I went to look at this dump on Alameda that a client might buy, and as you can imagine, she said, “What can we do about the yard?” She was using the term “yard” rather loosely, as you can see. From the front, the house is a perfect Christmas center-hall colonial sitting about ten feet [...]
The owner of this house (full disclosure: it’s my brother…) tried to unload it last summer, and found that the snobby buyers in that price range in this economy were no longer happy with just view, architecture, and location, but also found the existing 2 1/2 bathrooms inadequate. They required a master bath, and henceforth [...]
I have been, and likely always shall be, a public golfer.
I’ve played since my father took me out when I was about ten. During my teen years, I worked at what in those days were called “caddy camps,” summer programs organized with elite private golf clubs on Cape Cod, where boys from the greater Boston [...]
This spring it will be 20 years that I’ve been knocking down walls, putting them back up, painting, tiling, wiring, installing kooky lighting systems, and planting everything I could get my hands on. Nothing is nicer than seeing the evidence of this all over town, and even in Seattle, LA, Brooklyn, and Connecticut, and [...]
The project I’m working on now is something of an oddity, as they go. It’s a 1923 English Tudor, located in the hills above Northwest Portland, next door to some longtime clients (See “Urban Oasis) who recommended me so highly that the owners just told me to outline what needed to be done, present a [...]
As those of us who work for a living know, many days lead one to wish that we might have been heiresses and could simply bag the whole thing, but then, what, exactly, would we do? Work doesn’t just give us the means to live, but it also provides structure to our lives, a sense [...]
Although I’m somewhat reluctant to admit this, I probably listen to more talk radio than most 70-year old Teabaggers. Because of the nature of my job, I have several hours alone each day at work, performing tasks that, to put it mildly, leave my brain less than fully engaged, and the three-hour shows, punctuated by [...]
Seven or eight years ago I was called upon to do something with this garden, which at the time had one plant, no trees, a high retaining wall at the rear, a large, trailer-esque stilt home looming above it, and adjoined the house by way of a porch that had been artlessly enclosed with basically [...]
I went up to the mushroom building today, and it was oddly quiet up there, now that the exterior work is finished. Two units are now for sale, the first of which having dropped its price by $100,000. As my brother is also discovering to his untold chagrin, the market for high-end view properties is [...]
One of the great pleasures of creating gardens is watching them evolve and mature over time; indeed, a new garden takes several years just to provide the shade, structure, and privacy intended, and it takes at least a few seasons to eliminate poorly performing plants where needed, fill in bare spots, and make the garden [...]