The Perfect $100,000 House

The Perfect $100,000 House

Author: Karrie Jacobs

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2007-05-29

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 1440684529

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A home of one’s own has always been a cornerstone of the American dream, fulfilling like nothing else the desire for comfort, financial security, independence, and with a little luck, even a touch of distinctive character, or even beauty. But what we have come to regard as almost a national birthright has recently begun to elude more and more prospective homebuyers. Where housing is concerned, affordable and well-crafted rarely exist together. Or do they? For years, founding editor-in-chief of Dwell magazine and noted architecture and design critic Karrie Jacobs had been confronting this question both professionally and personally. Finally, she decided to see for herself whether it was possible to build the home of her own dreams for a reasonable sum. The Perfect $100,000 House is the story of that quest, a search that takes her from a two-week crash course in housebuilding in Vermont to a road trip of some 14,000 miles. In the course of her journey Jacobs encounters a group of intrepid and visionary architects and builders working to revolutionize the way Americans thinks about homes, about construction techniques, and about the very idea of community. By her trip’s end Jacobs, has not only had a practical and sobering education in the economics, aesthetics, and politics of homebuilding, but has been spurred to challenge her own deeply held beliefs about what constitutes an ideal home. The Perfect $100,000 House is a compelling and inspiring demonstration that we can live in homes that are sensible, modest, and beautiful.


Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House

Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House

Author: Meghan Daum

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2010-05-04

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0307593606

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From the acclaimed author and columnist: a laugh-out-loud journey into the world of real estate—the true story of one woman’s “imperfect life lived among imperfect houses” and her quest for the four perfect walls to call home. After an itinerant suburban childhood and countless moves as a grown-up—from New York City to Lincoln, Nebraska; from the Midwest to the West Coast and back—Meghan Daum was living in Los Angeles, single and in her mid-thirties, and devoting obscene amounts of time not to her writing career or her dating life but to the pursuit of property: scouring Craigslist, visiting open houses, fantasizing about finding the right place for the right price. Finally, near the height of the real estate bubble, she succumbed, depleting her life’s savings to buy a 900-square-foot bungalow, with a garage that “bore a close resemblance to the ruins of Pompeii” and plumbing that “dated back to the Coolidge administration.” From her mother’s decorating manias to her own “hidden room” dreams, Daum explores the perils and pleasures of believing that only a house can make you whole. With delicious wit and a keen eye for the absurd, she has given us a pitch-perfect, irresistible tale of playing a lifelong game of house.


Home Comforts

Home Comforts

Author: Cheryl Mendelson

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2005-05-17

Total Pages: 900

ISBN-13: 0743272862

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A classic bestselling resource for every household, Home Comforts helps you manage everyday chores, find creative solutions to domestic dilemmas, and enhance the experience of life at home. “Home Comforts is to the house what Joy of Cooking is to food.” —USA TODAY Home Comforts is an engaging and comprehensive book about housekeeping. It is a lively and readable guide for both beginners and experts in all the domestic arts. From keeping surfaces free of germs, watering plants, removing stains, folding a fitted sheet, cleaning china, tuning a piano, lighting a fire, setting the dining room table—this guide covers everything that people might want to do for themselves in their homes. Further topics include: making up a bed with hospital corners, expert recommendations for safe food storage, reading care labels (and sometimes carefully disregarding them), keeping your home free of dust mites and other allergens, this is a practical, good-humored, philosophical guidebook to the art and science of household management.


Best Seat in the House

Best Seat in the House

Author: Jack Nicklaus II

Publisher: Thomas Nelson

Published: 2021-05-18

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0785248382

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USA Today Bestseller Jack Nicklaus II shares stories, insights, and lessons he’s learned from his father, the “Golden Bear,” that will delight golf fans of all ages, encourage fathers, and inspire readers to focus on what’s most important in life: family. Best Seat in the House, written with New York Times bestselling author Don Yaeger, gives us eighteen valuable lessons that Jack Nicklaus II learned from his father, PGA champion Jack Nicklaus. Although the “Golden Bear,” as he is known by fans, is widely regarded as the best golfer of all time, with a record number of PGA major championships, his life and values show that true legacy lives on through your children, grandchildren, and others we are blessed to call family and friends. For the first time, the public is given the opportunity to see what made Jack Nicklaus an off-course success, including how he and his wife, Barbara, fashioned fifty-plus years of marriage, understanding that they both had to give of themselves “at least 95 percent of the time” the importance of having boundaries and limits that everyone in the family agrees on how Nicklaus taught his son Jack, who worked as his caddie for several years, to value his competitors and treat them as he would hope to be treated the need to be connected to what we’ll leave behind: our legacies One June day, Jack Nicklaus II had just completed his second round in a Palm Beach County Junior Golf Association tournament and was sitting at the scorer’s table, signing his scorecard, when somebody told him his dad was on the telephone. He was a little frustrated because he didn’t want to be bothered on such an important day, but his dad wanted to know how he had played, so Jack II spent the next twenty minutes detailing every hole and every shot. Afterward, his father said, “Jackie, would you like to know how your dad did today?” Of course he wanted to know, and he felt a little guilty for not asking. “Well, I just won the US Open.” It was Father’s Day 1980, and on that day Jack II learned a valuable lesson that he carried with him into adulthood: family is more important than anything in the world.


