These photos got me to thinking about homeowner’s insurance and coverage for nature’s angry outbursts. Thanks to Pamela Stevens of TopTen Reviews, I have the skinny for you.

Ugly outcome when the earth roars

Photo by USGS

In 1971, a magnitude 6.7 quake threw me out of bed, across the room, and dropped a bookcase on me. We were luckier than many in the San Fernando Valley. Stevens writes that if you have private homeowner’s insurance, you can add earthquake endorsements. If you live in California, the California Earthquake Authority offers coverage.

Twister assister

Photo by Richmond Times-Dispatch

Even if you live where this is a common sight, you can buy tornado coverage as part of your homeowner’s policy. Make sure you get repair coverage for hail, which typically shows up at the same time to hammer dings into even the best vinyl siding.

Surf’s up

Photo by Freak Waves

Don’t assume your homeowner’s insurance will cover damage from flooding. Stevens says you must secure a policy purchased through the National Flood Insurance Program.

Crispy creamed

Photo by Premier Choice Restoration

You can get fire damage endorsements throughout the country – unless you live in a high-risk area or a long way from the nearest fire station. Stevens says insurance companies can refuse you coverage. To find out if you live in a high-risk zone, check with The National Interagency Fire Center.

DOH!

Photo by Indy Media

Sad to say, most insurers will not offer coverage for radiation damage if you live near a nuclear power plant. Perhaps you should consider using lead when evaluating replacement windows.

You’re lucky if you live in a residential conclave where there are homeowners’ association decorating caveats. Not everyone does, however. If you find yourself stuck next to a neighbor who believes that painting their home like a bilious gallbladder is a tasteful thing, you may be really stuck. In this market moving is not so easy.

Hello Kitty, goodbye sanity

Photo by House Logic

In 1960, Shintaro Tsuji created the now-legendary Hello, Kitty line of plastic purses. Today, there are 22,000 products lines in this motif. Let us hope that this is the only such home. I’m not recommending arson, but I’d certainly understand the impulse,

Purple rain, ugly residential pain

Photo by Country Joy Crafts

Several manufacturers make plum colored vinyl siding colors, but you’ve got to get out the buckets and  brushes to create something like this. It reminds me of the artificial color used in grape Popsicles. As I recall, the hue stayed on your tongue for the entire summer.

The sum-of-all-fears motif

Photo by Handiman Club

This theme combines all the elements of a metal roof patina, distressed shutter effects and contrasting flesh-tone paint. Unfortunately, they should never have been combined. Witness the tragic characteristics of a do-it-yourself exterior painting effort done while under the influence.

A bad idea executed to perfection

Photo by Recentering El Pueblo

I love the cottage and pueblo look you find in Arizona and California. I do not like the look that says, “Help, we’re trapped inside by creatures that eat brain cells.”  An appropriate façade for Solano Prison is not necessary an apt exterior for residential Santa Ana. If you can find a door bell, for heaven’s sake don’t ring it!

Eco-roofs really caught hold again in Germany of the late 1970s. Jörg Breuning was introduced to the practice as a German landscape company employee. He brought the system and his experience to Maryland in 1988 and founded Green Roof Technology to develop less expensive and lightweight systems that would suit American architecture.

Rooftop green gardens

Living Roofs, Inc. is the first company in Florence, South Carolina to focus on commercial, residential, and institutional buildings. The company installed this 28,500 square-foot garden roof atop the city’s Federal Courthouse. (Read more about Living Roofs.)

Residential Eden

This three-level house with rooftop gardens is also super insulated and has nary an energy footprint with its passive solar array. Located on a hill north of San Francisco, this home to three generations of one family is a green work of beauty.  Look at the interiors!

Grow your own

This garden work in San Francisco’s Embarcadero proves that building architecture need not limit the creation of green rooftops. Rachel Mathews of the Successful Garden Design blog notes that in planning a rooftop garden, you’ll need to determine how to maximize usable space (including walls), discover how much weight the roof can bear, select the right plants for your climate and round up the lightest materials you can.

Why not give it a try?

CNN Money reports that HomeVestors often picks up homes that truly have virtues on the inside, but buyers can’t get past their ugly exteriors. The company has 200 franchisees, each on the look for “diamonds in the rough.”

Here are some roughs, sans any apparent diamonds:

Things might get ugly

I’d rather live in a refrigerator box beneath the overpass than move in here. Ugliness abides. There’s an entire website dedicated to the ugly called, uncannily enough, Ugly House Photos.

Gateway to the worst

Ah, the grandeur of St. Louis–the majestic Mississippi, the splendid arch rising from the shoreline and this turquoise shack along the highway. Almost gives you chills.

