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Got three estimates? Get three more.
2011-10-31 05:30:00
A couple of weeks ago, I did my annual pre-heating season ritual of flushing my 42 year-old Weil-McLain steam boiler in preparation for the ceremonial relighting of the pilot light.  I learned later from a plumber that you shouldn't flush a cold boiler because the fresh incoming water will leave chemical deposits.  It was academic in this case however because the boiler drained dry. WTF?  The low water cutoff (LWCO)/autofeed should have replenished the boiler with fresh water.  It didn't.  Granted, the LWCO looks like some sort of World War 2-era device and it had never been serviced since I bought the house so I wasn't surprised that it had failed.  I called the most knowledgeable plumber I knew in the neighborhood.  If ever there was a plumbing geek, it's him.  He even collects old boiler doors as a hobby.  But he also has a reputation for both being very expensive and very hard-to-get.  He even charges for estimate...

DIY For the Masses
2011-10-30 18:09:00
The #1 question I get asked on this blog is "What's your #1 piece of advice for a novice DIYer?"   I sort of hate that question because every situation is unique. Is it "prime before you paint?"  Or "measure twice, cut once?"  Or "dull blades are dangerous?"  Or "make certain the breaker is really off?" Fact is, you'll find lots of sites with lots of Top Ten lists for do-it-yourselfers.   Just read the first thing on the list, I guess. My answer is usually to reject the question.  Or maybe it should be, "If you think that a #1 piece of advice is going to help you, then my #1 piece of advice would be to call a contractor." But then I discovered something that was just too good not to share.   This is now my #1 Piece of Advice For The Novice DIYer:

Primer Failure
2011-06-24 07:49:00
I know it's been six months since my last update here but there hasn't been much DIY stuff to blog about at Brooklyn Row House... not even something worthy of a Facebook status.  Fact is, most of the work here is done but now I'm facing Phase 2 -- maintaining all the new stuff which has begun to show the wear and tear of the years and the many boisterous animals.  For that reason I think I'm going to jog this blog into slightly different direction, beginning with this post. Three years ago, I had the back of my house professionally prepped and painted by Wallcoat. While I'm not thrilled with the color that I chose (my fault) I'm happy to report that it's lived up 100% to its claims.  There's not a scratch on it, which is more than can be said for one of my neighbors' Thoroseal jobs done roughly at the same time.  I give Wallcoat five stars. Far less impressive however was the paint job I did on my back deck.  With my new, ...
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Netflix + Roku = HBO Killer?
2010-08-12 06:43:00
I've been very happy with DirecTV's service here but the monthly bill is like a car loan.  Or at least mine is thanks to my soup-to-nuts Platinum HD DVR package. Over the past year I've been on a mission to trim the monthly nut.  Quitting tobacco products in May 2009 was a great start.  So was dumping my $119/month aDSL service with Speakeasy.net in December, moving this server to Panix.com and installing Roadrunner at home.  Okay, I didn't really save anything with that but I got a lot more bang for the buck. Next on the plate was my crippling monthly satellite bill.  By my reckoning, I could save at least $51/month if I dumped all my movie channels -- HBO, Cinemax, Encore, the works.  I don't watch a lot of TV but when I do it's usually a movie.  However even with ALL the movie channels it's not as though I feast on a cornucopia of video variety.  Like bad oldies radio, it seems to be the same hundred-plus mov...
More About: Killer , Netflix

DOT sidewalk inspection scam?
2010-07-29 02:40:00
My doorbell rang this afternoon. It was Kevin, my postman, and he had a certified letter for me. Certified letters are always bad news and I could see on the envelope that this one was from DOT so I knew it wasn't Publishers Clearinghouse telling me about my windfall. Kevin said that every house on the block, except one, got certified letters from DOT. WTH, I've got nothing to be afraid of.  My sidewalk and curb are in excellent condition.  I signed for it and opened it up. Inside was a Notice of Violation that my sidewalk had been inspected and was found to have a "trip hazard". The notice said that I needed to replace ten square feet of sidewalk. There was a graphic indicating this general section of my sidewalk. In NYC -- and I presume that this is the case in most large cities -- a homeowner is responsible for the condition of his sidewalk.  If the sidewalk falls out of repair it's the homeowner's job to repair it, just as it...

