RANDOM MUSINGS
This is the junk drawer of the blog. It’s the miscellaneous stuff that defies categorizing, but seems too important to discard.

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN, FLOWERS & HISTORIC BUNGALOWS
"I have a friend who's an artist & has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say 'look how beautiful it is,' & I'll agree. Then he says, 'I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take...

BEFORE YOU HIRE AN OLD HOUSE CONTRACTOR
I wrote the E-book, 7 VITAL Things to Do Before You Hire a Contractor, after reading terrible & sad stories on the old house, Facebook, group blogs. In every single story I could see the exact moment at which the project fell apart, the money got ripped off, the...

A VERY MERRY BUNGALOW CHRISTMAS
My first bungalow Christmas, in The Hare House, my 1910 Craftsman was a year in the planning. Built before electricity came to that part of, what would be, Los Angeles. I moved in in December of 1998 & started thinking about the next Christmas. I had been living...

WHAT IS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE OF RESTORING AN OLD HOUSE?
I long ago discovered that the biggest challenge of restoring an old house is battle fatigue. It’s extremely easy to get disheartened. I know I’m not your mother (Disclaimer: I think I’m everybody’s mother.) but I restored a Folk Victorian & learned some great...

CHILDHOOD PETS IN MY BUNGALOW NEIGHBORHOOD
As I recall the years of my childhood spent in “Tampa Town,” I am always
cognizant of the changes that have accompanied our metamorphosis into a much larger city. One of them has impacted the daily lives of today’s neighborhood children. It has to do with pets and the different role they presently play. In those days, we all had pets, but they were not like the pampered, purebred or exotic ones prized by children today. They were “adopted” stray dogs and cats (Heinz 57 variety), plus many other varied forms of wildlife….and I do mean wild.

HOW BUNGALOW AUTHOR JANE POWELL CHANGED MY LIFE
Into every life walks a handful of people who impact your life profoundly. Jane Powell, author, bungalow restorer & advocate, was one of them for me.
In the winter of 1998, I walked out of my 1966 MCM house in Pasadena where I had lived as a renter for 8 years and gasped to see a FOR SALE sign in the yard. My landlord, who was a darling fellow, had purchased the house shortly before the housing crash in1990, and after having it on the market for some time, decided to put it up for rent.