The Home Crowd

From The Consumerist -

Bobo and Joy Dickson bought a house had been headed for foreclosure, but JP Morgan Chase apparently didn’t get the message that the former owners had moved out and the new owners were in residence. So, naturally, they hired a firm to drill the Dickson’s locks and take everything they owned

Wow, that’s terrible. I mean.. these people have heard of memos right?  Maybe an email or two?  I get that it’s probably in the best interest of asset companies to sneak in while you’re out to avoid confrontation, but ouch!  Lawyers are involved, so I imagine they’ll go from foreclosing on a home to virtually giving it away to a family whose possessions and photo albums they’ve just trashed.

How could you go wrong after that?  Why ,they’ll call him Bobo the Triumphant, or Bobo the Great!  It’s a cheap shot I know, but I’ve spent the last 3 days moving HQ from sunny Orange County to sunny San Diego and my compassion is still packed away in the garage somewhere.

Took a look over at Freshome today and saw their article on 3D wall painting, or Trompe l’oiel as otherwise commonly referred.  And I throw the term ‘commonly’ around loosely as you don’t see this painting technique around very often.

As you can imagine, there’s no paint rollers involved, outside of a base coat, then it’s up to a skilled artist to project a mural in perspective and give a faux depth to your space.  From what I remember from my art history classes, this type of perspective in art and geometry came about in the renaissance.

Now just imagine that up in your living room.  Actually I prefer the harbor scene to the shoeless joe’s checking out that woman’s medieval manicure.  What other uses could you have for trompe l’oiel (perspective mural art) in your home?

• Entertainment value - by allowing new guest to try to enter your painted loggia and tromp face-first into the wall in the great tradition of sliding screen doors and glass doors cleaned too well….Thump!
• Home Security - Just opposite your living room windows, you paint in a sleeping rottweiller.  The potential burglar may know it’s just a painting, but may lack the balls to find out for sure.
• Fantasy Land - Have an artist draw in your future retirement… Golf, those big blocky black sunglass things and just about as many trips to the bathroom as to the hometown buffet.  Not sure what benefit this has, you may just stay in the workforce another decade though.

Ron Hazelton has a great vid of an artist who has decorated his home in Trompe l’oiel.  Check it out, I think his 1 inch thick grandfather clock is pretty impressive. - Link

Ideal Investment Corner points us towards a recent article by the Wall Street Journal about the “Buy and Bail” phenomenon. In short, it’s a process of homeowners who are upside down on their mortgages who are facing a potential foreclosure, buying a second home to be their primary residence by showing their lender that they intend to rent out their current home. However, after the loan on their new home is secured with their good credit, they allow the old home to go into foreclosure, take the hit on their credit but yet are able to remain in a home.

The Upside: - The opportunity to be one step ahead of your impending credit ruin, and avoid years of apartment dwelling by getting into a home you’re actually able to afford.

The Downside: - Your credit gets hammered for the foreseeable future, you could get sued for mortgage fraud, and you could also have a lien placed against your new property for stiffing your lender with the bill.

From the Wall Street Journal,

The mortgage industry is starting to wise up to the practice and is scrambling to fight back. Buy-and-bail is “certainly fraudulent and unfortunately on an uptick,” says Gwen Muse-Evans, vice president for credit policy and controls at Fannie Mae. Although she doesn’t have data to quantify the size and scope of the trend, Ms. Muse-Evans says overwhelming anecdotal reports have prompted the agency to draft tougher regulations aimed at closing one big loophole that allows underwater homeowners to qualify for new home loans.

photo credit: respres

But don’t expect this to become a commonplace option to foreclosure. Lenders are busy closing loopholes and Fannie Mae is working on changing regulations to require users with the intent of renting a second property to prove that they could afford both mortgage payments regardless of actual or eventual renters.

From the Wall Street Journal, via Ideal Investment Corner

I stumbled upon a scan earlier today from the May 1962 issue of Playboy magazine of the “Playboy Townhouse” for the affluent, on-the-go, bachelor.  It’s a beautiful rendering done by Humen Tan (I really hope that’s not his/her real name) of a design commissioned to designer R. Donald Jaye by playboy to highlight the swingin’ bachelor lifestyle.  This great example of 60’s modern life is captured in this article with furnishings and furniture for which some have remained stylish and modern decades later.