Doesn't it always work like this?
2010-06-09 20:19:00
Sunday morning, a neighbor down the block called the fire department for what was apparently a minor fire.  I saw FDNY parked down the street as I returned from walking the dogs.  One of the firefighters was flushing out the hydrant as another rolled up the hose.  They weren't there long. The water pipes in the street here are very old and they also supply those hydrants.   Whenever one of those hydrants gets flushed the houses on the block get brown water for hours afterward.   I don't mean rusty looking water.   There are literally flakes of rust and (for lack of a better term) quasi-organic spooge floating in the water -- stuff you definitely don't want to swallow.  That's why most of the houses here have water filters. It was a hot morning and the dogs were dehydrated so I used the sink's filtered water dispenser to fill their bowl.   But the sediment was so heavy that morning that the water was ...
More About: Work

Product Review: Litter Robot
2010-04-07 02:18:00
I never thought I'd be doing a product review for an electronic cat litter pan.   A table saw or compressor, yes.  Well, until I get back into construction mode at BRH, I've got to fill the blog with something. Seriously though, regulars to this blog know that I don't accept direct advertising and that I generally steer clear of product reviews.  I usually spotlight a product only when it really pleases me (like the Magic Trowel and Glasseye 2000) or it pissed me off (the ISY99-i Insteon controller, cheap CFL bulbs and stay tuned for an upcoming mega-smackdown on Mannington engineered flooring!) You've probably seen late night TV ads for self-cleaning cat litter pans and assumed that there had to be major issues with them.  I did.  After all, how many people do you know who actually own one?   I never took them seriously until the Great Owls Head Cat TNR Roundup last summer.  Afterward, the feline population at Brookly...
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"This time for sure!"
2010-03-06 20:48:00
The old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon show had a series of interstitials with Bullwinkle attempting, and failing, to pull a rabbit out of a hat and Rocky increasingly skeptical that he would ever succeed. As tortured an analogy as that may be, it's how the Bay Ridge community has regarded announcements of the opening of the prodigal Key Food supermarket on Bay Ridge Ave (69th St).    It was almost two years ago that the neighborhood was buzzing with rumors that Key Food was negotiating to take over the two large buildings formerly owned by Harry's furniture store.  Yet, only a couple of months before that, Key Food announced that it was closing its well-patronized 95th St supermarket.  So this latest scuttlebutt left much to be skeptical about, especially when the new location wasn't exactly ideal for a large supermarket. For one thing, there was no parking lot.  There was a single-story building across the street that was the old Harry&#...
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Insteon, Apple style
2010-01-20 08:07:00
Since moving to this house, I had gone from running one 24/7 computer server to three -- actually four if you consider a hibernating laptop. The web site you're looking at right now ran on one of them -- a FreeBSD Unix server. A Windows box ran my home automation set up. The other computer, running Ubuntu Linux, was mostly work related. Thing is, the juice needed to run these servers and the related hardware was killing me, including the air conditioning needed to counteract the heat they produced in my small office. The three computers together drew about 700 watt/hours. Add a monitor, KVM, DSL modem, router, hub and backup and I was burning about 900 watts/hour x 24 hours x 365 days. At Con Ed's prevailing rates, it costs $1400/year just to run those three computers. That doesn't include the laptop or the A/C. Last spring I decided that I had to simplify my hardware and by summer I had a plan: I would move everything to one computer. The problem was, the only compute...
More About: Apple , Style

Some DIYer I turned out to be
2010-01-17 04:26:00
During the heating season -- from late October until April -- I run a large humidifier 24/7. It's something I've done since music school. I had a 115 year-old Czech flat-back double bass that didn't like steam heat. By the time spring arrived I would have spent anywhere from $300 to $1000 at the luthier getting glue joints fixed, new cracks repaired, the sound post reset and so forth. Running a big honkin' humidifier was a lot cheaper and the bonus was learning that it was healthier for people too. The humidifier, a six gallon Bemis, is located in the kitchen extension where it's close to water and where the noise is less annoying. When I walked into the kitchen to feed the dogs yesterday morning, something was missing. It was quiet. Normally that means the humidifier tanks need refilling, but I'd just done that the night before. I checked the unit and there was no sign of power. I pulled out the heavy breakfront to get to the wall outlet, forgetting about large bot...

