In the Beginning....

We have a structure! Of course, it is just the porta potty, but is a beginning.

There goes the neighborhood

Last spring we visited Pat's sister in Alabama. Although our "overt" mission was to visit with family, our "covert" mission was to tour the Usonian which is just down the street from her house.

In 1939 Stanley and Mildred Rosenbaum of Florence commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design their home. Here's the website.

http://www.wrightinalabama.com/

What the website doesn't show and what is difficult to understand unless one spends time there is that this one house radically changed design in this small college town, which is spitting distance from Helen Keller's homestead.

Before the Rosenbaum house, there were the normal sort of homes in that area for the times. After the Rosenbaums built their Usonian, just about every house in the neighborhood was influenced by it. Pat's own sister lives in a house with a dining/kitchen area directly derived from the Rosenbaum's. Her house was designed by the firm of Bar and Tune.

A quick walk through the neighborhood is a lesson in the evolution of the modern ranch house from the 1930's through the 70's. I am amazed SOUTHERN LIVING hasn't done a piece on it yet, because of all the wonderful neighborhoods they could highlight, this is unique in the south and almost unknown.

It's not all Tara and Twelve Oaks down here you know.

Appraising the Situation, or every party has a pooper

Pat finally got around to reading the construction loan appraisal. It was nothing we didn't expect, "Subjects' style (flat roof) only two bedrooms, no floor covers, only 1280 SF situated among homes with over 3000sf is likely to cause obsolescence. This is an older neighborhood with mostly colonial style homes."

Our appraiser would be remiss to not mention these issues, but he is wrong in one key aspect. Most of the houses are not colonial, they too, are Frank Lloyd Wright derivatives and we live in one.

We currently live in an American Four Square, and it is easily the prettiest house we've co-owned with a bank. It is a joy to sit in the living room and look into the front room and admire the angles of the stairwell and all the lovely windows that are proportional to the rooms. We can see nature from every aspect and Frank Lloyd Wright's prairie homes are considered to be the forerunners of this home. It is a standardized version of his early Midwestern homes, in fact sometimes it is referred to as a Prairie Box.

Our present next door neighbor has a lovely Victorian house with all the trimmings, it is painted a beautiful lemon yellow with lavender trim and is a joy to view. This plain, rational house is a reaction to that.

Our usonian design, which is only about 10-15 years later than some of our future neighbor homes and predates the others by nearly 50 years, is as different from them as our American Four Square is from the Victorian. But, as our current simple home complements the whimsical style of our neighbor, so too will the low lying organic home fit into it's surroundings .

SHOWTIME!!!

I thought we were finished with hauling young children around to house closings, but apparently not. The grandsons all acted pretty good. Even BOB, whom everyone knows is a bad baby, only stuck his finger in the outlet once.

Our lawyer, a nice gent, was very sweet and hardly rushed us at all. I kept on looking at his beautiful collection of gorgeous porcelain platters and wondered, which would be the first to fall.

So, the money is there, just waiting to be disbursed. Bring on the concrete!

How Firm a Foundation

Well, my theory about this being a "dense" house is more than supported by the floor which will support the whole thing. There 's so much junk in the floor I wouldn't be surprised to find Jimmy Hoffa in there.

We just had a conference with our builder and Jeff, the guy who is going to do the radiant heat tubing in the floor and the water heating. It will not just be a slab of concrete. There is a layer of gravel through which all the sewer lines and other water lines to the bathroom and kitchen fixtures and then insulation (blue board). On top of the blue board will rest little "chairs" then 2 inches of cement. The little chairs will stick up above the cement, and on their little backs will rest mesh which will support the tubing through which the hot water will course to warm our souls. THEN, there will be another 2 inches of concrete and after that is all done, someone will come by with a concrete router thing and score lines in the concrete and if God is on our side, then the inevitable cracks will follow our man made fault lines and we won't have to avoid our builder should we run into him on the street.

A big part of the discussion was insulation of the sides of the slab. Apparently, like hormonal teenagers, heat will escape through any means necessary and the side of the slab is just as tempting as open window. So, in order to save literally thousands of dollars a year, you have to insulate all around the edge of the slab and this causes aesthetic problems because the insulation is an ugly blue and there is no interior molding to cover it. Therefore, we opted to put the insulation on outside of the slab and will cover it with some sort of masonry material to be decided later. This would please Mr. Wright I think.

The upshot is, that unlike a conventional house with a foundation and then crawl space, everything has to be worked out before we pour the floor. The radiant, slab floor with the proper insulation is key to the whole shebang.

A really nice thing is that everyone is really using Pat's plans that he drew, they are that good, and also, both the builder and Jeff used the model to get a handle on the elevations etc.

I can't wait until the builder lets me use his name.

