#I could technically grill already because we built a roof over where it and the oven are
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I need these April showers to stop; we’ve already had enough rain for May flowers and I wanna fire up the grill and pizza oven! my khaki shorts are laying sadly in the corner waiting for Summer to arrive
also the town is flooded and even up here on the hill the rainwater is seeping in through the foundation into my bathroom
#I could technically grill already because we built a roof over where it and the oven are#but i wanna make ramp and morel pizzas so badly and the high humidity does not help the fire#vin if you’re reading this church st flooded again as well as the area behind pizza hut
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smoke and fire (epilogue II)
word count; 3193
summary; deep into your relationship, and still happy, there’s a bigger step on the horizon.
notes; please note that this is based two years after the events of the main series!
warnings; reference to arson, reference to injury.
“Tommy, where the hell are we? Why does it smell like burned wood?” You grinned, your vision blocked by the tie Thomas had used to cover your eyes, holding onto one of his hands tightly as he guided you up the pathway beneath your feet. “Seriously, I thought we were having a date night. You said we were going out!”
“We are out, technically.” He pressed a kiss to your cheek, your skin tingling a little where his lips had pressed, before he was slowing you down, bringing you to a stop, and his hand left yours. The sunlight that had been pocking through the tie was blocked, shadowed as Thomas came to stand in front of you. “It’s just not what you think. But we are on a date, and we can order some food out here later.”
“Where exactly is ‘out here’? Because we were driving for, like, an hour.”
“Okay, well, it wouldn't normally be that long. I got a little lost because I couldn’t use the SatNav.” He huffed, fingers smoothing over the knot on the back of your head and trying not to pull on your hair as he undid it carefully. You were buzzing with excitement, wondering where exactly it was that he’d brought you, and you blinked a little at the light burned ta your eyes, finally able to see again. Thomas had blindfolded you upon leaving the station after your shift, not wanting you to have any idea about where you were going, and it took you a moment to readjust. “You ready?”
“Totally ready.” You beamed, and Thomas nodded, dipping down to press a quick peck to your lips, before he was stepping out of your way. Staring up at the building for a second, your blinked once, and then twice, before your lips were pursing, head tipping to the side. You stared for another moment, before turning to look at Thomas. “We’re at a burned-up house from a call last month?”
“Yeah!”
“Yeah! Cool!” You faked his enthusiasm for a second, trying to understand where it was coming from. “Huh. Why?”
He rolled his eyes fondly, tucking the tie into his back pocket before taking your hand and tugging you up the steps. The doorframe was burned, the door pulled closed but unable to lock as it hung unevenly on its hinges, and Thomas pushed it open again carefully. “I thought you might want to look around? Can I show you around?”
You didn’t understand much, but you smiled, sensing his excitement in it, and nodding your head. “Yeah, Tommy, of course.”
You stepped in a little more, eyes flicking over it all. There was peeling wallpaper that was scarred with ash and black stains, burned away right down to the foundations in some places, and the ceilings were covered in soot. The floors creaked under your feet as you stepped in glass smashed and the shards stained, and it was unusual to see the remnants of a building like this without all the smoke and fire that usually came with it when you were on the job.
The first room looked like it was supposed to have wide doors, an entrance that would take double doors but they’d fallen down, ripped laces along the frame where they’d torn of, but the debris had been moved from inside of the house. The living room was beautiful, you couldn't deny it. There was a large fireplace against one wall, real log-burning with a chimney up to the roof and if you hadn't actually worked on the case, you’d have immediately put the large accessory down to the cause of the fire.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t. The reason this beautiful large house had burned down was stupid kids messing around with fireworks in the back garden of a house for sale, which was now completely destroyed. What would once have sold for over a million was barely worth a couple hundred thousand anymore, despite the beautiful neighbourhood it was in.
“This room is huge.” You mumbled, stepping a little further inside, and Thomas nodded. There was a file on one side, a place that was covered in old and destroyed bookshelves, a large windowsill beside it, and you could already picture it extended to make a little reading nook.
“Do you wanna’ see how it looked before? There were pictures on the real estate website, it was beautiful.”
You nodded, tuning to your boyfriend as he pulled out his phone, pulling up the pictures and swiping through them, Standing by his side, you looped an arm around his waist, leaning in slightly, and his arm went over your shoulders. Finally finding the right one, he positioned you both to be facing in the right direction, a set of large bay windows on one side that went out towards a decking that had been burned away.
In the photograph, the window had curtain rails and soft white curtains made of a thin kind of mesh, letting in the natural light as they hung over large glass doors. The walls were done up with a pale grey and white wallpaper, leaving it simply for the furnishings, but everything seemed to be in pale shades that made it all feel modern and elegant. Turning you both, he showed off the fireplace, decorated with old cobblestones and shale around the base that decorated it beautifully, before fading away into what had once been smooth oak wood flooring.
There were pictures on the wall at one end, and it reminded you of the wall Thomas had in his apartment, the one you had moved into almost a year ago, but his one was bigger, and looked like it could hold at least three times the quantity. There were couches laid out, surrounding a large television, and it was a huge area, a coffee table that looked like it was almost the size of a dining table.
Moving through to the kitchen together, you were even more taken aback by it. To one side was what was once a dining room, connected fully and open space, enough to seat a whole extended family, and you could only imagine the thanksgivings or the Christmas’, and you would be able to fit the whole squad into that room without trouble, without sitting in different rooms or connecting tables, all squeezing around the kitchen counters at Newt’s place or sitting in the tables, couches and floor like at Minho’s last Christmas.
There was space in the kitchen for an island in the centre, stools in front of it, and built-in ovens and fridges like at the station. There was also a set of large doors here, the glass broken, and you assumed this was where the fireworks had burst right though because there was a hole in the centre of the ceiling up into one of the rooms above.
“I saw this kitchen and I was immediately thinking about the size of it. Y’know, like, imagine the parties or the holidays, with a dining room like that and a kitchen like this I remember thinking it when we were putting out the flames, too.” He scratched at the back of his neck, looking around for a second, and you guided his face back to your own, leaning up to press a kiss to his lips. “Weird thing to think about when putting out a fire, I know.”
“I was thinking the same thing. Big kitchen and dining room, you’d actually be able to fit a family our size into it without trouble. It’s kinda’ wild to think about.”
He chuckled, nodding his head, and his hands lifted to cup your cheeks pulling you back in closer to him. His nose bumped against your own, dragging together for a second in sweet Eskimo kisses, before his lips were meeting your own. Pressing in softly, he was still smiling into the connection for the first few seconds, before his head was twisting to the side, one hand dropping from your face to your waist, smoothing around your lower back and pulling you in even closer.
Pressing up into him, your arms circled his neck, pulling him down to your level as his tongue soothed over your lower lip, and you parted them for him. He sighed, a breathy and delicate sound, before his fingertips were digging into your flesh, holding you tightly as he pulled you impossibly closer. Scratching lightly at the hairs along the base of his neck, he rumbled happily, chest vibrating under your own with the noise and your fingers tangled a little more, and you pulled back. He whined, chasing after you for a few seconds, before letting you go, his forehead resting against yours instead.
“Your hairs getting kinda’ long.”
“You don’t like it?” He teased, and you shook your head, slightly kiss-swollen lips puckering for a second to press to his own again, a series of short pecks, before you pulled back.
“I like it, but you always complain about how sweaty your head gets in your helmets when your hair is too long.” He sighed, knowing you were right, and shrugging it off with a ‘hmph’.
“You know, talking of parties, there’s this amazing outdoor area. It's huge, there’s the decking from the living room and a patio outside here, there’s a big tree at the end of the garden and this amazing barbecuing area.” You nodded along, eyes narrowing on him again as he got excited over it, walking you a little closer to the broken doors so that you could see out.
He was right, there was a tall oak tree at the end of a huge garden, a fire pit made in the middle surrounded by beer cans and wrapped from where you assumed the teens who’d started the fire had been messing around, but with a little love and care, it would be all fixed up. The patio would seat big outdoor furniture, and you could picture a smaller firepit in the centre for later summer nights, as well as the proud barbecuing area Thomas had mentioned, built into the stonework with different levels and multiple grills.
“What do you think?”
“What do I think of this house?” You echoed, and he nodded slowly, almost hesitantly, before you took a deep breath, staring back out to the garden.
“I think it’s beautiful. Or, it was. Has a lot of potential to be incredible again.” You didn’t know much, you’d barely seen half of the lower floor and none of the upper ones. “I haven’t seen much of it, but what I have seen is nice.”
“Well, y’know, there’s big bedrooms. The master bedroom is amazing, it has an en-suite with a shower and a bathtub, a big closet and huge windows for natural light with a little miniature balcony outside of it. There’s a study down here which would make a really nice snug or cosy room, it didn’t get touched as much by the fire so you can get a better image of it when I show you. There are so many bedrooms, seriously, like, six bedrooms. There’s an attic, and a basement, and-
“Tommy, why are we here?” There was something hidden under his voice, his words trailing off after you’d interrupted him and his hand sank back to his sides from where he’d been making gestures with them, his shoulders slumping a little.
“It’s a cool house, I thought you might want to see inside of it! Especially since you and Newt didn’t get to do much when we were here, there wasn’t anybody injured, so you were just left waiting around, and I wanted to share it with you.”
“There’s more to it than that, I know I’m not great at picking up on signals, Tommy, but I’d like to think I got pretty good at reading you over this last year or so.” You studied him for a second, and he shrunk a little more under your gaze, before huffing out a laugh.
“Almost two years, now.” You placed a hand on his shoulder, squeezing to reassure him, before sliding up to sit on his neck, letting your thumb brush over his pulse point and calm him. His hand landed on your wrist, following as he trailed it up your arm to find your hand, pulling it away from his body and linking your fingers together instead. He kissed along your knuckles, remaining in silence, but you felt like you were drowning in the nervous tension he was letting off.
“Talk to me, Tommy.”
“Okay.” He let out a shaky breath, nodding his head before looking back up to you. “Well, you and Newt were talking after the case, right? He said Derek lived in a neighbourhood like this when he was younger, and that you had always wanted to live in an area like this. Well, when I was in here, I kept thinking about how beautiful this place was, and how big it was. The whole squad could fit in, and it would be so comfortable. This is the sort of place you spend the rest of your life in, right? I was looking through it all and doing a sweep and because I knew it was empty my mind was wandering. I just thought about how I would never normally be able to afford a place like this, and how the value would go down so much because of the fire, and..”
“Oh, wow, are you thinking of buying this house?” You couldn't hide the shock in your voice no matter how much you tried, and Thomas chuckled as he watched you look around, with a little more interest now as you took it all in with more attention to detail.
