Sheetrock & Shellac (eBook)

A Thinking Person's Guide to the Art and Science of Home Improvement

David Owen (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2006 | 1. Auflage
320 Seiten
Simon & Schuster (Verlag)
978-1-4165-3429-7 (ISBN)

Infos

In a world of extreme makeovers, this book is a thoughtful, adventure-filled, witty look at what the space we live in says about us, the pleasures of home renovation projects great and small, and how home renovation can change our lives.

Few things define us as powerfully as the place where we live. The size and location of a house may reveal basic facts about our financial or social status, but it is the personal touches — a paint color or a homemade desk — that reflect our aspirations, our tastes, our secret desires.

In Sheetrock & Shellac, David Owen recounts his renovation and home construction projects in small-town Connecticut — from catching the home improvement bug while watching workmen replacing a leaky roof to his first tentative foray into DIY (successfully building an enclosure for a bathroom radiator that had 'turned into a sort of low-tech factory for converting splattered urine into odor and dust'). As his skill grows, so does his confidence: replacing a broken light switch turns into wiring an entire room, making bookcases is followed by building an office. Some of the more overly imaginative projects — for instance, an ambition to install sinks and hot and cold faucets in all the rooms of the house — never come to fruition but are amusingly recounted for other intrepid home designers.

Owen's two-hundred-year-old farmhouse provides numerous occasions for home improvement projects, and layers (literally) of fascination. Owen quickly learns the hard way when to tackle a project himself and when to turn for help. But soon he's so comfortable with the undertaking that he decides to take the big leap from renovation to building a completely new home from the ground up. In this case, Owen decides to build a weekend cabin a mere six miles away from his home. From a discourse on kitchen countertop materials to the complete history of concrete, to a near-disastrous mishap with a tree, a newly constructed roof, and an overzealous chainsaw, Owen's journey through home designing and building proves both enthrallingly educating and hilariously detailed.

New Yorker writer Owen's engaging narrative, filled with a wealth of practical information, hands-on tips, and canny insights, explores the ways in which the human processes of construction and renovation leave all the parties transformed. More than a simple how-to, Sheetrock & Shellac is a why-to, a wellspring of savvy advice and encouragement for anyone who has ever contemplated changing their surroundings and changing their life.

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In a world of extreme makeovers, this book is a thoughtful, adventure-filled, witty look at what the space we live in says about us, the pleasures of home renovation projects great and small, and how home renovation can change our lives. Few things define us as powerfully as the place where we live. The size and location of a house may reveal basic facts about our financial or social status, but it is the personal touches -- a paint color or a homemade desk -- that reflect our aspirations, our tastes, our secret desires. In Sheetrock & Shellac, David Owen recounts his renovation and home construction projects in small-town Connecticut -- from catching the home improvement bug while watching workmen replacing a leaky roof to his first tentative foray into DIY (successfully building an enclosure for a bathroom radiator that had "e;turned into a sort of low-tech factory for converting splattered urine into odor and dust"e;). As his skill grows, so does his confidence: replacing a broken light switch turns into wiring an entire room, making bookcases is followed by building an office. Some of the more overly imaginative projects -- for instance, an ambition to install sinks and hot and cold faucets in all the rooms of the house -- never come to fruition but are amusingly recounted for other intrepid home designers. Owen's two-hundred-year-old farmhouse provides numerous occasions for home improvement projects, and layers (literally) of fascination. Owen quickly learns the hard way when to tackle a project himself and when to turn for help. But soon he's so comfortable with the undertaking that he decides to take the big leap from renovation to building a completely new home from the ground up. In this case, Owen decides to build a weekend cabin a mere six miles away from his home. From a discourse on kitchen countertop materials to the complete history of concrete, to a near-disastrous mishap with a tree, a newly constructed roof, and an overzealous chainsaw, Owen's journey through home designing and building proves both enthrallingly educating and hilariously detailed. New Yorker writer Owen's engaging narrative, filled with a wealth of practical information, hands-on tips, and canny insights, explores the ways in which the human processes of construction and renovation leave all the parties transformed. More than a simple how-to, Sheetrock & Shellac is a why-to, a wellspring of savvy advice and encouragement for anyone who has ever contemplated changing their surroundings and changing their life.