Flip

Flip

Author: Rick Villani

Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional

Published: 2007-01-09

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13: 007154514X

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FLIP, the third book in the National Bestselling Millionaire Real Estate Series (More than 500,000 copies sold!) FLIP provides a detailed, step-by-step process to analyze each investment, identify the best improvements, accurately estimate the costs and intelligently oversee the construction. It takes out all the guess work and almost all of the risk. Here's what industry experts are saying about FLIP: "Read this book before you flip that house! FLIP is an indispensable step-by-step guide to flipping houses that you will refer to again and again."-Carlos Ortiz, Executive Producer, "FLIP That House" (TLC's most popular real estate TV show) "At HomeVestors, we're in the business of buying and selling homes for profit and I can attest that there are few, if any, who can rival Rick's and Clay's expertise when it comes to fixing up houses for profit. This book is a must-read for any investor."-Dr. John Hayes, President and CEO of HomeVestors of America (the largest homebuyer in America) "FLIP is a must-read book for everyone in the real estate business. Every agent should have this book. They should read it and master its contents. Why? Because it is the best guide ever written on how to evaluate real estate and how to add value to a house."-Gary Keller, Founder and Chairman of the Board of Keller Williams Realty International and author of bestselling The Millionaire Real Estate Agent and The Millionaire Real Estate Investor "For anyone looking to build wealth in real estate, FLIP provides a step-by-step approach that really works in any market."-Loral Langemeier, bestselling author of The Millionaire Maker FLIP extends the national bestselling Millionaire Real Estate series with a step-by-step guide that is quickly becoming "the model" for successfully finding, fixing and selling investment properties for profit. Based on their involvement in over a 1,000 flips, Rick Villani and Clay Davis walk you through the proven five-stage model for successfully flipping a house: FIND: How to select ideal neighborhoods, attract sellers, and find houses with investment potential ANALYZE: Identify which improvements to make and analyze the profit potential of any house BUY: How to arrange financing, present the offer, and close on the purchase FIX: A 50-step, easy-to-follow plan for fixing up houses that keeps you on time, in budget and assures top quality SELL: How to add finishing touches to quickly sell for maximum profit Woven through the book is an entertaining narrative that follows the flipping adventures of Samantha, Ed, Bill, Nancy, Amy and Mitch as they find, buy, fix and sell their first investment houses. With all this plus the experience of over a thousand flips condensed into one book, FLIP gives new investors the tools they need to avoid common pitfalls, make a profit, and enjoy the process of house flipping. Rick Villani and Clay Davis are senior executives at HomeFixers, North America's leading real estate rehab franchise. HomeFixers has been involved in more than 1,000 flips nationwide.


Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!!

Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!!

Author: Paul Scheerbart

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2014-10-19

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 022620314X

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German writer, critic, and theorist Paul Scheerbart (1863–1915) died nearly a century ago, but his influence is still being felt today. Considered by some a mad eccentric and by others a visionary political thinker in his own time, he is now experiencing a revival thanks to a new generation of scholars who are rightfully situating him in the modernist pantheon. Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!! is the first collection of Scheerbart’s multifarious writings to be published in English. In addition to a selection of his fantastical short stories, it includes the influential architectural manifesto Glass Architecture and his literary tour-de-force Perpetual Motion: The Story of an Invention. The latter, written in the guise of a scientific work (complete with technical diagrams), was taken as such when first published but in reality is a fiction—albeit one with an important message. Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!! is richly illustrated with period material, much of it never before reproduced, including a selection of artwork by Paul Scheerbart himself. Accompanying this original material is a selection of essays by scholars, novelists, and filmmakers commissioned for this publication to illuminate Scheerbart’s importance, then and now, in the worlds of art, architecture, and culture. Coedited by artist Josiah McElheny and Christine Burgin, with new artwork created for this publication by McElheny, Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!! is a long-overdue monument to a modern master.