“Well, yeah. Kind of. It’s only a thirty-minute drive from the house so it’s pretty much the same commute as right now, and-” He huffed, nostrils flaring a little as he thought, and you raised your brows at the way he suddenly went quiet, the gears in his head visibly turning as his brows furrowed a little. “Look, I’m struggling here, I’m nervous, okay?”
“Thomas, you’re getting all panicky.” You whispered, pulling him in a little, and leaning up. He was eagerly awaiting the kiss you gave him, body relaxing a little as you balanced yourself with one hand, thumb playing with his own where the other was still held by one of his, and he didn’t let you go when he pulled back. Instead, his head dipped lower, pulling you in and wrapping an arm around your waist, needy kisses that left you breathless as he held onto you, tension melting away and becoming a little hazy instead as he clung to you.
“I’m just,” His teeth nibbled a little on your lower lip, panting slightly as he pulled back for breath, and you were stealing more kisses through gasping laughs as you tried to get enough air, smiling and teasing as you did. “I’m just trying to ask you,” He was cut off again, your mouth meeting his and he laughed against your lips, his hand leaving your own to hold onto you more, fingers tickling over your sides lightly as you laughed into the kiss. “Cut it out, I’m calm now, but I have to say this while I have the courage.”
His cheeks were flushed when you pulled back, hair a little messy and lips a darker shade than usual, and he licked over them as he stared down at you, undoubtedly staring at an equal messy composure. “You have my undivided attention. Go right ahead.”
“I remember that a while ago, we were lying in bed and talking about things we wanted that we never thought would happen, and you said you’d always wanted to rebuild a house. Renovate it, was the word you used. You wanted to make it your own, but you never thought you’d afford it. And, on a paramedic and a firefighters wage, we’d never be able to afford a place like this, normally.”
“We?” You echoed, a soft smile on his lips as your heart thudded in his chest. You knew what it meant, it was a heavy commitment to buy a house with someone, living together was one thing but buying a house was basically a step away from a proposal, it was an investment in a long term future together, and you felt like you could barely breathe. Your chest felt tight, shock and adrenaline racing through you and you stiffened slightly, fear lacing itself into Thomas’ features once again. “You, uh, you want us to buy a house together?”
“Maybe..” He sighed, a little timid again now. “It was just a thought, because it’s such a beautiful house, and as soon as I saw it I was thinking about things you’d said, and it just seemed perfect for us, but if you don’t like it then that’s fine, just don’t shut down on me, okay?” He rested a hand over your cheek, thumb brushing softly, and his lips pressed a soft kiss toy our forehead. “Just tell me you hate the idea, but don’t go silent, alright?”
You nodded, letting him kiss your temple too, before pulling back to look at you. “I, um..”
“Hate it?”
“Love it, actually.” You choked on the words slightly, feeling a little breathless as they were wheezed out, and Thomas paused. He looked sceptical, shaking his head slightly, and you tried your best to smile. “No, I do. I really do. I’m just terrified, okay? I’m not good at long-term commitment, I’m scared, but I want it. With you.”
“Really? Because I know it’s a big step, and I know what it means, I’m not blind. It’s buying a house together, so if you wanna’ freak out or you don’t want it, that's okay, just tell me, alright? Because I’m in this with you for the long haul and you’ve got to know that by now, it’s not a secret, so I can wait until you’re ready.” The words sped from him, a little too fast, and you shook your head, leaning up to press your forehead to his.
“I’m really, totally sure. I just hadn't thought about it, okay? I was caught off guard, I’m not much one to think about the future, it doesn’t come naturally to me. But when I do think about my future, you’re always there.”
“Always?” He teased, twisting his head to brush his lips with your own.
“Every single time.” You gave him a quick kiss, a happy hum to accompany it and he relaxed once he let you sink back. “So, why don’t we order some pizza to be delivered here, and you can show me around some more. You said there were lots of bedrooms, which is good, because you know Newt will want his own.”
“So, we’re buying a house?” He looked a little unsteady, eyes glossing over, and he sniffed lightly. You matched him, nodding your head and beaming as the emotions overwhelmed you.
“Yeah, baby, we are.”
#thomas the maze runner#thomas#thomas x reader#thomas/reader#firefighter!tommy#ff!tommy#smoke and fire#SAF#dylan o'brien#dylan obrien#dylan obrien x reader#dylan obrien/reader#dylan obrien thomas#dylan obrien the maze runner
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OptimusPhillip Reviews 29: Transformers Generations Chromedome (Titans Return)
Welcome back to OptimusPhillip Reviews Pride Month Edition. Yesterday, we took a look at Titans Return Legends Rewind, and today we’ll be taking a look at his partner, Titans Return Chromedome.
Vehicle Mode
Like the G1 toy, Chromedome transforms into a retro-futuristic sports car. Looking at pictures, however, this version seems to be a much more streamlined take. The arms are now tucked away, and the rear is stretched out some to make for a more aerodynamic shape. The part that I really like are the wheels, they’re beefed up quite a bit and look like they could catch some serious traction. It helps that they’re cast in translucent plastic, which reminds me of the Velocitronians from Cybertron. It gives me a nice bit of nostalgia.
The color scheme is faithfully adapted, too. Primarily done in brown, tan on the rear and sides, with red on the roof. The hood deco of the original is updated, and even the headlight and grill stickers are fully molded. There’s also some new details, like the Autobot symbol on the hood and the red stripes on the quarter panels. The only real problems I have are the fact that the rear section is unpainted, and the random strip of brown on the side, though the latter is due to an unpaintable part, so I can accept it.
The figure comes with two guns, both cast in red. However, neither resemble the twin guns from the original toy. Instead, he comes with a Titan Master chair gun, and a red version of the rifle that came with Titans Return Blurr. Both have standard 5mm pegs, which allow them to mount on either fender, and the chair gun can mount on the roof via a pair of tabs. You can also mount the rifle on top of the chair gun in two configurations. There’s a port on top of the chair gun’s barrel that can accommodate the rifle’s handle, allowing a Titan Master to man it, and there’s also a hole behind the rifle’s handle that can attach to the peg at the rear of the chair gun that makes a cleaner looking gun emplacement. And of course, you can open up the cockpit to remove the Titan Master Stylor.
Titan Master Stylor
Technically, Stylor is a redeco of Hyperfire, the Titan Master that came with Blurr. However, the mold was clearly designed with Stylor in mind, so I’m inclined to call this a predeco. His torso is cast in brown, with all extremities cast in red. This is a marked improvement over the Firedrive Titan Master I already reviewed, which was cast entirely in gray, but sadly the figure is still unpainted. Given that there’s already multiple plastic colors in play, I’d be inclined to accept the lack of paint if it weren’t for the lack of paint on the face. As it is, it’s still a bit of a bummer.
He has standard Titan Master posability: ball jointed neck, ball jointed shoulders with limited outward range, and conjoined legs that bend forward at the hip and both ways at the knee. He also has ports on his feet to allow him to mount on Titan Master pegs, which are a very tight fit on my copy. Weirdly enough, though, there are no pegs on Chromedome himself. In fact, there isn’t even a slot in the cockpit for Stylor’s heel peg, so he just floats freely in the driver seat. He can, however, tab into the chair gun and ride on the roof that way, so you aren’t completely without options.
Conversion
One thing I like about Chromedome is that you actually have to open his cockpit to transform him. While subtle, this does help to streamline the conversion process to a point where I wish more Headmasters did this. At this point, however, the conversion might start feeling familiar to owners of the Combiner Wars Dead End mold. While the two don’t share any parts, they are built around the same transformation scheme. Arms pop out to the sides, shins open outwards to allow the legs to unfold, and the hood collapses down into a backpack. I personally don’t have any experience with the Dead End mold, so I can’t say for certain how repetitive this feels, but from what I’ve heard it’s pretty much the same, except of course the combiner peg is replaced with a Titan Master connector. So depending on your perspective, this is either a time-tested design that has proven effective... or it’s an tired and overused design that’s you’re probably sick of by now.
Robot Mode
Much like Rewind, Chromedome’s robot mode is based heavily on his IDW appearance, specifically his appearance in the Shadowplay arc. The only major differences I see are sacrifices for the sake of the car mode, like the tan shins and all the vehicle kibble. Aside from that, it’s mostly just slight variations in color, like the silver on the torso and the brown hands. I really like the look of this robot mode, it feels like a solid update to the G1 design. I could complain about the fact that the chest isn’t actually the car hood, but this is one of the cases where I think faux parts improve the look of a figure. About the only complaint I have is that the arms look a little short. I would’ve liked if they could extend out a bit, but this is probably a limitation of the original engineering.
The IDW influence is most visible on this figure’s head sculpt. Unlike the 1987 design, this Chromedome has a visor instead of separate eyes, and the face in general is much less boxy. I personally really like this head design. It’s very expressive, and looks really good next to Rewind. If you’d rather have a G1 style head, however, you do have options. The Takara Legends release of the figure had a retooled head to better match his appearance in the Headmasters anime, as well as a more G1 accurate paint job. The same head and a similar paint job can also be found on the more recent Retro Headmasters release. Personally, however, I’m a sucker for the IDW style head, so I’m happy with the version I got.
Articulation-wise, Chromedome’s neck is on a ball joint with a nice range of motion that lets him emote wonderfully. His shoulders are on ball joints, and those ball joints are themselves hinged for transformation. Mushroom peg bicep swivels are here, as well as 90 degree elbows. Waist swivels for the transformation, hips are on ball joints, and the knees bend 90 degrees. No useful ankle joint, but the feet are sculpted for a more natural A-stance.
In robot mode, Chromedome can still hold both of his weapons separately, though the chair gun has to be flipped over and cannot carry a Titan Master. They can also be combined together, but he can only hold it in one configuration. You can still use the side pegs on his shoulders to let a Titan Master sit in the chair gun, though, or to use the alternate configuration. I prefer to have him hold them separately, though. I just think it looks better that way.
Final Thoughts
Titans Return Chromedome is an amazing figure. While the engineering is recycled from a previous mold, everything about him feels distinctly Chromedome. The car mode is familiar yet streamlined, and the robot mode is almost dead on to his IDW body. And of course, he looks right at home next to his devoted partner, Rewind. If you aren’t sick of the Combiner Wars Dead End design yet, I would highly recommend getting this figure in some form, and with the Retro release currently on store shelves, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find him for a decent price. Personally, however, I’m partial to the IDW version, especially if you plan on getting him and Rewind together. Because, let’s be honest, these two belong together. Happy Pride Month!
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Who’s The Hero of Your Story?, Ch. 10
AO3 Link
The next day, Jemma headed back to the coffee shop. She had mixed up the compound she made from Raina’s sample with some general antiseptics and moisturizers and made a cream out if it to give to Daisy. Whatever got into the wound from Raina would hopefully be blocked by it and allow the scratches to heal.
