miscellaneous

• Does the Mills Act decrease public school funds?

  
  California’s Proposition 13 is the bane of public education in the state – and for the most part benefits the richest single segment of the population, relying on the old straw man of "senior homeowners on fixed incomes" (when tax credits for that demographic would be far more equitable in keeping folks in their homes). However, it’s only one of many archaic and unethical pieces of the tax code keeping our public schools underfunded.

  The whole story is much more complicated, but a recent grand jury report in San Diego took the focus off Prop 13 and turned that energy to vilifying owners of historic homes – only it turns out they got the story wrong. Kelly Bennett of Voice of San Diego reports:

  One of the most heartrending arguments for dramatic changes to the
  city of San Diego’s historic preservation program is that its tax
  discounts for homeowners results in an annual revenue loss to the San
  Diego Unified School District of nearly $1.5 million.

  That
  sum factored in media reports, propelled damning rhetoric in a county
  Grand Jury report and became a talking point of Mayor Jerry Sanders in
  press conferences and on the Roger Hedgecock radio show earlier this
  month. And so, the city’s Mills Act program looked quite like a fat tax
  break to homeowners in some of San Diego’s wealthiest neighborhoods at
  the expense of schoolchildren. And this at a time when schools are
  preparing to slash staff levels and budgets.

                But it’s not true.

  The
  school district didn’t lose $1,486,317, as was claimed in the Grand
  Jury’s report titled "History Hysteria." The state reimburses the
  district to make sure it has a particular level of funding for schools,
  even if property tax revenue drops, according to the state Department
  of Finance and San Diego Unified School District. The program does mean
  losses for the city of about $600,000, for the county, and for several
  other municipal agencies due to the tax discounts.

  The number
  blunder exemplifies some of the confusion swirling in the debate over
  one of the few programs for which San Diego leads the state. San Diego
  has entered into far more Mills Act contracts, more than 800, than any
  city in the state. The contracts with homeowners of historically
  designated homes trade a break in property taxes for a homeowner’s
  promise to keep the facade up to snuff.

   

  Read the full story at VoSD; photo  by Sam Hodgson.

• 3 practical suggestions to get your home ready for sale

  
  Our friend Joel McDonald writes regularly on real estate & home ownership topics. He sent in the following article a few days ago:

  Prepping your home for sale, especially an older home with its accumulation of what you like to think of as endearing personality quirks, can be a daunting task. Even in the best of circumstances, the preparations going into selling  can be stressful, complicated, and can demand a ton of work. That’s especially so if you’re like most sellers and prepare your home for sale a few weeks before putting it on the market.

  Plan ahead
  Waiting until the weekend before selling your home is going to cause you way too much stress and anxiety – not to mention a lot of unnecessary expenses. Create a list of things that need to be fixed now, and get to them a weekend at a time every few months. By taking your time to do a few tasks in the year or two before selling your home, you will be saving yourself a lot of hassles when it comes time to actually sell. Not only will you be less stressed, but you won’t be as rushed to get things fixed, and you’ll do a far better job. (If you hire someone, you’ll also likely keep some cash in your pockets by hiring them in the off season, not in the summer when most contractors will be booked, or have higher rates.)

  Taking the best picture possible
  You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression, and when buyers are looking online, that first impression is the photo of your home.  Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you can get away with a snapshot from the curb at high noon (which is the worst time of day to ever take a picture.)  One of the best things you can do to get ready to sell is to keep a camera handy for capturing that moment when your home won’t seem colorless because the picture was taken in the unforgiving glare of the noonday sun. It will look much nicer in the early morning or late afternoon, or under sunny clearing skies after a rain.  Murphy�s law predicts that if you wait until the last minute to take a picture for the listing, it will be gloomy the entire week your agent or the photographer shows up to get it done.

  Even if you’re not planning on selling in the immediate future, next time after it rains, see if you can take a picture of your home with a rainbow behind it. In the spring, make sure to get an late evening shot with the amber sun glowing on your gorgeous flowers on your front porch. Tiny details like that make make a huge difference.

  If you don’t need it – store it!
  Rent a storage locker well in advance, and start making occasional trips to it with the stuff you don’t need. Tackle your kitchen, garage and basement first since those tend to accumulate the most unnecessary clutter. If you don’t use that coffee pot taking up room on the kitchen countertop more often than several times a month, put it away or store it. (In fact, even if you do use it, if it could be easily stored in your cabinets – store it!) The less "stuff" is cluttering up your countertops, the bigger the kitchen feels. If your kids don’t play with the toys that are sitting around the family room, have a yard sale or donate them to Goodwill! The less stuff you have around in your home, the bigger it feels!

  With just a little advance planning, you can take a great deal of stress out of selling your house.

  Visit Automated Homefinder for all of your Colorado real estate needs.

