All good things come at a price, and when they're as meticulous, wonderful and small as the Astolat Dollhouse Castle, they should. The astonishing vision, meticulous preparation and incredible items (over 10,000) of the 29-room, 800-pound dollhouse justify the hefty $8.5 million price tag. The seven-level masterpiece was created by artist Elaine Diehl around 1980 and unveiled in 2015. It took no less than 13 years to complete and was estimated at the time to be worth over $2,000 per square inch.

Image – Astolat Dollhouse Castle
That makes this 9-foot-tall dollhouse castle more expensive than a fully furnished 4-bedroom, 6-bathroom, 4,000-square-foot home in San Francisco, and that's just how much money you'd have left over to buy a Tesla even after buying the house, according to the Zillow listing.

Image – Astolat Dollhouse Castle
It may not be a livable space, but it's certainly stunning. The tiny objects and rooms of the world's most expensive dollhouse will make you feel like Alice in Wonderland. What first catches the eye is the historic exterior of a residence named after the castle in “The Lady of Shalott,” a 19th-century ballad by Alfred Lord Tennyson, according to Bloomberg.

The rooms are illuminated by working chandeliers. Image – Astolat Dollhouse Castle
One can't help but marvel at details such as fountains, topiary and a grand arched entrance with ornate columns. And that's just the exterior. What lies beneath is truly astonishing. Details such as suits of armor, a $5,000 silver flatware set, artwork, paintings and gemstone collections in the extravagant rooms showcase the talent of the carpenters, goldsmiths, glassblowers and silversmiths.

Experienced carpenters and artists have crafted the incredible miniatures. Image – Astolat Dollhouse Castle
Although all rooms are luxuriously appointed with features such as real parquet floors, hand-stitched tapestries, marble bathrooms and gold trim, it is the library that captured my heart.

Image – Astolat Dollhouse Castle
This outstanding section contains tiny books whose actual printed pages are readable under a magnifying glass. In the library, one can find (if one really tries hard) a Bible that is said to be one of the smallest in the world. Some notable items kept here include a folding secretary bookcase valued at $2,500 and a miniature Hebrew Torah valued at up to $2,500.

Image – Astolat Dollhouse Castle
Expensive items include a miniature grand piano valued at $7,000, a midget Jeep 949 station wagon valued at over $3,300, and a miniature portrait valued at nearly $2,000. It was apparently so small that it had to be painted with a single bristle brush.

Image – Astolat Dollhouse Castle
Of the seven floors containing regular rooms like the main parlor, dining room, bedrooms and butler's quarters etc, the sixth floor was the most exciting as it contained the grand ballroom, musician's alcove, bar area and living rooms. At the very top of this multi-million dollar miniature home was a wizard's tower with fascinating details like astronomical displays and zodiac signs, a telescope and an observatory.

Image – Astolat Dollhouse Castle
These are just a few examples of the effort and excellence of the 29-room house, which was presented to the public in 2015 to benefit the nonprofit organization Autism Speaks and a selection of other children's charities. The exhibition was hosted by the Nassau County Museum of Art. “The castle is worth so much just for its structure,” said Paula Gilhooley, the museum's curator. She added, “Astolat is one of the most beautiful miniature structures in the world and has a rare combination of sculpture, art, engineering and attention to detail that sets it apart from anything that has existed before. Astolat is a tremendous feat of construction and when you see it, you will be absolutely speechless.” The museum-quality dollhouse was acquired by collector L. Freeman in 1996 and brought to the Nassau County Museum of Art.

The living area of ​​the house for sale in Francisco. Image – Zillow.

The post 13 years within the making, this extremely detailed miniature dollhouse is price greater than a totally furnished 4-bedroom residence in San Francisco. The home has 27 absolutely wired rooms embellished with chandeliers, gold plated chairs, books, oil portray even the loos have purposeful plumbing. appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

A dirty and trash-strewn bathroom in Norfolk, Virginia in February 2021. Some families don’t even have that. Source – Yitzilitt, CC SA 4.0.

When they need to go to the bathroom, more than 1 million people in the United States must turn to chamber pots, school showers, and public toilets. Almost half a million households do not have basic indoor plumbing, new research has shown.

While some rural and indigenous communities have never had indoor plumbing, you may be surprised to learn that the vast majority of Americans “plumbered” live in urban areas – with one in three households in 15 Cities across the country, according to research by the Plumbing Poverty Project (PPP).