Daisy’s scratches looked even worse today. Hopefully this worked.
Without a word, Jemma held the tiny jar out to Daisy.
“Thank you,” Daisy said, taking the jar with a smile, “What exactly is it?”
Jemma shrugged. “Just a little something I came up with in the lab.”
Daisy snorted. “So you’re getting a PhD in making face cream?”
“Biochemistry, actually. Mostly focusing on the various uses of genetically altered plants,” Jemma replied.
“Huh,” Daisy muttered inspecting the jar, “How do I know your lab experiment won’t kill me?”
“I guess you just have to trust me.”
Daisy smirked. “Alright, I’ll give it a try. I know where to find you if I suddenly start sprouting leaves.”
Jemma blanched. “I’m sorry?”
Daisy waved the little jar in the air. “This has mutant plants in it, right? If I turn green, I’m gonna be annoyed.”
Jemma huffed out a nervous laugh. “Right, well, that shouldn’t happen. I, uh, have to meet with someone in the lab. Bye!���
Jemma scurried out the front door and took a few deep breaths. She thought for a moment she had blown her cover and Daisy figured out who she was. Telling Daisy about her research was probably a bad idea. She would be able to figure out who was behind the super villain who had a mutant plant attached to themselves if she really thought about it.
Jemma’s phone dinged with a new email. It was from Raina, requesting a meeting in two days to discuss 'her next extracurricular project.' Jemma took another deep breath. She could only hope that they had changed their minds about killing Quake and this would be a meeting about a symposium for her to attend.
Jemma rolled her eyes at herself. As if her life could ever be that normal.
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Jemma checked back in with Daisy the day of her meeting. She made sure to go in the lull between the morning rush and the lunch rush so she would have time to grill Daisy on the compound she gave her. That was definitely the only reason she was checking in today. Not because every time she talked to Daisy, her chest felt fluttery and her vines started doing a weird, wiggly dance.
Still, Jemma had to wait in line behind a lady with an expression like she had just bit into something sour berate the manager while Daisy stood next to him and texted, looking thoroughly unimpressed.
When the lady was finally satisfied with her yelling and moved on, Jemma sidled up to the counter.
“Well, you’re looking much better,” she commented, noting Daisy’s scratches. In the two days since she had been in, the red, inflamed cuts had faded into tiny pink lines across Daisy’s cheekbone. They probably wouldn’t even scar at this point.
“Yeah, whatever you gave me was magic,” Daisy replied. “What was in that, by the way?”
Jemma shrugged. “Just a bit of general antiseptic and some experimental extracts. Nothing too mysterious.”
“Huh. Strange.”
Jemma frowned. “Why?”
“Well, at first I thought I was having a bad reaction to it, because it felt really weird and tingly. And then for awhile I couldn’t use my…arms. They just kind of felt weird, but it wore off pretty quickly,” Daisy said with a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Then, Jemma saw the purplish bruises up Daisy’s arms and gasped. “What happened? That didn’t happen after you used the compound I gave you, did it?”
“What? No!” Daisy tugged her sleeves down over her hand. “Well, yes technically, but it didn’t cause it. I, uh, took a kickboxing class the other night and got my ass handed to me.”
Jemma eyed Daisy. Maybe the compound blocked her powers as well as whatever got into her scratches from Raina. Maybe the blocking of Daisy’s powers directed them back into herself as opposed to out, causing the bruises.
“Well, at least your cuts are healed, so you don’t need to use it anymore. I didn’t realize there would be such strong side effects,” Jemma muttered.
“Hey, it worked. I can’t complain about the side effects too much,” Daisy said. “Maybe you’ll let me buy you a drink sometime as a thank you.”
Jemma smiled, in spite of everything inside her saying don’t encourage her. “I—“
Her phone chirped a reminder about her meeting with her advisors in ten minutes. And she was an eight minute walk from the campus.
“Shoot, I’m going to be late for my meeting. I—I have to go, I’m sorry. I’ll talk to you later?” Jemma called on her way out the door. She didn’t pause for Daisy’s reply. It was probably best she didn’t see Daisy’s expression because she was sure Daisy would just think Jemma was blowing her off.
Unfortunately, she would have to worry about Daisy later, because, if she was late, her advisors were going to kill her.
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Jemma skidded into Raina’s office with two minutes to spare. She got a raised eyebrow from Quinn, since normally, Jemma was a solid five and a half minutes early. Since Garrett still wasn’t there, no one commented, though.
Garrett sauntered in three minutes late, earning him a glare from Raina and an exasperated eye roll from Quinn. Great, so everyone’s in a good mood already.
“Now that everyone has elected to show up—” Raina shot another glare at Garrett, who seemed unperturbed, “—we have another issue to attend to: Quake is still alive.”
“You don’t have to remind me of that,” Garrett grumbled. Jemma noticed then that he had a black eye and bandages wrapped around the half of his arm that hadn't been amputated.
Jemma fidgeted in her seat, before she realized that none of them were looking at her.
“Apparently, our initial try has failed somehow, so we’re back to the drawing board,” Raina growled.
Jemma frowned. “I’m sorry, but what was the initial attempt?” She knew she wasn’t included in all the trio’s plans, but since she was originally given this task, she figured they would have let her know if there was a change of plans.
Raina sighed. “One of the only good things to come out of my thorns is that they’re tipped with a low-potency venom. Anything I scratch, within a few days, will burn, itch, and eventually, shrivel up and die. Somehow, Quake got scratched, but didn’t get affected, as Garrett learned last night.”
Jemma’s stomach sank as Garrett recounted his latest altercation with Quake. She didn’t realize that those infected scratches were part of a conscious attempt on Daisy’s life. When she thought of Daisy’s bright smile every morning, Jemma found it hard to feel guilty about interfering. Unfortunately, they weren’t having this meeting just to talk about one failed attempt.
“Simmons,” Raina spoke up, interrupting Garrett’s graphic story. “You know what this means?”
Jemma gulped. She had a feeling that she did.
“Good. You’re Option Two and we’re running out of time for more options. We’ve got big plans coming up and we can’t have Quake getting in the way before we’ve gotten started,” Raina finished.
Jemma was tempted to ask about the 'big plans,' but her throat felt like it was closed up and her mind was reeling with what they were asking her to do.
Quinn spoke up. “You have one week.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Apparently, her advisors didn’t trust her to come up with a plan in a week, since, two days later, Jemma got a notice of another meeting. Also, a 6-inch long dagger mysterious appeared in the lab with a holster that would snap perfectly onto the belt Fitz built in to her bodysuit.
Jemma quickly tucked it into a drawer and tried to forget it was there.
The next day, she went up to Quinn’s office. The whole trio was present, but Raina was, unusually, sitting off to the side with Quinn, giving Garrett the run of this meeting. Garrett laid out a blueprint of a government building downtown that would be their (Jemma’s) stage.
With a marker, he drew X’s all over the building’s access points and security checkpoints, as well as where valuable documents were stored. She wasn’t actually going in to take anything; she was just causing enough panic and noise to summon Quake.
“—And then, once you barricade the door, she’ll Supergirl her way to the roof and BAM!” Garrett slapped the table dramatically causing Jemma to nearly fall out of her seat. “If you’re lucky, maybe a news chopper will be there at that point to catch the finishing blow on camera. Then, no one will ever mess with us again.”
Jemma felt sick. Like she was about to be physically ill. She was sure if she looked in a mirror right now, she wouldn't be able to distinguish the color of her face from her vines.
To disguise this fact, she just nodded along to what Garrett said without a word. Her mind raced through thousands of possibilities of ways to get out of this whole arrangement. All of them ended in death: hers, Fitz’s, her family’s, hundred of stranger’s.
Quake’s.
She couldn’t. But she also had to.
This was the point of no return. So far, she had only robbed a few people and caused some destruction of property. But murder? That was something she could never come back from once done. She would be a super villain now and always.
She eyed the framed diplomas on Quinn’s wall. Was it worth this? Jemma knew if she backed out of this and somehow didn’t end up dead, there was no way she could start another doctorate anywhere else. She would be blacklisted from every school in the world. How would she continue to do her research, to solve problems?
To make the world a better place.
That was why she wanted to go to this school in the first place. She wanted to solve problems in the world in whatever way she could. Her research was supposed to minimize bad things in this world. How could she do that if she was working for people who aimed to create so much bad?
“We’re really counting on you for this, Simmons,” Raina piped up. “We’ve got big things in the works and we can’t put them off anymore.”
This was the second time Raina had brought up their 'big plans.' If Jemma wasn’t already staring at the blueprint of the most abhorrent thing she could think of, she would be inclined to ask what her role would be in those plans. As it was, she couldn’t stomach knowing who else was getting hurt or robbed or killed while she sat back and did nothing.
She thought of Fitz down in their private lab, pounding out as many projects as he could. She thought of the burly security guards that led them to the lab the first day and knew, despite Garrett’s assurance, that they could access the lab whenever they wanted and do whatever they wanted with no witnesses.
She thought of Daisy. A virtual stranger to Jemma, but another good-hearted person just trying to make the world slightly less evil.
She didn’t know if it was intentional or not, but Jemma suddenly realized that she was sitting in the lowest chair in the room. Garrett towered over the desk in front of her. Raina was now leaning against the doorframe. Quinn was hovering by the windows.
All eyes were on Jemma and all exits were blocked. She was physically and metaphorically trapped.
“So?”
“I’ll do it.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The designated day finally showed up. Jemma spent the day frantically testing and retesting her plants, hoping that maybe they wouldn’t actually be ready and The Plan would have to be postponed.
Unfortunately, the one time she wanted failure, Jemma got success. Her plants were responding perfectly to everything she wanted them to do. She wondered if she could get away with lighting them on fire and pretending it was an accident.
That afternoon, the two plants were carefully transferred to nondescript containers and transported to the roof of the building Jemma was supposed to infiltrate.
She spent the rest of the day avoiding contact with anyone. She didn’t want to see Fitz because he would ask for updates on Jemma’s super villain activities and Jemma didn’t think she could manage lying to him right now.
She briefly considered making a stop at the coffee shop, but that thought was quickly thrown out. She knew if she had to make polite conversation with Da— with her target— the last bit of her resolve would crumble.
Jemma camped out in her apartment until it was nearing dusk and then suited up. She slid the dagger out of the sock drawer she had moved it to once the plan came together and snapped it onto her belt. It wasn't overly large, but the weight of it suddenly felt like it would drag Jemma into the ground.
She tugged on a hoodie and sweatpants over her suit and slid out the fire escape toward the roof.
Right on time, Quinn’s helicopter appeared and hovered low enough that she could grab on and pull herself up.
