Category: Design

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Paying the rent

Finally started the spiral staircase repair for the workshop landlady. I confess I put this off for a few years as I was unsure how I wanted to tackle it.

Original state

These are homemade by her late husband. I believe he was using an old plan from Sunset magazine from the late 70’s or early 80’s. Despite living in the house for decades and raising their children here he never got back to finishing them. As well as having no handrail the stairs are considerable bounce to them. So much so that her family has been begging her to replace the stairs with a standard staircase.

I don’t believe that a standard staircase is possible given the main floor and basement floor plan even with a landing to shorten the run. You either run into a doorway or whack your head going down or totally mess up the main floor flow as you would have to enlarge the hole in the floor for the stairs to solve the headroom problem.

My first plan was to build a form and make a laminated stringer to replace the bands of cedar he started using. After measuring the staircase out I found that the stairs are far from consistent. The radius of the treads vary over an 1” from the top to the bottom step. I therefore decided I would have to laminate the stringer in place.

That decision created another problem. As I started adding the first lamination I quickly realized that the variation in the curvature was very noticeable. Since I could not solve that within the construction of the staircase I instead shimmed the stringer at several treads to fair out the curve.

New stringer in progress

So far I have completed five 1/4” laminates using plywood. The last lamination with be solid wood so I can match the existing stairs. A solid wood edge band on the stringer with hide the lamination layers. After all that I can begin the handrail.

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Put one on the honey done list

There is a common thread to many people’s reaction to self isolation during the pandemic. They have the greatest intention to accomplish all the things they have been putting off for so long. I am no exception. Well, as far as the intent goes anyway.

I have had a moderately productive week. Planted the garden. Pulled four truck loads of fallen trees and branches out of the forest to start a chipping pile. Wait, did I just transmogrify a task? Cleaning up from wind storms into future mulch making?

I also FINALLY managed to get back into the shop and resume the shelving project. In fact, I finished it!

Doesn’t really look like a lot of work does it? Poor things sat in that cold shop most of the winter because I didn’t want to leave the heat on overnight. Electric heat here is flipping expensive, and the doors to the shop are pretty poorly sealed. Two coats of stain and five coats of lacquer takes a long time when you only do it when the weather is warm enough overnight.

Pretty happy with the result. I have three extra shelves I can add to the stack or use in another location. Need to buy more stainless round bar first. I knew I should have bought that extra piece.

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Creative Cloud is unCreative Robbery

I was very disappointed to find out Adobe had decided to end sales of Creative Suite in favor of a leasing model through Creative Cloud. Judging from a few minutes surfing the web the vast majority of web posters agree.

In my case I had looked at the option when I was thinking about upgrading to CS6. Based on the upgrade costs and frequency I calculated an upgrade to CS6 was more economical for me than moving to the Cloud. Since I had already made the big investment in the original purchase, upgrades were about half the price. Yes, some of the Cloud features interest me. I would like to play with Muse, but not at $180 per year. I also do not need to storage and collaboration aspect of Creative Cloud. I already have several cloud storage accounts and as a one man design shop I have no real collaboration requirements.

Frankly I don’t see how Adobe can claim CC is cheaper even if you include the original full retail cost of the software. It looks cheaper for the first 10 years but then the pendulum swings in favor of buying. Yes, 10 years is a long time but how long have you owned a copy of Microsoft Office? Designers who use the applications in CS are long term users. Career users. These are not typically consumer level buyers. No one I know would buy Illustrator over the other alternatives out there just to play around, not when Illustrator is 5 to 6 times the price.

The other big gotcha with Adobe’s plan and possibly the biggest one is when you quite paying, you have nothing. Going back to my 10 payback model, you would have spent $6000 and will have exactly nothing to show for it the day you let you subscription lapse. With a purchase model I would still have functioning copies of all of the applications in the suite.

I do like the cloud only concept though. I usually buy as a download if I can, and avoiding the packaging step does allow for immediate version updates as bug fixes and new features are developed. On this point I agree with Adobe.

It really comes down to the pricing. Adobe has just doubled my future cost of ownership and I have received very little in return. Practically nothing. Certainly nothing worth more than $5 per month for some storage.

I have to agree with the posting populous. It a straight out money grab. I am going to hold off for as long as possible. Maybe they will get enough of a backlash and change their mind, just like they did with the Touch app Kuler.

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Sans Wha?

Ever wonder where the fonts you use today came from? No? Well, you should. Here is a nice short clip telling the history of typography.

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Comfort Architecture?

Do you think there is such a thing as comfort architecture?

There are many comforting things; soup, a fire in the fireplace, a down quilt. I guess anything that is linked to a warm memory can be called a comfort item. Even though I hated it as a kid, today the smell of Vicks Vap-o-Rub is a comforting thing for me.

I was sitting in the main mall at the hospital today and noticed the design. It so reminded me of the buildings at the university I went to. All that 60′s and 70′s preformed concrete, open centre, overhanging design that makes you think of Expo 67 in Montreal. Then it struck me! I felt good. My university days were happy times and I was feeling so at ease sitting there.

So what about you? Does architecture do it for you? Maybe your grandparents farm house, or the cottage design. Maybe the look of an old English pub. Must be a few of you out there or we would not have as many similar looking man caves as we do.