The Plumbing Poverty Project is a joint venture between King’s College London and the University of Arizona. The work is based on the community surveys of the US Census Bureau. The full analysis was released Monday in association with the Guardian as part of a long-running series exposing America’s water crisis.

The researchers found that even in some of the richest cities in the country, renters and people of color were more likely to live in a house with no running water or flush toilets. The situation is particularly dire in San Francisco, California and Portland, Oregon.

Both cities are considered to be advanced technology centers on the west coast with a growing wealth gap and a homeless crisis. And San Francisco has more billionaires than any other metropolis except New York and Hong Kong, according to Wealth-X.

In San Francisco, nearly 15,000 families live in homes without adequate plumbing. That number has increased 12 percent since 2000, while the median price of a home has tripled. The data also showed that while black Americans make up 9 percent of the city’s population, they make up 17 percent of households with no indoor plumbing.

Captive twilight real estate photography captured in Cleveland, Ohio as part of real estate and corporate virtual tours in 2020. Source – Captivlymedia, CC SA 4.0.

Here’s an example: In San Francisco, Rosa Ramirez and her two daughters lived in a studio apartment for $ 2,300 a month until recently. Yellow water was coming from the tap on the sink and the toilet could not be used because it was not connected properly; her landlord wouldn’t fix it.

The family went to a nearby donut shop or coffee shop to use the restroom. When the pandemic started, the doors were closed to them. “It was unbearable,” said Ramiréz.

“The history of sanitary poverty in San Francisco is inextricably linked with priceless housing, falling incomes, transformations in California’s post-recession rental sector, and racist prosperity gaps fueled by a kind of ‘anti-black urbanism’ that has either propelled blacks in San Franciscans precarious or out of the bay, ”said Katie Meehan, senior researcher at PPP and Professor of Environment and Society at King’s College London, according to The Hill.

Tenants in San Francisco make up less than half of households in the city’s metropolitan area, but nearly 90 percent of homes have no working plumbing, The Guardian reported.

The report also notes that cities like Milwaukee, San Antonio, Phoenix, Seattle, and Cleveland made little or no progress in improving plumbing problems between 2000 and 2017. All five of these cities have more than 3,000 households without proper plumbing.

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HALEDON, NJ (CBSNewYork) – A new, destructive TikTok craze leads teenagers to steal and damage property in schools.

From stealing school supplies to devastating bathrooms, students across the country are jumping on a TikTok viral trend.

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Parents and teachers can also quickly get a crash course.

“This phenomenon was completely unknown to me. Lo and behold, the very next day we experienced some form of slight vandalism, ”said Chris Wacha, Headmaster of Haledon Public School.

Wacha said the day after his son warned him about a challenge called “Devious Licks” last week, someone caused $ 400 water damage in the boys’ bathroom.

“It’s not good. They have to close that. They need parents of the children who come in and explain. This is serious business,” said parent Florencio Hernandez.

“There is a reaction for every action. So if you do something that is not cool, something not cool is going to happen to you, ”added Machanga Blackmon, mother.

In Connecticut, some school administrators are taking drastic action, joining Senator Richard Blumenthal in the state capital on Monday to call for a ban on TikTok users who have participated in the trend.

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“Theft and vandalism are literally glorified. The viral videos show the students who steal as heroes, ”said Blumenthal.

The social media site says it has already taken steps to stop the trend by removing content.

If you search for the hashtag “Devious Licks”, you will see a message saying “No results found”.

In Haledon, those responsible were disciplined. The superintendent said the key to preventing future vandalism lies in the children.

“I want them to go through the entire decision-making process, analyze and think independently,” said Wacha.

The process begins with parents talking to their children.

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Blumenthal said there have been over 94,000 of these viral videos nationwide in the past few months.

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A creepy handyman admitted hiding cameras in bathrooms in homes in Paramus and Wayne, New Jersey, police said.

Romeo Sanchez, 47, of West New York, was arrested on September 17 for invasion of privacy by Paramus police after a homeowner who hired him to install a window discovered a suspicious device in her bathroom in late August reported WABC.

The device, which police said was inserted into a bathroom wall, was later classified as a micro-camera with a memory card, the station reports.

The homeowner saw the device plugged into an electrical outlet in the bathroom and knew it was “not hers,” Paramus police officer Mark Pinajian told CBS New York.

The victim then saw clips on the device showing herself and her bathroom as well as another location, Pinajian said.

Investigators set out to track down Sanchez, a married father, who admitted to having the camera installed in the Paramus house – and claimed he intended to retrieve her when he returned to finish work, police said With.

