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The great home-office debate
1 commentWhen I turned my attention to designing the home office, I considered extending the balustrade to enclose the space, but I didn’t like the idea that the view...
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Do we need a tagline?
5 commentsSo the other day, one of the editors suggested that maybe Fine Homebuilding needed a tagline. You know, a little phrase on the magazine’s cover that clarifies what it’s about and who it’s for.
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A happy accident
Like so many topics in these politically divisive times, patriotism is a tricky thing. Personally, I don’t think it’s determined by whether you wear a flag pin on your lapel or whether you agree with all our government’s policies.
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Tolerances
A skilled tradesman knows a thousand such things and has forgotten he knows them. They are so naturally a part of what he does that he takes them for granted.
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The quality of our decisions
If you know anything about building stone walls, you know that stones with flat faces are much prized. Flat faces turned outward help to make a good-looking wall.
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The wedding gift
When my friend Chris Green got married last summer, I gave him, as a wedding gift, one day of my labor. He is remodeling his small house to accommodate a now-expanded family, and I knew he could use some help.
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My Oregon swimming pool
One of the things that editing a magazine has in common with renovating an old house is that the ability to get something done depends absolutely on your ability to ignore all the other things that also need to be done.
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On message for our brand
I went to a brand sensibility meeting this week. It was hard for me. Generally, I’m the kind of guy who makes fun of such things, not attends them.
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Happy landings, and the stairs are finished
Well, I finally finished my staircase, and I’m as pleased as the perfectionist, son-of-a-surgeon, editor of Fine Homebuilding is likely ever to be with his own work.
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Dealing with mistakes
The latest thing I’ve learned about making mistakes, like firing a nail through your brand-new handrail, is that they make good fodder for a blog.
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Garage Progress
We're making good progress on the garage shop at the project house. Drywall is hung, carriage doors are installed and the new front facade has been painted. read more
About this blog
As the editor of Fine Homebuilding, I spend my weekdays trying to produce a magazine that will satisfy 300,000 of the most demanding builders, both professional and amateur. As the owner of a 200-year old Cape in Connecticut’s Litchfield Hills, I spend weekends working on my house.
Each activity invariably informs, and complicates, the other. In this blog, I’ll offer observations from both worlds -- publishing and building -- with the hope of providing some useful or at least entertaining insights.
