Cassilhaus

Canopy for Canapes

The dining canopy is finally in the air and feels like an important benchmark in the project. It was all hands on deck. Mark's careful execution and attention to detail over the past week make this a really special piece for the house.  Early in the design process we called it "the tongue". It feels like it somehow starts to pull the whole house design together.  There is light at the end of the tunnel now with only 6-7 weeks left in construction.

Mark's next trick will be integrating the canopy into the final phase of the decorative cedar ceiling in the kitchen and entry.

No matter where you go, there you are.

                      --Buckaroo Bonzai

Quick Update

There was a ton done last week.  They finished the insulation under the bridge and canopies, most of the roofing was completed, work continued on the decorative cedar ceiling, they started framing the screened porch, they started the delicate work of fabricating the dining canopy lattice, and an amazing amount of trim work got done.

Mark has moved from steps to dining canopy and has notched the slats for horizontal supports, predrilled for the support rod, and fabricated an electrical chase to acommodate wiring for the canopy's 3 light fixtures and track in anticipation of assembly today.  The canopy is critical as it drives the location of vertical members of the ceiling in the kitchen.

Update--Mark came in today to assemble the canopy and it looks fantastic!

Above is a view from the peek-through passage in the master bedroom.The extensions on the south side of the canopy will stagger the interface to the main kitchen ceiling so we won't have a butt connection.

As part of our "value engineering" on the millwork we converted a number of custom millwork pieces into adapted pieces from IKEA. One of these is next to the laundry room.  It is (surprise) not a rectilinier cavity and so we wanted to place the IKEA stock cabinet in there at an angle parallel to the wall and then fill in the gaps with pie slice shelves.  Scott was working on this and the custom base trim on Friday and it looks really great.  By a wierd quirk of fate and bad packaging on IKEA's part, we had 3 extra groovy blue plastic and aluminum doors as IKEA had to ship them three times to get enough undamaged ones (all had dented aluminum strips).  We decided to make our shelves out of these damaged doors and have a super custom IKEA installation complete with aluminum edge trim.

Scott also finished up the trim, 3 sliding doors, and fixed panel (to be painted super high gloss white) on the laundry and he put the saloon hinge and panel on the cat door.

The closer you get to the edge, the better the view.

                                 --David Napp

 

Marc Maiorana

Marc Maiorana is a metal artist/blacksmith from Virginia who is doing the custom stair rails for both pods.  I covered his previous visit in an earlier post. Now that the stairs have been finalized Marc came down to make his final measurements, build his templates, and continue to brainstorm with Ellen and I on design issues.

The current design concept is to have a continous top rail comprised of two different diameter barstock pieces to form an abstracted trapezoidal cross section.  This would be welded to verticals comprised of two equal diameter rods of different lengths that Y to meet the top rail.  Panels of a material to be determined would be used for infill.

On the main stair the verticals would penetrate the overhanging stair treads and be attached to the side of the stringer.  There will be a step down in rod size at the top of the tread so the hole will be covered.  In the guest pod the rod stock will be flattened at the 1/4" overhang of the tread and again attach to the side of the stringer

Marc was here all day and actually ended up building his final templates about 9pm by worklights.  We made great progress and decided on the exact location of all the verticals and made many refinements in the details of the rail and attachment.  Marc and I are doing research on panel materials and we are considering everything from furniture grade maple panels to match the stairwell millwork, metal mesh, high density polyethylene, polycarbonate, and 3Form resin sheets.  Glass was out of reach budgetwise.

The template building process that Marc has developed over time was fascinating to watch.  Using scrap 2x4s he carefully documents the angles and size of each tread/riser combo and scribes and notates all over them. 

 He also used this hinged MDF apparatus to get the relative angle and position of the two flights in the main stair.

He plans to fabricate the entire rail in his shop in Virginia and bring it to the site in 3 pieces.  The level of accuracy required is unbelievable and how he gets a finished stair rail out of a pickup truck full of 2x4 templates is beyond me but I was absolutely convinced that it would happen.

Marc is such a treat to work with and resonates so much with our desire to collaborate with artists to surround ourselves with beautiful forms and great design. He also makes a beautiful line of metal pieces for the home through his design firm Iron Design . He should be done with the rails in about a month--stay tuned.

DETAILS

It is just a pure rush to go onto the jobsite these days.  There were 20 vehicles and more than 30 guys on the site yesterday--we haven't had that many since we poured foundation walls back in January.  Things are moving so fast I can't even take it in. It is a tribute to Leon and his team that this thing looks like a well choreographed dance and doesn't just implode on itself. Finish and detail work is beginning and it is so exciting. Not being familiar with residential construction, one of the biggest surprises for me has been the amount of finish carpentry work that this project requires.  You can't swing a cat without hitting a trim carpenter at the moment. 

There are now 6 in addition to the 5 framing carpenters that have been working since the beginning of the project. Door trim, pocket door installation, stairs, window sills and trim, closet shelving, and base trim are all happening simultaneaously. All of these guys bring intellectual rigor to how wood goes together. A couple of posts back I talked about how Mark was doing such a killer job on the guest pod stairs.  He has now moved on to the main stairs which are much more intricate.  He has been holed up in the project gallery for the last three days assembling the treads and risers and sanding them to perfection.

 

We were a little anxious about how the unusual stair tread extension design would work but I think it looks fabulous.

  

There is going to be some tricky drywall work here.

The much talked about decorative cedar ceiling is finally getting built and Steve and Dwayne have outdone themselves. They are starting at the project gallery (East) end of the house.

