cover image courtesy of amazon.comThis is a bit unorthodox; I have neither read nor held a copy of New England Icons by Bruce Irving, so this is more of a reading/viewing wish-list post than a review or commentary.

You may know of Bruce Irving from his 17 years producing This Old House for PBS. He wears many hats: real-estate agent, renovation consultant, writer, editor, speaker, and, now, author. I believe I first learned of Bruce from his Design New England magazine department about icons. His interest in the houses, work buildings, local artifacts and places of New England overlaps to such a degree with mine that I also consider him a web neighbor. Plus, as a Cambridge resident, he's a New England neighbor, too.

With photography by Greg Premru, a forward by Norm Abram, and content including stone walls, sugarhouses, roof walks, skating ponds, icehouses, mills, and lobster boats, New England Icons sounds too promising to miss. Let me know at the KHS Facebook Page if you've had a chance to check out a copy. Happy reading.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast

So which is it? A fence, a wall, or a planter? Fences are generally light-weight, thin, somewhat ephemeral demarcations between property or grounds. Walls tend to be thicker, more solid, and often seemingly permanent dividers. Planters are typically low, decorative, planted containers.

This creative composition successfully blends and morphs the common attributes of all three constructs. Like a fence, it’s built of light-weight wood, and it bounds a property. Like a wall, it has thick mass, demonstrated by its capacity to store lengths of firewood. Like a planter, it brims with decorative plantings.

Using clapboards, a customary exterior wall cladding, as fencing helps this feature blur its function. So, too, does the height of the planter, which is almost roof-like. An opaque door, adjacent to the firewood and beneath the planter, further suggests that the feature is a wall, since the door most likely conceals space constructed to store tools, yard equipment, and/or furnishings. Beyond it and the planter, I suspect the assemblage narrows to a more fence-like thickness, though we can't be sure since its face remains in the plane of the door. Had that portion stepped back to the rear plane of the firewood compartment, it would have disrupted the contiguous fence/wall appearance.

When I’m scouting for “design snapshots”, this type of hybrid, multi-function creation, which also happens to be aesthetically delightful, is one of my favorite kinds of finds.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast

"Remembered house with good layout" by Roy, a builderFind an introduction to this series here.

I would love to see a "napkin sketch of home" created by you, your family, and/or friends -- both young and old.

Please submit sketches via a scan or photo to Katie@katiehutchison.com for possible inclusion in the series. Include the artist's name and age, and a title for the sketch, if there is one.

Share your idea of "home" -- whether it's your cat, your porch, or your neighborhood; you decide what "home" means to you.

Let's get sketching.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast

If you've seen the Drawing Board column I wrote for the September 2011 issue of Fine Homebuilding magazine ("Taking oriels to a new level", Issue #221), you might want to check out this video, too. I created it as a companion piece to my column about upper-level oriels. (An oriel is a window bay without a foundation.) If you haven't seen my Fine Homebuilding column yet, it's on newsstands now, and here's a link to a PDF version of it. Reprinted with permission copyright 2011, The Taunton Press, Inc. You can also find this video in the "Magazine Extras" section of the Fine Homebuilding website here.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast

A couple of weekends ago, this Idjit Gardener had a unique opportunity to try her hand at market gardening. For one weekend, The Idjit Gardener and her husband tended to chickens, a bunny, and a small farm stand Up-Island on Martha's Vineyard. No lives of the animal or plant variety were lost -- at least, not that The Idjit Gardener knows about. Check out the video below to share in the adventure.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast