the random musings not worthy of new thread thread

[Rome]

Are you familiar with restrictive covenants?  There's precedents for this everywhere, Dio. 

[Diomedes]

Sure, in a gated community of uptight rich people.  But a whole city?  On account of taste?

[Rome]

Yes.  After Hurricane Andrew Dade County enacted the strictest building codes in the nation and that included the elimination of shoddy building materials like the shtein Baltimore is banning.

Different reasons obviously but if the aim is to improve values by eliminating the use of substandard building materials, then I'd be all for it.

[Diomedes]

There's nothing substandard about formstone from an enginineering point of view.  It's just ugly.

In fact it rather helps in many cases because once it's laid over brick, you dont have to repoint the brick anymore, which is something a lot of people never bother to do, so the formstone in Baltimore has likely helped to keep it from literally falling apart.

[hbionic]

Help me understand, what does repointing brick mean? I know that with all structures, there is shifting and settling, causing cracks throughout. Does it mean just re-positioning brick?

[General_Failure]

re·point
Fill in or repair the joints of (brickwork)

[hbionic]

Thank you Big Brother.

[phillycrew]

Farewell Formstone? Requiem for a Baltimore Building Material

Formstone, a stucco faux-stone material, is synonymous with the Baltimore landscape. It covers row houses in blue collar neighborhoods throughout this city; native son John Waters is a devotee.

But Formstone may be on its way to becoming illegal here. The material is banned by Baltimore's proposed new zoning code. If the revised code is adopted, builders would not be allowed to apply it to new housing, most commercial structures, or even to existing establishments.

Though Formstone is not dangerous, the city included it in its list of banned materials because it looks cheap and tacky. "There's really no good reason [for Formstone's inclusion], that's the honest truth," Laurie Feinberg of Baltimore's Department of Planning recently told the Baltimore Sun. "We really want people to invest in their homes."

Anyone have a good suggestion for stone siding?  We were thinking stucco but that needs to be painted anyway.  I am unfamiliar with Formstone.

[Diomedes]

textbook formstone

[Diomedes]

http://vimeo.com/54479784

finally someone does it right

[phattymatty]

this is the type pf person who gives me hope for the future.

I came across a deal online about 8 years ago where I was able to buy around 200 pairs of socks for something like $75. Partially as a joke and primarilly as a story, I went ahead and puchased them with the intent of never having to wear the same pair of socks twice for more than half a year. After about 3 weeks or so, both of my feet began to develop a severe rash that continued to worsen until I finally saw a dermatologist. As best he could guess, the fact that I was wearing a brand new pair of unwashed socks every single day was causing the problem. His assumption was that chemicals involved in the manufacturing process remained on the unwashed new pairs of socks and the continual daily exposure was causing an irritation and thus a rash. I washed all of the socks that evening and the problem slowly went away over the next few weeks. The washed "new" socks didn't feel as good as the fresh, unwashed ones but on the other hand my foot rash went away. All in all I'd call the experience a net neutral..

[phattymatty]

pimp

[Diomedes]

did Rusty die?

[PhillyPhreak54]

Maybe.

I saw a Facebook post where he mentioned single malt scotch and peanut m&m's being consumed.

[Sgt PSN]

What's worse is that he seemed to think they weren't a good combo.