Textauszug

1

ROOMS AND DREAMS

The best-selling poet in America in the nineteen-thirties was also a newspaper columnist, a small-time actor, and a successful designer of Hawaii-themed dinnerware. His name was Don Blanding. He wore an oversized fedora and had a Clark Gable mustache, and he described himself as an 'artist by nature, actor by instinct, poet by accident, vagabond by choice.' He was born in Kingfisher, Oklahoma Territory, in 1894. In 1912, he saved the life of a six-year-old neighbor, Billie Cassin, who grew up to be the actress Joan Crawford. In 1915, he briefly shared an apartment in Chicago with the novelist and playwright Sherwood Anderson. For a few years in the nineteen-forties, he was married to the crayon heiress Dorothy Binney. He was famous for having no fixed address, but he kept turning up in certain favorite warm-weather locales, mainly in Florida, Hawaii, and California. He died in 1957, at the age of sixty-two. In 1986, the musician Jimmy Buffett borrowed the title of one of his poetry collections, Floridays, for a song (which he dedicated partly to Blanding) and an album.

I first heard about Blanding from a friend, who had bought one of his books at a flea market and thought that I would get a kick out of it. The book is called Vagabond's House. It was first published in 1928, was reprinted more than fifty times during the next couple of decades, and is still in print today, though only barely. I bought my own copy from a used-book dealer, the flyleaf is inscribed 'Aloha Don Blanding.' The book is -- well, the book is virtually unreadable. And the illustrations, which are also by Blanding, are on the creepy side, full of statuesque naked ladies and dated-looking silhouettes. But the title poem is kind of captivating:

When I have a house...as I sometime may...

I'll suit my fancy in every way.

I'll fill it with things that have caught my eye

In drifting from Iceland to Molokai.

It won't be correct or to period style

But...oh, I've thought for a long, long while

Of all the corners and all the nooks,

Of all the bookshelves and all the books,

The great big table, the deep soft chairs

And the Chinese rug at the foot of the stairs,

(it's an old, old rug from far Chow Wan

that a Chinese princess once walked on).

My house will stand on the side of a hill

By a slow broad river, deep and still,

With a tall lone pine on guard nearby

Where the birds can sing and the storm winds cry.

A flagstone walk with lazy curves

Will lead to the door where a Pan's head serves

As a knocker there like a vibrant drum

To let me know that a friend has come,

And the door will squeak as I swing it wide

To welcome you to the cheer inside.

And there are a couple hundred more lines, all written in the same merrily sprung anapestic blandometer. I've never drifted from Iceland to Molokai, and I don't own a Chinese rug or a Pan's head door knocker (although I now sporadically search for both on eBay), and some of Blanding's decorating touches are mildly disturbing -- 'An impressionistic smear called 'Sin,'/ a nude on a striped zebra skin,' 'a nook / For a savage idol that I took / from a ruined temple in Peru, / A demon-chaser named Mang-Chu' -- but the impulse that drove his fantasy must be close to universal. The theme of Blanding's poem is the same happy daydreaming that leads to the construction of tree houses, backyard forts, ice-fishing shacks, cottages at the beach, and three-bedroom raised ranches in suburban New Jersey. The Vagabond's reverie is a reverie of shelter.

Don Blanding is unrelated to Jim Blandings, the fictional protagonist of Eric Hodgins's...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.7.2006
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Freizeit / Hobby ► Hausbau / Einrichten / Renovieren
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Freizeit / Hobby ► Heimwerken / Do it yourself
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Lebenshilfe / Lebensführung
• ISBN-10: 1-4165-3429-6 / 1416534296
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-3429-7 / 9781416534297