The High Price for Cheap Rent
2009-11-16 05:57:00
On a nearby street, a line of ugly, cheaply built, 1980s-vintage row houses stand on a plot of land where there was once a neglected old Victorian. The six houses share a communal front "yard" -- a quarter-acre concrete pad that gives the place all the charm of a New Jersey strip mall. To complete that grim visual, cars are illegally parked on it, usually double wide, often obstructing the sidewalk. In fact, there are more cars than one would expect from six single-family homes. A couple of months ago, I deduced why that was when I saw a small "For Rent" sign hanging from the railing in front of one of those row houses. The answer: because they've also got illegal apartments. A visit to the Department of Buildings' information system confirmed that all of those houses lack a Certificate of Occupancy to permit rental apartments. According to a recent NY Daily News article, with the economy still in the tank, some home owners are taking advantage of the downturn to make a l...
More About: Price , High , Cheap

Most Bizarre Use of a Shop Award
2009-07-24 18:02:00
There's no way I don't get nominated this year. As prologue, let's step into the WayBack Machine and bump the dial back to early June, when I casually mentioned to Doc Karen that I had seen several feral cats on my evening dog walks. In addition to being an MD, Karen is also a NYS licensed wildlife rescuer so I should have known that I was shaking a hornets' nest. A week later, over my fourth or fifth margarita, I found that I had agreed to allow my shop to be used as a holding facility for the Great Owls Head Cat Roundup. Karen hooked me with the Mayor's Alliance and the ASPCA for a trap-and-release campaign (called a TNR -- I learned some new lingo hanging with these people). The TNR would encompass at least two known colonies and four caretakers (again, lingo) over a geographic area of about five blocks. I was surprised to learn that feral cats aren't usually loners but are part of a loose colony of ferals. A cat that isn't part of a colony is called a rogue. Do I...
More About: Bizarre , Shop , Award

It's 2009. Time for Secession!
2009-06-18 01:42:00
Every presidential inauguration year seems to kick off another round of local secessionist talk. In 2001, it was about New York City seceding from New York and becoming its own state. I admit to a certain degree of sympathy for that given the fact that NYC is the revenue cash cow for the state. But few people took the talk seriously. Short of NYC becoming a hostile nuclear power, there's no way Albany would agree to let us go. In 2005, the local news was about Staten Island secession. Its promoters have a different plan. They want to leave NYC and become part of New Jersey. I didn't have a problem with that. For me, Staten Island is mostly just an obstacle to be navigated on the way to New Jersey anyway. If it became part of New Jersey maybe it would get better malls. Now Long Island wants to secede and become the 51st state. What kicked this off is a $1.5 billion payroll tax to bail out the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Never mind that the MTA is underwriti...
More About: Time , Secession

No brag intended.
2009-05-15 06:40:00
A couple of weeks ago one of my stained glass designs was picked for the Dragonfly Design of the Month, May 2009. I don't consider myself an artist in the visual sense so I was kind of embarrassed by the attention and decided to keep it to myself. But I wanted to publicly thank Michael Wilk, president of Dragonfly, for the honor. So here it is. I know I probably wasn't the most cooperative candidate he's dealt with. I also wanted to give a plug to Michael's Glass Eye 2000 stained glass design software. Believe me, if it can make a graphically challenged person like me create a nice looking design, someone with real talent will be able to do amazing things with it. One more announcement. I've been blogging for Old House Web for the past couple of months -- my first paid blogging gig! Unfortunately, I've been neglecting my own. So I also wanted to apologize to readers of this blog for the lapses in posting here. I've been very busy with Childrens Health Fund the pas...
More About: Brag

Tainted Drywall
2009-05-07 06:19:00
I ran across a story today about a new health threat from a strange source: drywall. My first thought was, "you've got to be kidding!" My understanding from watching the How They Make Stuff TV shows was that drywall was about as inert a product as you can find: gypsum slurry, a fiber binder and recycled paper. How can that possibly be a health threat? Tell that to the dozens of families who have been forced to evacuate their homes in Florida thanks to outgassing of drywall allegedly imported from China during the home building boom. Residents of these homes talked about a foul rotten-egg smell in rooms built with this drywall and, worse, whatever is causing the smell is also corroding metal in the homes: wiring, air conditioning coils, faucets, even table lamps. Testing agencies have tentatively identified the smell as being sulfur dioxide, a toxic gas which can cause breathing disorders and be potentially fatal to those already suffering from asthma. The chemical is also c...

