Monday, December 28, 2009

Geometry revisited



In an earlier post, I'd mentioned the fact that lines and planes are, in fact, infinite. A trick of the eye that Wright used to great advantage with the trellises on the end of his flat roofs to lengthen visually the horizontal.

Another trick that we have used is to bevil the ends of the hardie board siding where they meet at the corners of the house so that each board seems to go off to the end of the world. If you look at other houses, there can be a cap piece of molding at every corner. This "stops" the line visually.

This requires great skill in the cutting of each board and fitting them together. And Brian is doing a wonderful job with this.

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Painting starts



The weather has been fine here for the last couple of days, so we scurried over to do what painting we could during this first weekend of Christmas.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

And now the painting begins




This is where we were at the end of work on 12/23. It is really soggy here, since the rains washed away the remnants of our slushy grey Christmas. We're feeling a bit better, although we think the Dog has the flu now. After Pat does some calking, we're going to get going on painting some windows and get started on painting the pre-primed hardie board siding.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Oink Oink


Down for a bit with a bug..
Have a Merry Christmas and we'll be back after the Birthday Party.

Now, here's the funny thing, I've been looking for and posting free pictures from all over the web, but couldn't find anything on the web about Jesus for free to post up here. There are more scam artists out there working Jesus than there are working the walk-in-tub con.

So I had to go to Wikipedia, once again. After the money all shakes out, I'm going to give them a donation I think.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Solomon would be proud


We are going with the blown in cellulose for the ceiling and the Pink Panther batting on the walls. That's the decision as of 6:20 this morning.. Could all change by the third cup of coffee

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Night Shift



Pat and I went to the house last night to paint the long vertical window so that the guys can start the siding. Here's a night time view of the house. You can see the Anderson windows with the blank squares, that's where the handmade windows will go. We have about 35 of them in our truck waiting to be transferred the the basement so we can paint them and another 15 at the house waiting to come here... Thank Goodness the weather was warm last night.

And of course, the two oldest grandsons had a grand time running around the dark house with Pappy's flashlight. The highlight of their evening was the port-a-potty. It is always fun to use an outhouse in the bleak midwinter....

The problem with Genius


In Rebecca West's novel, The Fountain Overflows, a child is taking piano lessons from her mother, a concert pianist. They are working on Beethoven's Sonata in D Major (opus 10). The mother is frustrated with her daughter because she insists on playing the piece as it is written and the mother tells her, "Rose, you are a musical halfwit...you must supply the high F sharp there though it is not written. Beethoven didn't write it because it was not in the compass of the piano as he knew it, but he heard it, he heard it inside his head."

Jane Austen, born five years later than Beethoven on this day in 1775 wrote the orginal "chick lit.". Her books were so far ahead of their time that Pride and Prejudice reads more like a screen play than a novel. And even today, some people will lump them as silly books to read and toss, whereas they are poison pen satires as pertinent today as when they were written during the Napoleonic Wars.

I've written quite a bit about the fact that Frank Lloyd Wright's houses were leaky sieves. I don't know why that was. Maybe like Beethoven, he was working in his head with a material that was not in the "compass" of building materials currently invented. Another puzzling thing is that although many of his roofs leaked and cantilevers failed, the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo survived the great earthquake of 1923, one of the few buildings to do so. So, I'm thinking he knew engineering, he knew structure and he knew that materials were going to be designed that would help his roofs not leak.

Happy Birthday Mistress Austen and Maestro

Sunday, December 13, 2009

A small saving with interest.


We are doing a combination handmade/Anderson Windows deal on this house. It is cheaper, if the windows aren't going to open, to have Tom S. and his crew make the framing and Matkins glass supply the fillings. But, this means we will have to paint the frames... you can see the handmade next window next to the casement one. This saves us alot, not individually, but collectively as we're talking around 50 windows..

Friday, December 11, 2009

Sweat Equity

That horrible sound title means just what it says. We have to start working now, painting the foundation tomorrow, painting the hand built clerestory windows and once the siding goes up, painting that...

BUT, on the plus side, it means things are CRACKING!

