The Home Crowd

From Popular Mechanics -

In an effort of historic preservation, the home of founding father Alexander Hamilton was moved from it’s original Harlem location to a nearby city park to await restoration.  The difficult part was that it was blocked in by surrounding buildings.  So they lifted the home up 40 feet, and up and over the buildings it went onto its (much lower) home moving transports.

Wow, what a great effort of preservation…  As we all know, Hamilton sports the bust on the 10 dollar bill, and was shot to death by vice president Aaron Burr in a duel resolving smarmy colonial trash talk, as opposed to being shot during a hunting excursion, as is common practice today.

These supports though, while strong, might just be very tempting to those who enjoy games of chance…

The full article here at Popular Mechanics, with a great diagram and much better explanation.

Some strangely cantilevered farmhouse in the Ukraine.

Dunno why, but some farmer in the ukraine really likes his privacy.

Or really wants to be prepared for the next flood that brings max. 15 feet of floodwater.  More than that and he’s in trouble.  Doesn’t look that ridiculous when you think of all the ridiculous roadside objects we have here in the U.S.  World’s largest ball of twine and such…

link

From the Detroit News:

This quaint little Detroilet area home (below), last sold in 2006 for 65K, the home foreclosed last summer, and the home was re-listed for $1,100.  No takers…  In the meantime, the house was stripped down by looters and squatters.  So the home was listed for $1.  No one’s seen a deal like that since you last cheaply bought out Baltic Ave. from your dim-witted friends at Monopoly.

Talk about a motivated seller.  Obviously not motivated by greed.  Apparently it’s already cost the bank that owned the home 10K, and constant looters and squatters weren’t helping the situation.

The siding was the first to go. Then they took the fence. Then they broke in and took everything else.”

The company hired to manage the home and sell it, the Bearing Group, boarded up the home only to find the boards stolen and used to board up another abandoned home nearby.

Scrappers tore out the copper plumbing, the furnace and the light fixtures, taking everything of value, including the kitchen sink.

The kitchen sink thing sounds like a bad pun, but the fence?!?  Is there a big market for used fencing?  I know there is for copper as I’ve heard many a story about copper wiring and piping being ripped off from abandoned homes, job sites, and even more brazenly, freeway medians.  And stealing the plywood that had been boarding up the home to board up yet another home…. really?  I mean, what does plywood cost anyhow, a couple of bucks a sheet?  Well of course that’s too much because you could buy a few houses for that kind of green.

But most disconcerting of all, is stripping the siding of the side of an abandoned house.  Really though, what could that be good for? ….

Oh, of course…. to line your shower, now who’s laughing?  Only shower on the block with a 30 year weatherbeater warrantee, ….bitch to clean soap scum off though.

More from this article here.

From the LongCountdown.com,

With earthquakes, tsunami’s, and various natural disasters happening on a seemingly monthly basis,  here’s one of Japan’s answers to providing temporary shelter after the fact.

So, for 150,000 yen (approx. 1400$) you get two 90 pound boxes of cardboard pieces.

Then, you begin assembling your cardboard igloo over a plastic sheet.

And provided that you have a couple of friends clad in painter’s outfits, you can neatly roof your highly flammable new bachelor pad.

And then, a wonderful silver tarp and duct tape along the seams waterproofs your shelter, so long as that rain falls perfectly vertically downward.

The only way this could be more comical would be if it was used as a prop in a Japanese game show.

• So…. It’s made of cardboard huh? Should smell real nice after rain hits it once, and your soggy walls cave in.
• Probably better keep this monster in your car, because if your permanent home caves in, crumbles in a heap of wood, steel, and concrete, it’s going to be quite the chore to unseat both of these 90 pound packages.
• Best use yet: plant a windmill on the front, and charge the neighborhood children to putt a golf ball through your front door.
• Oh, and it costs 1400 bucks.  To live in a glorified cardboard box.  You could easily find a water heater box for much less.  Actually, for 1400 dollars, you could BUY a water heater, live in the box, and with a little ingenuity have indoor plumbing with enough left over to buy a tankless water heater, and use it’s cardboard box as a den.

OR…..

There’s another recent development in temporary shelters, real cutting edge technology you may want to try.  They’re called Tents.  Very hard to find (Wal-Mart, target, drugstores, basically anywhere), but if you can manage to track one down, you’ve got a temporary shelter which repels rain, weighs only a few pounds, and if you’ve spent a hundred bucks on one, you’ve likely bought the family size.  Someone should have tipped off those cardboard guys..

Check out the story, and many more great pics at Longcountdown.com.