1. His aesthetic judgments I think were correct, but his insistence on evaluating things per fashion was irritating. I suppose in order to move inventory he has to be conscious of that.
==
2. His dental work is distracting.
==
3. He seems queer as a $3 bill, but he apparently has a wife and daughter. https://danielhale.ca/about/
==
4. I’ve never heard of ‘shiplap’ or seen most of the features he describes. I wonder if you see them in Canada and not in the States.
==
5. There was only the vaguest allusion to wallpaper and stained wood.
Whatever was in, is out.
Housing fashion is like all other fashion, it will change on a regular basis. We built our new house 3 years ago: white paint and white kitchen cabinets. We do have a great room which is living, dining, and kitchen. However, the back side has 2 larges sliders which open to the lanai and pool making that great room part of indoor/outdoor space. The bedrooms are in 2 separate and opposite wings of the house for privacy.
This morning the left media is touting how the WH is in total panic mode over Iran as Trump doesn’t know what to do and how each day the midterms are becoming a disaster. The Daily Mail also reported how Trump went “nuclear” screaming at everyone over the downed planes. All of this, of course, from unnamed sources.
This from the WSJ, and not even the editorial section:
But of course they give Trump as little credit as possible.
OK, only one we have is the Popcorn Ceilings. But, when we built 48 yrs ago, that was the thing. It would be difficult to remove it because of all the furniture. And yes, we have ROOMS! I do not like the open floor plans at all.
Trump is this or that. Hope springs, and crashes.
I grew up in a tenement apartment. An honest-to-God tiny run-down tenement apartment with my family of 6 crammed into 2 bedrooms, a factory just across the alley from my bedroom window, neighbors yelling at each other in foreign accents (and languages), a coal-fired furnace that sometimes emitted deadly gas that required us to evacuate the premises, a horse-drawn junk wagon driven through the alley once a week by a deformed Eastern European immigrant (I am NOT exaggerating!), mice and cockroaches and the occasional rat, el trains rattling by just a block away at all hours, a gang of Irish-American hooligan teenagers that prowled the alley and made lots of noise, a pervert who rented out the little garage directly below my bedroom who used the place as a darkroom for developing the photographs he took of young girls at the beach and in nearby parks, etc. etc. Did I say it was tiny? Also cramped and dark. I am NOT exaggerating . . .
I now live in a house with a spacious brightly lit open-concept design, and I love it.
“Getting Trump” as fashion, fad or fetish:
Fifty shades of impeachment…
Harry Reid methods; whatever it takes, ends and means, for the Party! And the greater good. (sarc x 11)
This view of the human situation in general and of the situation in our century in particular retained a certain plausibility, not in
spite of Fascism but because of it, until Communism revealed itself
even to the meanest capacities as Stalinism and post-Stalinism, for
Trotskyism, being a flag without an army and even without a gen-
eral, is condemned or refuted by its own principle. For some time
it appeared to many teachable Westerners—to say nothing of the
unteachable ones—that Communism was only a parallel movement
to the Western movement—as it were its somewhat impatient, wild,
wayward twin who was bound to become mature, patient, and
gentle. But except when in mortal danger, Communism responded
to the fraternal greetings only with contempt or at most with mani-
festly dissembled signs of friendship; and when in mortal danger,
it was as eager to receive Western help as it was determined to give not even sincere words of thanks in return. It was impossible for
the Western movement to understand Communism as merely a new
version of that eternal reactionism against which it had been fight-
ing for centuries. It had to admit that the Western project which
had provided in its way against all earlier forms of evil could not
provide against the new form in speech or in deed. For some time
it seemed sufficient to say that while the Western movement agrees
with Communism regarding the goal—the universal prosperous
society of free and equal men and women—it disagrees with it
regarding the means: for Communism, the end, the common good
of the whole human race, being the most sacred thing, justifies any
means; whatever contributes to the achievement of the most sacred
end partakes of its sacredness and is therefore itself sacred; what-
ever hinders the achievement of that end is devilish. The murder of
Lumumba was described by a Communist as a reprehensible murder
by which he implied that there can be irreprehensible murders, like
the murder of Nagy. It came to be seen then that there is not only
a difference of degree but of kind between the Western movement
and Communism, and this difference was seen to concern morality,
the choice of means. In other words, it became clearer than it had
been for some time that no bloody or unbloody change of society
can eradicate the evil in man: as long as there will be men, there
will be malice, envy and hatred, and hence there cannot be a
society which does not have to employ coercive restraint. For the
same reason it could no longer be denied that Communism will
remain, as long as it lasts in fact and not merely in name, the iron
rule of a tyrant which is mitigated or aggravated by his fear of
palace revolutions. The only restraint in which the West can put
some confidence is the tyrant’s fear of the West’s immense military
power.