Reclaiming Public Housing

Reclaiming Public Housing

Author: Lawrence J. Vale

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 510

ISBN-13: 9780674008984

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Lawrence Vale explores the rise, fall, and redevelopment of three public housing projects in Boston. Vale looks at these projects from the perspectives of their low-income residents and assesses the contributions of the design professionals who helped to transform these once devastated places during the 1980s and 1990s.


Sympathy of Things

Sympathy of Things

Author: Lars Spuybroek

Publisher: V2_ publishing

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 9056628275

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We have to find our way back to beauty," writes Lars Spuybroek in the introduction to The Sympathy of Things. In this book Spuybroek argues that we must "undo" the twentieth century - the age in which the sublime turned from an art category into a technical reality. This leads him to the aesthetical insights of the nineteenth-century English art critic John Ruskin, from which he distils pointers for our time. In The Sympathy of Things, the old romantic notion of sympathy, a core concept in Ruskin's aesthetics, is re-evaluated as the driving force of the aesthetic experience. For Ruskin, beauty always comprises variation, imperfection and fragility, three concepts that wholly disappeared from our mindsets during the twentieth century. Spuybroek addresses the five central dual themes of Ruskin in turn: the Gothic and work, ornament and matter, sympathy and abstraction, the picturesque and time, ecology and design. He wrests each of these themes from the Victorian era and compares them with the related ideas of later aestheticians and philosophers like William James and Bruno Latour.


Hell House

Hell House

Author: Brenda Hampton

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2013-10-01

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1476746176

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In this ingenious novel that brings reality TV to the printed page, drama levels go through the roof as six outrageous characters fiercely compete to win $100,000. The most controversial characters from Brenda Hampton’s bestselling novels come together for a reality TV show in a house that could unite— or destroy—them all. Roc Dawson from Full Figured, Chase Jenkins from Don’t Even Go There, Sylvia McMillan from SLICK, Jada Mahoney from How Can I Be Down?, Jamal “Prince” Perkins from Street Soldier, and Jaylin Rogers from the Naughty Series attempt to put aside their overwhelming differences and calm their unique personalities. Without supervision, though, anything could happen inside Hell House—especially when there’s $100,000 at stake. And these six cutthroat contestants are determined to have it all. Overflowing with drama, raunchiness, and manipulation, survival by any means necessary is their primary focus, but only those with tough skin will make it to the next round. Who will be the last person standing, and who will walk out, slamming the door behind them and screaming at the top of their lungs?


You Can't Be Serious

You Can't Be Serious

Author: Kal Penn

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2021-11-02

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1982171405

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The star of the Harold and Kumar franchise, House, and Designated Survivor recounts why he rejected the advice of his aunties and guidance counselors and, instead of becoming a doctor or “something practical,” embarked on a surprising journey that has included confronting racism in Hollywood, meeting his future husband, and working in the Obama administration, in this “incredibly joyful and insightful” (Kiefer Sutherland) memoir. You Can’t Be Serious is a series of funny, consequential, awkward, and ridiculous stories from Kal Penn’s idiosyncratic life. It’s about being the grandson of Gandhian freedom fighters, and the son of immigrant parents: people who came to this country with very little and went very far—and whose vision of the American dream probably never included their son sliding off an oiled-up naked woman in the raunchy Ryan Reynolds movie Van Wilder…or getting a phone call from Air Force One as Kal flew with the country’s first Black president. “By turns hilarious, poignant, and inspiring” (David Axelrod, New York Times bestselling author), Kal reflects on the most exasperating and rewarding moments from his journey so far. He pulls back the curtain on the nuances of opportunity and racism in the entertainment industry and recounts how he built allies, found encouragement, and dealt with early reminders that he might never fit in. He describes his initially unpromising first date with his now-fiancé Josh, involving an 18-pack of Coors Light and an afternoon of watching NASCAR. And of course, he reveals how, after a decade and a half of fighting for and enjoying successes in Hollywood, he made the terrifying but rewarding decision to take a sabbatical from a fulfilling acting career for an opportunity to serve his country as an Obama White House aide. Above all, You Can’t Be Serious shows that everyone can have more than one life story. The book “is insightful, funny, and instructive for anyone who’s ever grappled with how they fit into the American dream” (Ronan Farrow, New York Times bestselling author), and demonstrates that no matter who you are and where you come from, you have many more choices than those presented to you. And okay, yes, it’s also about how Kal accidentally (and very stupidly) accepted an invitation to take the entire White House Office of Public Engagement to a strip club—because, let’s be honest, that’s the kind of stuff you really want to hear about.