Articles in category "house":
See Inside the Pythian Temple!
· Posted Tuesday April 24, 2007 by jamie
Historic Tacoma will be celebrating National Preservation Month this May by presenting an old house lecture series. I’m particularly stoked about the May 10th session on the repair, restoration, and replacement of wood windows, but I guess I’m a dork like that. The other big bonus is a chance to see the inside of the Temple of the Knights of Pythias on Broadway, something of an architectural gem that is simultaneously easy to miss from the outside and hard to get inside of. Coolness.
Tickets are $8 per, $25 for the 5-lecture series, or free for Historic Tacoma members. More details, membership signup, and ticket purchase here.
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Visit a Future Landmark With Historic Tacoma
· Posted Friday February 16, 2007 by jamie
We love old houses. There is something wonderful about the solid-wood doors, the gently sloping floors, the drafty wood windows. There is nothing more depressing than seeing someone renovate their house in ways that ruin the charm—vinyl windows and siding being the worst offense, both stylistically and environmentally.
Luckily, there are lots of other people out there who also love old houses enough to fix them the right way. One such Tacoman is historian and preservationist Caroline T. Swope, who will be opening her 1906 home for a Historic Tacoma “tea party” on February 24th from 1-4pm. Swope, author of Classic Houses of Seattle, has spent the last year carefully renovating the house with as much historical accuracy as possible, and the home is currently nominated for Tacoma’s Registry of Historic Places. The home will be featured in Sunset Magazine in March, and also featured on the Tour of Historic Homes this year, but this event provides the unique opportunity to talk to some of the craftspeople involved in the renovation and discuss energy-efficiency, code concerns, and various other topics related to the process. We’re definitely hoping to attend.
Space is limited, and reservations must be made in advance.
Reserve your space by calling 253-370-6984 or email info@historictacoma.net. I’m assuming more details will be provided once you’ve registered.
Tickets are $25 for non-members. Or, if you join Historic Tacoma, tickets are only $20.
All proceeds benefit Historic Tacoma.
I’m not sure what the deal is with the tea party…but we like tea so I guess it’s all good.
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Cool Stuff...Pretty Cheap Sale Saturday!
· Posted Friday January 12, 2007 by jamie
Cool Stuff…Pretty Cheap! was a favorite haunt of the ThriceAllAmerican household every other Saturday for years before they closed their doors to regular sales and put their building on the market about a year ago. It was always a great place to find antiques harvested from various estate sales at quite reasonable prices, and we’ve got quite a few pieces of furniture and other knick-knacks around the house to show for it. Since they “closed”, they’ve been doing occasional auctions, but we were excited to hear that this Saturday they’re coming back for a regular old sale!
Just Like Old Times! Sale at “COOL STUFF...pretty cheap!” 411 S. Fawcett Ave. Six Hours Only! Sat. 10a-4p Antique & Vintage everything incl: D.Phyfe table & 6; Arts/Crafts library tables; rockers; dressers; church podium; 1940s vending machine; glass; rugs; art, etc.
We’re so there! Woo-hoo!
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History in a House
· Posted Tuesday July 18, 2006 by jamie
The first meeting of Historic Tacoma is this coming Thursday, July 20th, from 5:30pm-7:30pm in the Olympic Room at the Tacoma Public Library Main Branch (1102 Tacoma Ave South). Here is an opportunity to take part in the preservation of our cities architectural heritage. I’m assuming this is different things for different people, be it attempting to stop the demolition of First United Methodist by Multicare, restoring the historic Elks building, or preventing the next home demolition on par with the Mattson House.
Our home, on the surface, has none of the significance of these structures. Sure, it definitely has some street appeal, but in the end it is a generic 1922 kit-style bungalow, and if you drive around town, even just down the street, you can see homes that are almost exactly the same. But at the same time, there is a history there, and it, too, can be revealed at the library. The Northwest Room a great online index of buildings, with information about the builder, relevant news articles, and any photos that have been collected. (We are not so luck as to have a photo attached to our address.) Perhaps even cooler is that if you visit the Northwest Room at the library, you can look in old Polk city directories to see who lived in your house at various times. (This site offers scans of a 1921 city directory for Tacoma.) Starting in 1928, these offered reverse lookup by address. Thus, we were able to determine who lived in our house as far back as 1925, and to trace the working class history of our home: a bookkeeper for City Light and Water, two salesmen, a department manager at West Coast Grocery, a wharfinger at the port, and then finally, in 1940, the family that would occupy the house for the next 60 years. Many houses, though not ours, were listed as vacant during the years of the Great Depression. Suddenly our home, and the others surrounding us, seem rich with history.
So we’re planning on being there for the first meeting of Historic Tacoma, to help preserve local heritage, both that which is already generally recognized and that which requires a bit more digging. We hope you will be there, too, and that maybe you will be inspired to look into the unique history of where you live.
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Weekend Project Recap
· Posted Tuesday July 11, 2006 by jamie
A bit of home and garden sorta stuff…
I put in a brand new fence this last spring. To my horror, one of the fence posts warped significantly post-construction, causing the crosspiece to slip out of the fence bracket. I suppose I could have taken the whole thing apart and rebuilt, but I decided I would work with what was there, so I cut back the cross-stud, created a filler piece, and fused it all back together.
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Now I just need to go around and add nails to attach all of the studs to the brackets. Lesson learned, though I’m not sure doing that would have stemmed the warpage problems…
Next on the agenda was the installation of a rainbarrel on our garage. We already have 3 barrels installed on the house and 2 reserves sitting inside the garage. This is a great way to reclaim at least a little bit of the water from our roof that would otherwise pool up at the base of our downspouts, and provides excellent water for plants, birdbaths, etc.
So without further ado, before and after:
Just need to throw an earthquake strap on there for safety, an overflow hose to the nearby plants, touch up the paint on the downspout, and wait for the rain to come…
We have just 2 downspouts left without barrels, so I imagine we’ll be getting more soon. Our rainbarrels were purchased from Dan Borba, a super nice guy who throws together a great product. (If you attended Art on the Ave, you may have seen his barrel painted up with fireworks…very cool…)
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categories: house