Mod Squad Planning Charlotte Trip
The always-interesting Triangle Modernist Houses is sponsoring another exciting event. This time the tour goes to Charlotte on May 22 to tour the Design Within Reach store, the 1970 Mark Bernstein house, and IKEA. Some of the trip’s features include:
- Our own air-conditioned, restroom-equipped, internet-equipped luxury tour bus.
- Sodas, water, and both healthy and junky snacks provided on board the bus.
- Super green – think of all the carbon we’ll save versus driving down individually.
- Each person gets "storage credits" representing a total of six cubic feet of storage space under the bus. You can trade, buy, or sell credits to others. So, in theory, with enough credits, you could bring a couch home! Plus, all you can carry in your lap. Delivery is also available through DWR and Ikea.
- Lunch is on your own at the IKEA restaurant. Be sure to try the Swedish meatballs!
- Parking is $4 per car, paid separately to FastPark on exit. Dropoffs and pickups are ok, no charge.
Tickets are limited, and are $49.95 before May 1, $58.00 on and after that.
The Container Store Coming To Raleigh
It is extremely hard to contain myself with TBJ’s news of North Carolina’s first location for The Container Store Coming to Raleigh. The chain’s 49’th store will take the vacant Circuit City store across from Crabtree. The store will open in mid-October.
National Art Interiors Closing Showroom
National Art Interior + Design , the design firm that used to be located in downtown Raleigh at the corner of Hillsborough St. and Glenwood, is closing its doors. The firm, which moved to North Raleigh a couple of years ago, is having a huge showroom closing sale where you can get some big name furniture (Henkel Harris, Baker Furniture, Hickory Chair) at great prices.
The sale is taking place at Sutton Square Shopping Center (on the corner of Falls of Neuse and Spring Forest Roads). Look for the National Art Interior+Design banner. Sale hours are Wednesday – Friday 10 am to 7 pm and Saturday 10 – 6 pm through mid-June or until everything is gone.
Spring Home Tour Begins Today
The Wake County Home Builders Association has had so much success with the Parade of Homes in the fall, that they are doing a spring tour, too. Featuring 76 new, unsold houses across the county, the Spring New Home Tour runs today, tomorrow, next Saturday, and next Sunday. Houses will be open from Noon to 5pm each day. For a map of the houses available, see page 16D in today’s News & Observer.
Valentine’s Day is Time To Fertilize
Of course, you know, I’m talking about nurturing a drought-resistant lawn that is beautiful year round, right? The three times to fertilize a Tall Fescue lawn are the beginning of September (with seeding), Thanksgiving, and Valentine’s Day. The first two are most important as they aim at stimulating good, downward root formation. The Valentine’s Day fertilization promotes a hearty top half of the plant. Fertilizing once the weather is warm is a recipe to creating a lawn that grows too fast and requires too much water to live.
In order to fertilize, one needs to evenly put the adequate amounts of fertilizer down. The rules of thumb around here are 75 lbs of limestone per 1000 feet (to bring pH around these pines and azaleas up), 1 lb of nitrogen per 1000 feet, and 6lbs of tall fescue see per 1000 feet (if seeding, but remember that seed placed in the spring never has the chance to grow downward, and will therefore have to be watered all summer).
In order to fertilize correctly, measure the square footage of the lawn. Then look at the fertilizer offered in the store. There are three numbers XX-YY-ZZ, and the first (XX) is the nitrogen. Divide 100 by this amount, and multiply that resulting number by the number of thousands of the lawn’s square feet. This will result in the correct number of pounds of fertilizer to use.
Frank Harmon To Deliver Harris Lecture
Frank Harmon , FAIA, will deliver the annual Harwell Hamilton Harris Lecture on February 15 at 7 p.m. The lecture takes place in the Burns Auditorium of Kamphoefner Hall at North Carolina State University’s College of Design in Raleigh.
Sponsored by the College of Design and the Triangle section of the American Institute of Architects/North Carolina, the annual lecture is endowed by the estate of the renowned architect Harwell Hamilton Harris, FAIA (1903-1990) who served on the faculty of NC State’s College of Design from 1962 to 1973.
Frank Harmon is a fellow of the American Institute of Architecture and a Professor in Practice at the College of Design. He is the founder and principal of Frank Harmon Architect PA, a multi-award-winning, LEED AP, green architecture firm established in 1985. He was also a close friend of Harris for many years, and he credits Harris with steering his design sensibilities towards modern, innovative and regionally appropriate design.
A New Way To Leave
The introduction of hand blow dryers in public restrooms often times introduced no clear way to exit without touching an enteric bacteria-coated door handle. To date the best way to exit the bathroom without smearing someone else’s bacteria on your hands is to use a paper towel to touch the door handle. Golden Corral in Cary has a new approach, the door hook. Using the forearm a person tall enough to reach the hook should now be able to leave the restroom with uncontaminated hands. This is especially important in a restaurant that serves finger foods like fried chicken, rolls, etc.
Of course it is still up to the diner to properly wash their hands. According to the CDC , hands should be washed for the length of time it takes to sing “Happy Birthday†twice. Diners should also assign themselves one hand for touching the dirty food bar serving utensils and one for handling food. However for maximum cleanliness, use a dime-sized dollop of alcohol-based gel of at least 60% concentration (40% gels are worthless) after each trip to the food bar. ( CDC Paper , .PDF)
While there are still many routes for disease transmission, it is nice to see a restaurant offering a solution to one of the key sources of sickness.
City Leaf Collection Begins (Began?)
The City of Raleigh will officially begin their leaf collection program on Thursday. The collections will start in the Northwest corner of the city, but cover each area once before Christmas, then a second time after New Years. Residents are asked to rake leaves into piles at the curb rather than in the street. Normal weekly Yard waste collection will continue throughout.