The Tormek Blade Sharpening System
2009-04-11 19:12:00
Shop owners love to brag about the incredible tool buys they've made on eBay, at flea markets and at estate auctions. Like my $50 Hitachi framing nailer and $125 radial arm saw. But most of us have also made purchases we're less proud of, like the $100 "miracle corner clamping system" I bought at a tool show which turned out to be utterly useless for anything besides building the tiny box the salesman demonstrated at the show. Naturally, we don't talk much about those overpriced white elephants, which is probably why these hucksters are still in business. Then there are those purchases that fall somewhere in the middle: useful tools with staggering price tags that don't really justify the tool's performance. When I purchased the Tormek T7 wet grinder at the International Woodworking Show in New Jersey, I was afraid I'd made just such a buy. After purchasing the optional jigs and accesories I needed for my planer and jointer blades, knives and scissors I walked out of th...
More About: System , Blade , Sharpening

Building stairs the EZ way
2009-03-15 23:36:00
Shortly after I took possession of my house, I was cleaning up the cellar one afternoon when I noticed my cat, Chopper, engrossed with something halfway up the old cellar stairs. I checked to see if he might have a moth and instead saw a pile of paint chips and wood fibers below the stringer he was pawing at. With the paint removed, I saw hundreds of white wormy looking things. Termites! How did this happen? I'd closed on the house nine months earlier. My inspector found some evidence of an old termite infestation and, to be safe, my lawyer made the closing contingent upon an exterminator's report. The report was so terse that the inspector could have Twittered it: "Found/killed two termite colonies. No evidence of internal infestation." Evidently this bonehead's inspection was as thorough as his report because the termites had dug a tunnel from the far foundation wall, across the ceiling through a 3" floor joist, and down the stairs. It cost me $1500 to have a license...
More About: Building

Warning: R-rated Geek Content Follows
2009-02-22 04:08:00
After three weeks of updates and upgrades to my Insteon home automation setup here, I ran across this YouTube video today which summed up the experience nicely. <!--break--> Okay, upgrading my HouseLinc software wasn't nearly as painful as trying to get that "Stupid Piece Of S**t That Doesn't F*****g Work" ISY99-i installed. But it wasn't a stroll on the beach either. HouseLinc v2 imported all my Insteon device settings from HouseLinc v1 fine, only to report that it couldn't communicate with three quarters of them. It took half the night to get everything working -- changing outlets for the serial PLM controller, rebooting it, resynchronizing the database, etc. Caveat: if you want home automation and none of this makes any sense to you, you might want to do yourself a favor and hire a pro. In the end, I don't have a clear idea what I did to fix it. It just suddenly stopping throwing errors and started working. It's bizarre, but the new PLM refused to work in sam...
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The Key Food Disconnect
2009-02-17 18:26:00
In December, your wannabe Norm Abrams (me) tried a taste of old school investigative bloggerism and reported on the troubles with the construction of the new 69th Street Key Food supermarket. The local pols and press had been reporting that Key Food was on schedule for January opening. Problem is, I wasn't seeing any work being done on the place. Then the day after Christmas while walking the dogs by 244 Bay Ridge Avenue, I saw a stop work order from the Dept of Buildings plastered on the side of the building. Everything must have worked itself out, or one would presume so, because on Feb 10, 2009, there was a post on City Councilman, Vincent Gentile's, blog announcing the long awaited completion date for the 69th Street Key Food Supermarket. I want to update everyone with some good news: work on the site recently resumed, and the store is expected to open in the end of March. So in just a little over a month, Bay Ridge will have a new supermarket! <!--break--> It must...
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Beware the Sucker Holes
2009-02-04 18:43:00
No, that's not a pornographic double entendre. "Sucker hole" is a term I learned from an old flight instructor. It's a break in the clouds which beckons naive, non-instrument rated pilots to take a chance on finding clear skies through that hole only to have the clouds close in on them and leave them in zero visibility. Last week I said I'd post my progress with the new Insteon home automation device, the ISY99-i. Lemme digress for a second. Say what you will about marketing droids, but when a company goes to the trouble of holding a brain jam to create a slick product name for its baby -- like "Insteon" for example -- it says that someone was paying at least a little attention to the customer. Needless to say, this wasn't done with the ISY99-i. I've been through this so many times that I knew with 89% certainty what I was embarking on. Out of the box I saw that I was going to have problems. For one, the packing slip said that there was a DB9 serial cable. In fact,...
More About: Beware , Holes

