site news

  • apologies for light posts this week

    Sorry for the light posts this week. Had a small heart attack and am back from the hospital with stents in and lots of new medications. As a result I may not get back to the usual Hewn & Hammered schedule for another week. Sorry.

  • Hewn & Hammered forums

    Our redesign is still a few months away, but we’re slowly introducing new features which we hope will make the site more useful and interesting to you. Chief among those changes is a new forum where you can ask questions and hopefully get advice  on a variety of old-house and design issues.

    Up at the top of this window, on the left hand side, you’ll see a small text link to the forum. Go ahead and click there and post a sample question, show off a recent project, for example, or plans for your dream house, or ask our other readers for advice or feedback. Right now the forums do not require any kind of registration, but if we’re overrun with spam we might require you to register.

  • getting out the vote

    You know what I’d really like for my birthday this year? I’d like to get an award. Any kind of award. I’m not sure we’d qualify for "best local blog" or website, given that while we do have a disproportionate number of entries on Sacramento-area homes & architecture, we’re certainly not nailed to my own hometown, but that’s the category closest, since there’s no "best website about the Arts & Crafts Movement" category.

    If you all wouldn’t mind too much, I would be so appreciative if you’d visit the Sacramento News & Review‘s Best of Sacramento poll and vote for us. In exchange, I promise to write a really interesting article on John Hudson Thomas next week.

  • site additions and changes

    Hi there. I’m midway through a redesign of the site, and have been thinking of incorporating a forum – a simple bulletin board. Do you folks think that would be useful? Any comments on features I should have or that I don’t need? Please let me know in the comments of anything you’d really like to see.

    I tried to incorporate a house registry and calendar into the last version of Hewn & Hammered, but they weren’t that well-thought-out and people didn’t use them (and I hardly ever added events to the calendar). But people are always emailing me questions about remodel projects, or asking to identify a particular maker’s mark, things like that – I thought maybe the forums would be useful. But I’m open to suggestions.

  • new houseblogs – they just keep coming

    Browsing through bouseblogs.net (their new community section is terrific, and I think we are aggregated somewhere within it, although I can’t find out where – there is so much to read!!), I was struck by how many new houseblogs have sprung up since I last did any kind of comprehensive search – dozens related to Craftsman homes in just the last year and a half. Here are some of the most interesting:

    Hi-Fi Bungalow – "musings on a 1925 bungalow in Northern Colorado"
    Prairie Rose House – Lebanon, IN-based Ben and his Prairie home
    Foxcroft – "a record of our restoration of a 1928 Craftsman."
    Our Charmed Life – "bungalow addicts head to Texas to start a new life"
    Big Orange House – "a 1922 California Craftsman and the people who love it"
    Bungalow Blog – "Ron & Mary Ann’s owner-builder journal"
    Chicago Two-Flat – "Steve and Jocelyn’s adventures renovating a Chicago-style two-flat"
    1919 Craftsman – "ongoing restoration of a cold-press cement block Craftsman"
    Renovation Rants – "renovating our 1916 Craftsman style home, one room at a time"

    Just remember, these folks are making the mistakes so you don’t have to.

  • Bungalows in the News, continued

    It’s kind of pitiful how little original content we have had lately – and I apologize very much for this. My own schedule has precluded me from taking pictures of local bungalows, something I’ve been intending to do for months, and a few other small projects. To tide you over until next week, here is a rundown of recent (and recently-discovered) articles from various newspapers and magazines which you may find interesting or useful.

    As always, contributions are appreciated: tell us about your house, send us a picture of your new project, or alert us to interesting work you’ve seen recently!

  • our Amazon store is beefed up

    While we continue to build the Hewn & Hammered Home Store, where you’ll be able to buy handmade items from a dozen of the country’s greatest craftspeople, you’ll have to be content with our Amazon and affiliates shop, accessible from the "shop" link above. We’ve recently beefed up the Astore with new categories – videos, calendars, a special selection of gifts for the 2006 holiday season, furniture, books and more – and it’s definitely worth a check-out.