The experience of Communism has provided the Western move-
ment with a twofold lesson: a political lesson, a lesson regard-
ing what to expect and what to do in the foreseeable future, and a
lesson regarding the principles of politics. For the foreseeable future
there cannot be a universal state, unitary or federative. Apart from
the fact that there does not exist now a universal federation of
nations but only of those nations which are called peace-loving, the
federation that exists masks the fundamental cleavage. If that fed-
eration is taken too seriously, as a milestone on man’s onward
march toward the perfect and hence universal society, one is bound
to take great risks supported by nothing but an inherited and per-
haps antiquated hope, and thus to endanger the very progress one
endeavors to’bring about. It is imaginable that in the face of the
danger of thermonuclear destruction, a federation, however incom-
plete, of nations outlaws wars, i.e. wars of aggression; but this
means that it acts on the assumption that all present boundaries
are just, i.e. in accordance with the self-determination of nations;
but this assumption is a pious fraud of which the fraudulence is
more evident than the piety. In fact, the only changes of present
boundaries for which there is any provision are those not disagree-
able to the Communists. One must also not forget the glaring dis-
proportion between the legal equality and the factual inequality of
the confederates. The factual inequality is recognized in the expres-
sion “underdeveloped nations.” The expression implies the resolve
to develop them fully, i.e. to make them either Communist or West-
ern, and this despite the fact that the West claims to stand for
cultural pluralism. Even if one would still contend that the Western
purpose is as universal as the Communist, one must rest satisfied
for the foreseeable future with a practical particularism. The situa-
tion resembles the one which existed during the centuries in which
Christianity and Islam each raised its universal claim but had to
be satisfied with uneasily coexisting with its antagonist. All this
amounts to saying that for the foreseeable future, political society
remains what it always has been: a partial or particular society
whose most urgent and primary task is its self-preservation and
whose highest task is its self-improvement. As for the meaning of
self-improvement, we may observe that the same experience which
has made the West doubtful of the viability of a world-society has
made it doubtful of the belief that affluence is the sufficient and
even necessary condition of happiness and justice: affluence does
not cure the deepest evils.
excerpt from the Introduction to The City and Man, (1963)
Leo Strauss
Up until the 1980s, many popcorn ceilings were made with asbestos. It’s incredibly dangerous to remove one yourself — you need to have it tested and hire a ceiling professional with safety training.
A slightly different topic than the video, but the irritating thing about my 36 year old house is that most of the hardware seems to be obsolete. Repair a drawer slide? Oh, here are parts that look exactly correct, except the dimensions are just a tiny bit wrong. The bathroom faucets need new valve inserts? Yeah, the company quite making that part a while ago.
Do you love the movie My Cousin Vinny (1992)?
This video presents some interesting “facts” about the movie, especially if you have an interest in the law. Warning: It’s too long, I hate the narrator’s voice, and some of the surprises are cheesy & unsurprising. But there are some fun items too.
I saw Marisa Tomei perform in a play at the Vivian Beaumont theater (I think) in NYC years ago. A great theater experience. It’s a pity she didn’t sign up for the sequel to the Vinny movie.
Always nice to see the things people don’t like when I don’t have them anyway!
I agree with the dislike of some trendy things – but every era has its own fashions. Shag carpets and autumn colors (avocado green and goldenrod yellow) are ones you don’t see now.
