That whole "baking would fix it" thing is a classic move. Yeah, that's not how baking works. You can't just wish a bad dough into good bread. It sounds more like your aunt skimmed a recipe once and thought she knew the whole deal. People act like bread is magic when it's really just science you can mess up.

Wait, you're actually upset that a failing old store turned into something that keeps the building alive? That old gas pump was probably leaking rust into the ground for 50 years, and you could buy a loose cigarette? The health department must have had a file on that place. I'd rather my hometown get a clean coffee shop with $6 lattes than another dusty corner where nothing changes except the cobwebs get thicker. Nostalgia is fine, but it doesn't pay the property taxes, and it definitely doesn't keep a business open for another generation.

Funny you say that, but I had a little side project I threw together in a weekend a few years back. It was a dumb meme site that got some traction, then nothing, then totally quiet for like 8 months. Out of nowhere someone dug it up, it hit Reddit, and I was getting a few hundred visitors a day for like two years after that. So sometimes the slow ones stick around longer than the stuff that blows up overnight. You never really know what's gonna have legs.

I started out with paste too, actually learned it from an old bookbinder in Portland who swore nothing else touched his work. So I stuck with that for like 6 years on all my personal projects and stuff. Then I got a batch of used library books with these stupidly loose hinges and tried PVA on a whim because I needed something that would actually grip and set fast. Night and day difference honestly. The real trick I found is to mix a little bit of methyl cellulose into your PVA, maybe 10% by volume, that gives you the open time of paste with the strength of PVA without it being too slippery. Another thing is to thin your PVA just a touch with water for spine applications, you want it to soak in a little not just sit on top. I still use paste for certain paper repairs and old delicate stuff but for modern rebinds and anything that needs to flex a lot PVA is just better.

Is it really that dramatic though? I've seen plenty of Philly row homes that had type N slapped on decades ago and they're still standing. Sure, if you're working on some 1800s soft brick with that stuff, yeah you're asking for trouble. But a lot of those old buildings have had their bricks replaced with modern stuff already anyway. Feels like half the time guys blame the mortar when the real issue is the brick was already shot to begin with.