Here's a cynic's view of sweat equity...


Pat has a clear understanding of we can and cannot do. Painting is entirely within our realm of workability. The wiring is not..

The unrabbitted lintels, or no Pink Panther for us


The insulation discussion is complete. After talking with the inspector, if we go with the fiberglass batting, we need vents in the soffits.. but, Tom says that the won't work with a flat roof because then we need corresponding vents in the roof.
So we're going with the blown in cellulose at nearly 2.5 times the cost. Somewhere, somehow, we're going to save money...

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Insulation


If you tour the Pope-Leighey home in Alexandria, you will see on the floor by the window a cutaway sample of the orginal wall. This is to let the tourists see the insulation used at the time. It consists of the outer wall of cypress, the inner wall of cypress and sheet of paper between...that's it.

My my, all of our talk recently has been of insulation..vented, non-vented, blown in cellulose, blown in fiberlass, fiberglass batting. All with "R" ratings in the high numbers. In fact, more men know their insulation numbers than their children's birthdays.

We haven't yet decided; the quotes are coming in. That's the ubiquitious Tyvek wrapping around the exterior walls. I think the next thing is the Hardie Board siding and then we start our onerous, sweat equity job of painting..uggh..

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Capistrano



Like a flock of swallows, roofers descended yesterday.. It was either then or never as rains are predicted off and on, seemingly for the rest of the century.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Well?????

okay, we have 20% chance of rain for the next two days.... are our roofers going to be the brave fellows we know they CAN be and attempt to finish the roof so that we can get our windows and doors in and therefore take delivery of our appliances from Sears and our cabinetry from Ikea???
Inquiring minds want to know

Devilish Details






The blue boards are the insulation that will keep our radiant heat from seeping out into the ground and costing us many, many bucks.The silly white dog has her Christmas bow on her neck, which we had to remove because she has such sensitive skin, we don't want to spend many many bucks on her steroid creams.

The devil is in the details because the big conversation this afternoon with Tom's assistant (Tom is on his anniversary cruise) was how to do the blue board under the sliding glass doors....these are issues that could make a huge difference in our heating bills when we're 95 and freezing...

Our first insulation quote is nearly TWICE what we thought it would be.... scotch and water time.

Friday, December 4, 2009

nope

no roof and it is supposed to rain tomorrow turning into snow.....

mebbe, mebbe not

A roof covering today????

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Robert Lewis Stevenson, sortakinda



The rain is raining all around
It falls on field and trees.

It rains on the umbrellas here,
and on the ships at sea..

AND MY ROOF DAMMIT....

Rain has probably delayed our house building by 3 1/2 weeks. We, by rights, should have been dried in for over a week. We have had to put off the Sears delivery of our appliances three times and the roofers may or may not be able to put the membrane on today so that we can proceed with our windows which have been waiting silently in the Home Depot warehouse...

AND, RONNA IS GONNA WIN!!! ARRGGGGGHHHHHH!

Thanks to Amazon.com for the image...

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Obsessions

My sib, after viewing the house, reported to the others it looked Japanese, which led to emails talking about the influence of the Japanese on FLW.

The other day, we watched Magnificent Obsession, Frank Lloyd Wright's Buildings and Legacy in Japan..
These video's thesis isn't that Wright was influenced so much by the Japanese as they just had absolutely identical ideas as far as organic architecture and were well suited, like a good arranged marriage. It was an interesting video with animation that reminds me of Terry Gilliam of Monty Python fame. The music got on Pat's nerves toward the end though. Magnificent Obsession: Frank Lloyd Wright's Buildings and Legacy in Japan

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Trinity

One of the things that I want to remember is that it has been a privilege to watch this house get built. It is interesting that although we had visited the Pope-Leighey house and taken pictures and paced out the dimensions, we and our builder, really just have been flying by the seats of our pants. And it has been fun to see that with further reading, it has adhered to alot of the tenets of Wright's philosophy.

In The Natural House Wright talks about all the possibilities when one uses concrete, steel and glass. Although this house is structurally different from the original, it looks the similar. Much like two computers look alike at first, but then you see one is an Apple and one a PC.

