I Spent 11 Months Building an Uncomfortable Couch

...houses, somehow just need to get built. Such was the case when he proposed making two reproductions of the obscure Gustav Stickley Divan #165, one for his house and one for ours. The couch dates from the summer of 1900, when Stickley employed, at great expense, the architect Henry W. Wilkerson to design a line he called “The New Furniture.” Wilkerson is probably best known as the architect of one of New York City’s few Arts and Crafts style apartm...

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Yes on 15! Vote for Nithya Raman for CD 4!

...ying taxes based on outdated values. For instance, Walt Disney Studios in Burbank pays taxes on an assessed value from 1975 allowing them to dodge around $3.5 million in taxes every year. Prop 13 was sold as a way to keep older people on fixed income from being taxed out of their houses. This is partly true, but the real impulse behind Prop 13 was to shift the tax burden away from the wealthy. I was in junior high in a public school when Prop 13 p...

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A Grand Rapids End Table

...working project I tackle seems to come along with a lesson learned through making a mistake. A previous project taught me that I should take more time deciding what to make. As a woodworker, since you can make whatever you want, you might as well make something interesting and custom sized for a particular spot in your house. With this end table I took my time looking for the perfect piece to reproduce. While the Arts and Crafts thing is way out o...

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Happy Cranksgiving

...ent’s new closing guidelines and came to the conclusion that they are just making stuff up on the fly. Some things are open and some closed and it’s obvious that the decisions aren’t based on any research since their probably isn’t any. When you see a multi page list of directions for “model airplane facilities” you know they are winging it. Again, the solution is simple. In a surge like we’re having right now, close everything except what we need...

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