The first of many horrible plans of this evening happened right away. As soon as they approached the building, Quinn handed her a rope that was tethered to one of the handles in the interior of the helicopter and given a three-second countdown.
On three, she jumped.
Keep your feet straight out as soon as you jump. If the rest of your body hits the window first it’s gonna hurt, Garrett’s voice echoed in her mind.
She clung to the rope with all her might as she swung through the air. In the split second before she hit the window, she looked toward the ground a dozen stories below her. She didn’t have time to worry about the height before her feet were crashing through the nearest window.
Entering the building on one of the middle floors will limit the amount of security you have to bypass and shorten the distance you have to cross to get to the roof.
Jemma let the rope slip out of her hands as she tumbled through the window.
Jemma hissed as she felt a sharp sting in her hands. A thin cut stretched across her palm from landing on all the broken glass. She was pretty sure she felt a matching one on her cheek. This was one of the many ways Jemma could tell this plan was entirely concocted by Garrett; he was more concerned with style than what was considered practical. Yet another reason why this was the worst plan Jemma had ever been involved in.
Outside the window, Quinn’s helicopter sped away. At the other end of the hall, Jemma heard panicked voices and the thunder of footsteps rounding the corner.
Before they made it into her line of sight, Jemma pulled out a device stolen from Fitz and slapped it on the keypad on the nearest door. It whirred angrily until the keypad flashed red and the floor’s alarm sounded. That ought to attract some attention.
The first group of guards was small, only having three. Jemma lunged towards them, landing a punch to the first one’s nose and knocked him back a few paces. The other two spread out as much as they could in the narrow hallway.
The second tried to grab her wrist, but she slipped out of his grasp and kicked him in the knee. The third managed to get behind Jemma and loop his arms under hers to try to immobilize her. One of her vines snapped around his neck and squeezed just tight enough that he panicked and released her to try to claw it off. Once free, she ducked down and flung him into the second guard and knocked them both out cold.
The first guard made a lunge for Jemma again. She jumped over the unconscious forms of the other two guards and snapped a vine around the first’s wrist before he could move.
Quake monitors police dispatch in her free time. That’s how she always knows where to find us.
“Change your radio to the frequency of the police dispatchers,” Jemma commanded. The guard’s eyes went blank and he reached for his radio. “Now, call for backup.”
“This is Officer Jones of the Federal Building, requesting immediate backup—“
“Sound a little more distressed,” Jemma whispered. His voice was rather deadpan and didn’t sound too urgent.
“—requesting immediate backup.” the guard’s voice kicked up an octave. “There is a powered intruder, repeat: powered intruder.”
Once the call went out, Jemma pulled off the guard and he fell to the ground. She found the stairs to the next floor up and sprinted up them.
She only had one more floor to ascend before reaching the roof and this one had a larger guard presence. Still, Jemma’s intense training with Scarlotti seemed to be holding out and she managed to disarm them long enough to slip into the next stairwell. It helped that she had around 20 limbs to work with.
She barricaded the stairwell doors and headed to the roof. There was only one access point to the roof and it was through this door, so she shouldn’t have any unwelcome intruders.
Once she passed through the door to the roof, she snapped another one of Fitz’s devices to it to instantly weld the door shut, like it had at the bank.
Now, all she could do was wait.
The sun was just setting on the western horizon, casting everything in a purple and orange glow. The clouds shifted slowly, giving the impression of a watercolor painting coming to life. She could see the entire city and even some of the outlying suburbs. Jemma would have admired the view if she wasn’t focused completely on what she came here to do.
She saw plants 3.1 and 3.2 tucked into boxes the same color and shape of the vents on the roof. If she didn’t know what to look for, she would have been none the wiser that they were even out of place.
Jemma fished out the tiny electrodes she designed and stuck them to her temples. She concentrated on experimentally moving the vines of the plants across the roof from her. It was much more difficult than moving the ones on her back, which acted more like an extra set of limbs. These new ones were more like moving puppets with strings made out of slinkys.
When she was confident they were obeying her thoughts, Jemma tucked them back away and waited.
The distant sound of police sirens was all Jemma could hear from this height. All the security guards were still stuck a floor below her, so she couldn’t hear what they were doing to try to break down the door. Jemma hoped that maybe Daisy would be taking a night off from being Quake and wouldn’t show up. It wouldn’t be Jemma’s fault if she couldn’t complete her mission then.
Unfortunately, fate was not on Jemma’s side and she saw a shadow streak up the side of the building. The roof trembled as Quake slowed her descent. She landed and her eyes found Jemma straightaway.
Quake frowned slightly, more in confusion than anger. “Really? You graduated from jewel thief to, what, stealing people’s mortgages?”
Jemma rolled her eyes. Just a few more feet.
“So, where are the rest of your cronies? I thought you were all in this together?” Quake teased. She strolled a few steps forward. Just a little closer.
“They’re taking the night off,” Jemma replied. “This job is only for me.”
“Really? Surprised they trust you that much. They don’t seem to give you anything important to do. It’s almost like they don’t treat you as part of the team,” Quake said.
That much was true. Except in this instance. Quake took a few more steps. Perfect.
“So, what are you really here for?” Quake asked, sounding bored.
Jemma locked eyes with Quake. “You.”
Plants 3.1 and 3.2 snapped to life. Vines coiled around Quake’s elbows. Next, they wrapped around her knees, locking them together and forcing Quake to her knees. A sick part of Jemma’s mind thought she liked Daisy in this position, but she pushed it away.
“Impressive,” Quake murmured. She scrunched up her face in concentration and then hissed in pain. She flexed her hands and glared in confusion.
“They’re coated with a compound that temporarily blocks your powers. I wouldn’t try to use them or you’ll just hurt yourself,” Jemma informed her. She was hoping to sound aloof and in charge, but she genuinely didn’t want to cause Daisy any pain. She would be doing enough of that shortly, anyway.
Quake suddenly looked concerned. “Okay, that’s new. At least this gives me time to talk to you without having to beat you up first.”
Jemma narrowed her eyes and sauntered across the roof towards Quake.
A distant boom drew both Quake’s and Jemma’s attention. A few blocks away, a cloud of smoke was clearing from another skyscraper. Police cars swarmed the area below it and, above, Jemma recognized the Quinn helicopter that dropped her off dangling a rope down for the forms of Raina and Garrett to climb. Garrett appeared to have a large bag of something tucked under his arm. Jemma could practically hear his maniacal cackling from here.
Jemma frowned. They hadn’t mentioned doing another job tonight. They said they would be on standby to come swoop in early in case anything went south for Jemma. Instead, they were using her as a distraction, to both temporarily and permanently get rid of their nemesis.
Daisy growled and squirmed against the vines restraining her. She snorted when she saw Jemma’s face. “Wow, must be rough to not be included in the big plans. They’ve really got you in the minor leagues still.”
Jemma glared. Daisy continued when Jemma didn’t stop her. “Listen, if you’re trapped or you don’t want to work with those guys, you don’t have to. I work with an organization that helps people like you and me. They can help you and protect you from whatever you’re caught up in. You have a choice.”
Jemma paused. That was surprising. She always pegged Quake as the solo vigilante-type who never needed help from anyone. Though this ‘organization’ she mentioned could just as easily be the police.
Something nudged Jemma’s hand, but she ignored it, wanting to hear more of what Quake had to say. Quake very obviously noticed it, though, and her eyes went wide.
Jemma looked down. One of her vines had retrieved the dagger from its holster and was helpfully trying to press it into her hand. Jemma rolled it into her palm and stared at it.
Quake noticed the glint of the metal now in Jemma’s hands and started struggling harder.
“Okay, seriously, you don’t have to do this,” Quake pleaded. “I can help you. We can help. You can use your powers to do something good.”
Jemma took a few steps closer to Quake. She had to do it. She couldn’t go back now. Her advisors would go after her family, her friends, anyone she loved. She had to do this one thing for them and then could worry about squirming out of their grasp.
Quake was visibly panicked. Jemma didn’t think she had ever seen so much fear in her eyes. “Okay, I know you said I don’t know what kind of person you are, but I know you’re not a bad person. I can see it in you. You haven’t hurt anyone yet, and that’s not an accident. Quinn, Raina, Garrett. They’ve hurt hundreds of people, but not you! Because you’re a good person!”
Quake--no, Daisy was practically begging at Jemma’s feet. Jemma tried to tune out her words. It was only making it harder for what she had to do.
Logically, it was so easy. Aim for the heart, the guts, the throat. Jemma knew the human body like the back of her hand. It would be so easy.
Emotionally, Jemma couldn’t separate herself from the person in front of her. Quake was trapped and at her mercy, but all Jemma could see was the friendly barista who flirted with her and gave her free snacks. Beyond that, Jemma could see the superhero, whose only crime was trying to make things a little less dark and to help people. Even people who had a knife pointed at her.
Jemma gripped the dagger a little tighter and glanced towards the building her advisors had just robbed. The helicopter had disappeared into the distance and not reappeared. Quinn was supposed to circle back and pick Jemma up once ‘the job’ was done, but it appeared she was on her own.
She looked back at Daisy. She had given up trying to squirm free and was staring at Jemma with wide, pleading eyes.
Jemma wondered if Daisy was right. Was she a good person? Does a good person compromise their entire moral compass for the approval of three terrible people?
Does a good person use their scientific mind and research to commit terrible crimes?
Jemma’s eyes fell on her plants, the ones she worked tirelessly to create for months. They were still tightly squeezing Daisy’s arms together. Was this really their intended purpose?
Jemma felt her resolve crumble into dust. This wasn’t her. No degree or fancy lab equipment or even a lifetime of charity work could make this go away if she went through with it.
The dagger slid out of her hands and clattered against the roof.
She turned and ran. Jemma sprinted towards the back side of the building and jumped.
There were no police cars on this side, as expected. The city’s police department really needed to work on their siege tactics.
But there was a gutter. Jemma shot out a vine and wrapped it around the gutter. She yanked herself closer to it and grabbed it tighter with her hands and all her vines to slow her descent.
Her hands burned from the friction, but she held on as tight as she could.
She hit the ground just slightly too hard to be comfortable, but immediately jumped to her feet and scanned the back alley. Her eyes found a sewer cover. It wasn’t ideal, but it would have to do for now.
She hoisted the cover, slipped into the sewer, and swung herself onto the concrete ledge.
Jemma slid to the ground and tried to catch her breath. Her hands were still shaking and, once her weight was off them, her knees felt wobbly too. She peeled the electrodes off her temples and tossed them into the scummy water rushing by. Hopefully, the plants would relax now and Daisy could get out of there before the police broke through to the roof.
Jemma buried her face in her hands and tried to breathe deeply. She was so screwed.