We sat in beach chairs in the great room yesterday on our concrete floor, gazing at the steel beams that support the cantilever carport, windows and trellises while a gentle breeze lifted our hair through the windows where the glass will let nature come inside the house.

It's different, and yet it is concrete, steel and glass...


Pat putting in some sweat equity...cleaning sawdust.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Thanksgiving reconsidered















On this, the most traveled holiday, one of the sibs came by on her way to the Grove Park Inn http://www.groveparkinn.com/Leisure/ ) to see the house. She commented that we had mentioned years ago building a Roman style house with a barrier to the world and a courtyard in the middle.

I've been reading the Emperor series of books by Conn Iggulden (co-author of The Dangerous Book for Boys). In it, a group of country folk walk into Rome for the first time and comment on the architecture of the greatest city in the greatest Empire of the day. The visitors note that unlike Egypt, where the most impressive buildings are the tombs for the dead, Rome was a city built for the living, commerce and conquest.

I do think architecture reflects the place of its origin. New York has limited space, hence the skyscrapers. The prairie is low and flat, therefore the Prairie Houses hug the ground, emphasizing the horizontal which to Frank Lloyd Wright represented "home."

On our trip south, the most interesting group of buildings was on the strip of I-85 between Spartanburg and Greenville, South Carolina. These innovative buildings anticipate the boom years to come for those forward looking people of the state to the south.

And, as far as our "courtyard" home - if we'd lived in Roman Times, we couldn't have afforded one of those. They were out of our tax bracket. We'd have had to live in an upper apartment, which had no running water or any of the modern conveniences the Romans had to offer, like sewers. There were also very tiny windows to block out the hot Italian sun and consequently they were firetraps for dwellers. Should one of these tenements catch fire, you couldn't even jump to safety, you were just stuck there, skin crackling, like the Thanksgiving turkeys we all ate last week.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Hotty Toddy

Heading south for Thanksgiving. Rains for the past couple of days so nothing new on the house.
Will write more after we're more stuffed than the turkey.


See full size image

Saturday, November 21, 2009

STEEL 2






Our great room trellis now has the steel supports it needs.

The other ones looked a little funny too until they were encased in wood.

This is the bedroom trellis. It doesn't look so dorky.

Another famous American Architect

In the comment section following the fireplace post, one of my sibs, BB mentioned that she liked her fireplace because it was a open barrier between the foyer and the great room. It can be seen from either side and yet provides privacy to the living quarters so not just anyone can peek in and see them in their jammies at the unseemly time of early afternoon.

Thomas Jefferson, that guy from Virginia, knew a thing or two about building. I just assumed he designed Monticello and the colonnade at UVA. But, he also built a lesser known country home to which he would retire when the company got to be a bit too much in Charlottesville.

Poplar Forest outside of Lynchburg Virginia is a tiny delight. This was a house intended to maintain Mr. J's privacy. An uninvited visitor could be shown through the house all the way to the back public reception area, and never really see the private spaces because of the central hallway.The bedrooms and family living areas are to either side of this hallway.


Instead of the compression and release theory of going through a small foyer to enter an airy great room, it was more of a squeeze play, that gets the company in and out quickly. He could walk them through the house, and out the back door before they knew what was happening, and they felt like they were truly being invited into his home.

It always comes down to this. We want to live in beautiful homes that are comfortable. And, we want our privacy too. My sister achieves this with her fireplace, TJ had a walk through hallway, and we have a wall to the world on the street side.

This is the "street" side of the house. There will be clerestory windows on the great room, that tall kitchen window that you can see and one small window in Pat's sanctuary/bathroom/laundry room.


Friday, November 20, 2009

Rumor has it

Our builder told us one of the neighbors snuck over and asked if he was building a convenience store...

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Rainy Day construction

Shown is the beginning of the roof for the great room. As you can see, it introduces a new plane which lends interest.

The interior shots show a "dead" space that was created at the joint of the higher roof to the lower. One of the builders thinks we should put an aquarium in there, Pat immediately said, "that's where we can put the dead bodies," and I said it could be the "naughty zone," for bad babies which means our BOB could be spending his toddlerdom there.















