Casual Reading: Houses

It must have been about thirty years ago that I read a review of David Owen's The Walls Around Us: A Thinking Person's Guide to How a House Works in The Washington Post, for the book was published in October 1991. I knew of Owen as an entertaining writer, and the topic was one that much occupied me just then, but I did not buy a copy. I must have been too busy in my own dealings with how a row house did and did not work.

Last week, I rectified my neglect, for I found and read a copy. I greatly enjoyed it, and will send it on to my brother, who has undertaken much more ambitious home projects than I would think of. Yet I can't say that practically speaking I have missed out on that much over the thirty years. Probably sixty percent of what Owen writes of I had learned by then or have learned since. The other forty percent involves work I would not undertake--work with copper pipes and blow torches, work with power saws and routers, doing my own drywall work.

But Owen is quite entertaining. He is good on the madness that develops when the upper middle class deals with kitchens--

They live in the apartment just half the year, and when they are in residence they almost always eat out. ... The rest of the kitchen gets a real workout only during parties, when it used not by the couple but by people they have hired.
This couple did not build a drop-dead kitchen because they wanted to create a pleasant working environment for servant and caterers. They did it because they wanted to send the world a message about themselves. Their kitchen is not so much a place to cook as it is an affirmation of their wealth and good taste.

Or, occasionally, when it does its own home renovation:

The only real setback I encountered involved a wallboard screw that made a funny noise as I drove it in. I looked at it for a while and then unscrewed it. A thin column of water streamed horrifyingly through the hole. Like most plumbing disasters, this one occurred late on a Saturday night.

The Walls Around Us seems to be out of print now--I must have contributed to this, in a small way, by my long delay in finding a copy. It does not seem to be hard to find used, though one must distinguish it from a novel of that name by one Nova Ren Suma.