A Triple Decker for Elfland

October 10th, 2024
housing, kids
In 2021 one of the kids in Somerville started Elfland, a miniature community, in a vacant lot. There had been a gas station there which was demolished to build housing, but with construction delays there it was open for a while. When construction resumed there were calls to "defend Elfland", and while the original location closed it's now on the Somerville Community Path just west of Willow Ave.

My kids like it a lot, and Anna and I decided to build something for it. Anna wanted to make a house, and I sold her on making a triple decker. These are three-unit buildings, one on each of three floors, that are common in Somerville and other older Boston-area neighborhoods.

We cut some 2x4s to size and glued them up:

I did the rough sanding with the belt sander, and then Anna did the finish sanding:

We primed and painted together, and Anna put on the doors and windows:

We brought it over today:

Here it is, with Somerville's best grocery store and the Elfland Museum of Hopeful Art:

I'm strongly in favor of constructing more housing in Somerville, though we'll need a lot more than this!

Comment via: facebook, lesswrong, mastodon, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Paid Subscriber Questions Post

I have picked up a lot of new paid subscribers since the last time I did something like this, so: let's do a subscriber questions post!

via Thing of Things July 21, 2025

Retrospective on life tracking and effectiveness systems

I’ve been doing life tracking for around 10 years, and this post is looking back at some things I learned from the data (since my previous retrospective in 2017). Highlights include what I get out of the Oura ring, correlations between sleep and deep work…

via Victoria Krakovna July 4, 2025

Elixir's Last Dance

On May 18th, the contra dance band Elixir had their last gig ever. The dance was packed: there were three hundred people. It was the only dance BIDA has ever done where they sold tickets. People flew from across the country just to hear Elixir play one la…

via Lily Wise's Blog Posts June 5, 2025

more     (via openring)