Curbside Outtake: The New Three Story House

As you well know, I’m actually a bit more involved with immobile curbside classics than the wheeled variety. Unfortunately, too many new houses have zero interest for me, but there’s the occasional exception, like this three story house we’ve been watching go up over the past four years (or is it five?), one story at a time. But it finally got its top floor, and it is definitely a bit out of the ordinary, in a good way.

 

 

I wish I’d photographed it over the years to show its progress. It was just the first story for at least 2-3 years. I asked the guy one day, and he said it was a workshop. Proof that it was already built in 2016 is on its exterior wall. And it’s presumably not coming down for a while longer.

We caught the tail end of the refrigerator being hauled up to the third floor via its built-in crane.

There it is, up on that top floor balcony, which conveniently has a a gap in its railing wall for access. That piece will likely get filled in later.

Here’s a better view of the crane. I suspect it will stay up there for future use.

This is essentially how every older house in Amsterdam and so many other old Northern European row houses deal with moving furniture in and out: pulleys and ropes are attached to those hooks, and then the furniture goes in through the large windows below it. In some cases there’s just a little door up there at the top that gets opened and the rail gets extended through the opening.

 

This new house isn’t the first three story house on the lot. The owner/builder had a trial run some years earlier with this smaller one on the back of the lot. I showed it to you here, but can’t find the post now.

Here it is from the other side, but the sun is playing havoc with my phone camera. But its easy to see that the new one is a direct evolution of the little one.