Wapsi Square Forum

https://wapsisquare.com/comic/how-fun-2/

I didn't fire up the computer until after 1200 CDT, What's everyone else's excuse for not posting the new comic to the forum? Archetectural salvage is not an easy line of work, but I know from what I find locally that it's very lucrative: get paid to tear down a building/house, paid to haul away the remains, and get paid again to sell the usable bits and pieces for new construction. And some houses that get torn down have lots of artifacts from previous tenants/owners left laying about forgotten.

My excuse? Out of town on vacation and away from my laptop (BTW I edited your posting titles to confirm with the usual convention - date first, then the title) (Oops... obviously I had the convention backwards after this long hiatus. Change reverted, with my apologies)

One of the pleasures of watching "This Old House" is seeing the team look at the original features in the house they're renovating. There's often some wonderful old woodwork, moldings, ceiling and wall lights, and so forth that show marvelous craftsmanship and character.

In some cases, the home's owners want to preserve the feel of the place, even when doing a big remodeling and modernization and bringing-up-to-code. Old hardwood railings and banisters can be rebuilt and raised for better safety and access. Old wood flooring might be pulled out of one room, cleaned and repaired, and then used to floor an upstairs hallway or a new addition.

In other cases, though, the owners are making such a big change that the older materials and fixtures just don't fit the new style. In that case, a savvy owner will arrange for salvage - a removal team will uninstall the salvageable materials, and they can be sold to builders who are renovating older buildings in the original style or used to accent new "retro" builds.

One of Gwen's hot buttons is seeing shows where young couples buy houses with lots of history, and completely gut them to redecorate them with the latest modern bland conformist trend. Her biggest heartbreak was her sister's place in West Seattle. Her brother-in-law had spent years customizing the place - he's a master woodworker. When they retired and sold the house, the new owners simply tore it down to build a MacMansion on the property, and 40 years of craftsmanship went into the dumpster with no attempt at all to salvage or re-use.

One of my favorites was a man who had a older woman come to his house and ask if she could see inside . . . she'd had friends there many years before and wanted to see the inside again . . . She chastised him for gutting the place and re-doing the inside . . . so he showed her what he'd started with: a scorched foundation with some charcoaled beams and some medium-sized trees growing in the cellar hole!

The place had burned during the time she was living overseas, and he'd liked the looks of the house that had been there, so he recreated the house. She told him some of the things he hadn't known about the interior.

--FreeFlier

I wonder why she's looking for work outside her own family's business. Her parents wanted her to have experience making her own way, or wanted her meeting new people? She wanted something different herself? The family business didn't have the work or the finances to have her on the payroll? Her family is actually an organised crime Family and is wanting to expand their reach?

Rosslyn doesn't want to work with her dad's emotional outbursts?

--FreeFlier