I don’t think dislike of decorating choices should ever rise to hate, but the trends he mentioned that make cleaning both mandatory and difficult do get close.
Popcorn ceilings, however, are total anathema.
We (meaning me) had to remove a decrepit one in an old 1950s house we bought around thirty years ago. If it had asbestos in it (the siding and some insulation did), pulling it off hasn’t killed me yet.
My new peeve is exteriors that are solely black and white. The house across the street got that paint job recently when it was flipped, and is totally out of character with the neighborhood. There are lots of houses with the B&W motif around town, and even some commercial establishments. I think it looks terrible.
On the other hand, some trends are useful.
We just renovated our upstairs bedroom and the closest bathroom as “elder friendly” because we are getting old enough to see walkers and wheelchairs in the near future for at least one of us.
The only change to the bedroom was installing a sliding barn door to make access easier (we widened the hallway as well), but it has some features that kind of modify the hate factors. The finish is white, because that matched our walls, so it doesn’t look like it belongs in a barn (we aren’t into that country style at all, unless it’s in an actual remodeled barn, as the presenter suggested), and the in-room side has shelves on it, so there is no wobble at all. The doors were designed for kitchen pantries, but made the door much more functional for our needs.
That also meant we weren’t really losing the bookshelves that were moved to make room for the open door. Plus, we mounted the track on a 2×6 oak board stained to match our oak flooring.
In the bathroom, we replaced the tub with a shower, simplified storage, moved the sink location so it’s easier to get to from the toilet, (the new vanity has an integral basin and counter; I like to look at vessel basins but they are indeed a pain to use and clean), and installed a pocket door to save space and make it easier to go inside without banging into something on the walls, and then having to get your walker out of the way to shut it.
AesopSpouse did everything but the tile for the shower and floor, and the drywall fixes; we figured we better get the changes done while he could still manage most of the work. We did have to hire professionals to remove some walls with asbestos-paint on them, but they took the old tub, vanity, and other debris as well, so we didn’t have to make a landfill run or junk-hauler. Came out pretty well.
One of our sons has a tub in their over-sized shower enclosure, but it is built in rather than free standing so is not the cleaning hassle that the fancy ones are.
Open shelves are great for displaying family heirlooms; I want cabinets for my mismatched dishes and random food fixings. However, when the kids were young, I always took the cabinet doors off so they could find things to feed themselves and set the table, and then put the dishes away after washing (those were all in the lower cabinets so they could reach them).
We didn’t much care how it looked at that stage in our lives.
sdferr, thanks for that bit of Strauss. That introduction, so timely still, is really great and deserves to be better known.
@ Jim Melcher: I know many people who think very highly of Strauss as a philosopher and political philosopher and political commentator. And his knowledge of English is much much better than my abilities with German. But what (little) I have read by him is a struggle for me.
Do you have any recommendations on source(s) that can provide a discussion of Strauss’s content and meaning, but written in (what for me needs to be) a more readable style? That would be welcome.
AesopFan: black and white can also ruin an automobile purchase. We were in the market for a Prius a few years back, but the interior for that year was very Orca looking and turned us off of buying that year. Your sliding door/shelving example does look very useful and attractive.
Now, let’s see: you said you were not Catholic, so you don’t really need a priest’s hole …. 🙂
TommyJay on April 20, 2026 at 1:27 pm:
“A slightly different topic than the video, but the irritating thing about my 36 year old house is that most of the hardware seems to be obsolete. … Yeah, the company quite making that part a while ago.” And yet we either have to or want to update or upgrade our domicile over time.
I have been keeping spreadsheets of my home/house expenses since purchasing it decades ago. Those costs for our home that are “improvements” go into one column that cums to the property basis for tax purposes. Other costs go into “maintenance” or “administrative” categories. But I recently learned from my CPA that repeat expenditures for some “basis” items cannot be added together to sum to a larger basis. If you replaced a roof, it is an improvement and adds to the basis [since it extends the life of the house], but when you replace it again years later, the older roof is no longer around to be part of the basis, so you can only use the cost of the new roof in your basis calculation and must thereafter exclude the basis “contribution” from the prior roof. This applies for a number of major cost items, such as AC systems, selected elements of remodeling, etc. Removing those duplicate expense situations has had a major impact on reducing my overall tax basis.
