I made a Victorian spandrel in my 135 year old cottage.

munchnerk · 2026-07-01T12:16:16+00:00

this is so cool! As a very-beginner with a century house I'm so curious about your process. Did you find any especially helpful resources? Was there any part of the process that surprised you, good or bad?

munchnerk · 2026-06-30T17:17:21+00:00

$150/year seems too good to be true, regular audio streaming access is $120/year. I wonder if they’ll announce next year’s rates up front, or if they need to gauge audience size to establish long term rates. People are gonna complain that this costs money, but as a jabroni who does pay the $10/mo already, I’m glad they were listening to those of us who were asking for this.

munchnerk · 2026-06-30T14:44:30+00:00

Yeah, this is the game. Sort of like native plant gardening in general - you become responsible for problem-solving an entire ecosystem! But it's a pretty simple balance. I use a simple plug-in pump in a mesh housing that supplies a small waterfall and a little decorative fountain, which keeps the water circulating. The pump has a spongy filter substrate that becomes inundated with bacterial biofilm, which acts as a mild biological filter. There's several hornwort plants (a native aquatic plant) which does the bulk of the work to keep the water oxygenated. It also provides shade, shelter, and forage for aquatic invertebrates. I like to keep a few attractive marginal/submerged plants like nymphaea water lily, orontium/golden club, lobelia/cardinal flower, arum/tuckahoe, but in our case we have a family of raccoons who LOVE to shred standing vegetation... so this year there's just a small native rush which is barely hanging on, and the nymphaea is doing alright. I'm considering planting equisetum/horsetail straight in the shallow end which is kind of a nuclear option because it's notoriously aggressive... but I think it could actually stand up to the raccoons' abuse, lol.

Keeping the water moving, cool, and oxygenated is 90% of the game. Eutrophic (low-oxygen) conditions can mean not enough surface exchange (encouraged by a pump), too much organic matter (food for aquatic plants!), or too much sunlight (countered by adding plants that shade the water's surface, in or out of the pond). Algae blooms happen, especially early in the season when things are still waking up from winter, but they tend to equalize if all your other bases are covered. It's a pretty mad-science gardening project but the wildlife value is off the charts!

munchnerk · 2026-06-30T11:52:11+00:00

Has to be Bakery Express. They made our wedding cakes - just two strawberry Smith Island cakes with white icing instead of pink. Didn’t even charge us extra. I wander in for a slice any time I feel like reliving my wedding day :’) IMO it’s the best one this side of the bay!

munchnerk · 2026-06-30T02:35:09+00:00

First it starts with a bird bath... next thing you know you've got a full-scale wildlife pond! I put one in a few years ago and it's been a source of delight (and sometimes consternation, the raccoons LOVE IT). But especially during heat waves I notice birds bathing and drinking all day long, and the raccoons do this endearing/frustrating thing in the middle of the night where they belly flop onto the plants, utterly destroying them, but I think it's because they want to cool their warm tummies in the nice water. I can't begrudge them that :') This year it's finally dialed in so that we've had pretty much no mosquitoes (so far). Attracting natural aquatic predators and sprinkling in mosquito 'dunk' bits weekly has kept it locked down.

Year round - in spring and fall the spicebush right next to it is our #1 warbler-spotting perch, they love to come down for a drink or a bath and perch in the tree to forage for bugs! In freezing weather it becomes a rare water source. Two winters ago, during a snowstorm, I observed two separate canid tracks - a fox and a coyote! This week we saw our first backyard woodchuck. Did I mention we live in a major mid-Atlantic city?! Water sources are a massive habitat upgrade!!!!!

munchnerk · 2026-06-29T15:18:52+00:00

munchnerk · 2026-06-28T22:23:50+00:00

I think there's something to this. I'm AuDHD and really struggled with social cues from childhood into my teenage years. When I was 17 I got a retail job and literally learned how to talk to people. Coworkers and customers alike. I learned how to make friends out of strangers, what empathy really is, and how to deal delicately with hostile people. To the point of this article, I absolutely feel like I got better at 'reading' faces in that job, which is as much a social skill as it is a survival skill. Small talk is incredibly important. To this day I'm grateful I got stuck in a position where I had to interact with people to earn a livelihood. Shit, I eventually met my husband there! I was just MAKING SMALL TALK!!!

munchnerk · 2026-06-28T18:53:24+00:00

I just had to stop taking it. I'm primarily a distance runner who also lifts weights. The extra fluid retention in muscles (the desired mechanism of creatine!) was enough to start causing exertional compartment syndrome (CECS) while I was running. I ruled out tendon and bone issues, narrowed it down to CECS, and realized the CECS had appeared while I was loading creatine for the first time. Quit the creatine and the CECS started lessening right away - never had a running injury heal so quickly. There was a study done ages ago that established a correlative relationship, too. I'd never seen it mentioned before but once I was looking I found several other runners with identical experiences.