My house "blue screened", or The Confessions of a House Geek
2009-01-25 02:27:00
I had my first Insteon home automation device failure this week. Unfortunately, it happened to the brains of the "automation" part -- the software/hardware combination that executes the timers that turn the lights on and off. Specifically, the culprit was the PowerLinc device that bridges my house to the USB port on my computer which runs the timers. Here's the little sucker. At 70 bucks, it's not like changing a lightbulb. Okay, I was pissed about it, especially as it's only a little over two years old. But, fact is, I was never happy with this automation set up. For one thing, it requires leaving a Windows box on 24/7 for the timers to work. And the House Linc software I was using must have some memory leaks in it because once I removed it from my computer it seemed to gain an extra half a processor. What I really want is an Insteon driver for Linux/FreeBSD that would let me build my own timers in Perl, which I could run under Unix cron. That's what I did with my form...
More About: Confessions , Blue , Geek , A House

Well, isn't this special?
2008-05-29 03:02:00
New York Magazine's cover story this week is The Brooklyn Wars. Is this ominously titled article about drug gang violence at the projects or the racial tensions in Crown Heights? Or maybe something really volatile, like another pizza shoot-out between Grimaldi's and Tontonno? Nope. It's a five thousand word feature about The What, an anonymous misanthrope who posts on a Brooklyn real estate blog, Brownstoner. Sheesh, I can't even get this blog mentioned as a footnote in a local shopping paper and New York Mag writes a cover article about a troll on another Brooklyn blog? It ain't fair. I guess I should be happy that the Manhattan media is taking such an interest in Brooklyn blogs at all. So congrats to... well, I'm not sure who to congratulate. The What sounds like a chronic malcontent who's pissed that he missed the gentrification boat and his detractors seem to be the same upwardly slithering, relocated latte sippers I moved to Brooklyn to escape from Soho. Folks, ...
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Brooklyn's "Blue Thunder"
2008-05-28 02:53:00
While this is generally a quiet neighborhood, we get quite a bit of helicopter noise here. Traffic choppers hover overhead during the morning news to monitor the "Belt-BQE split" a few blocks away. I always know when Bush or Cheney is in town because Marine One and its small convoy of support aircraft are uniquely audible, even in my basement. Mainly, we're three blocks away from NYPD Aviation, where the police choppers refuel. So it's not uncommon to have the chirping birdies obliterated by the hellish thunder of a Bell 412 on approach, flying about 150 feet above my house. Fortunately, this only happens two or three times around mid-day. After the sun goes down they make their approaches over New York Harbor. Lately though, people have been upset by non-NYPD helicopters using that heliport, one of them a silver 412 with no markings. Rumors were flying (pun unintended) that celebs we're being allowed to use the secure police heliport to avoid the paparazzi. This morni...
More About: Blue , Thunder

"Starter house" for sale
2008-04-29 22:03:00
Got a pampered dog or a very small relative? This is believed to be Brooklyn's smallest house. Located near the intersection of Ave T and Van Sicklen in Gravesend, it occupies what used to be a driveway. It's a 1BR, 1 bath home sitting on a lot just 7.25 feet wide and 113 feet long. The interior area is just under 300 square feet. This is a shot of the living room looking towards the entryway. The window on the right looks a bit superfluous, doesn't it? ... and here's a shot from the opposite side. The kitchen actually looks fairly normal sized, at least by Brooklyn row house standards. There's even a washer/dryer. The sole bedroom is behind the kitchen, like any classic NYC railroad flat. Obviously, it would be a problem entertaining guests in the back yard with a double bed in the way so... Murphy bed to the rescue! I can't think an application more suited to it than this house. Speaking of the backyard, it's actually pretty cute. You won't be throwi...
More About: House , For Sale , Sale , Starter

Got a shop? You need this stuff!
2008-02-25 04:52:00
Last weekend, my boss and I made the trek to the annual NJ Woodworking Show. Jeb has a pretty nice woodworking shop but his passion is car and motorcycle restoration. He's done several old bikes -- Velocettes and Moto Guzzis -- but his current project is a 1955 Land Rover. The Rover looked like it had been parked at the bottom of a river for the last fifty years but after two years he's nearing paint and finish, which means he needed supplies, which means we both needed to hit the show. I've been looking for a decent steel tool deck cleaner for a couple of years. Nothing I've tried worked much better than WD40, #00 steel wool and carnuba wax. Jeb told me that he'd had good results with Boeshield and, sure enough, we found it at the show. It's expensive but it was worth a try. Boeshield was developed by Boeing for cleaning metal airplane shells. It's actually a family of specialized products but the T9 aerosol is the centerpiece. It's like a super deluxe WD40 with an...
More About: Stuff , Shop

The Greenville Horror
2008-01-07 00:04:00
A Google search shows that the house at #6 Whitten Street in Greenville, SC was sold to George C. Leventis on July 8, 2003 for $88,000. Flash forward four years. The home's new owners are the Browns, who purchased the Whitten Street house for $75,000. Cited text is courtesy of WYFF. Jason and Kerri Brown of Greenville found a secret room in their home behind a bookcase, and what was inside was a nightmare beyond their wildest dreams. "This can't be happening. This can't be true. It terrified me," Kerri Brown told News 4's Tim Waller. A secret room! Who hasn't had fantasies of finding a secret room in their old house? But for Kerri Brown, it was about the worst nightmare a home owner could face. The secret room in the old mill home on Whitten Street in Greenville's Dunean section contained a handwritten letter from the previous owner titled, "You Found It!" "Hello. If you're reading this, then you found the secret room. I owned this house for a short while and it was ...
More About: Horror

Vincent Gentile's War on Illegal Curb Cuts
2007-12-22 06:02:00
Quality of life issues are the low-hanging fruit for low-rated pols looking for Page Two time. Like Rudy's crackdowns du jour, they rarely accomplish anything other than some wasted news print and an overnight ticket blitz. But Vincent Gent ile, city councilperson for District 43, seems to be a determined pit bull with one of these issues: the illegal driveways, curb cuts and careless parking in his district of Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights. Every month or so it seems there is another article about another initiative he's gotten behind to put a stop to the growing problem of antisocial parking. I like this guy. Today's Bay Ridge Eagle reports that Gentile will be introducing two bills to the City Council to put some teeth back into the curb cut laws. One will require homeowners with illegal curb cuts to restore the curbs back to DOT compliance. The other bill addresses a more serious problem that has been at the bottom of many of these illegal driveways, not to mention a lot su...
More About: Illegal , Cuts

Designing Stained Glass
2007-12-17 07:59:00
I suck at drawing. I can visualize things pretty well but there's a bridge out somewhere between my left and right brain. With woodworking, I usually wind up head jamming the fabrication. It works 90% of the time. The other 10% is handled by my hard-won skills in making dumb mistakes look like I meant to do that. But this ad hoc process doesn't work for stained glass construction, where you need to have a completed design and pieces cut before you start soldering things together. My stained glass work to date has been pretty simple, angular and, yes, left brained. But for the new projects here I wanted something a bit more artistic. So I began the hunt for stained glass design software and settled on Glass Eye 2000 from Dragonfly. It's ain't cheap but it's not like stained glass people are a huge market. Nevertheless, it's a high quality product and the best design software I could find. This is a window panel I designed in GE2k in about three hours. GE2k is pri...
More About: Designing , Signing

New Stained Glass Projects
2007-12-12 04:09:00
I have several stained glass tasks in the queue here. Some, like the upper cabinet doors in the living room media cabinet, have been on hold since 2003. Others, like the funky stairway skylight, I've wanted to replace since the day I first saw the place. While stained glass construction is fairly mechanical and basically just woodworking joinery using glass and lead came, the design, templating and piecing out can be very time consuming. Most of the glass I've done here is fairly simple and angular to match the existing stained glass. But I wanted something a bit more ornamental for these new projects. The delay is mostly because I suck at drawing. I can muddle my way through Photoshop if I have to and I've even built a few nice web page banners using "creative appropriation" of assets conceived by others. Change a few lines, overlay a mask or two, morph a few elements and, poof, it's mine. Derivative art. While a Photoshop geek might be able to design stained glass us...
More About: Projects , Glass

My Odorific Old House
2007-12-04 04:50:00
I'll be posting a new series of articles on stained glass construction in a few weeks. I purchased some new ($$!) stained glass design software from Dragonfly, Glass 2000 Professional, to help me complete the half-dozen stained glass projects I've got on my plate. So I'll post a review of that as well. I'm gonna change gears and show a bit of my feminine side. I like fragrant houses. I spent my early years living in a small town in Japan, where my mother became a passionate connoisseur of oriental incense. She often had a subtle fragrance burning in the house long after we moved back to the States. For me, a fragrant house smells like home. Since I moved out on my own, I've usually had a cone of incense burning, mostly temple fragrances. It beats smelling the dogs' microwaved breakfast all day. After moving to Brooklyn I found myself estranged from my Manhattan oriental incense supplier. I tried buying it online but the stuff I was getting smelled more like a broth...
More About: House , Old House