What does that buy you? 3,850 square feet, first of all, under high pitched-roof ceilings with sweet exposed wood. There’s plenty of glass to let the outside in, and gorgeous exposed brick in the living room. Then there are all the “little” details like an orb fireplace, amazing bath tubs, and the neutral decor that might surprise some at its understated tastefulness.

And how about that infinity edge pool, mmm. Those are so awesome when done right. I tell you truly that while I usually go in for a bit more color and a lot more black, I wouldn’t kick this particular real estate out of bed. How about you? Like it? Love it? Hate it? Why?

(via)

Those being the four gigantic clock faces that adorn the tower, which coincidentally is where the most expensive apartment in Brooklyn is located. That’s right, in addition to a whopping 3,000-square-foot main floor and a 2,300-square-foot second floor, you get a 988-square-foot open loft, high ceilings, and amazing views from 14-foot windows that overlook the Brooklyn Bridge and New York Harbor.

Oh, and you get the joy of always knowing the correct time, so long as you’re good with reading clocks backward!

Note that I do not have a free $25 million laying about, but I’ll happily move into the most expensive apartment in Brooklyn if anyone might be so kind as to donate the fundage. Heck, I think those clocks are so cool that I wouldn’t even mind if they went tick-tick-tick, and that’s saying a lot since I’m rather obsessive about ambient noise.

Note, too, that the buyer of the apartment need not worry about the nightmare of having four terribly big clocks each showing a different time. According to Walentas, the four clocks are electronically synchronized to show exactly the same time. That time being, of course, not rich o’clock, but rather poor o’clock.

Our Cape is in good company, when you considered that we’re in New England the architectural style originated right here in the 1600s. These little symmetrical one-and-a-half story cottages weren’t called Capes until the 1800s, however, when the Reverend Timothy Dwight IV, president of Yale University, made a visit to Cape Cod and coined the term “Cape Cod house.”

Nowadays one finds Capes with many different dormer styles, like shed dormers, gabled dormers (also known as dog house dormers), and recessed dormers. And yet there’s something about walking into a Cape Cod. I grew up in one and have found that I can walk into most Capes and know where the bathroom is and where the kitchen will be. The one difference is the fireplace orientation — historic Capes had a large central chimney that allowed for fireplaces in multiple rooms, while revival Cape Cods usually have a single fireplace with the chimney on one side of the house. My Cape? It has no fireplace at all, though I hope to rectify this someday.

HGTV’s Front Door put together a list of the defining features of traditional Cape Cod architecture that reads perfectly, so instead of rewriting it I’ll just excerpt it here.

Large, central chimney The large, central chimney is located directly behind the front door, with the rooms clustered around it in a rectangular shape.
Steep roof Cape Cods have steep roofs to quickly shed rain and snow and a shallow roof overhang.
Captain’s stairway “The second floor, often kept for boarders or ‘seafaring’ men, was accessed by a narrow stair, or ‘captain’s stairway,’ which has incredibly steep risers and shallow treads to minimize the use of the first-floor space,” explains David Karam, an architect and builder from Brewster, Mass.
Shingle siding Weathered gray shingles are one of the most recognizable elements of a classic Cape Cod, but newer homes are built of brick, stucco and stone

Most of the Capes you’ll see today are revivals built after World War II as affordable housing for returning Vets, which might not have been the case if Boston architect Royal Barry Willis hadn’t reintroduced the Cape Cod as a modern housing option in the 1920s. These are a great first-home option for those who are happy living with about 1,000 sq. ft. of living space since they tend to cost less than larger houses. Ours was quite reasonably priced and when we fix up the upstairs properly will have two whole stories rather than one and a half.

Zaarath and Christopher Prokop appear to be just that, according to the NY Post. They work a lot, they don’t eat in, and they don’t host guests, which is why they had no qualms about buying a microstudio — possibly Manhattan’s smallest — for $150,000.

The kitchen is used to store the few articles of clothing they keep in the microstudio, with most of their clothes living at various dry cleaners. Oh, and the couple’s two cats eat on the counter. There’s naught in the fridge other than espresso and champagne. A queen bed takes up a third of the microstudio, and the bathroom is the size of a small closet. At a mere 14.9 feet long and 10 feet wide, you can bet it feels a little claustrophobic.

“I’m amazed we can fit two people and two cats in there,” Zaarath said. “But it’s harmonious at this point. I have friends who say they could never live with their husbands in a place this small. It’s a good thing we like each other enough to live there.”