All of this is in anticipation of our bank loan going through. Nothing we've done so far can't be undone. Everyone at this point is waiting on our loan and then things will get crackin'.

And of course, everytime anyone said anything, I just saw dollar signs where their irises should have been. All very scary.

Today was much better. Instead of trying to get things online we actually went to local places of business and got alot of things straightened in our head.

The Hardward Store in Gibsonville, will provide our interior walls. We're forgoing sheet rock and using a pale birch plywood, prefinished. It will look very clean and bright. There will be some sort of sheet rock on the ceiling which will need to be painted.

We also stopped at Home Depot to discuss windows and doors. We will have shorter doors (pocket style to save room) and I thought, FINALLY, a savings because the doors are shorter, but alas, we have to pay 5 bucks a door extra because of the odd size.

Our contractor mentioned that since the walls of the inner "L" facing the inner courtyard will be mainly windows, in order to "stiffen" the house, he wants to use plywood on the outer walls under the Hardie board rather than that other exterior sheeting, you know that has "tyvek" or whatever plastered all over it. Thankfully, the cost is comparable. These sort of add ons can be very scary you know.

Our last stop was Sherwin Williams to take advantage of the paint sale, but a huge storm came through and knocked out all the computers so we will have to return to actually make the purchase and get the red paint, our eldest grandson thought would look good on our new house. We have already tried it on our "usonian" sauna and decided he was right!

Rembrandt Ruby Red

Fuhgedaboutit

I'm beginning to think that the world wide web is full of spiders. Google walk-in tub lawsuits and the slimeworld of predatory retailers targeting old folks opens up on your laptop. We were so dismayed that we started rethinking the whole walk-in tub idea.

The best ones are comparable to buying a new car, and there is no bucks for bathtubs program coming down from the Feds. The cheap ones don't hold water, LITERALLY, plus there is the issue of having to sit in dirty cold water while the thing drains. It can take 5 minutes, more than enough time for hypothermia to set in.

We spent most of the other night on the computer and working the phones just trying to get some sort of idea what would be the best deal for us. Some sites don't even have phone numbers, you have to send an email. Of those we called, most were manned by an answering service. The one salesperson Pat actually spoke with worked hard to get our Visa number right then and there, all the while dissing the other outlets. Afterwards, Pat told me the kid was on a cell phone driving on the Jersey Turnpike.

The next day, Pat called the local plumbing supply place, we went down and picked one out, along with the fixtures, which of course, are also expensive...extra large faucets to get the tub filled during your lifetime and something called a "minute" drain which will empty 60 gallons a minute; a miniature maelstrom in the house. If we bathed our daughter's minpin, Homer may end up swirling down the sewer.

The lesson here- you wouldn't buy a Buick without taking it for a test drive. Don't buy a bathtub you can't fondle in a showroom.

Me and Wilt the Stilt

The first time I ever heard of a truly custom built home was when some magazine visited Wilt Chamberlin's new house. He had extra tall cabinets in the kitchen because he was an extra tall guy. I don't know if he did all his own cooking or his wife and/or cook was extra tall too.

We are also building a custom house but we don't have to worry about extra tall cabinets because we are both regular sizes, although Pat's suits started fitting better once he started buying 40 short. BUT, this usonian is going to grow old with me, and hopefully, the best is yet to be...

We are making it suitable for aging geezers on wheels. The original house's corridors were all the width of a Pullman Car's. Of course, this is no longer possible due to those pesky building codes but also, we want to make them wheelchair accessible. This adaptation is one of the major reasons our house will be larger than the other.

Another big difference is in the bathtub. The orginal's tub is a lovely low, difficult to enter shallow thing. It is very serene looking, but if one is arthritic or worse, serenity is easier to attain if it is easier to bathe. We are searching the internet for a walk in bathtub. When we started thinking about things a couple of years ago, there were very few available, but thanks to the masses of aging boomers, there are tons, all of them very expensive.

Our builder needs a decision because since we're using a poured concrete floor throughout the house, these fixture decisions cannot be written in sand, they must be set in stone, RIGHT NOW!

Jumping the gun

We have our construction loan closing date which is next week, but our contractor is getting excited about this and wants to start taking down the tree that will block our carport. Even if the whole thing falls apart for now, eventually we'll still need a carport that doesn't have a tree growing through the middle of it. We met him this afternoon to make sure we were all talking about the same tree; none of us want any unnecessary tree deaths.

This has been an interesting time to start this sort of odd house. There's not much doing, construction-wise around here, and so our contractor has really been studying up on Frank Lloyd Wright. Pat, during the lazy days of early summer, made a 3-D model of the house. The grandsons were tickled with it because they could lift up the roof and see the tiny graph paper rooms. They even donated one of the their matchbox red convertibles to be glued under the little cardboard carport.