#skimmons#bioquake#jemma simmons/daisy johnson#Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.#who's the hero of your story fic#superhero au#supervillain au
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Classic Car Studio Builds a Model A that Stops Traffic
Rock stars. They’ve got the life. They go out, play some gigs, and then do famous people stuff with other famous people all the while making themselves more famous. That fame also allows them the opportunity to buy or build their dream rides.
That brings us here, to this 1930 Ford Model A, a bare metal street rod formally owned by bassist Dale Stewart of the band Seether. As the story goes Dale was no stranger to performance automobiles, having owned quite a few sport and exotic cars as well as his share of custom motorcycles. In the latter part of 2016, he contacted Noah Alexander, the owner of Classic Car Studio in St. Louis, Missouri about building a one-off special. This was not going to be a typical restomod or flat-out speed machine, but instead a chopped, channeled and blown ground-pounder that was to be enjoyed a mere twenty miles at a time. According to Noah, “He wanted something that was totally crazy, off the wall and completely unique that could be driven when he got back from touring, and that, if we came up with a great idea, we’d have full permission to just run with it and do whatever we want.”
And run with it they did.
Noah’s idea at first sounded simple. Build a raw, classic hot rod complete with the full playbook of Classic Car Studio touches. It was to be a mix of old school design and craftsmanship combined with a bit of steam punk flair, resulting in a car that would not only stop traffic, but summon conversation wherever it was driven. Before we dive into the Model A, though it’s important to learn a little about CCS owner Noah Alexander as a car enthusiast and business owner, as it will help everyone to better comprehend the genesis of the ’30 Ford.
For many of us the urge to play with cars started at a young age. Matchbox and Hot Wheels where the choice of many, and be it good or bad, the desire to keep playing only evolved as we matured. Sadly, one of the most difficult things a budding young car enthusiast can endure is the realization that those around them do not share in their passion – something Noah found at a young age.
“As a kid, I was always trying to get my Dad to buy a Mustang, Camaro, or a pickup truck, but he just drove what was appropriate and didn’t care about cars otherwise. My parents nurtured my other interests such as sports and music, and while they never neglected me in anyway, they never saw my enthusiasm for cars. It was never even on their radar,” Noah says. As a way to venture into the field, Noah would research local car shows, then jump on his bicycle and ride all over town in an attempt to be a part of them. While he did tinker with automobiles in high school, it wasn’t until after college that things started to fall into shape.
To those who want to enter this profession Noah states, “I always push tech schools. If you want to get into the car business and you like this hobby, get into engineering, go to a tech school, and learn the craft. It will only help you. I had a business and psychology degree with a minor in Spanish (laughs) and went through the whole school system because I thought that’s what I had to do. I cherish it in regards to the critical thinking skills and tools it’s given me that are important in life, but I would’ve been better off in vocational school. The problem was that I didn’t even know that was an option until I was already in the business. Back then it seemed like if you went to technical school, it was looked down upon. In hindsight, that is just ridiculous.”
To understand why this is relevant, we must go back to 2006 when Classic Car Studio wasn’t a hot rod shop, but, instead, was a purveyor of classic vehicles that catered to customers from around the world. At the time, buying and selling classic and exotic cars was a great business, as the economy was strong. When it started to go south in the late 2000’s, though, things changed. For starters, the bank for which Noah relied on was purchased by another bank, which subsequently failed, as did the credit line that was extended to him. That meant a halt on the buying of new inventory and a rush to sell everything they had. Rather than laying off workers and closing shop, Noah invested in the talents of his employees and modified his business plan to move Classic Car Studio forward in a new direction.
“We had a group of technicians that were into street racing, hot rods, and all that stuff, so we started building hot rods and custom cars. It started out of utter panic, which is crazy, but it ultimately became the best part of what we’re now doing, which is pretty damn cool,” says Noah.
In addition to building custom cars, what Classic Car Studio is doing now is Speed Is The New Black, a new show on Discovery. However, when first approached about the idea of doing a show, Noah was skeptical, “At first, it was kind of a foreign idea that I knew nothing about. With new things, you generally lose money, but we shot a sizzle reel and after two years, (laughs) it got picked up. My favorite part about it, beyond the great customers and the cool builds, is that we’ve gotten to meet everyone in the automotive industry because, all of a sudden, we became recognizable. Not only has this help gain a host of new customers, but new fans as well.”
Fast forward to the present and the build of this Model A; a build that combines a variety of styles and components. We’re talking about a 1930 Ford body with a Chrysler 331 HEMI that’s mated to a GM transmission and fed through a Ford rear end – got that? And while it may seem like a hodgepodge of parts, there is a method to the madness.
Noah explains, “this build was a breath of fresh air. We had the idea to build something really simplistic and visceral, while using the best parts we had access to. It’s stout, it does a burnout at quarter throttle and it’s just a wild ride. This is not the kind of vehicle you drive for 200-miles. Instead, it’s 20-miles and you’re done. There are a few cars out there that make you terrified when you drive them, which is the ultimate experience for me.. For a car to make you feel that way every time you drive it, I’ll chalk that up as a win.”
Let’s begin with the power plant. TRUTH: Everything, regardless of the year, make or model looks better with a blown HEMI. Rebuilt by Morley Performance of Fenton, Missouri, the 331 HEMI was outfitted with a Hot Heads Cam (for a wicked lope), a set of Holley Carburetors, MSD Ignition, and Speedway Motors Headers that are just loud enough to blow the eardrums out of both the driver and passenger. The whole setup is gnarly and gives the car a presence that’s akin to the scrappiest junkyard dog you’ve ever come across.
For cooling, a keen eye will notice the lack of a radiator behind that custom grille. Frankly that isn’t a surprise, as the industry doesn’t make many units for applications such as this. While mounting one up front was the original plan, it simply wasn’t efficient, nor did it work with the overall aesthetic of the car. Instead, they mounted a large, high-capacity unit out back, complete with twin electric fans that move 3,000-cfm apiece.
From there, the crew crafted a custom built chassis that in itself, is a work of art. With box tubing for stiffness and with the goal of enhanced drivability, the chassis was constructed so that the entire driveline would be housed up and inside the body. In fact look closely and you’ll notice that nothing hangs lower than the actual body of the car. After the engine was positioned, a TH700-R4 automatic transmission with a custom 10-inch converter was sourced from TCI Transmissions along with a John’s Industries Ford 9-inch rearend with 4.10 gears.
For suspension, the Model A utilizes a solid I-beam with radius arms and a reverse spring up front with a custom 4-link with Speedway Motors shocks and modified perches out back. The wheels are custom Classic Car Garage’s own “Smoothie” models shod with Firestone Deluxe Champion rubber from Coker Tire. The stance is aggressive and staggered with 18-inch front and 20-inch rims in the rear. Stopping is accomplished via a hidden Wilwood master cylinder and drum brakes at all four corners compliments of Speedway Motors. For those of you who scoff at the idea of drum brakes in this day and age, just remember what famed auto journalist Brock Yates once said, “The point of brakes in an emergency stop is to stop you once. If you have to make emergency stop after emergency stop, you have a problem worse than your brakes.”
With the mechanical bits out of the way, Noah and his team turned to the body. The guys at CCS started with an original 1930 Ford Model A shell that was stripped bare to find any imperfections. From there 5 inches was chopped from the roof with an additional 3 inches of channelling done to the floors and outer body so that the rear suspension would fit tucked up within a custom enclosure. Even though the body itself was chopped and massaged, the crew still managed to keep the integrity of the Model A intact. To aid with cooling, twin panels were cut into the rear to duct air through the radiator. They were scalloped fitted with brass rivets, a theme that can be seen throughout the vehicle.
Noah knew he wanted retain the wooden slats in the roof, so he turned to friend and woodworker Martin Goebel from Goebel & Co. Furniture, and together they came up with an innovative solution. They made a template that follows the curvature of the roof, and built the slats in layers using a combination of an exotic hardwood known as zebrawood, strengthened by sheets of carbon fiber. In total, four layers of zebrawood and three layers of carbon fiber were used to maximize the roofs stiffness and rigidity. As the Model A was always meant to be a “sunshine only” type of vehicle, a decision was then made to leave the roof uncovered so that onlookers would have visual access to the cabin.
From the exterior to the interior, the bare metal theme continues. Every surface on the Model A has been custom fabricated utilizing bead rolled panels, chocolate brown leather accents, and a slew of brass rivets for contrast. This is a minimalist interior if there ever was one with little to no attention paid to comfort.Hell, there aren’t even windows. Twin bomber seats have been fitted to hold you in place, but don’t look for seatbelts because there aren’t any. The only things you’ll find in the cabin are a set of vertically stacked Autometer gauges that have been frenched into the console, a two spoke steering wheel with brass accents, and a big ass shift lever with a leather boot.
So how’s the visibility? Gee, thanks for asking…
It’s amazing. It’s terrifying. It’s exhilarating. In other words, it is exactly how it should be for a build such as this. Nothing about this car is practical. Staring out the windshield means a face full of 6-71. Rest your arm on the window sill and prepare to have road debris embedded in your elbow. If that’s not enough, you can always take comfort in knowing that the fuel tank is mounted directly behind your head. Take that Ford Pinto!
Non-traditional builds like the CCS Model A are intriguing. They’re not about fuel economy numbers, safety, or comfort. Instead they’re vessels built around the ideals of hooliganism and adrenaline,. They also take an owner that’s of confident mind and body as the driving dynamics couldn’t be more different to that of a modern vehicle.
“This thing causes Moms in minivans to fist pump when you drive by. It’s so loud that it makes people on sidewalks freeze or something crazy. It creates spastic behavior in people. We’ve had one other build that’s done this- our twin-turbo C10- and while that makes people go crazy, nothing makes them lose their minds like the Model A,” says Noah.
To that, we wholeheartedly agree.
The post Classic Car Studio Builds a Model A that Stops Traffic appeared first on Hot Rod Network.
from Hot Rod Network https://www.hotrod.com/articles/classic-car-studio-builds-model-stops-traffic/
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My $3500 Tiny House, Explained
Meet “Timothy”, the new tinyhouse-style conference room at MMM HQ.
One of the nicest new trends of recent years is really the revival and rebranding of something very old: the smaller dwelling.
Over the last few months, I have built just such a structure, and it has turned out to be a rather cool experience. In fact, I’m typing this article for you from within its productive new confines.
Technically, it’s just a fancy shed. But it is functioning as a freestanding office building, a sanctuary, and would even make a pretty fine little dwelling for one person, if you were to squeeze in the necessary plumbing. It’s a joyful place to spend time, and yet it only took a moderate amount of work and less than $3500 of cash to create it.
The experience has been so satisfying and empowering, that it has reminded me how much we rich folk are overdoing the whole housing thing.