[Now, if anyone here thinks I have been given flawed information, I would welcome an explanation about that, such that I could add those earlier costs back into the basis. Then again, we don’t expect to sell before our children inherit this property.]
Art,
I so agree! His teeth were massively distracting!
I wonder what the current take on ‘zero entry’ showers is. They were quite trendy a few years ago. I have a walk in shower in the master suite of my 36 year old house. The entry lip is the height of the 4″ tiles. There may be a leak behind the wall* necessitating a remodel, if so, i’d like to go the zero entry route. Looks seamless and works for ‘age in place’ plans.
Then again, like R2L, I can please myself as I don’t expect to sell either. The kids can deal with it when the day comes!
*Not sure if it’s a plumbing failure or roof leak from the torrential rains during March. My handyman told me every one of his clients had a leak of one kind or another from those rains.
@R2L:If you replaced a roof, it is an improvement and adds to the basis [since it extends the life of the house], but when you replace it again years later, the older roof is no longer around to be part of the basis, so you can only use the cost of the new roof in your basis calculation and must thereafter exclude the basis “contribution” from the prior roof.
If a roof needs to be replaced, I should think it would have depreciated. Maybe that’s where your CPA is coming from. Does he have a system for depreciating such things? You might ask and see if doing the accounting that way helps you make sense of it.
If they run out of meaningless stuff to be “dated”, they’ll still let us have indoor plumbing, right? Right?
There’s “interested” and there’s “uninterested” (which means don’t care one way or another) but I’m not sure what word would mean an aggressive “don’t bother me with this crap, it works just fine! Leave me alone! Go away! Get a damn’ hobby.”
OK Virginia – you have a country to save – get out there and vote “No”
R2L, there is no royal road to understanding Strauss. Look for his essay, “On a Forgotten Kind of Writing,” and you will see why. His essays on Plato and Machiavelli in History of Political Philosophy would also probably show the shape of his approach.
Harvey Mansfield wrote “The Legacy of Leo Strauss after 50 Years” in 2023:
Browse the Claremont Review for lots more secondary content, but without putting in the time on Strauss—and, more importantly, on the authors he addresses—it can become just in-group chatter and gossip.
@SD – I did my part this morning and voted against gerrymandering. However, I suspect it will pass.
Housing fashion is like all other fashion, it will change on a regular basis.
==
No, it will change on an irregular basis.
==
His entire orientation is toward instituting or refraining from instituting features which will complicate the work of the real estate agent when you want to sell the house. He’s not interested in what pleases the owner.
==
@ Molly Brown: “Not sure if it’s a plumbing failure or roof leak.”
If you haven’t done so already (plus you are willing to spend the couple hundred $$ to find out), there are ways to measure the sound of the water flowing in pipes under slabs and behind walls to confirm or reject the plumbing failure option. That might clarify the situation for you and when and where to make or get a correction.
We had an issue with some ceramic tile coming loose, so we had to confirm we did not have an under slab pipe leak, where the tech’s final opinion was some form of moisture was just coming up from the ground to make a tile floor damp in one location (a rare situation so not worth investing in a slab repair, etc.).
Jim Melcher: thanks for the additional guidance on Strauss.
NC: while I did use depreciation on some of the larger expenses for my rental house back in the day, I understand that is not applicable for a personal residence. I expect to have a conversation with my CPA in a week or two to address 2026 tax strategy, so I will explore your idea then [his office is out of state but works in association with my investment advisors]. For 2025 I ended up with a refund I was not expecting, so that paid for his fee. 🙂
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1. His aesthetic judgments I think were correct, but his insistence on evaluating things per fashion was irritating. I suppose in order to move inventory he has to be conscious of that.
==
2. His dental work is distracting.
==
3. He seems queer as a $3 bill, but he apparently has a wife and daughter.
https://danielhale.ca/about/
==
4. I’ve never heard of ‘shiplap’ or seen most of the features he describes. I wonder if you see them in Canada and not in the States.