Pat thought he was just having fun, but when we went to see the structural engineer in Gibsonsville, we took the model to show and he asked to keep it for reference.

And, I was wanting to get a photo of it to post here, but I think we have lost it to the contractor who studies it at night...

A stake through the heart

Pat standing in our string living room

Our builder, who prefers to remain anonymous until he's sure things are going alright, has put the stakes out on the property. I happened by just when he was finished and he walked with me into the imaginary house.

"This is a small house," I stated.

"I told you it was, " he agreed, smiling down at me. Are all contractors tall?

"Well, we're used to living on an 80 sq. ft. mini-trawler, so I think we'll be good."

Later on Pat and I were walking in the string bedroom.

"It's pretty small," I said.

"We're used to living on an 80 sq. fit boat," he replied.

The house while small, is not compact; it is expansive, and even though we have a pretty good sized lot, it takes ALL of it to fit within the setbacks. Picture a ranch house split down the middle and spread open. Each wing reaches to almost the lot line. It is the difference between a person standing with her arms down at her sides and one with her arms open to hug a long lost child. Both take up the same mass in the universe; one is tight, the other welcoming

Went to the friends and family sale to actually purchase our appliances... now I KNOW we're not family. The entire transaction took place with no screaming, no guilt and no remembrances of hurtful things past.

The Sound of Money

One of my favorite movies is MEET JOE BLACK, wherein the wealthy, dying Anthony Hopkins is visited by the gorgeous, vacationing Death, Brad Pitt. Mr. Hopkin's character lives atop Manhattan in a beautiful penthouse above the rabble. Although he can't stop Death from eating at his dinner table or defiling his daughter, noise is never allowed. Even when the softspoken servants who shuffle around on carpeted floors in silken slippers set the table, the silverware is surrounded in ivory napkins so as not to disturb the dying man. Amazingly, no one gets shocked with static electricity when they hug.

You have to be really rich to afford such serenity.

We have lived in mobile home, which was sort of like living in a dying K-car. Every rattle of the furnace or squeak of the air conditioner interfered with conversation. I didn't realise how much it bothered me until we moved into the country house we were building at the time and the silence was overwhelming.

Our little Usonian will not be much bigger than that trailer. So when we went appliance shopping at Sears, our emphasis was on quiet. And, you have to pay for it. There are even decibel ratings on the better built dishwashers. Stainless steel appliances are quieter than their counterparts and that adds to the cost. We went with Kenmore for the dishwasher, stove and reefer. They seemed to be the most consistent with quality and our son-in-law says he likes his. Maureen, our salesperson, told us that every manufacturer's stainless steel finish is different, so in order to lessen confusion to the eyeballs, that played into our decision too.

Also, Sunday, Sears is having a "Friends and Family" sale. This means that anyone who has ever walked through a Sears at anytime during this or a previous life can buy a Kenmore,and get a better deal. So, we picked out the goods last night, but will actually buy it on Sunday because we are Friends.

I don't think we're Family.

seriously hard core economics

We had always considered going green. However, as bad at math as I am, even I knew that the initial outlay plus our expected lifespan did not always add up to a good financial decision. Pat has a stent. We're both, while not ancient, old enough that sometimes our granddaughter looks at us and I can tell she's trying to figure out if we're dying or not.

But, there are tax breaks to be had right now, and Pat says if we use solar panels on the roof, the payback would be 7 years. We should last that long.

There's a lot you can do to go green. Situating a house correctly according to the climate is among the most basic. We're in the south, so it's more important to reduce air conditioning costs. Up in Lake County Ohio , we'd be seriously worrying about heating bills.

In the Usonian we're using as a guide, there are plenty of clerestory windows.Which will help with air flow.

About 10 years ago, we visited the Waverly Mansion in West Point, Mississippi. This house had a central round hallway with the windows on the third floor opened to allow the cool air from the outside, which was surrounded by trees, to rush in forcing the hot air out through the central higher windows. The owners, who ran the tours themselves said the house remained cool throughout the summer with no a/c.

http://www.wpnet.org/waverley_mansion.htm

Of course, using a central cooling tower or just plain ole clerestory windows mean that there has to be open windows for green cooling to take effect -an anathema to some people.

Searstime

OUR FAX WORKED!