The latest and most distant Las Vegas Suburbs – still expanding (actual screenshot from Google Maps)
For decades, we have been cranking up household size and amenities in response to increasing productivity and wealth. In the 1940s, the typical US household had four people sharing 1000 square feet, or the equivalent of one large garage bay of space per person. Nowadays, new homes average around 2600 square feet and house only three people, which means each person floats around in almost triple the space. We have also started placing these dwellings in bigger expanses of blank grass and/or asphalt, which separate us further from the people and places we like to visit.
The funny part of all this is that we prioritize size over quality. Houses are sold by the square foot and the bedroom and the bathroom, rather than the more important things like how much daylight the windows let in or how well the spaces all fit together. And we settle for the shittiest of locations, buying houses so far from amenities that we depend on a 4000 pound motorized wheelchair just to go pick up a few salad ingredients.
Meanwhile, smaller houses and mobile and manufactured homes have continued to exist, but they have sprouted an undesireable stigma: those things are only for poor people, so if you can afford it you should get yourself a large, detached house.
My Tinyhouse Dreaming
Ever since my teenage years, I have dreamed of casual, communal living. 1992 still ranks as possibly the Best Summer Of My Life, because my brother and I lived a leisurely existence in the utopian garden-and-forest expanse of our Mom’s half acre backyard complete with swimming pool, fire pit, and pop-up tent trailer.
We lived at the center of small, historic town, with very little for teenagers to do in the summer besides find a way to get beer, and find somewhere to drink it so we could play cards and make jokes and if we were really lucky, find romance. And in these conditions, Mum’s backyard came to the rescue of our whole social group.
People would show up in the morning and just linger and come and go all day, swimming in the pool, grilling up lunches and dinners, playing cards at night or watching movies in the impromptu movie theater I had set up in the old detached garage. There were last-minute multi-person sleepovers every weekend. Leftover spicy bratwurst for breakfast cooked over an open fire in the morning. The fond memories from this early-nineties teen utopia live on in all of us*. So naturally, I have wanted to find ways to recreate that carefree feeling ever since.
According to people who actually study this stuff, the key to a really happy community and warmer friendships seems to be unplanned social interactions: you need to run into people unexpectedly every day, and then do fun stuff with them. To facilitate this, you need to live close enough together that you encounter one another when out for your morning stroll. Smaller, cheaper housing is the key to this, as well as a key to spending a lot less money on isolating yourself from potential new friends.
Weecasa resort (image credit Weecasa)
Need a few real-life examples? Right next to me in Lyons, Colorado, someone (I wish it were me!) thought up the idea of creating a resort out of tinyhouses called WeeCasa. Consuming less space than just the parking lot of a normal hotel, they have a beautiful and now highly popular enclave where the srooms rent for $150-$200+ per night.
Two friends of mine just bought a pair of adjoining renovated cabooses (cabeese?) in a Wisconsin beach town, with plans to create the same thing: a combination of a pleasant and walkable lifestyle with fewer material strings attached, and a stream of rental income when they’re not there.
Another friend built her own tiny house on a flat trailer platform, and has since gone on to live in a beautiful downtown neighborhood, both car-free and mortgage-free except for a small parking fee paid for stationing it in her friend’s back driveway. The monetary impact of making such a bold housing move for even a few years of your youth, is big enough to put you ahead for a lifetime.
Even my neighbourhood of “old-town Longmont” has recently inflated to the point of tiny starter home selling for $500k, for the same reason: people really want walkable, sociable places to live and house size is less important than location. While I’m in favor of this philosophy, I’m not in favor of anyone having to spend $500,000 for a shitty, uninsulated, unrenovated house. So we need a greater supply of smaller, closer dwellings to meet this higher demand.
But that’s all big picture stuff. The real story of this article is a small one – a single 120 square foot structure in the back of one of my own properties right here in downtown Longmont, CO. So let’s get down to it.
The Tinyhouse Conference Room
An interior view of our new workspace.
Nearing its one year anniversary, the “MMM-HQ” coworking space has been a lot of fun to run so far. It has been a mixture of quiet workdays, heavy workouts, evening events, and occasional classes and markets. (We have about 55 members and are looking for a few more, so if you happen to live in Longmont click the link above.)
But with only one big room as our indoor space, some members have felt the pinch of needing a quiet place to do longer conference calls or client meetings. So the plan has always been to build a couple of new spaces, and at last I have one of them mostly finished. And I made a point of documenting the whole process so I could share any ideas and lessons learned with you.
What goes into a Tinyhouse?
As with any big construction project, I started with a spreadsheet of steps and materials.
Here’s the complete list of steps and materials. You can click for viewing or download an .ods version for tweaking.
To save time, I tried to think ahead and get everything in one order **- most lumber shops will do free or cheap delivery on large orders like this. Of course, I ended up only partially successful and had to go back for missed objects, but I added those to my spreadsheet so your order can be more complete than mine.
At this point, it was just a matter of putting it all together, an effort which took me about 120 hours (three standard weeks) of work, spread out very casually over the past three months. Most of the work is standard house framing stuff, but just for fun we can step through it in rapidfire style right here.
The Super Simple Insulated Floor
Normally when building a small house, you’d dig a hole and pour a reinforced slab of concrete, as I did for the larger and fancier studio building at my main house. But in this case, the goal was fast, cheap and simple. So I just raked out a level patch of crushed gravel, compacted it with my rusty homemade welded compactor tool (“La Cruz”), and then started laying out pressure treated 2×6 lumber.
Here’s the 12×10 floor platform. Note the little support rails which allowed me to tightly fit in the foil-coated foam insulation between the joists. Most joints are done with simple 3.25″ galvanized framing nails, but I added Simpson corner brackets on the insides of the outermost joists for more strength.
Framing
Once I had those floor joists super square and level (hammering in stone shims under corners and joists as needed), I added a layer of standard 3/4″ OSB subfloor and nailed it down judiciously with the framing nailer to ensure a very rigid base. Then started to make the walls.
I used the floor as a convenient work platform for building the four walls. I built them flat and even added the 1/2″ exterior sheathing in advance, then tilted them up with the help of a friend or two. This method makes for heavier lifting but higher quality, because you get a perfectly straight and square wall almost guaranteed. Plus, it saves time because sheathing is a fussier job to do on an already-installed wall.
Once all four walls were set up and locked in place, I created the roof frame, which is really just a rather large wall. I did this on the ground, but had to compromise and skip the pre-sheathing step even though it would yield better quality, because we needed to keep it light enough to lift. If I had really strong friends or a telescoping forklift like real framing companies have, doing it all on the ground would have been a big win.
Framing and roofing.
A Metal Roof (of course)
I wanted a relatively flat-looking roof, so I cut wedge-shaped 2x4s and nailed them to the tops of the roof rafters before adding sheathing. This results in a slope of only 2%, but with a careful underlayment job and the seamless nature of metal roof sheets when compared to shingles, I have found it is nicely watertight. If in doubt, you can add more slope or use a rubber EPDM roof. The other advantages of metal: longer lifespan, lighter weight, and better protection from summer heat.
Insulation and Siding
Various wall layers revealed, insulation, lights, super frugal wood floor!
On top of those handy pre-sheathed walls, I added 1″ foil-covered foamboard, then some stained cedar fenceboards to create the reddish exterior you see in these pictures. Although the cedar gets quite a few compliments, it was an experiment I wouldn’t repeat: the boards expand and contract in changing weather and leave visible gaps at times. Next time, I’ll use more wavy metal siding, or something prefinished with an interlocking tongue and groove profile.
Electrical was done exactly the same way you’d wire up a normal house, with outlets and switches in AC Romex-style wiring. But on a tinyhouse like this, you might choose to have it all terminate at a male outdoor receptacle on an exterior wall like an RV or camp trailer, so you can run the whole thing from a good extension cord.
Insulation was just basic batts in this case, but you can use spray foam for even better performance. I drywalled everything using standard 1/2″ “lightrock” wallboard, hoping to keep the structure weight down in general, in case this thing ever needs to be moved with a forklift.
For lighting, I used these LED lights I found at Amazon at $4.20 per fixture.
The bare drywall stage – one of so much promise.
The Final Touches – Interior Trim, Furniture and Climate Control
At this stage in the construction story, I had something that looked like any other ready-to-finish example of modern house construction, and it was such a happy and familiar feeling. It’s a blank canvas but also a very solid one upon which you can create anything – an office, a bedroom, music studio, living room. Or if you’ve got the pipes for it, a kitchen or even a bathroom with a fancy shower.
Normally by this stage in building a house, you’ve spent at least $100 per square foot, so you can imagine the pleasantly Mustachian feeling I got when I arrived here at about $22.
So to keep the frugal trend going with the floor, I decided to try just smooth sanding the raw OSB with a good belt sander and clearcoating it with this really tough floor urethane. It came out looking pleasant, and is very durable and mud/gravel resistant. But I found the sanding was a slow process – throwing in a basic but attractive engineered wood floor at under $2 per square foot is probably a better idea next time at only slightly higher cost, unless you are building a big enough space to justify renting a real floor sander.
I made my own trim and window jambs by buying three 4×8 sheets of 3/4″ MDF and slicing them up on the table saw. Like the floor, this adds a bit of labor, but the benefit is you can get nice beefy trim in whatever dimensions you like (and even throw in some matching custom shelving and built-in cabinetry!) and save a couple hundred dollars per room.
The portable air conditioner occupies only one shelf.
For furniture, I picked out a mixture of stuff I already had, an Ikea desk frame from Craigslist, and a nifty chairside table from a local big box store.
Finally, I added some simple but effective climate control by just throwing a low cost portable AC from amazon up on the shelf (it vents through a 6″ hole I cut to the exterior). In the winter, I’ll just stash that little air conditioner somewhere and replace it with a silent oil-filled electric radiator for heat.
By plugging either of these machines into a wifi-controlled electrical outlet, I can even control the heating and cooling from anywhere using an app on my phone, as I already do for the various patio lights and ventilation fans I have in my life.
So do YOU want a Tiny House?
The real point of this article is just to share the idea that small structures can be very useful for many things. They are quicker and cheaper than creating a traditional house or building an addition onto one. They may allow you to have a guest house or home office or even an AirBnb rental in space that was formerly just a water-sucking part of your back lawn. Many cities allow you to place small things like this in your yard without requiring a building permit. And if you have the skills to build these things, you can even create an instantly profitable business cranking them out to satisfy the strong demand.
As for me, I’m hooked – later this year I’ll build a second one of these things here at MMM-HQ. And perhaps I’ll even get a chance to help someone build yet another in a tropical seaside location this winter, as part of my ongoing “Carpentourism” habit.
Happy downsizing!
—
*except my Mum, who still regrets letting so many teenagers run free and attract the ire of the older neighbors and occasionally the police department. Sorry Mom.. but also, thank you so much!