The section of the townhouse highlights the spatial and elemental qualities of the townhouse…the central pool, the open air under a retractable skylight, the teak wood paneling, and lots and lots of concrete.  This rendering also explains the space usage by it’s contents, most of which were specified in the townhouse article.

Note that the servants quarters at the bottom right are not furnished, seeing as how no bachelor outside of Bruce Wayne should be living in the city with a butler anyhow.  Also, a modern design feature that would be scrubbed first after the first estimate is the concrete waffle slab used for the floors.  They might as well have put the garage on the roof as strong, overbuilt and expensive as that would be.  But they’re dreaming out loud, so we’ll side with artistic license on that one.

And what better bachelor bed that the rotating playboy bed, highlighted in an earlier article of the magazine.  Great spot for entertaining ‘guests’, it rotates 360 degrees to face the fireplace or the television with built in conveniences such as telephone, refrigerator and bar.  And who wouldn’t want to watch some TV on that mammoth 21-inch screen.  They didn’t specify what kind of TV it was, but I do vaguely recall George Jetson calling Mr. Spacely over it from time to time.

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From The Kitchen @ Serafini Studios - A cooking blog by husband/wife team, Gabriel and Kristin Serafini. After living in their classic St. Louis area home for a few years, the Serafini’s undertook a massive kitchen remodel. There’s a window replaced with re-set brickwork, beams hidden, and the cabinetry and appliances entirely replaced and well photo-documented.

The granite countertop however, is the most unique piece of the project due to the royal blue river running through their countertop.

The blue river glows brilliantly due to the embedded fiber optic lighting system. Being in the St. Louis area, the river reflects a template of the nearby Mississippi River. How did they do this?

After selecting their granite, they took it to be cut by waterjet. I’d have been equally as impressed had they said the granite was cut little by little with a handsaw and a file. The waterjet, however, is a tool that shoots water at an ungodly PSI and offers the type of precision you can’t get with traditional saws, and thus a perfect choice for the Serafini’s hand-drawn river template.

With the void of the river ready, the Serafini’s found some blue bottles and crushed them down until they had small glass chips laid over and illuminated by fiber optic cable lighting.

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I’ve seen Esquire’s list of “75 skills every man should master” around a few times lately, and though I’d chime in, seeing as how…

1. It’s a great list
2. Esquire’ is a men’s magazine, but certainly women can master these skills as well. Thing is, the main reason men are mastering these skills is to impress the ladies. Let us have that, huh?
3. There’s some quality home-related skills most of us should brush up on. If you haven’t learned them, it’s a great reminder.
4. It was time for a new list, as mine has grown stale (see below)

Understandably, some of us just won’t have the drive to take on the entire list, and some items you just wouldn’t care for anyhow. But here are some of the relevant entries I took note of.

14. Chop down a tree. Know your escape path. When the tree starts to fall, use it.

(Also, chop down a tree in good weather, My first experience was chopping down our xmas tree in 2 feet of snow. The trunk, was frozen, and halfway through I’d only wished that santa would bring me a chainsaw….right then)

15. Calculate square footage. Width times length.

(Perfectly useful if you’re measuring a rectilinear space. Not a useful explanation. Instead, find the floorplans and your tape measure, for more help, see the explanation here at about.com)

16. Tie a bow tie.

(There was an explanation with that one, but it’ll never happen, not with me, not without a tux. That’s one fashion don’t that’s about as dead as a hitler-esque moustache)

7. Cook meat somewhere other than the grill.

Buy The Way to Cook, by Julia Child. Try roasting. Braising. Broiling. Slow-cooking. Pan searing. Think ragouts, fricassees, stews. All of this will force you to understand the functionality of different cuts. In the end, grilling will be a choice rather than a chore, and your Weber will become a tool rather than a piece of weekend entertainment.

(Julia Child??? What century was this writer born in? Granted, a master grillmaster who can bend a vegan’s will is certainly bound for greatness. However, I haven’t seen a cookbook without Rachel Ray’s face plastered over it in years.)

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