==
5. There was only the vaguest allusion to wallpaper and stained wood.
Whatever was in, is out.
Housing fashion is like all other fashion, it will change on a regular basis. We built our new house 3 years ago: white paint and white kitchen cabinets. We do have a great room which is living, dining, and kitchen. However, the back side has 2 larges sliders which open to the lanai and pool making that great room part of indoor/outdoor space. The bedrooms are in 2 separate and opposite wings of the house for privacy.
This morning the left media is touting how the WH is in total panic mode over Iran as Trump doesn’t know what to do and how each day the midterms are becoming a disaster. The Daily Mail also reported how Trump went “nuclear” screaming at everyone over the downed planes. All of this, of course, from unnamed sources.
This from the WSJ, and not even the editorial section:
America Is in the Middle of a Stealth Manufacturing Boom
https://archive.fo/GJzrv
But of course they give Trump as little credit as possible.
OK, only one we have is the Popcorn Ceilings. But, when we built 48 yrs ago, that was the thing. It would be difficult to remove it because of all the furniture. And yes, we have ROOMS! I do not like the open floor plans at all.
Trump is this or that. Hope springs, and crashes.
I grew up in a tenement apartment. An honest-to-God tiny run-down tenement apartment with my family of 6 crammed into 2 bedrooms, a factory just across the alley from my bedroom window, neighbors yelling at each other in foreign accents (and languages), a coal-fired furnace that sometimes emitted deadly gas that required us to evacuate the premises, a horse-drawn junk wagon driven through the alley once a week by a deformed Eastern European immigrant (I am NOT exaggerating!), mice and cockroaches and the occasional rat, el trains rattling by just a block away at all hours, a gang of Irish-American hooligan teenagers that prowled the alley and made lots of noise, a pervert who rented out the little garage directly below my bedroom who used the place as a darkroom for developing the photographs he took of young girls at the beach and in nearby parks, etc. etc. Did I say it was tiny? Also cramped and dark. I am NOT exaggerating . . .
I now live in a house with a spacious brightly lit open-concept design, and I love it.
“Getting Trump” as fashion, fad or fetish:
Fifty shades of impeachment…
“Five stories Democrats told during Trump’s 2019 Ukraine impeachment have fallen apart”—
https://justthenews.com/index%2ephp/accountability/political-ethics/democrats-ukraine-narrative-has-gone-reverse-gop-seeks-expunge
Barry Meislin:
Harry Reid methods; whatever it takes, ends and means, for the Party! And the greater good. (sarc x 11)
excerpt from the Introduction to The City and Man, (1963)
Leo Strauss
Up until the 1980s, many popcorn ceilings were made with asbestos. It’s incredibly dangerous to remove one yourself — you need to have it tested and hire a ceiling professional with safety training.
A slightly different topic than the video, but the irritating thing about my 36 year old house is that most of the hardware seems to be obsolete. Repair a drawer slide? Oh, here are parts that look exactly correct, except the dimensions are just a tiny bit wrong. The bathroom faucets need new valve inserts? Yeah, the company quite making that part a while ago.
Do you love the movie My Cousin Vinny (1992)?
This video presents some interesting “facts” about the movie, especially if you have an interest in the law. Warning: It’s too long, I hate the narrator’s voice, and some of the surprises are cheesy & unsurprising. But there are some fun items too.
I saw Marisa Tomei perform in a play at the Vivian Beaumont theater (I think) in NYC years ago. A great theater experience. It’s a pity she didn’t sign up for the sequel to the Vinny movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr8ncDn-8CM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAIlVCStp3c
Do you love the movie My Cousin Vinny (1992)?
==
Just this scene:
==
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh0210A-VZo
Always nice to see the things people don’t like when I don’t have them anyway!
I agree with the dislike of some trendy things – but every era has its own fashions. Shag carpets and autumn colors (avocado green and goldenrod yellow) are ones you don’t see now.