** I also took advantage of the large chunk of spending for a tiny bit of “travel hacking“, picking up an Amex Platinum card that gives me about $1000 of cash/travel credits only if I can spend $5000 within the first three months. For travel hackers, timing the acquisition of a new rewards card to coincide with a chunk of planned spending can be a useful way to squeeze the travel budget into an existing renovation budget.
from Finance http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2018/06/30/tinyhouse/
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My $3500 Tiny House, Explained
Meet “Timothy”, the new tinyhouse-style conference room at MMM HQ.
One of the nicest new trends of recent years is really the revival and rebranding of something very old: the smaller dwelling.
Over the last few months, I have built just such a structure, and it has turned out to be a rather cool experience. In fact, I’m typing this article for you from within its productive new confines.
Technically, it’s just a fancy shed. But it is functioning as a freestanding office building, a sanctuary, and would even make a pretty fine little dwelling for one person, if you were to squeeze in the necessary plumbing. It’s a joyful place to spend time, and yet it only took a moderate amount of work and less than $3500 of cash to create it.
The experience has been so satisfying and empowering, that it has reminded me how much we rich folk are overdoing the whole housing thing.
The latest and most distant Las Vegas Suburbs – still expanding (actual screenshot from Google Maps)
For decades, we have been cranking up household size and amenities in response to increasing productivity and wealth. In the 1940s, the typical US household had four people sharing 1000 square feet, or the equivalent of one large garage bay of space per person. Nowadays, new homes average around 2600 square feet and house only three people, which means each person floats around in almost triple the space. We have also started placing these dwellings in bigger expanses of blank grass and/or asphalt, which separate us further from the people and places we like to visit.
The funny part of all this is that we prioritize size over quality. Houses are sold by the square foot and the bedroom and the bathroom, rather than the more important things like how much daylight the windows let in or how well the spaces all fit together. And we settle for the shittiest of locations, buying houses so far from amenities that we depend on a 4000 pound motorized wheelchair just to go pick up a few salad ingredients.
Meanwhile, smaller houses and mobile and manufactured homes have continued to exist, but they have sprouted an undesireable stigma: those things are only for poor people, so if you can afford it you should get yourself a large, detached house.
My Tinyhouse Dreaming
Ever since my teenage years, I have dreamed of casual, communal living. 1992 still ranks as possibly the Best Summer Of My Life, because my brother and I lived a leisurely existence in the utopian garden-and-forest expanse of our Mom’s half acre backyard complete with swimming pool, fire pit, and pop-up tent trailer.
We lived at the center of small, historic town, with very little for teenagers to do in the summer besides find a way to get beer, and find somewhere to drink it so we could play cards and make jokes and if we were really lucky, find romance. And in these conditions, Mum’s backyard came to the rescue of our whole social group.
People would show up in the morning and just linger and come and go all day, swimming in the pool, grilling up lunches and dinners, playing cards at night or watching movies in the impromptu movie theater I had set up in the old detached garage. There were last-minute multi-person sleepovers every weekend. Leftover spicy bratwurst for breakfast cooked over an open fire in the morning. The fond memories from this early-nineties teen utopia live on in all of us*. So naturally, I have wanted to find ways to recreate that carefree feeling ever since.
According to people who actually study this stuff, the key to a really happy community and warmer friendships seems to be unplanned social interactions: you need to run into people unexpectedly every day, and then do fun stuff with them. To facilitate this, you need to live close enough together that you encounter one another when out for your morning stroll. Smaller, cheaper housing is the key to this, as well as a key to spending a lot less money on isolating yourself from potential new friends.
Weecasa resort (image credit Weecasa)
Need a few real-life examples? Right next to me in Lyons, Colorado, someone (I wish it were me!) thought up the idea of creating a resort out of tinyhouses called WeeCasa. Consuming less space than just the parking lot of a normal hotel, they have a beautiful and now highly popular enclave where the srooms rent for $150-$200+ per night.
Two friends of mine just bought a pair of adjoining renovated cabooses (cabeese?) in a Wisconsin beach town, with plans to create the same thing: a combination of a pleasant and walkable lifestyle with fewer material strings attached, and a stream of rental income when they’re not there.
Another friend built her own tiny house on a flat trailer platform, and has since gone on to live in a beautiful downtown neighborhood, both car-free and mortgage-free except for a small parking fee paid for stationing it in her friend’s back driveway. The monetary impact of making such a bold housing move for even a few years of your youth, is big enough to put you ahead for a lifetime.
Even my neighbourhood of “old-town Longmont” has recently inflated to the point of tiny starter home selling for $500k, for the same reason: people really want walkable, sociable places to live and house size is less important than location. While I’m in favor of this philosophy, I’m not in favor of anyone having to spend $500,000 for a shitty, uninsulated, unrenovated house. So we need a greater supply of smaller, closer dwellings to meet this higher demand.
But that’s all big picture stuff. The real story of this article is a small one – a single 120 square foot structure in the back of one of my own properties right here in downtown Longmont, CO. So let’s get down to it.
The Tinyhouse Conference Room
An interior view of our new workspace.
Nearing its one year anniversary, the “MMM-HQ” coworking space has been a lot of fun to run so far. It has been a mixture of quiet workdays, heavy workouts, evening events, and occasional classes and markets. (We have about 55 members and are looking for a few more, so if you happen to live in Longmont click the link above.)
But with only one big room as our indoor space, some members have felt the pinch of needing a quiet place to do longer conference calls or client meetings. So the plan has always been to build a couple of new spaces, and at last I have one of them mostly finished. And I made a point of documenting the whole process so I could share any ideas and lessons learned with you.
What goes into a Tinyhouse?
As with any big construction project, I started with a spreadsheet of steps and materials.
Here’s the complete list of steps and materials. You can click for viewing or download an .ods version for tweaking.
To save time, I tried to think ahead and get everything in one order **- most lumber shops will do free or cheap delivery on large orders like this. Of course, I ended up only partially successful and had to go back for missed objects, but I added those to my spreadsheet so your order can be more complete than mine.
At this point, it was just a matter of putting it all together, an effort which took me about 120 hours (three standard weeks) of work, spread out very casually over the past three months. Most of the work is standard house framing stuff, but just for fun we can step through it in rapidfire style right here.
The Super Simple Insulated Floor
Normally when building a small house, you’d dig a hole and pour a reinforced slab of concrete, as I did for the larger and fancier studio building at my main house. But in this case, the goal was fast, cheap and simple. So I just raked out a level patch of crushed gravel, compacted it with my rusty homemade welded compactor tool (“La Cruz”), and then started laying out pressure treated 2×6 lumber.
Here’s the 12×10 floor platform. Note the little support rails which allowed me to tightly fit in the foil-coated foam insulation between the joists. Most joints are done with simple 3.25″ galvanized framing nails, but I added Simpson corner brackets on the insides of the outermost joists for more strength.
Framing
Once I had those floor joists super square and level (hammering in stone shims under corners and joists as needed), I added a layer of standard 3/4″ OSB subfloor and nailed it down judiciously with the framing nailer to ensure a very rigid base. Then started to make the walls.
I used the floor as a convenient work platform for building the four walls. I built them flat and even added the 1/2″ exterior sheathing in advance, then tilted them up with the help of a friend or two. This method makes for heavier lifting but higher quality, because you get a perfectly straight and square wall almost guaranteed. Plus, it saves time because sheathing is a fussier job to do on an already-installed wall.
Once all four walls were set up and locked in place, I created the roof frame, which is really just a rather large wall. I did this on the ground, but had to compromise and skip the pre-sheathing step even though it would yield better quality, because we needed to keep it light enough to lift. If I had really strong friends or a telescoping forklift like real framing companies have, doing it all on the ground would have been a big win.
Framing and roofing.
A Metal Roof (of course)
I wanted a relatively flat-looking roof, so I cut wedge-shaped 2x4s and nailed them to the tops of the roof rafters before adding sheathing. This results in a slope of only 2%, but with a careful underlayment job and the seamless nature of metal roof sheets when compared to shingles, I have found it is nicely watertight. If in doubt, you can add more slope or use a rubber EPDM roof. The other advantages of metal: longer lifespan, lighter weight, and better protection from summer heat.
Insulation and Siding
Various wall layers revealed, insulation, lights, super frugal wood floor!
On top of those handy pre-sheathed walls, I added 1″ foil-covered foamboard, then some stained cedar fenceboards to create the reddish exterior you see in these pictures. Although the cedar gets quite a few compliments, it was an experiment I wouldn’t repeat: the boards expand and contract in changing weather and leave visible gaps at times. Next time, I’ll use more wavy metal siding, or something prefinished with an interlocking tongue and groove profile.
Electrical was done exactly the same way you’d wire up a normal house, with outlets and switches in AC Romex-style wiring. But on a tinyhouse like this, you might choose to have it all terminate at a male outdoor receptacle on an exterior wall like an RV or camp trailer, so you can run the whole thing from a good extension cord.
Insulation was just basic batts in this case, but you can use spray foam for even better performance. I drywalled everything using standard 1/2″ “lightrock” wallboard, hoping to keep the structure weight down in general, in case this thing ever needs to be moved with a forklift.
For lighting, I used these LED lights I found at Amazon at $4.20 per fixture.
The bare drywall stage – one of so much promise.
The Final Touches – Interior Trim, Furniture and Climate Control
At this stage in the construction story, I had something that looked like any other ready-to-finish example of modern house construction, and it was such a happy and familiar feeling. It’s a blank canvas but also a very solid one upon which you can create anything – an office, a bedroom, music studio, living room. Or if you’ve got the pipes for it, a kitchen or even a bathroom with a fancy shower.
Normally by this stage in building a house, you’ve spent at least $100 per square foot, so you can imagine the pleasantly Mustachian feeling I got when I arrived here at about $22.
So to keep the frugal trend going with the floor, I decided to try just smooth sanding the raw OSB with a good belt sander and clearcoating it with this really tough floor urethane. It came out looking pleasant, and is very durable and mud/gravel resistant. But I found the sanding was a slow process – throwing in a basic but attractive engineered wood floor at under $2 per square foot is probably a better idea next time at only slightly higher cost, unless you are building a big enough space to justify renting a real floor sander.
I made my own trim and window jambs by buying three 4×8 sheets of 3/4″ MDF and slicing them up on the table saw. Like the floor, this adds a bit of labor, but the benefit is you can get nice beefy trim in whatever dimensions you like (and even throw in some matching custom shelving and built-in cabinetry!) and save a couple hundred dollars per room.
The portable air conditioner occupies only one shelf.
For furniture, I picked out a mixture of stuff I already had, an Ikea desk frame from Craigslist, and a nifty chairside table from a local big box store.
