HOME IMPROVEMENTS

I'm rereading Sarah Susanka's book, "The Not So Big House" and it's inspired me to try a couple of home improvements. For specific ideas I need look no farther than the architectural posts on this very Theory Corner site. Maybe it's time to try some of them out instead of just writing about them all the time.

Hmmmm....well, the obvious thing to do would be to would be to replace my living room windows with big natural wood ones like kind on the book cover above. Yikes! That looks pricey! And beams...they're out for the same reason. Too bad. They look great.

Susanka's right about the appeal of small houses (above) where every inch of space gets used. 

You can do all kinds of things with the big kind of wooden kids blocks (above), and I already have a bunch of those. I once saw a fireplace bracketed with blocks in a shape like this.

I have a level change in my back yard and I'm considering changing the retaining wall so it resembles something the Mayans would have done. I could keep the existing wall and brace the new structure against it.

I picture dumping a pile of maybe four different kinds of old weathered bricks on the ground and making a pattern out of them. Maybe I could I could make a few unique bricks with plaster of Paris. Does anybody sell triangular bricks?

I stumbled on this (above) while I was searching for structural foam on the net. Hmmm...white, textured interior wall panels. That sounds promising. All the walls don't have to look like this, just one small one.

I also came across a site that sells colored glass bricks. They were popular in the 60s and 70s with people who had waterbeds and bongs, which is not exactly my thing. Even so, maybe I can think of a use for them.

When my kids were little I painted the nursery walls with pictures of animals (above). It looked so good that I was always thinking of excuses to spend time in there because I liked staring at the walls. Later on the walls were painted over but maybe I should try something like that again.

Oldtime readers of Playboy like myself imbibed Hugh Hefner's aesthetic which required a large abstract painting in the living room, so maybe I need one of those.

Maybe something along the lines of Gary Panter's "Elvis Zombie (above)."

Or a Fearless Fosdick painting.

Or a Cliff Sterett-type picture. My left sidebar is full of interesting possibilities.

I like this curtain pattern by Lucy Cousin. It's a bit girly but it's cartoony and has a good vibe. It wouldn't fit with a zombie painting, though.

I wonder if there's some way I could use those thin, quarry-cut sheets of rock bricks (above) that you see everywhere nowadays. I'd have to use them sparingly because they appear phony when you look close.

How about a pre-fab Japanese fence for the yard (above)...you can't beat that.

Above, Picasso-type panels on the upper floor railing. Great idea!

Maybe built-in bookshelves... if I could afford it. They sure look good. Interior French doors, too.

I like the idea of out-of-the-way shelves that are designed for irregular piles of paper that haven't been sorted yet. This would be a hard sell for my family who wouldn't understand why I saved all that paper in the first place.