Borderline ugly

This freshly painted home in Mexicali (south of the California line) proves that ugliness knows no bounds. It looks like the stencil print children make from tempera ink using cut-out ends of a large potato. Tan feo, hombre!

Beast of burden

I wrote about his house before on the blog, but it deserves a reprieve. I cherish the tall crop of grass edges and the delightful use of contrasting oil stains on the drive.

Camden yards

This house in New Jersey was among 13 entrants in the Cramer Hill Ugly Home Contest run in 2009 by local churches bent on reforming the neighborhood ambiance. See the details at the Cramer Hill/CCOP website.

Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like ugly. I have plenty of other photos, but this is all I can take, friends.

No Parking

Here’s a great way to discourage visits from in-laws, parcel delivery companies, and tax investigators. It’s the perfect driveway for people who own dirt bikes.

Palm Sunday through Saturday

One can only hope the tree won’t widen in the trunk as it climbs—like most palm trees—up into the blue California skies. The photo comes courtesy of AzWeird, your one-stop shop for the grotesque and zany.

A Slice of Life

Bathroom

Another AzWeird discovery: using a jigsaw to make the door fit, rather than redoing the toilet installation. Bravo!

Form Meets Function

The wry editors of Strangest, Coolest Things! have compiled some funny construction mistakes, including this clever placement of the mannequin behind the drainpipe. (You’re encouraged to write your own caption.)

Somnambulism Remedy

Among all home improvements, I find this unique solution to sleepwalking an exceptional value in window durability. You can invite all the neighborhood kids over for a game of baseball.

Enhanced Digital Security

Protect yourself from digital snooping and identity theft while using this ATM. Absolutely no one can capture your password.

Voyeurs Rejoice

Created especially for John Blutarsky, this unique sorority house stair concept protects visitors from unintentional falls.

Rosie The Riveter

The Rosie the Riveter Memorial: Honoring American Women’s Labor During WWII, is located in Richmond, CA, at the site of the former Kaiser Shipyards–the largest and most productive of the war.  Rosie the Riveter herself was the celebrated heroine in the WWII song of the same name:

Rosie the Riveter

“All the day long,
Whether rain or shine,
She’s a part of the assembly line.
She’s making history,
Working for victory,
Rosie the Riveter.
Keeps a sharp lookout for sabotage,
Sitting up there on the fuselage.
That little girl will do more than a male will do.
Rosie’s got a boyfriend, Charlie.
Charlie, he’s a Marine.
Rosie is protecting Charlie,
Working overtime on the riveting machine.
When they gave her a production “E,”
She was as proud as she could be.
There’s something true about,
Red, white, and blue about,
Rosie the Riveter.”

(Listen to it here.)

According to Metropolitan State College of Denver Dept of History,  “Female employment in defense industries grew by 462 percent from 1940 to 1944. From 1940 to 1944, the percentage of women workers employed as domestic servants declined from 17.7 to 9.5 percent.”

Woman Up!

Recently, construction worker Deidre Douglas opened a boutique in Brooklyn, NY (my hometown) for tradeswomen tired of wearing men’s work apparel that won’t fit. In an interview for The Brooklyn Paper, Douglas said, “We wear boots, not suits.”

What better way to take advantage of your own roof than to turn it into a spot of heaven?  The green roof craze has sprouted in Asia and Europe and has made its way to the States. Chicago–the city with the most garden roofs in the nation– has dedicated nearly 300,000 square feet to green roofing. Green roofs can cut your heating and cooling costs, pump desperately needed oxygen into the air, and provide vegetables for your family.

I Lost My Heart (of Romaine) in San Francisco

This San Francisco rooftop garden is a model of its kind. Remember, you need to call out a structural engineer to see if your roof can support the weight of a garden. Rest assured: most rooftop gardens rely on super-light granulated clay or shale for a growing medium.

In the Garden of LaLa

In the land of smoggy skies, it’s an easy adjustment to put in a herb garden that can fight for balance!  I love this little corner of paradise in Fukuoka, Japan:

See more cool examples at the Grow Spot.

Maple Leafiness

In Toronto, where this lovely roof pumps out O2, the city has passed a new law that may have locals trading out their greenery for alternative solar energy panels.

Tokyo Chia-pet

Here in Tokyo, the city government requires all new roofing on medium to large buildings devote 20 percent of the rooftop to agriculture, according to Scientific American.

By the Rivers of Babylon

This Darmstadt, Germany,  residential complex, built in the 1990s, is flocked with rooftop grass, trees, and shrubs. It bears an uncanny resemblance to The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, built by by King Nebuchadnezzar in 605 BC.

Enough words to the wise. Get out your ladders, people, and hang your own garden!

