Landing, a development in what would soon become one of the fastest growing cities in the nation. I knew none of this context, nor would it have refined my picture of my place in the world—like any child, my life was defined by low walls and narrow vistas. But I did know we were moving, here, to this new house. I gazed up into the vaulted entryway, looked down at the unstained ornaments for the front window. My memories of this construction phase are spotty, but I know we visited regularly during dim fall evenings. I remember little from the days we moved, but the vast expanse of fresh carpet lodged in my brain. Perhaps because I was six years old and still close the ground. That was 1991, over 20 years ago.
Loved this quote from a NYTimes article “Furniture - The Big Get Bigger”:
McMansions, which still populate the suburbs like domestic mastodons.
Someday, it is my dream to live on a sunny hilltop where I can see the stars at night. I think I’ll feel content. Right now, I can’t see the stars at night, but I still feel content. I guess it’s not about where you are, but who is there with you.
As promised: extremely heartening piece declaring online social networking as the beginning of the end of conspicuous consumption, and the start of something significantly more environmentally sustainable. Conspicuous, but not Consuming, by Stephen Linaweaver:
All Boarded Up - How Cleveland is Dealing With Mass Foreclosure - NYTimes.com — draw your own conclusions, though you might be able to pick from this grab-bag: government is ineffective, government is effective, the economy is on the upswing, the economy is on the downswing, home ownership is great, homeownership is terrible. Etcetera. An interesting quote (emphasis mine):
A stupendous interactive infographic in the New York Times titled Is It Better to Buy or Rent? allows you to twiddle the dials of interest rates, appreciation, rent increases, taxes, and etc. to see when it makes more economic sense to buy rather than rent.
Row houses with nice flowers.
This gives a good idea of the lean of the row houses in Amsterdam.
Note the leaning houses; they lean forward so the hoist hooks at the top can be employed to move furniture in through the windows — the inside stairs are too small to move large furniture. Most every place in Amsterdam has these hoist hooks.
The New York Times has an article about a family in Akron, Ohio who restored a 1913 house over 12 years:
It was, in fact, as the couple learned only at the closing, about to be condemned. There were large holes in the roof, various furry woodland animals in residence, a barely functional heating and plumbing system. The roof over the master bedroom leaked so badly that the previous owner had placed 55 aluminum baking pans on the floor to catch the rain.
An interesting architectural guideline: “Light on two sides of every room.” The observation:
When they have a choice, people will always gravitate to those rooms which have light on two sides, and leave the rooms which are lit only from one side unused and empty.
My sketch of my Chris’s future. It has since been revised, but this is the general outline.
Penthouse triplex of the Hotel Pierre - While the $70 million price tag is the “highest ever listed for a city residence,” I find the price, for once, to be justified. This isn’t any price-inflated handbag—this house is the real deal:
The Father of the Bride House - Shown on HGTV, turns out it doesn’t quite look like it did in the movie. Thanks, Mykala!
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