And just in the nick of time. To celebrate we're heading to Sears tonight. They are having a big appliance sale and they will hold the stuff until we need it. I have already picked out the refrigerator, a freezer on the bottom model. One of our daughters has it and they like it very much. I find I need more fridge room on top because with our shrinking household, we just don't have that much need to open the freezer, mainly to access the cocktail necessities of life and ice cream for the grandkids. Although Julia Child hated her freezer on the bottom. In one of her episodes, she was bending down to put something in it and complained about it being designed for "pygmies." We now buy our groceries weekly and not keeping massive amounts of food in readiness since we're not feeding 4 hungry girls and whoever they bring home for dinner. And let me say, in my experience, both having been raised in estrogen heavy household, and then running one- girls eat WAY MORE FOOD than boys. One of my sisters told me once that she usually stopped eating when she got tired of chewing.

Right now I have a Jenn-air stove, with the dual ovens. I like the dual ovens, but the upper smaller one doesn't heat as accurately as the lower, larger one, and the stove top, while having five burners, cannot accommodate three large pots at once. Although our children are all out now, we still cook for the hordes because of family dinners so I'm looking for a larger gas cooktop. And once again, I think Sears has it.

Pat is meeting with our builder to discuss the steel beams in the roof. THINGS ARE HAPPENING! This is so exciting!

A picture from the war zone

We are going with a odd sort of air conditioning system. We're going to go as green as we can, starting with the orientation of the house which will ensure that the morning sun enters the living areas while the hot afternoon sun hits a windowless wall.

We are considering using something called a mini-split system, wherein each room has its own indvidual unit, which are long skinny things that are placed as high as possible on the wall. They are quiet, which is important, because while building our country home nearly 20 years ago, we lived in a mobile home on the property and the worst thing about that was the a/c noise.

I had been having a difficult time with picturing how they would look and how well they would work because from the description they would be too small to do anything. Yesterday, we were looking at photos from our nephew in Baghdad. One of them was of the thermometer registering 140 degrees. Another was of a computer center and Pat said, "Oh, there are our a/c units." I hadn't even noticed them they were that small. But, if they can combat 140 degree desert heat, then I guess they'll work for Alamance County Augusts.

For Want of a Nail

Per usual, it is the odd things that hose up life.
Our fax machine isn't working correctly and hence communications between us and the bank are sort of slow right now. We replaced the fax and had my sister, who is the only person I know with a personal fax send us a test run, which worked, but then later on,, the bank couldn't get through. I had to reinstall the dang thing which involved the usual computer work of crawling around on the floor under desks etc. I then woke my sister up from her nap to fax us another test.

We still haven't received any banking faxes. But I have received a couple of good recipes. Including one from Southern Living that is a bean based pasta dish. I bought arugula for the first time in my life. Sounds good.

What does Usonian Mean?

In 1936, when the United States was in the depths of an economic depression, American architect Frank Lloyd Wrightdeveloped a series of homes he called Usonian. Designed to control costs, Wright's Usonian houses had no attics, no basements, and little ornamentation.

The word Usonia is an abbreviation for United States of North America. Frank Lloyd Wright aspired to create a democratic, distinctly American style that was affordable for the "common people."

Thanks to Jackie Craven of www. architecture.about.com for this succinct explanation of the Usonian house.

I should have been able to remember that simple definition, but alas, my memory, never good, has been further damaged by too many falls from too many horses.

Our little house, should the bank agree to this endeavor, will have some ornamentation. We are putting in some art glass inserts in the 400 series of Anderson windows. If we just use the 400 series for those few places where we will have art glass and the 200 series elsewhere, we can save nearly $8,000.00 according to Pat's calculations.

Although we are "common people," we plan on having an uncommon number of windows.

It is so hot here, the Food Lion parking lot is gooey.

Usonian

We should hear from the bank this week about the construction loan for the new house we're building. It is based on a Frank Lloyd Wright usonian, the Pope-Leighey Home which can be visited in Alexandria Va.

Here's a link to the original

http://popeleighey1940.org

It didn't come up blue, so it may be best to cut and paste it. If we get the loan then this blog about building an old design that is so radical it is hard to get loan approval, will continue. Otherwise I may have to write about my new old-fashioned broom which I love so much.

Okay, here's a little lecture which is almost straight out of a Lloyd-Wright house tour. The odds are greatly in your favor that at one point you have lived in a house that was directly derived from Mr. Frank... The ranch house common to most post-war suburbs, is a descendent of the usonion. That's it for now. I have to go de-gunkify the stock simmering on the stove.

Lay Reading

I was the early morning lay reader today. As usual, I just checked to see how many horrific names there were to pronounce and then promptly set aside the scripture. I'm not a terrific bible scholar so I wasn't familiar with the actual passage.

The reading was from 2nd Samuel and was the story of David's son Absalom who gets killed in a pretty gruesome, sad manner and by the time I came to the ending, I could hardly get out the "Absalom, Absaslom" bit. It was a terrible story to have to read in front of a group of people with no warning about the ending.

There's a lesson here, I'm sure. Maybe I'll figure it out later.