The other location pictured on camera was a bathroom in a house in Wayne where Sanchez was also being hired for a job, police said.

No children were present in either house and there is no evidence that Sanchez distributed the video, CBS New York reported.

“As far as we can see, he’s not a licensed contractor,” said Pinajian. “He’s like a handyman doing little things and he’s been referred to other people. That’s how he got into business. “

Investigators are investigating Wayne’s home there, Paramus police said. Wayne police have not returned a message asking for comment on the case, NorthJersey.com reported.

Sanchez, who served up to a year in prison, has been released pending a trial, reports NJ.com.

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My first time in San Francisco will never forget looking for a place to live.

My husband and I saw a dizzying number of places that day, unsure of which neighborhood to live in, and mostly dazed with sticker shock at each new place. But the jaw-dropping prices weren’t what stood out the most that day – it was one of the first places we saw in Noe Valley. As an old Victorian apartment, I was immediately delighted with the bay window and high ceilings. Then I opened a hall closet door, which I assumed.

There sat a lonely pink toilet – the only one in a confined space. My confused reaction was evident. The real estate agent who showed us around knew we weren’t from here and immediately said, “It’s a shared bathroom.”

More than five years later, I’ve seen tons of shared bathrooms at friends’ homes, and most are just like the first ones I saw – no sink, with the sink and shower in a separate room next door. The occasional “lucky few” huddled or wall-mounted a small sink in a corner, but that was likely an addition to the tiny space in later years, said Bonnie Spindler, a real estate agent and “Victorian specialist” of San Francisco.

When most houses were built in the Victorian era, there was no toilet in the house at all as most people would still have used an outhouse and / or chamber pots. Indoor plumbing was just becoming the norm, so Bay Area residents may have installed their sinks and tubs years before adding an indoor toilet. Once they were able to add the toilet, it might make more sense to convert a nearby closet into a toilet room than to build it into the existing bathroom.

More likely, however, this is due to the Victorian era’s new obsession with hygiene. “The idea was to separate where you clean yourself and where you have bowel movements,” said Spindler. “You would have thought it would be most unclean to empty yourself in the same room that you take a bath and shave in.”

A shared bathroom in North Beach.

Ben Ramirez

Spindler also said that most toilets at the time did not have something called a “backflow preventer”, which prevents wastewater from flowing back through the toilet and onto the floor. Thus all incidents would have been limited to the small area. She said that the Victorians are also responsible for the proliferation of tile in bathrooms and kitchens as it is an easy-to-clean material.

Rob Thomson, president of the San Francisco Victorian Alliance, said Victorian-era residents were avid adopters of new technology, and there was no bigger story in the home than indoor plumbing in the second half of the 19th century. “This residential trend was compounded by the advent of consistent municipal water and sewer systems – these were the fiber optic data networks of the 1870s,” he said.

Open, multi-purpose floor plans like those common today were unknown. “In the houses, the Victorian and Edwardian San Franciscans were very aware that they should separate the space for different uses and users: double rooms, separate stairs and entrances for servants, and formal dining rooms played one role in both architecture and society special role, “said Thomson.

Shared bathrooms are particularly common in San Francisco, but they can also be found anywhere from Europe to Australia.

The Victorian and Edwardian San Franciscans were very conscious of separating the space for different purposes. The shared bathroom is a good example of this.

Caroline Smith

Modern home design has its own version of the split bathtub in the form of a water closet, although these are usually included in a larger bathroom. Many San Francisco homeowners choose to convert shared bathrooms into one large bathroom during a renovation, Spindler said.

But more than a hundred years later, many homeowners and landlords with these old San Francisco homes have chosen to keep the shared bathroom simply because it is often more convenient for families or roommates.

I did and I loved it. Had 2 roommates so it was almost like having 2 bathrooms – one could use the toilet while another is showering or brushing teeth. I was really a great setup.

– Jeffrey Jones (@ JeffreyJones63) February 8, 2021

Multitasking is great, and I also like it a lot when the toilet and its aerosolizing properties aren’t near the sink and shower, toothbrushes and towels and – you get the picture.

– Eugene Archibald (@Dzhena) February 8, 2021

Loved it. Only 1 bathroom for 3 roommates, but rarely waited for “important business”. Used the sink when someone showered.

– Christine Herron (@christine) February 8, 2021

Loved it, was the perfect setup during the parties, we could keep a keg in the bathtub.

– Sammy the dead rat @ (@gmonie) February 8, 2021

Keeping a barrel in the tub is also a great perk for sharing bathrooms.

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