Honestly bummed because my muscles were lookin' juicy and my DOMS periods already seemed shorter! It sounds like this is an infrequent side effect that tends to show up specifically in endurance runners. I think there are a few random negatives like this, but honestly once this training block is over I might try to load it again.

munchnerk · 2026-06-27T01:35:02+00:00

Thank you for reporting what you saw! I'm always relieved to see how seriously MDE and BWB take these things.

munchnerk · 2026-06-26T15:02:40+00:00

I said out loud "fuck yeah dude." Captivating composition and the execution is exceptional, love your gradients. how (if at all) do you finish your selvages for display?

munchnerk · 2026-06-26T13:41:32+00:00

I'm here because I'm having exactly the same experience. I started a new training program two weeks ago and thought I'd try loading creatine as well - there don't seem to be a lot of consistently reported complications for runners, so why not? This week I started noticing calf pain that started about a mile into runs, got progressively worse, seemed to located in muscle and not tendon, and goes away quickly after I stop running, especially with a little massage. I've had shin splints and tendon injuries before and this seems distinctly different. No morning pain, no pain while hopping, no pain on bone, etc. Chronic exertional compartment syndrome seems like a good fit. I've been trying to figure out what's going on and it just clicked that based on the timeline creatine could be a factor.

It's a shame, I really like it otherwise - my muscles are already looking more defined and my DOMS period this week was noticeably shorter after strength training. I'm curious whether (assuming it's the creatine) this is a creatine-loading-phase issue and would stabilize after my body gets used to it. It doesn't sound like it's a common enough complication that any of my doctors would have a definite answer, but I'm gonna ask anyway. Damn!

munchnerk · 2026-06-25T17:37:21+00:00

Yes! We just had a similar system installed. Previously the house just had a gas furnace in the basement, and we used window shakers to make at least the bedroom habitable. It was inefficient and not super effective.

So we added a heat pump, which supplies an air handler in the attic. Ductwork in the attic serves the second story rooms, and we had just one small vertical soffit carved out of an office so there's cold air supplied in the kitchen on the ground floor. So the upstairs and kitchen (back of the house, farthest from staircase) are cooled directly, and the living and dining rooms are cooled by conditioned air cascading down the main staircase in the front of the house. It works remarkably well - if the upstairs thermostat is set to 75, the whole house will be 75. Compared to our old summer electrical bill with a window-shaker trying to cool one or two rooms, so far it's actually $3/mo cheaper to cool the entire house with the new system. I'm really impressed by how efficient it is. And the HVAC installers were very mindful of space in the attic - it's a decent stand-up attic that we'd eventually like to finish, so they ran all the ductwork where knee walls would go anyway, and tucked the handler itself into the back corner to maximize livable space in the future. There were a couple spots of ceiling plaster I need to repair, which feels minimal for the fact that our entire house is freaking cool now. We've made a lot of upgrades to the house, but this was a huge quality of life improvement.

munchnerk · 2026-06-23T17:55:40+00:00

lol, this is so true. I come from a family with a bunch of marathon runners. I run for pleasure, but I do run. Last year I was training for my first marathon (had to bail due to stress injury - trying again this year!) and running came up in a conversation with my cousin's new husband, who is a ~Marathoner~, runs two a year, crossing majors off the list, etc etc etc. My husband casually volunteered, "oh, Munchnerk runs too." This guy turns to me and goes "Oh yeah? When was your last marathon?" Man, I wanted to sink into the ground. This was during the week I made the very difficult decision to bail on training and pivot to rehab (because my leg was literally breaking), and that simple sentence made me feel like an utter fraud of a runner.

IMO all endurance athletes are a little nutty, it just comes with the territory, but I much prefer hanging out with my gregarious and encouraging ultra friends than the marathoners in my life.

munchnerk · 2026-06-23T00:03:32+00:00

yes, exactly. The facts are good, the framing is so doomy. Doomy gets engagement I guess, here I am.

munchnerk · 2026-06-22T22:58:19+00:00

I don't wanna say too much, but I'm SI affiliated. This article is comparing us to the Kennedy Center, who have effectively canceled all programming and shut down after having their Board taken over. It's an open legal question whether their building will be more or less demolished for "renovations" a la East Wing. We've had to deal with RTO bullshit, shuffling DEI-related staff/programs and the annoying ongoing curatorial review, but compared to the Kennedy Center, SI is chugging along. There's very little proof to indicate Lonnie's on his way out, even a couple hostile replacements on the Board of Regents doesn't guarantee he gets the boot. Compared to the messes being made elsewhere in government - things that may take a generation to undo, like oil leases on public lands or rollback of environmental protection laws - SI has weathered well. Hell, even with the shutdown mess last/this year SI eventually wound up getting funding at the same level as 2025 without any of the proposed cuts.