• How to Green Your Kitchen

  Given that there is a fair amount of overlap in the Hewn & Hammered and Environmentally aware Venn diagram, I present Treehugger‘s recent Green Guide, "How to Green Your Kitchen":

  The eco-friendly kitchen begins with eating green, but it doesn’t end
  there. Energy-efficient food preparation and cleaning habits, using
  equipment made from sustainable materials, and dodging toxic chemicals
  are also important if you want to have a truly healthy kitchen.
  Fortunately, making the right choices for your well-being is also good
  for the pocket and the planet. Our straightforward and simple
  suggestions for preparing earth-friendly meals–from fridge to food to
  cleanup–will turn you into a greener gourmet in no time. read the whole thing

• some things are beyond our control

  

  A few beautiful old homes here in Sacramento were damaged or, in one case, totally destroyed by falling trees and other debris in this first of the three storms scheduled to hit us before Sunday evening. Most of these photographs are from the Sacramento Bee. Click the image for a slightly larger version.

• Martha Stewart’s Arts & Crafts Christmas dinner

  
  Reader Bob Sindelar of Sindelar & O’Brien Antique and Design imagines the following bit of holiday humor: Martha Stewart’s planner for a very special Arts & Crafts Christmas dinner…

  DAY I: Build pavilion for the dinner — something in a bungalow motif. Use native woods. Strive for a Greene & Greene look. (Use original hardware from the collection if time gets too short to hammer my own.)

  Quarter-saw white oak from the stand I felled last year. Build manger. Use through-tenons and pegged construction, adding corbels to the underside (Joseph may have been a carpenter, but he was no Gustave Stickley!).

  Fume and set aside.

  DAY 2: Shear sheep. Card and spin wool. Weave. Fashion into swaddling clothes.
  Phone Dale at the Boathouse. Book time at furnace. Pick up Lino at airport. Blow life-size glass putti. (Use gold foil inclusions; the silver looked tacky in that eight-foot, sand-cast sleigh Bertil and I did last year!)

  Swaddle. Place in manger.

  DAY 3: Pluck goose. Fashion quill pen. Make red ink from the crushed skin of holly berries. Address 250 dinner invitations in a calligraphic hand.

  Design award-winning new typeface. Carve from heart pine. Set type for dinner menus. Pull 250 prints, hors commerce, and pencil sign. Illume in six colors, plus gold. Bind in limp covers. Set aside.

  DAY 4: Run off individual linen place mats and napkins on loom. Embroider with guests’ initials in original Arts & Crafts design based on the Dard Hunter sketch book I found at that wonderful yard sale last week for 25¢.

  Design and cast bronze mounts for those terribly plain, Tiffany salts.

  DAY 5: Fuel the Aerocoupe. Fly to Colorado. Select and fell Blue Spruce for the Great Room. Fashion sled from trimmed branches. Recruit dog team. Mush tree to front yard, waving gaily to ordinary folk along the way. (They will remember this for years!)

  DAY 6: Soak frostbitten toes in Weller jardiniere filled with fresh mountain spring water, to which has been added 8 oz. arctic ice. Reserve water for the ice sculpture. (Remember to wash jardiniere before serving the mulled wine!)

  Clean funky old sideboard I found on the trash pile yesterday. Paint in colorful Peter Hunt design. (I’ll need a place to put those three-color Grueby bowls for the soup.) Be sure to cover up that "R"-inside-a-sawmark carved on the back, probably by some bygone child.

  DAY 7: Melt down old copper tubing removed from Victorian house I restored last week. Pour and let cool. Roll into sheets. Radially hammer individual place card holders. Patinate and set aside.

  Hit local flea markets and garage sales. Gather enough "Ruba Rombic" in seasonal colors of Jungle Green and Ruby Red to use as party favors. (Don’t tell dealers their Consolidated "Ruba Rombic" is really Kopp "Modernistic." They don’t want to hear it. Particularly not from Martha Stewart!)

  DAY 8: Strip Thanksgiving turkey carcass; dry. Paint red. Distress. Apply gold leaf to highlight. Invert and hang on front door. Fill with freshly cut pine boughs and cones. Add left-over mashed potatoes to pine cone tips to simulate snow. Top with jellied cranberries for that festive note.

  For dinner music, record traditional Christmas melodies on period instruments, playing each myself and mixing in my studio later. Laser CDs, enough for each guest.

  DAY 9: Harvest bee hives. Make wax; color with crushed and pureed fresh cranberries for that just-right Christmas-red. Line 120 toilet paper rolls saved over past year (waste not; want not!) with wax paper. Using as molds, cast bee’s-wax candles. Remove and discard TP rolls.

  Line drive and walk with Loetz oil-spot vases. To each, add 1-1/2 cups Gulf Coast, summer sand, to weight. Insert red candles (wick up). They will look lovely, glowing warmly, against the snow! (If summer sand is unavailable, substitute winter sand, but increase to 1-2/3 cups.)

  DAY 10: The Day of the Dinner – E-mail holiday greetings to the 37 on-line discussion groups I moderate. Be sure to preface with "Off Topic." Remember to ask them to respond by PRIVATE e-mail!

  Greet guests, asking after each of their children or grandchildren byname. So as to reduce guests’ well-deserved feelings of inadequacy,carefully add a light splash of Beaujolais Nouveau to the skirt of the country suit I whipped up this morning.

  Smile modestly. Try (sincerely, this year!) to appear slightly flustered.

  Sign and dedicate 250 copies of "Martha Stewart Collects."

  Collapse.

• Architectural Salvage VI

  Given the seemingly endless popularity of the DIY movement, awareness of green practices and recycling as parts of the design/build process and the high cost of new materials, salvage businesses continue to thrive:

  • Chicago-based Salvage One, established in 1979, sells … well, everything. And anything. Arts & Crafts furniture & fittings, A&C stained glass, fountains, doors, bath fixtures and columns – and that only scratches the surface.
  • Minneapolis' City Salvage has a large stock – especially of art glass – at their First Avenue warehouse; they also have a blog "for the edification and enjoyment of all."
  • Recycling The Past in Barnegat NJ has a good stock of the usual ephemera, plus lots of Indian salvage, tilenew furniture made from recycled / reclaimed wood and iron.
  • The Old House Parts Co. in Kennebunk ME specializes in hardware, but they also have a ridiculously large stock of woodwork, fixtures & millwork.
  • In Susquehanna PA, we find Conklin's barnwood & hand-hewn beams, which sells just what you'd expect. Whether you're looking for flooring or decorative and structural beams, they have one of the largest stocks I've ever seen, in a dozen different types of wood.

  and in the UK, where architectural salvage is a way of life:

  • Cheshire Demolition "offers one of the biggest salvage and reclamation yards in the North West. They offer everything from reclaimed doors to fireplaces."
  • The Salvage Doctor specializes in the "reclamation and restoration of cast iron architectural salvage and antiques," and carries an extensive range of radiators (cast iron, school- / hospital- /column- style, etc.), fireplaces & surrounds, woodburning stoves, rainwater systems (guttering, downpipes & fittings), gates and railings. They are located in Horsham, West Sussex.
  • In Situ trade out of their Manchester ex-pub warehouse and studio. They keep a large stock of the usual – with attention to fancy pavers, lighting, glass, flooring, entryways and doors / door furniture.
  • Cox's Architectural Salvage has operated their 12,500 sq ft covered warehouse in Moreton-in-Marsh since 1992. They are one of the largest Victorian ironmongers in Britain, and also refinish and sell their own line of nickel plate and brass hardware.
  • Toby's Architectural Antiques has shops in Exeter and Newton Abbot. They carry a wide range of exterior detail – gates, ironmongery, roofing, slate, stone, water features – as well as kitchen materials, doors, light fixtures etc.
  • Park Royal Salvage at the Lower Place Wharf in London sells everything from building materials, doors, windows and reclaimed plumbing to doors, windows, fireplaces and other old house parts.
  • Robert Mills Architectural Antiques are one of the more specialized shops of their kind, with an especially large stock of architectural woodwork, mainly panels, columns, balustrades, mouldings and friezes, window frames, etc.
• news roundup, July 2007

  Several bits & pieces of interest to old-house aficionados, rehabbers and others interested in A&C:

  • George Andreassi reports on a decrepit Palm City, Florida bungalow that is currently getting much-needed TLC from owner Kirk Geismar;
  • Bill & Kevin Burnett respond to questions on foundations, adding a new storey to an older home and more in the San Francisco Chronicle‘s Sweat Equity column;
  • Marianne & BIll Roettger have one of the most colorful bungalows I’ve ever seen in Naples, Florida;
  • Dale Caldwell added to his Atlanta bungalow and did some very complete renovations that were kept very much in the Craftsman style; and
  • Edinburgh’s City Art Centre recently opened a large and very complete show on Scotland’s tremendous influence on the Arts & Crafts Movement.
• real estate agents, pay attention please

  A note to real estate agents who do this: what do you think is more important to buyers, a picture of the house or your glamour shot? I realize that you always wanted to be a model, but this is just ridiculous.

• delicious del.icio.us: Craftsman links from all over

  Delicious is a great way to keep track of your bookmarks between machines – and between people. I’ve been steadily adding to my own bookmarks, and hopefully will soon have several hundred links – furniture makers, blacksmiths, tile dealers, sellers of architecture salvage, antique buyers’ guides, auction notices, do-it-yourself directions and lots more.

  Eventually, I’ll get around to organizing it all, but until then, I’m sure you’ll find plenty to browse.