That scaffolding you see along the sidewalk at the corner of First Street and West J Street is extra strong with metal I-beams at the top for a special reason. The grey plastered brick “Mason’s” building that looms over the corner of that intersection has been red-tagged as unsafe and cannot be entered because deep […]
ArchiTalk: Old House/New House
Melody and I are at that phase of house building when the decisions need to come fast and often. We recently spent part of an afternoon at a place called General Plumbing selecting faucets and sinks and finish colors. For an hour and a half we dug deep to find opinions within us about […]
ArchiTalk: The house that started it all for me
The first act of building a house is to walk onto the empty property with a helper and a long piece of string. The two of you will pull the string taut to create a straight line and then carefully position it to mark the exact edge of the house to be built. The end […]
ArchiTalk: My house in 200 years
I’m in the process of building a house for myself alongside the edge of a cliff. The best view of the Carquinez bridge is had from there, so that’s where the house is going. A couple of people have expressed concern about building so near a cliff. Like I’m not going to do something about […]
ArchiTalk: The wind is rising. We must try to live
Ten years of column writing means I get to choose a poem for a title IT WAS 10 YEARS AGO LAST MONTH that I started writing this column. Thus begins decade number two. My first column was about how to turn a walk-in closet into a full-blown dressing room without too much trouble. Not bad, that […]
ArchiTalk: Back to Mexico
IT WAS MY FIRST TIME BACK IN PUERTO VALLARTA IN FOUR YEARS. Back then I’d gone on behalf of my mom, to sell her dream house to a land speculator after development forces beyond the control of law had built a big fancy marina right where we once had our own perfect bit of beach. […]