Tuesday, November 17, 2009

A view of infinity

This is the window at the end of the corridor in the bedroom wing. I think it looks like something escher could have drawn, an infinite puzzle.

Great Builders building Great room!


That's Tom Southern the contractor.



Pat on top of carport.



Views of the great room from the roof.

The great room looking toward the stairs.


Obviously my hopes for a roof tonight were overly optimistic.

Monday, November 16, 2009

YEAH!

After a week of IDA rains, work has begun again! I think we may have a roof on the lower, great room portion tonight! Yeah....

Saturday, November 14, 2009

We are not alone...whoahahhaha


We are not the first, nor will we be the last to decide to go back to the future and build a usuonian house. When we went for our second visit to the Pope-Leighey house in Alexandria Va, we were the only ones on tour and asked if we could really take our time. The docent knew exactly what we were up to and said, "sure, lots of people bring tape measures."

I don't think we were that organized. I had an old grocery list and pencil stub and Pat paced out the rooms while I wrote down the dimensions. You can buy a floor plan for any of the unbuilt Frank Lloyd Wrights houses from his foundation, but that will cost you a pretty penny, plus, then you have to abide by their rules and regs and they will have an advisor come out to tell you how it should all go down.

You can go on ebay and buy FLW plans to modify and/or just build.


However, we knew we wanted to take the basic plan and modify it enough that we didn't want to do that. We had already designed our country home and built that without any problems...even after the dog ate the plans on the second day of framing.

A family out in Ohio designed and built their own usonian.

This house, while it really looks like it could have been designed by FLW wasn't.

What these Ohioans did, and what we are attempting to do is bring that sense of FLW style back with modern materials- so our roof won't leak.

The inside furniture looks really like FLW's but I didn't like that style, and in his book, The Natural House, FLW discusses how difficult it was for him to design a comfortable chair. Indeed, he and Mamah Cheney had mission style chairs for their use at Taliesin.

The chair above is from TARGET.

Calamari calls us


I couldn't find a picture of the Pope Leighey fireplace, but I did find a site that had a usonian fireplace , to give you an idea of how important they were to the structural integrity of the buildings.

The website belongs to, NW Renovation, a home improvement magazine.
As you can see, the fireplace is the pillar that helps hold up the roof, and it is also a wall that hides the kitchen from the living area. By using a gas fireplace, we have opened up the kitchen to the great room, so that who ever is cooking isn't out of the conversation loop. We have regained our "calamari counter," as our Mikey calls it. Pat will be able to fry the squid, and we can all sit around and eat it so fast, he won't get any.

Here is our fireplace, much less impressive, but more portable as far as placement in the house.



Napoleon GVF40 Fireplace














Friday, November 13, 2009

Fireplaces.













A quick trip around undeveloped countryside will reveal exposed fireplaces; the lone remnants of former dwellings. The reason for this is that they were the sturdiest bits of the structures that no longer exist.






A hundred years from now, there won't be the same archeological artifacts because we have all gone whole heartedly for gas fireplaces. This is sad because our children won't have the same smoke filled rooms to clog their memories of good times and cursing by parents who forgot to open the damper.



An unvented gas fireplace has no need of a chimney, flue or damper. It just needs a gasline to feed it and can be placed anywhere in the house. You can even replicate the great dining hall from THE LION IN WINTER by placing your fireplace in the middle of the room. All you'd need would be a couple of mangy dogs fighting over the deer haunches and the illusion is complete.



The Pope-Leighey house needed its fireplace to be in the center, creating a wall between the living room and the kitchen. Frank Lloyd Wright used this, the strongest part of the house, to anchor his ceiling joists.



We're using steel instead and have moved our fireplace to the far side of the room because we, non-purists that we are, like a fire every morning by which to read our paper and sip our coffee. We don't have a cackling aroma filled room, but we do have a semblance of that which Prometheus stole from the gods and it's alot easier to flip a switch than chop firewood.











This lovely illustration show Prometheus bound, with his liver being eaten. This was the punishment that the Gods deemed fit the crime.