Snug as a Snowbug

Sunset Magazine features the 850-square-foot mini-lodge in Winthrop, Washington in its latest issue. It’s located in the Methow Valley, summer home to the state’s apple growing industry.

Extra Twispy

Ray and Mary Johnston of Johnston Architects designed and built this 1,200-square-foot cabin for their family in Twisp, overlooking the Washington Cascades.

Nighty Niche

Sunset editors marveled at the “bed cabinet” that the Johnston’s built into the heart of their Twisp getaway. I love the affect of the sliding barn doors.

Wallowa the Day Away

In the same issue this month, Sunset Magazine featured the diminutive, 130 square-foot cabin built on Wallawa Lake by Mariah Morrow and Ryan Lingard for $57,000, including the acreage.  The couple constructed their tiny getaway six hours from Portland at Joseph, Oregon. The cabin uses wood heat, has no electricity or water. (That’s off the grid!) Ryan, an architect, designed the cabin with its metal roof and cedar siding. The entire project was completed in two weeks.

Small IS Beautiful

If you want a small cabin getaway, or small permanent home, Thoreau devotee Jim Wilkins of White Bear Lake, MN, is here to help with plans. He creates designs for Tiny Green Cabins, which you can take with you, or for permanent small dwellings like the wildflower (pictured).

You gotta love it when Jim says, “There are trade-offs in everything, from owning a big home to a small compact tiny house or cabin; from a long commute wearing expensive suits to a short bicycle ride to a low stressful job; to living green in an earth friendly environment or living in a high rise condo that spills energy into the night. These are all choices, and we are each investing in our thoughts that will produce the life of our choice. Let’s make a smart choice, and rethink our bigness to one of living in harmony in earth-friendly products.”

Really?

Blue?

And okay, speaking of blue, I once also tiled my kitchen counters in a 2″ blue tile– which looked fabulous, by the way, and just like the Arts & Crafts style I was going for. In the process, however, the contractor who was working on my house at the time suggested that I use a rounded black tile on the lip instead. Blue tile on the top, black tile on the side… no other black in the house mind you, just on the lip, because that’s what he’d seen on special at the Big Box store.

I suggested he remove himself from making any more design decisions about my house and did the lip in matching blue tile, as it should be. But I’m thinking that people who are stressed out with the house building process occasionally listen to people who are best suited for building houses and not picking out paint colors. Which in turn led me to question, how do those truly hideous houses come into existence.

1.) You listened to a contractor who thinks they are a designer. I mean, they build houses all the time so they must know what they are talking about. Right. Right?

You, my friend, are sentenced to the blue roof for 30 to life for that decision. Good luck to you.

2.) You think you are a designer, or know you are not a designer and are just testing out “being creative”. The truth is, there is nothing creative about painting your house purple and orange. You are not on to the next big thing. Its just that no one else does it because it looks horrible.

This isn’t an accidental ugly. This definitely qualifies as an on purpose, and if you live here, you have to take full credit for it.

Side note: These are definitely people who thought they were being creative and failed, as evidenced by the house number placement. I think there is an equal chance that the house number is 5625, or 5265. Not creative. Not functional. Just no.

3.) You just don’t know any better. That color looked so fresh and beachy on the two-inch square paint swatch…

I sympathize. Really, I do. I’ve been stressing over roof colors, trim colors, siding colors, what to color and what not to color, and the end result is anyone’s guess. Here’s the good news for those of you us that just don’t know any better… paint can be painted over.

Bad news… roof shingles can not.

What’s Shakin’?

This earthquake-proof bamboo housing innovation in Nanjing stands alone where others wobble and collapse. The English People Daily reports that researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences created an attractive, sustainable home that not only has eight-degree seismic fortification intensity, but is resistant to moisture, rot, and insect damage.

Above It All

In Bolivia, builders have created treehouses from its abundant supply of 17 species of bamboo that can be grown, sold, and quickly renewed. Considering that the material has been used for housing in South America for 4,500 years, most existing bamboo homes there are 100 years old. Once known as the “poor man’s timber”, bamboo just may be the answer on a continent where nearly half the residents have no homes at all. Read more about the promise of this alternative wood at Bamboo Living.

Dream Weaver

This woven bamboo house was created by designer Søren Korsgaard.  If birds weave nests, why can’t we?

Run Forest, Run

This Forest House, created by London’s ROEWU Architecture for a family in Taiwan, shows how good it can get with bamboo. Light and air filter through the bamboo screen, changing the interior look throughout the day. Upper stories and are naturally ventilated and the roof contains a spa that the family uses in winter months.

We should consider using bamboo extensively in the American South, Southwest, and West where it would be a sound, green alternative to pricey, increasingly sparse hard woods.