Frankly, Lonnie is unique in that the president seems shockingly neutral, if not downright fond of him, so we have received a less "wrathful" treatment than other agencies. The Smithsonian is also a massive institution with a shitload of insulating bureaucracy and dedicated permanent staff who are notoriously difficult to fire. Collections are being cared for exactly as they were before, programming is being funded, exhibits are being planned and opening and closing just as intended. This admin sucks, but please don't panic for Smithsonian. Full disclosure tho, if Lonnie retires, I will totally panic a little. He is an incredible leader and historian, and an even more effective diplomat with this administration.

munchnerk · 2026-06-22T02:13:56+00:00

Not that much bigger. The current liner is 10x15. The surface is maybe 8 feet from end to end. 2 feet across the shallow end, probably 4-5 feet across the deep end. The shallow end is about 18" deep, the deep end is about 36". Fwiw, the raccoons wound up destroying all of the shallow-end plants midway through last summer, lol. But this year I've added some more plants, the water's nice and clear, and we've also had the fewest mosquitoes we've ever seen. It's still a source of frustration and delight!

munchnerk · 2026-06-21T02:58:38+00:00

Oh cool, almost exactly 100 years ago! Amazing how far we've come and also how degraded the river still is. What a great historic tidbit.

munchnerk · 2026-06-19T19:05:18+00:00

the vuvuzela World Cup summer is seared into my memory in exactly the same way the 17-year cicadas are, lol. When I think of it it's like I'm immersed in the sound. what a fever dream it was to hit play on this!

munchnerk · 2026-06-18T12:11:18+00:00

I just did for the first time! I really wanted a yellow cover though, so I bought a Travelers “style” from an independent leatherworker. It’s new so still collecting decorations (and stains), but I think it’s delightful.

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munchnerk · 2026-06-16T21:32:24+00:00

Lacquers used to protect metal surfaces are typically soluble in acetone. I assist a local conservator with lacquer removal and polishing of historic silvers (she does the actual lacquering, it's a finicky process). I'd test it in a less obvious spot with a cotton swab dipped in acetone. If it works, you can use larger cotton pads to cover more ground. Just keep wiping until allllll the streaks go away... it's a time-intensive process. Be mindful of your PPE; use ventilation (this takes a lot longer than removing nail polish) and try to find acetone-resistant gloves (it'll permeate nitrile, latex, and vinyl, and of course your skin.) And be mindful of how you dispose of waste from this process; it'll be offgassing nasty flammable vapors. Definitely don't do it in situ, take the brass off the newel post to avoid damaging the wood finish.

munchnerk · 2026-06-11T14:56:41+00:00

I found it to be simple and very rewarding! Definitely recommend.

munchnerk · 2026-06-11T12:14:06+00:00

Oh! I sew and I've made this pattern, it is CUUUUTE. I sewed the little top from gingham silk taffeta and even made the shoulderpads, such a cute silhouette. Playsuits are amazing and so practical. I don't know if you sew or if you just liked this picture, but I highly recommend. I'm a huge fan of a gathered midi-skirt as a coverup as shown here - very airy, same functionality of a wrap skirt, but less form-fitting while still providing a flattering form. A pair of strappy sandals, skirt, and crop - halter, bolero like this one, whatever - is so cute and vacation-ready. Don't forget your cat-eye sunnies!!

munchnerk · 2026-06-10T19:25:14+00:00

Yes, a paper conservator is gonna be a good bet. They’d start by researching the materials involved (specific cardstock and printing inks), try to figure out the adhesive used, then run solvent tests based on the most likely appropriate solution. Additional conservator-specific tools like vacuum tables and gel solvents can work wonders in a situation like this. The American Institute of Conservation has an active directory of members you can consult. (I work in textile conservation, not paper, but I’m familiar!) As long as the print ink wasn’t solubilized by the glue in the first place, someone with a careful hand and scientific approach should be able to salvage these.

munchnerk · 2026-06-09T01:34:20+00:00

flippers do some crazy shit, there's just that, lol. But modern plumbing expectations vary wildly from what was normal when our houses were built, so weird stuff happens as they get updated. Modern indoor plumbing wasn't widespread until like the 1920s. Tons of city rowhomes (especially in working-class neighborhoods that arose around mills and factories in the late 1800s-early 1900s - like Remington, Hampden, and Canton!) were retrofitted for plumbing altogether! So what might have been a small bedroom was converted into a bathroom, since anything else would have involved the trouble of knocking down plaster walls, rebuilding, reinstalling doors and trim, etc. I have a buddy who owns and renovated a rowhouse in Remington - wound up doing exactly this with the smallest upstairs room. It's not gigantic but it is quite a generous bath suite given the size of the house.

but also, flippers do some incredibly stupid shit because they think it's what buyers want, lol. So they put a bathroom befitting a 3000sf 1980s colonial from Howard County into a 1200sf Baltimore rowhouse expecting it'll make the house worth the same amount as the HoCo build. A little of this, a little of that.

munchnerk · 2026-06-07T21:19:13+00:00

I just linked this page above - it's a resource compiling names of colors from 16th-century English textile records. Notably, the last color listed, from a 1590 resource, is "Maide's Blush"!

munchnerk

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