I don’t think dislike of decorating choices should ever rise to hate, but the trends he mentioned that make cleaning both mandatory and difficult do get close.
Popcorn ceilings, however, are total anathema.
We (meaning me) had to remove a decrepit one in an old 1950s house we bought around thirty years ago. If it had asbestos in it (the siding and some insulation did), pulling it off hasn’t killed me yet.
My new peeve is exteriors that are solely black and white. The house across the street got that paint job recently when it was flipped, and is totally out of character with the neighborhood. There are lots of houses with the B&W motif around town, and even some commercial establishments. I think it looks terrible.
On the other hand, some trends are useful.
We just renovated our upstairs bedroom and the closest bathroom as “elder friendly” because we are getting old enough to see walkers and wheelchairs in the near future for at least one of us.
The only change to the bedroom was installing a sliding barn door to make access easier (we widened the hallway as well), but it has some features that kind of modify the hate factors. The finish is white, because that matched our walls, so it doesn’t look like it belongs in a barn (we aren’t into that country style at all, unless it’s in an actual remodeled barn, as the presenter suggested), and the in-room side has shelves on it, so there is no wobble at all. The doors were designed for kitchen pantries, but made the door much more functional for our needs.
That also meant we weren’t really losing the bookshelves that were moved to make room for the open door. Plus, we mounted the track on a 2×6 oak board stained to match our oak flooring.
https://www.amazon.com/Bookshelf-Hardware-Included-Effective-Reduction/dp/B0F13759W3/ref=sr_1_6?sr=8-6
In the bathroom, we replaced the tub with a shower, simplified storage, moved the sink location so it’s easier to get to from the toilet, (the new vanity has an integral basin and counter; I like to look at vessel basins but they are indeed a pain to use and clean), and installed a pocket door to save space and make it easier to go inside without banging into something on the walls, and then having to get your walker out of the way to shut it.
AesopSpouse did everything but the tile for the shower and floor, and the drywall fixes; we figured we better get the changes done while he could still manage most of the work. We did have to hire professionals to remove some walls with asbestos-paint on them, but they took the old tub, vanity, and other debris as well, so we didn’t have to make a landfill run or junk-hauler. Came out pretty well.
One of our sons has a tub in their over-sized shower enclosure, but it is built in rather than free standing so is not the cleaning hassle that the fancy ones are.
Open shelves are great for displaying family heirlooms; I want cabinets for my mismatched dishes and random food fixings. However, when the kids were young, I always took the cabinet doors off so they could find things to feed themselves and set the table, and then put the dishes away after washing (those were all in the lower cabinets so they could reach them).
We didn’t much care how it looked at that stage in our lives.
sdferr, thanks for that bit of Strauss. That introduction, so timely still, is really great and deserves to be better known.
@ Jim Melcher: I know many people who think very highly of Strauss as a philosopher and political philosopher and political commentator. And his knowledge of English is much much better than my abilities with German. But what (little) I have read by him is a struggle for me.
Do you have any recommendations on source(s) that can provide a discussion of Strauss’s content and meaning, but written in (what for me needs to be) a more readable style? That would be welcome.
AesopFan: black and white can also ruin an automobile purchase. We were in the market for a Prius a few years back, but the interior for that year was very Orca looking and turned us off of buying that year. Your sliding door/shelving example does look very useful and attractive.
Now, let’s see: you said you were not Catholic, so you don’t really need a priest’s hole …. 🙂
TommyJay on April 20, 2026 at 1:27 pm:
“A slightly different topic than the video, but the irritating thing about my 36 year old house is that most of the hardware seems to be obsolete. … Yeah, the company quite making that part a while ago.” And yet we either have to or want to update or upgrade our domicile over time.
