Word: owen
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...Owen's book promises that a house is much more than "a huge box filled with complicated things that want to break." He writes, "My house was a canvas on which other people had been painting (or, more recently, wallpapering) for more than two hundred years." And then he waxes romantic...
Even with such poetry, Owen does manage to maintain the frame of a practical how-to. His goals for the book extend far beyond the pleasures of entertainment. A fan of zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (which he read in college), Owen wants to "demystify technology" for all home owners. "There is a powerful feeling of tranquility that comes from knowing how one's house is put together," Owen writes. "My childhood would have been somewhat less anxiety-ridden had I realized...there was no way for pirates to crawl... from the laundry chute...
...Walls Around Us is segmented into nine chapters covering all necessary information from "how to make your paint stick" to how to do your own electrical wiring ("and when to get someone else to do it"). Yet, even in these "techy" passages, Owen stays interested and interesting. He explores the Keeler & Long paint factory to find our how paint is made, where porcelian blocks and round stones whine and grind pigments which pour into thousand-gallon mixers, and he visits the first American Sawmill, (Jamestown, 1625) to learn about the origins of lumber...
Along with machinery know-how and history, we get philosophy and sociology. In describing different house sidings, for example, Owen surmises upon the social implications of each one: readers can choose to be apparently rich (but not really rich) brick person, or they can settle to be "just a vinyl-siding kind...
...Walls Around Us, Owen has created art like he has in his house-a place of imagination and of tales to tell. All you need is a house, an in-flow supply of cash--a car would help--and his book...