Key to This Home’s Care Is a Good Screwdriver
To see the new home under construction on Richland Road in San Marcos, you’d think someone got a little carried away with a huge Erector Set. You don’t hear the sound of hammers hammering; you hear power drills drilling. If you drop a stud on top of another, it doesn’t clap. It pings and boings. The framework glistens in the sun. There are metal shavings on the ground where sawdust should be.
This is the house that Peter De Baan is building for a horticulturalist. Out of steel.
The framework will cost about twice as much as wood construction, but just think of the advantages, De Baan says.
This house won’t get wood rot--and it won’t rust, either, because it’s galvanized steel. This place won’t warp or go creak in the night. No termites here. Presumably, the fire insurance will be cheaper, but we’re not sure about the need for a lightning rod.
“This house should last just about forever,” said De Baan, a general contractor who likes taking on unusual building assignments. On the other hand, don’t try to hang a mirror by driving a nail into a stud.
Steel residential construction is not too unusual in Canada, where this material came from, and elsewhere in the United States. But San Diego County has shied away from steel studs in home construction because local home builders are unfamiliar in working with it, we’re told.
DeBaan is sold on the stuff. “It’s a lot easier to build,” he said. “You screw instead of nail. If something goes wrong, you just unscrew it and do it again. People can buy the material and build their own homes, like kits, and people like me would just supervise them.” (And to think that some of us have trouble with metal storage sheds.)
Once completed, this two-story, 1,800-square-foot house will have a tile roof and stucco siding, with wood fascia boards.
Owner Anthony Bons, a professional rose grower, prefers steel greenhouses over wood ones, so he was willing to build a steel home as well.
He’s not sure if he’ll keep it or sell it. But if he sells it, the real estate man will actually be telling the truth when he makes the pitch, “This place is a steel!”
Here’s One to Halley’s
Halley’s comet fans can now toast the celestial snowball with a Halley’s Comet Commemorative Cuvee, a brut-style champagne blending chardonnay, pinot blanc and pinot noir grapes. From Neiman-Marcus, it’s a mere $19 a bottle.
Or, if your luck in spotting Halley’s and your taste in champagne run more like ours, you can toast the North Star with Andre pink champagne, about $2 at your local supermarket.
Vacation on Wheels
It’s Easter break but Tony Hawk, a senior at Torrey Pines High School, isn’t exactly lying around taking it easy.
Tony, the nation’s premier professional skateboarder, flew home late Sunday after appearing at a surfing trade convention in Toronto, where he demonstrated his skateboarding skills.
This morning, he’s flying to Houston for the first of half a dozen contests this year, sponsored by the National Skateboard Assn., to determine who is the best all-around skateboarder in the country. He has won the title the last three years.
The following weekend, 17-year-old Tony flies up to San Francisco for another demonstration and to meet with one of his many professional sponsors.
Tony is most famous for his trick riding. Like skateboarding down and up the steep sides of a swimming pool, reaching the top, doing a full double-twist of his body and skateboard in mid-air, and coming back down.
In one piece.
He’s the only kid in the nation who can do the 720 (as in: 360, twice). Now he’s working on doing a 900-degree twist (That’s 2 1/2 times around). “You just keep pushing yourself,” he said.
He learned the maneuver by skating up the side of a pool, letting his board fly away and perfecting his body twist without the board, then falling to the ground, kapowee. Later, he added his skateboard to the move.
He’s never broken a bone.
His advice to youngsters: “Don’t get frustrated. And learn how to fall.”
Municipal Nannie
If you’re wondering what City Hall has done for you recently, consider this nifty public service in San Marcos.
Every second and fourth Friday of the month, the city will baby-sit your child (age 5 to 12) overnight. You pay $10 and drop him off at 5 p.m. and come back for him at 8 the next morning. While you’re out for the evening having fun, your kid is eating dinner, playing games, doing arts and crafts, watching children’s movies and flaking out in a sleeping bag.
Two adult supervisors--a man and a woman--watch over the brood. The limit is 20 kids per night, and reservations are required. The program is about a year old, is open to non-residents of the city, and is quite popular, said Sharla Holcomb of the city’s Community Services Department.
“We have one little girl who’s been with us for every single overnighter,” she said.
“Parents like everything about it except having to pick up their kids by 8 in the morning. But, on the other hand, our people are pretty burned out by then.”
