Customer Reviews

Walls Around Us: The Thinking Person's Guide to How a House Works

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Have you ever wondered why you couldn't just use the paint they use for nuclear power plants, for your house? Wouldn't it be a lot more durable? David Owen has wondered - and visited the manufacturer who makes nuke paint, to get the answers.

Also among the choicest bits in a book that is full of great moments: the description of a layer of ugly wallpaper over a layer of ugly paint over a layer of ugly wallpaper over a layer of ugly paint...

Read this book during that break from stripping paint; have a tall glass of iced tea with it. And rejoice in the fact that even though it's 100 degrees and you're working on your house, at least you are not on an aluminum ladder near electrical lines in the rain.

I give copies of this book to friends as housewarming gifts for their first house...; we had to buy two copies for ourselves, as we don't want to run the risk of losing our only copy if someone borrows it.

This is a fine entry in the category of Well-written, Wryly-humorous Books About the Trials of Ordinary Life That Also Contain a Suprising Amount of Useful Information. If that sounds like an excessive qualification, it isn't, since the book is about houses, a subject dear, or dire, to the hearts of very many middle-class married men.

David Owen definitely writes as a guy. It's conceivable that a woman could enjoy this book, in the same way that some men enjoy reading Erma Bombeck. It's also true that many a woman these days finds herself, willy-nilly, the sole proprietor of some "huge box filled with complicated things that want to break," and so will see that this book is essentially inspirational and non-gendered, and will read it anyway. It's for anyone who has a house and doesn't know how that house works. Because if you have a house and don't know something about how it works, you will regret it, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.

The author is a writer for, among other publications, "The New Yorker", and he has the easy, colloquial, accomplished style that we associate with that magazine. This is not a "humor" book that tries to milk laughs out of the trials of a hapless urbanite who buys a 200-year-old farmhouse and gets his comeuppance. However, he was indeed a Manhattan apartment dweller with a wife and two young children who decided to buy a 200-year-old farmhouse in Connecticut, and certain mishaps and learning experiences did follow from that action. Some are laugh-out-loud funny, but mostly you will find yourself reading along with a smile that is composed of one part sympathy and two parts relief ("at least my house isn't THAT screwed-up!").

Mainly, though, in the course of your reading you will learn a lot. David Owen is a professional writer, and he knows how to research a topic, be it wallboard or lumber or electricity. (Perhaps the finest part of the book is the section on wallboard and plaster.) But he's also just an ordinary guy and a home-owner, until fairly recently just as butt-ignorant as you about how a house works. He lives in a this-old-house sort of place, and most of us don't. (Although once-fine old houses do present an implicit challenge that some of us fantasize about taking on, when our skills are a bit more honed.) His discussions, though, are firmly rooted in what many of us brood about on an almost daily basis: ugly walls, bad wiring, roofing leaks and wet basements.

But courage! A house need not be a millstone. It can be that fort Mom never let you build. If you're a grownup you can actually go out and buy power tools and plywood and all sorts of other neat stuff, and then you can come back home and make your house better.

Or worse. One of the virtues of this volume is its cheerful attitude toward working on one's home: that it is essentially a pilgrimage. Nothing is ever final, and every failure, every flub, teaches you something. Perfection is not the object, but rather, engagement. After a number of years of living in it, and coping with it, your home will become, for better and/or worse, an extension of yourself. If you love yourself, eventually you will love your house, too, with all its endearing faults.

As the owner of a 200-year-old fixer-upper, David Owen has more remodeling issues than most of us will ever have to *think* about, much less face. He gives us the benefit of them in _The Walls Around Us_. Every chapter is a self-contained essay in which, without lecturing, he clearly explains issues such as the differences in linseed-oil-based, alkyd, and latex paints (and each one's strong and weak points), shingles and tar and how ice dams ruin gutters, how finding lead plumbing is a lead-pipe cinch, so to speak, in some situations but not in others, and on through the rest of a house's components. In each chapter, Owen relates the subject to his need to address some component failure, small catastrophe, or need for improvement, making the book feel like the reader is having an unhurried visit with another do-it-yourselfer, trading "war stories" of balky drains, cracked plaster or shifting foundations.

This is not a "how-to" book, but rather a journey of discovery, in which Owen invites the reader to share with him as he learns how to deal with living in a house where things go wrong, and how to get past them without completely losing one's sanity or humor.

This book is the story of the author's renovations of his newly-purchased colonial-era house. In the process, Owen learns a great deal about how houses work and how they're built...and he makes a lot of mistakes.

Somehow do-it-yourself books always make me feel less than competent. It looks so easy in the book. Owen perfectly captures the learning process involved with getting to know an old house. In the process, he passes along much of what he's learned and frequently makes me laugh out loud.

Anyone who has lived in, or, especially, tried to improve, an old house should read this book.

We picked this book up in the midst of a 2-year home renovation. His humor brought us some needed levity, and his research and knowledge even helped guide some decisions. Worth reading.

This book is worth it for the description of the router class alone. But there's lots of hilarious and informative stuff on every page. I'm thinking of putting up a half wall in my kitchen, and I blame this book. Incidentally, I'm also reading it aloud to my wife, like the guy in the review right before me.

Loved this book, I'm 28 and have worked in construction/remodeling for just over ten years and this book touch on almost all of it. Not only that but the author does this without putting you to sleep or lecturing, but with great humor.

This book is a smart and funny take on "what I learned while repairing an old house". You feel smarter about the how and why of house structures after you read this book (especially fascinating is the discussion of paneling -- why walls and doors were originally paneled). At the same time Owen mocks the self-importance one feels working on one's house and the messes one backs into when you get the brilliant idea to start a huge project at 6 PM. While Owen is a guy, working on a house, he shares the joy in a gender-inclusive way and you come away with the feeling that the joy of removing plaster is within reach for all of us.

This book is worth it for the description of the router class alone. But there's lots of hilarious and informative stuff on every page. I'm thinking of putting up a half wall in my kitchen, and I blame this book. Incidentally, I'm also reading it aloud to my wife, like the guy in the review right before me.