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One of the themes of this little blog series is reusing old stuff in modern times. It’s creative. It reuses resources. And it allows you to live in an old area, an old city, an old house, and still live … Continue reading
Tag Archives: Travel
It has always seemed to me that it’s careless, to mislay a Roman road or a villa or a city. Look at this picture — there’s a big pavement under there, and they completely mislaid it for thousands of years. … Continue reading
How fun it would be to live in a house that was built before Columbus arrived in America. Half timbering, narrow cobbled streets, nothing but the sound of birdsong in a pre-industrial paradise! Except … you do want all your … Continue reading
You don’t need a chimney. But if you’re relying upon combustion to stay warm, a chimney has many advantages. Smoke is mostly drawn up and out of the actual living area. You can use flammable roof materials like thatch without … Continue reading
One of the most important considerations if you’re building a house is materials. In the past you’d almost always build out of local materials. It’s just too costly, to haul stones or logs or whatever very far. So if … Continue reading
Fans of Robert Heinlein will recall that in his short story ” –And He Built a Crooked House” one of the characters remarks that the main job of a house is to keep the rain off. Yes, shelter is a … Continue reading
Purely for variety’s sake we have removed to Sarlat-la-Canéda, a town in the Dordogne inland from Bordeaux. The buildings in the medieval town center date back to the 14th century. It is relentlessly beautiful, astonishingly picturesque, the kind of town … Continue reading
Every old building in the world is either used, or not. If it’s not in use it tends to fall into ruin, its uses and history forgotten. If it’s in use, well, somebody is fixing it up. Not only to … Continue reading
Sara Stamey’s journeys include treasure hunting and teaching scuba in the Caribbean and Honduras; backpacking Greece and New Zealand; operating a nuclear reactor; and owning a farm in Southern Chile. Sara Stamey’s novel Islands, now in ebook from Book View Cafe, is set in the Caribbean and packed with both adventure and intricate characters and plot. It’s also romantic suspense with a drop of psychic wonder. “An archeologist investigating petroglyphs ends up diving for sunken treasure and investigating a cult murder.”
Continue readingYou will have noticed that I’m interested in how old stuff gets reused. In a region crammed full of old stuff, this is continually happening. Upcycling old houses so they have flush toilets, repaving the Roman roads so that the … Continue reading