This is strange as the leave collection team passed by my house one week ago, when we didn’t have many leaves accumulated. Perhaps they started early? Perhaps they were just warming up, getting the trucks and their routine down pat?
Raleigh’s Most Beautiful Foliage
The most gorgeous trees I’ve seen this fall are in the North Hills parking lot, near Wachovia. While they aren’t big trees, they are 100% non-green. The reds in the one on the left are intense. Also pretty is the Eastbound side of I-440, travelling from Wade Avenue toward Glenwood.
Have a tip on beautiful foliage in the area? Let us know!
REI Hosts Basic Bike Maintenance Class
On Tuesday (10/27), REI at North Hills will be sponsoring another free Bike Maintenance class. The 7pm session is aimed at teaching parts, basic adjustment, and care of your bicycle.
Triangle Modernist Houses Organizing NYC Trip
The local website championing modernist architecture, Triangle Modernist Houses, is putting together a day-trip to New York City . Their email states:
Want to meet Richard Meier? You will. Want to see his vast collection of architectural models? No problem. What about visiting his famous Smith House, almost never open to visitors? Yep . The Museum of Modern Art – aren’t they having an exhibit on the Bauhaus? Yes, and you’ll be going . What about a guided tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum? That, too . What about getting to New York? It’s all included . Lunch? Yes. Ground transportation? Of course. Wow, that’s incredible! We think so, too . Only 21 seats are available on the plane; but if you want to go separately and stay longer over the weekend, we’ve got 19 additional day seats.
The fascinating trip takes place on Friday, January 22, and costs $459 per person. The plane takes off at 6am, and returns at 10pm, weather permitting 😉
Impetuous Council Needs Unrestricted Renovation
Two years ago 10% of voters elected a new Raleigh City Council that quickly found itself at odds with its voters. Within months several drastic, potentially devastating measures were exercised:
Garbage Disposal Ban – Based on absolutely no scientific evidence, the entire city council (with the exception of Philip Isley ) voted in a ban on new garbage disposal installations. The ban was later overturned after a political firestorm. During discussions Rodger Koopman stated that “we are at war†with soldiers living in less than ideal conditions and it is “our duty†to “suck it up once in a whileâ€. Councilor Crowder stated that this would be the “only logical step toward healthy waterâ€, yet the evidence actually points to the contrary.
Water Restrictions – This city council, in the aftermath of a highly unusual drought situation, imposed a water use policy that restricts residents from properly maintaining a drought resistant lawn. Watering laws are irrationally based on days of the week, rather than ideal watering times. There is a prodigious amount of information published by N.C. State University and the state’s Cooperative Extension Service, yet this city council never even considered conveying some of the simple and proven best-practices for drought resistant lawns.
Water Rates – After restrictions and diligent citizen behavior reduced water consumption by 7%, the city council voted to raise water rates 8.5% because the public works division was suddenly losing money.
House Replacement Law – Russ Stephenson and Thomas Crowder were strongly in favor of limits on homeowner’s abilities to renovate or replace their houses. Crowder wrote in an email “If a new house is to be developed on a site where a house was torn down, it would go to the Planning Commission for approval unless it does not exceed a reasonable increase in the existing area of the structure – say 10 to 20 percent in area and 10 percent in height.†Later he wrote “I spoke with Russ and I believe we are on the same page . . .The house being replaced is no more than 30% greater than the gross floor area of the original structure and the height is no greater than 10% of the original structure height. To sum it up . . .if you have a 1,500 SF home you can increase it to 1,950 GSF. Same analogy goes for height.â€
Can you imagine living in a 1,500 square foot house and only being able to add 450 square feet, regardless of the neighborhood’s setback scheme, the condition of the house, the height of neighboring houses, and the condition of those houses?
* * *
The problem with some of these incumbents is that they are willing to take drastic measures without thinking through the consequences. A garbage disposer ban would have led to scores of improperly DIY-installed disposers, additional loads on garbage hauling, increased animal control problems, and, as the research suggests, a sewer system with more clogs than is currently seen. The city imposed water restrictions, only to raise the rates, keeping the total burden on families the same or worse than before!
A severe limit to house replacement sizes would destroy the value of older homes inside Raleigh, and directly cause more suburban sprawl. Who would want to renovate a 1,200 square foot house in Five Points when all you could add is a little utility room and a closet? Young people would completely lose interest in older houses that were improperly built, and flee to the outskirts of Raleigh much like they did after World War II, collapsing the housing market in established neighborhoods.
Another problem with this quantitative approach to a qualitative problem is that many of Raleigh ugliest replacements and renovations would have still been allowed under these restrictions. Conversely, some of Raleigh most beautiful replacement houses would have been denied. ( Link 1 , Link 2 ). It would turn the Planning Commission into a draconian architectural review board, putting architects at the mercy of the commission’s whim.
Do we really want a City Council that makes irrational, negligent decisions? These decisions have direct effects on our lives, our savings, and our children. People were intensely interested in the presidential election last year, but to be honest, this city council election means far more. Only 10% of registered voters bothered to vote two years ago, and the effects have been chilling. We heard a lot about “change†in the last year. I’ll take some change! It’s time to instill some common sense, freedom, and empathy in the Raleigh City Council. Vote very, very carefully today , and make this city more attractive, more productive, and more beautiful than ever.
Shredding Events Coming Saturday
According to the State Attorney General’s office, shredding personal information is one of the most important things you can do to prevent identity theft. If you own a business, it is imperative that you handle others’ sensitive information responsibly.
On Saturday from 10am to 2pm, NBC 17 is sponsoring shredding events at three key sites: Heritage in Wake Forest (at the pool – map it ), Tryon Place Neighborhood ( map it ), and Crossroads Plaza (in front of Michaels – map it )
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