Finally, I added some simple but effective climate control by just throwing a low cost portable AC from amazon up on the shelf (it vents through a 6″ hole I cut to the exterior). In the winter, I’ll just stash that little air conditioner somewhere and replace it with a silent oil-filled electric radiator for heat.
By plugging either of these machines into a wifi-controlled electrical outlet, I can even control the heating and cooling from anywhere using an app on my phone, as I already do for the various patio lights and ventilation fans I have in my life.
So do YOU want a Tiny House?
The real point of this article is just to share the idea that small structures can be very useful for many things. They are quicker and cheaper than creating a traditional house or building an addition onto one. They may allow you to have a guest house or home office or even an AirBnb rental in space that was formerly just a water-sucking part of your back lawn. Many cities allow you to place small things like this in your yard without requiring a building permit. And if you have the skills to build these things, you can even create an instantly profitable business cranking them out to satisfy the strong demand.
As for me, I’m hooked – later this year I’ll build a second one of these things here at MMM-HQ. And perhaps I’ll even get a chance to help someone build yet another in a tropical seaside location this winter, as part of my ongoing “Carpentourism” habit.
Happy downsizing!
—
*except my Mum, who still regrets letting so many teenagers run free and attract the ire of the older neighbors and occasionally the police department. Sorry Mom.. but also, thank you so much!
** I also took advantage of the large chunk of spending for a tiny bit of “travel hacking“, picking up an Amex Platinum card that gives me about $1000 of cash/travel credits only if I can spend $5000 within the first three months. For travel hackers, timing the acquisition of a new rewards card to coincide with a chunk of planned spending can be a useful way to squeeze the travel budget into an existing renovation budget.
from Money 101 http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2018/06/30/tinyhouse/
via http://www.rssmix.com/
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2018 Subaru WRX STI Type RA First Drive
Flush with cash in October 2001, just before the dot-com bubble burst, I went to an Audi dealer to buy an S4 Avant. Perhaps it was my Alice Donut T-shirt and camo shorts, but I couldn’t get a salesperson to even look at me, let alone give me a test-drive. I’d read a review in our sister publication Automobile (by none other than Jamie “NVH” Kitman) stating not only that the new-for-the-2002-model-year Subaru WRX was their Automobile of the Year, but also that the rough and ready, bug-eyed, rally-based bruiser had performance akin to a Porsche 911 4S. A boxer engine metaphor taken too far, perhaps, but the review got me thinking, and I took my tech boom dollars a few doors down to the Subaru dealer. An hour or so later I drove away in a black WRX wagon (base price $24,520) that was about 20 grand less than the Audi. Good thing, too, as I got mass laid off a month later and never would have been able to keep a near-$50K S4. Life is a funny thing, as I just drove the $49,855 2018 Subaru WRX STI Type RA. The only question there can be is: Is the Subie worth the money?
What makes a Type RA? First thing is exclusivity. Only 500 units are being built for the U.S. market, and 75 are being sent to Canada. That’s 575 total cars worldwide, as Canada and the U.S. are the only countries getting any. You can tell which one you have by a numbered plaque above the shifter. They come in blue, white, and black, with black being the scarcest color. RA stands for Record Attempt, dating back to the original 1989 Legacy RA that set a FIA World Speed Endurance Record. For years Subaru has been releasing limited edition RA models—much to the sorrow of JDM fans around the world—only in Japan. The 10,000-foot view shows you that the RA gains 5 horsepower, loses a little weight, gains a little aero, and receives slight tweaks to the suspension. From up there I get that it’s difficult to justify the $10,400 price bump over an STI with keyless entry and Recaro seats ($39,455). However, once you zoom in and get granular, you see where Subaru spent the money.
The one single aspect that cynics and Subaru haters are lasering in on the hardest (see my Instagram feed) is the admittedly tiny bump in horsepower. American STI fans first met the 2.5-liter turbocharged flat-four (engine code EJ257) in 2004, when it made 300 hp. In 2008 Subaru bumped it up to 305 hp, the same amount of power the EJ257 still makes today, 10 years later. Cobb or any other tuning company will sell you a kit to add 20 hp for a few hundred bucks. However, the way the Type RA makes the extra power is impressive. First off, the ECU is retuned, and there’s a redesigned cold air intake. Standard stuff, sure. Subaru also throws in stronger pistons and sodium-filled exhaust valves, the latter of which is some pretty serious high-performance kit (sodium-filled valves handle heat better) typically seen on higher-end performance cars.
There’s also a new, larger exhaust system with 50 percent less back pressure. The EJ257’s peak torque output (290 lb-ft) remains the same, but more of it shows up earlier in the rev range. However, based on a dyno-chart PowerPoint slide we were shown during the overview, I asked the engineers if in fact peak torque isn’t a little bit higher. They said yeah, it is, but they wouldn’t specify a number. They told me they would get back to me, but they never did. I don’t know why. Anyhow, the Type RA is torquier than the standard STI. The big point, though, is that Subaru could have added 5 extra ponies with just an ECU reflash. Instead, they re-engineered the necessary parts to add both strength and durability. Tuners rejoice. In addition to the engine mods, third gear is 4.5 percent shorter at 1.590:1.
Subaru cut the weight of the STI Type RA by 68 pounds. This was accomplished by replacing the spare wheel with a can of fix-a-flat (Type RA owners can further reduce weight by hucking it and its associated near-useless pump into the trash), adding BBS gold wheels, replacing the rear wing with a carbon fiber one, and replacing the steel roof with a top made from carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP). You will note that one of those things is not like the other. In fact, it represents a major change to the car’s structure. Subaru claims that the carbon roof not only drops 8 pounds overall and lowers the center of gravity by a couple millimeters but also is so much stiffer that it helps the rear wheels maintain better contact with the road. Subaru also pointed out that the next cheapest car to come standard with a CFRP roof is the nearly $20K more (BMW M3, $67,495).
For the first time ever on a U.S.-spec STI, you get Bilstein dampers, which are tuned differently than those on the standard car, as is the rest of the suspension. There’s also a new front clip with a Cherry Blossom red accent in the grille, a new rear bumper, a functional underbody wing, and cutouts in the rear fenders. By the way, the wing not only reduces lift but also can be placed in two positions. Inside, the red accents continue around the cabin, including on the standard Recaro seats. There’s red stitching all over the place and red seat belts, too. By the way, red belts are a $540 option on a Porsche 911. My favorite interior upgrade is the steering wheel, which has been wrapped in Ultrasuede. It’s exactly like Alcantara and transforms the STI’s steering wheel from what feels like a hollow Rubbermaid product to something quite great to hold on to.
Right, driving. I spent the first 10 minutes of my drive trying to remember if Subaru had mentioned anything at the press conference about improving the steering. Neither my driving partner nor I could remember them saying anything of the sort. Turns out it’s the same exact steering rack and electric-assist motor. Hook me up to a lie detector, though, because I’d swear that they changed something, both in terms of quickness and of feel. To be more specific, the steering ratio feels much quicker. Subaru actually had a standard 2018 STI on hand, and I had to turn the wheel more in it than in the Type RA to get through the same corners. Not only that, but the steering felt so much better, more connected, more precise, less spastic. Grown up? Yeah, let’s go with that. Talking to Subaru peeps as well as pro rally driver Mark Higgins—who gave me a blistering, handbrake-yanking hot lap around the 1.4-mile Desert Circuit at the Thermal Club—the difference in steering feel comes from the retuned suspension, plus the overall stiffening of the car resulting from the carbon roof.
Then of course there’s the added power, if you can call a 1.6 percent increase an actual increase. That said, it’s really more of an increase in torque, or at least torque delivery, than power. Remember, horsepower is best seen at the end of a quarter-mile, not at the start. In other words, horsepower is your top speed, whereas torque is your acceleration. The shortened third gear also has something to do with it, but the Type RA feels quicker than the stock WRX STI. The torque, aka twisting force, hits all four wheels earlier and harder than stock. As a result, an already quick car feels that much quicker still. Subaru claims only a 0.1 second improvement in 0–60 mph (the 2018 Subaru WRX STI we tested hit 60 mph in 5.7 seconds), but passing ability, felt most acutely in third gear, is surely much better.
In summary, it is the combination of the extra grunt, the revised suspension, and the improved steering feel that takes an already good performance car and makes it great. I arrived at this conclusion from time spent both on the road, where the Type RA truly impressed, and on that technical yet fun little track circuit. There were a couple of hairpins that induced then exaggerated the STI’s inherent understeer. However, if you’re brutal with the car and get the front rotated around pre-apex, you can just mat the throttle and power your way on out. Turns out if you’re violent enough, the Type RA is killer little track toy, one that, as Higgins showed me, is capable of fairly insane things. Higgins recently set the four-door production car Nürburgring Nordschleife record in a (highly) modified STI Type RA. The dude can wheel a car even when using a plowing, crossed-up front end to dive into a corner.
Is it worth the money? How do you ever answer this? I’ll just go with yeah, it is. Look, if I were in the market for a new sporty car, I’d absolutely consider the Type RA. The combination of its rarity and how much better it drives than the standard STI would be enough for me to pull the trigger. Still, $10,400 extra is a good chunk of cash, especially for something with a Subaru badge on it. Of course, we live in a world where the carbon-ceramic brake upgrade on a BMW M3 costs $8,150, and it’s a frequently selected option. Again, that’s just for the brakes. (All STIs now come standard with six-piston front, two-piston rear steel Brembos, including the Type RA.)
We asked Subaru what cars they benchmarked when developing the Type RA. First they looked at the VW Golf R. Once they surpassed that, they then looked at the Ford Focus RS. They also spent time with Porsches. Despite being a sedan instead of a wagon/hatch, I think this Subaru beats both the Volkswagen and the Ford. To reiterate, I think $49,855 is a fair price for this rare car, especially if you are a fan of the brand. Getting back to my original point, I would buy the Type RA over the current $52,375 Audi S4. I say that as a 2017 Audi A4 Allroad owner.
But there are buts. Three specifically: the $34,990 Honda Civic Type R, the $35,945 BMW 230i, and the $44,995 Chevrolet Camaro SS 1LE. I’d say in terms of pure driving fun, the BMW is on par with the Subaru Type RA. The Subaru is probably the better athlete, but it’s hard to find fault with the little rear-drive Bimmer. It’s a throwback to when BMWs just had that something extra. Were you to option up the BMW the way the Subaru comes equipped, the German’s price would likely be higher. Still, badge snobs won’t even understand this particular comparison.
Then we have the Type R from Honda, the best Honda I’ve driven since the original NSX. True, unscrupulous dealers are charging $15,000 We Don’t Want You As A Repeat Customer fees, as apparently is both their wont and their (quasi-legal) right. Even if the two Japanese performance machines cost the same, I’d probably go Honda. I think. We have yet to do th
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