I have been keeping spreadsheets of my home/house expenses since purchasing it decades ago. Those costs for our home that are “improvements” go into one column that cums to the property basis for tax purposes. Other costs go into “maintenance” or “administrative” categories. But I recently learned from my CPA that repeat expenditures for some “basis” items cannot be added together to sum to a larger basis. If you replaced a roof, it is an improvement and adds to the basis [since it extends the life of the house], but when you replace it again years later, the older roof is no longer around to be part of the basis, so you can only use the cost of the new roof in your basis calculation and must thereafter exclude the basis “contribution” from the prior roof. This applies for a number of major cost items, such as AC systems, selected elements of remodeling, etc. Removing those duplicate expense situations has had a major impact on reducing my overall tax basis.
[Now, if anyone here thinks I have been given flawed information, I would welcome an explanation about that, such that I could add those earlier costs back into the basis. Then again, we don’t expect to sell before our children inherit this property.]
Art,
I so agree! His teeth were massively distracting!
I wonder what the current take on ‘zero entry’ showers is. They were quite trendy a few years ago. I have a walk in shower in the master suite of my 36 year old house. The entry lip is the height of the 4″ tiles. There may be a leak behind the wall* necessitating a remodel, if so, i’d like to go the zero entry route. Looks seamless and works for ‘age in place’ plans.
Then again, like R2L, I can please myself as I don’t expect to sell either. The kids can deal with it when the day comes!
*Not sure if it’s a plumbing failure or roof leak from the torrential rains during March. My handyman told me every one of his clients had a leak of one kind or another from those rains.
@R2L:If you replaced a roof, it is an improvement and adds to the basis [since it extends the life of the house], but when you replace it again years later, the older roof is no longer around to be part of the basis, so you can only use the cost of the new roof in your basis calculation and must thereafter exclude the basis “contribution” from the prior roof.
If a roof needs to be replaced, I should think it would have depreciated. Maybe that’s where your CPA is coming from. Does he have a system for depreciating such things? You might ask and see if doing the accounting that way helps you make sense of it.
If they run out of meaningless stuff to be “dated”, they’ll still let us have indoor plumbing, right? Right?
There’s “interested” and there’s “uninterested” (which means don’t care one way or another) but I’m not sure what word would mean an aggressive “don’t bother me with this crap, it works just fine! Leave me alone! Go away! Get a damn’ hobby.”
OK Virginia – you have a country to save – get out there and vote “No”
https://commoncts.blogspot.com/2026/04/ok-virginia-you-have-country-to-save.html
R2L, there is no royal road to understanding Strauss. Look for his essay, “On a Forgotten Kind of Writing,” and you will see why. His essays on Plato and Machiavelli in History of Political Philosophy would also probably show the shape of his approach.
Harvey Mansfield wrote “The Legacy of Leo Strauss after 50 Years” in 2023:
https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/the-legacy-of-leo-strauss-after-50-years/
Browse the Claremont Review for lots more secondary content, but without putting in the time on Strauss—and, more importantly, on the authors he addresses—it can become just in-group chatter and gossip.
@SD – I did my part this morning and voted against gerrymandering. However, I suspect it will pass.
Housing fashion is like all other fashion, it will change on a regular basis.
==
No, it will change on an irregular basis.
==
His entire orientation is toward instituting or refraining from instituting features which will complicate the work of the real estate agent when you want to sell the house. He’s not interested in what pleases the owner.
==
@ Molly Brown: “Not sure if it’s a plumbing failure or roof leak.”
If you haven’t done so already (plus you are willing to spend the couple hundred $$ to find out), there are ways to measure the sound of the water flowing in pipes under slabs and behind walls to confirm or reject the plumbing failure option. That might clarify the situation for you and when and where to make or get a correction.
We had an issue with some ceramic tile coming loose, so we had to confirm we did not have an under slab pipe leak, where the tech’s final opinion was some form of moisture was just coming up from the ground to make a tile floor damp in one location (a rare situation so not worth investing in a slab repair, etc.).
Jim Melcher: thanks for the additional guidance on Strauss.
NC: while I did use depreciation on some of the larger expenses for my rental house back in the day, I understand that is not applicable for a personal residence. I expect to have a conversation with my CPA in a week or two to address 2026 tax strategy, so I will explore your idea then [his office is out of state but works in association with my investment advisors]. For 2025 I ended up with a refund I was not expecting, so that paid for his fee. 🙂