The only other resident of the microstudio is the couple’s Roomba, which must scare the bejeezus out of those poor cats every time it’s turned on. On one hand, I applaud Zaarath and Christopher Prokop for making the most of the space they can afford — they’ll apparently be able to pay off the $150,000 in a mere two years. On the other hand, they seem a little self-congratulatory about their knack for small space living.

I’m not picky or anything; something like this will do quite nicely, thank you.

Perhaps with an exterior rather like this? Something where I can walk out my front door and smell the sea air or even walk directly into the ocean.

And an interior like this would not be remiss! Though as I said, I’m not picky at all. (via)

Hint, hint!

Researchers discovered homeowners, on average, outweighed renters by 12 pounds. In addition to excess weight, female homeowners were also carrying around more aggravation, making less time for leisure, and were less likely to spend time with friends.

Apparently the researchers controlled for age, as it would seem logical to assume that homeowners are on average older than renters and people tend to put on weight as they ride the chronology train into the future.

Fat House by Erwin Wurm (2003)

Alas, age has nothing to do with it. Researchers speculate that homeowners spend less time doing things like socializing with friends, walking, and playing sports because they are too busy fixing roofs, installing new wainscoting, and walking the aisles of Home Depot looking for deals on pedestal sinks for that half-bath they plan to install one of these days.

The findings present a chicken-or-the-egg question for social scientists, who are unsure if home ownership causes these patterns or if people prone to less sociability, less interest in leisure activities and higher stress are simply more attracted to owning homes.

Full disclosure: I am a female homeowner. I may be carrying around an extra pound or two, but not necessarily twelve. That said, I walk every day. And I wasn’t all that social to begin with. But this smacks to me of one of those “correlation does not imply causation” situations.

With that in mind, I was intrigued by a post over at The Simple Dollar that explained how one could set up a simple neighborhood cooperative.

Household equipment Why not share a lawnmower with your neighbor? How about a snowblower? One great model for this exists in our neighborhood, where one person owns a snowblower and provides fuel for it, but is not in good enough physical shape to operate it. Thus, one of her neighbors actually operates the snowblower, using it to blow the snow out of both driveways (and often doing a large swath of the block’s entire sidewalk as well).

Gardening If two or three neighbors all have gardens, why not specialize the gardens and freely share the produce? This allows one family to focus specifically on a crop or two, making garden maintenance easier for all of the people involved. You can even carry this to the level of canning and/or freezing, agreeing to swap prepared garden products with neighbors.

There are other ideas in the post, though I’m not sure how readily I’d leave my baby with a neighbor or share cooking duties on a weekly basis. I would like to get to know my neighbors, however, as previous to this, I’ve been living in apartments for years and years. This was in the cheapest possible sections of Brooklyn, so there was a lot more wall banging and language barriers than friendly interaction. Now I’m curious to know how well you are acquainted with your neighbors.

Someone needs to feed 75½ Bedford Street a sandwich.

Well, most of the time. This eco-house in the Cambridgeshire countryside is pretty unique, inside and out.

But back to the topic at hand! I know I’ve heard a lot of people say that it’s better for the environment to drive a well-maintained used car than to buy a new hybrid, though I don’t know how valid that is. I’ve been trying to figure out whether that same maxim applies to houses as well. Is it better for the environment to buy an older house that’s already been built and then do what you can to retrofit it for eco-friendliness, or is it better to start from zero (either knocking down an extant house or buying a piece of land) with a new house that meets every criteria for greenitude right from the start?

On one hand, there are plenty of things you can do to greenify your home without having to build a new one. On the other hand, there are plenty of sustainable building materials you might use to create a home that is unobtrusive within its environment. The overall expense aside, how does using a previously untouched piece of land fit into the equation?

I’d love to hear your take on this because I haven’t come to any real conclusion yet and my (admittedly spotty) research hasn’t gotten me very far!

The San Francisco Chronicle recently ran a piece about the apartments in The Cubix Yerba Buena building in SoMa. The Building is filled with “micro-units,” which are essentially tiny little studio apartments that are smaller than the finished half of my basement.

The floorplan makes it clear that there’s no room for a bed, so the units are staged with a sofa bed so prospective owners get a feel for what they’re buying into.

Architect George Hauser is the first to say the studios are too small for many people, families in particular. He and local planning groups, however, believe the so-called micro units represent one means of providing more first-time home-buying opportunities in a city where most prices outstrip most incomes.

I could see living in one of these if I was just out of college or single — I did, after all, living in a itty-bitty dorm room at school and occupy rented rooms for many a post-university year — and I do like that these micro-units force owners to decide what stuff is really important to them. I think, however, that I’d eventually be motivated to sell by feelings of claustrophobia.