Popular Mechanics - USA (2019-04)

(Antfer) #1
↓ FROM THE EDITOR

@PopularMechanics _ April 2019 5

I


ONCE LIVED IN an apartment in Greenwich Village so small that I could sit in a
chair in the middle and wash dishes or make my bed without leaving the chair.
When my wife and I decided to move out of the city with our two kids, we were
living in a one-bedroom apartment. The first time we looked at the 1,700-square-
foot farmhouse we would eventually buy, it seemed enormous. So many rooms.
A chimney! Stairs!
City people. The house was not very big at all, but after 15 years of brushing
my teeth in the kitchen and grilling dinner using a hibachi on the fire escape, the
three-bedroom house felt like a mansion. All those rooms.
We discovered an important quality about our house: There were many rooms,
yes. But they were tiny.
We learned that back in the day (the house was built in the 1850s), small rooms
made houses more efficient to heat: You could simply close rooms off. (That’s the
other thing: Every room on every floor had a door that closed.)
Around that time, my friend (and now occasional Popular Mechanics con-
tributor) Chad Stokes was restoring an early-20th-century home in Jamaica Plain,
Massachusetts. He gave me some advice: Take down every wall you can. Anything
nonstructural, remove.
Open things up!
So, recently, when we had to have some work done on the place, that became par t
of the mission: Open things up. Tear down walls. Allow the space to breathe. Let in
some light, let in some air.
Chad was right. The first time we walked in after constr uction (done beautifully
by Concordia General Contracting in Carmel, New York), it was as if the existing
footprint of the house had, by some magic, doubled in size. Everything looked huge.
Each room flowed into the next, like on Downton Abbey, and we strolled through
without bumping into corners or knocking doors against each other.
Back when we first moved from the city, we’d had a
party soon after. We hardly knew anyone in the town,
but we invited neighbors, and the neighbors’ friends,
and a few parents we had met through preschool, and
we put out some cheese and bought the best wine we
could afford after blowing all our money on the down
payment. It was great, but it was like seven little parties,
each happening in a different, small room.
This time, five years later, we had a bigger party after
we moved back in. Half the town showed up—my wife
counted 90 at one point. In our little house! Conver-
sations tumbled from room to room, bouncing off the
bright new paint on the walls. People perambulated.
We put out a spiral-cut ham and my mom’s cookies, and you could smell the food in
every corner. Clusters of friends claimed a spot—a nook, a seat by the fire, a whole
room—and everyone was included.
And that right there is the beauty of taking down those walls: The simple removal
of an opaque barrier made of plaster and lath meant that neighbors and friends could
see each other. Simple as that. And if you can see your buddy across the room, you can
walk over to him, slap him on the back, say howya doing? And that’s a beautiful thing.

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RYAN D’AGOSTI NO
Editor in Chief
@rhdagostino

My Anti-Wa l l R a n t


THE PAINT I USED
When doing the renova-
tion I mention on this page,
we used Farrow & Ball
paint, made in England.
Their color palette con-
tained every shade my wife
could dream up, and the
wall coverage was better
than any I’ve seen. F&B’s
decades-old formula—the
company was founded by
a chemist (Farrow) and an
engineer (Ball) after the
Second World War—avoids
plastic additives and gives
the paint a smooth, viscous
texture. It’s expensive. Like,
really expensive. But worth
it, especially for DIYers. My
dad always says, If you’re
saving on the labor, spend
on the paint.

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