 

They took a break to put the ipe on the screened porch and Ellen and I finally had a picnic dinner on our real porch and not on a precarious stack of plywood.

 

I am not sure exactly who has been working on the trapezoidal base trim but I think it is Scott and David or Kindon.  I was afraid that it would be too subtle to notice but it turned out to be a great detail particularly at the corners.

 

Even the simple rectilinear trim in the guest pod has some tricky details.

Holly and Corey are busy on doors and door trim.

 

David has done a beautiful job on the wood cap and headboard shelf in the sleeping loft.

He also worked with Scott on the beautiful interior cedar trim pieces that go floor to ceiling in a single run in the corners of the double high spaces in both pods.

Our millwork guys Doug and Patrick continue to work on the stair object installation and have just completed the North Wall.

The panels are maple with a cherry reveal.

Chuck and Tyson from Prescott Stone arrived to template for the granite countertops.

(would you trust this man with your granite countertops?)

I sent Chuck some images of a knife edge I was trying to achieve (Boffi ad at left) and he made some wood mockups to show what they could do.  Ellen, Chuck and I worked through it and think we have something that will look great.  He still needs to make a drawing to see if all of the faucets etc have good clearance around the raised bar section of the counter and that we have all of the backsplashes (mixture of tile and granite) worked out.  Chuck is a hoot to work with.  He is more sarcastic than I am which is saying something. He gets high marks for sweating the details.

Tyson makes the templates out of glued up slats of wood.

Tile work continues with the floor and shower of the guest and lower bath complete and most of the wall in the master bath done. The Corten tile looks fabulous.  I love the small mosaics.

Ellen and I held round 3 of the Finish Olympics this past weekend with an entire afternoon of grout color selections.  Medalists include Magnolia, Pale Umber, Mocha, Charcoal, and Bone.

The standing seam metal roof on the bridge got underway.  I'm going to have to get used to the wacky fins on the roof.

  

Last but not least, Fripp and Siberry are happy to know that we are looking out for their needs. Scott is working on the cat door in the laundry room where their litter box will live.

They have a very tough gig.

There is nothing so mysterious as a fact clearly described.

                                --Garry Winogrand

THE TOP TEN THINGS GOING ON AT CASSILHAUS

1)  Darren is installing the beautiful Siematic main Kitchen and Dining Room cabinets from The Kitchen Specialist.  The action on the drawers feels like a Mercedes.

The unit on the right is the very groovy LeMans unit which swivel out and allow you to use all of the space in the corner unit,

2) Nathaniel and Mario and the rest of the team from Quality Tile are laying the Rex Ceramiche Meteaux Roulle Rouge Italian porcelain tile in the Entry and Lower Bath. Tuan has also prepped the master bath and shower bench to receive the Tau Corten tile.

Ellen and Nathanial figure out the final tile patterns in the master bath.

 

3) Steve and Dwayne (with some help from Richard) have just finished the exterior cedar siding on the whole house after completion of the North face and the short walls at the lowered roof.

4) The membrane roofs have been installed on the North ends of both pods.

5) Porfirio and company have finished laying the hardwood floors with completion of the kitchen/dining/living area.

6) The HVAC system has been activated in the Guest Pod.

7) The structural support for the decorative tile shelf in the lower bath has been installed.

We will have an approximately 4" H x5" W shelf with a tile pattern made of 1"x12" mosaic tiles which will go from the vanity to the shower glass.  There will be a break at the glass and then the shelf will go from 5" wide to 2" inside the shower and then continue on as a flush decorative pattern on the North wall.

8) Ed and Ward have started the Ipe decking on the screened porch and northwest end of the main pod.

9) The tree grates have been installed!

10) A new window has been added on the south side of the Guest Bath to bring in more light from the South Clerestory.

Enough going on for you?  Next week they start the decorative cedar ceiling. Check out the scaffolding ramp jigsaw puzzle under the bridge.  OSHA would be proud.

endless LOOP

I have a weakness for European light fixtures.  OK, I actually may have to enter an Italian light fixture 12 step program. I've got it bad.  Fortunately we have some great fixtures already and we are bringing them from our current house.  We have been working with Jeff Brown at Colorlume on our lighting. Jeff is great and is fortunately much more focused on photometrics and low voltage transformers and is fine with me searching out the cool decorative pendants and sconces.

Recently I was looking for a replacement exterior sconce because the original unit Jeff specified came in too spendy.  He suggested I talk to Teresa Teachey Associates, a lighting rep firm. She represents more than 28 manufacturers--many of whom I had never heard of.  That's like crack to an addict. I spent the better part of the day checking out all of the websites, found an outdoor sconce (at right by Access Lighting) , AND discovered the Flaver corporation. Flaver is an Italian company just entering the US market and Teresa is one of the first US reps (In Fuquay Varina-go figure).

One of the many genetic gifts I inherited from my mother is the ability to select the single most expensive item in any product line regardless of my familiarity with what I am looking at. I can't tell you the number of light fixtures I have fallen in love with that turned out to cost more than a two week vacation in Italy. So I had prepared myself for the inevitable emotional body blow of learning the price of my latest love the Flaver LOOP glass pendant. I tentatively called Teresa to ask and she told me that Flaver was pricing their products very aggressively to get a foothold in the US market and that she was further heavily discounting to get some initial pieces in the field.  I almost fell over when she told me it would be $295.  I was expecting 10 times that. I signed up immediately.

Flaver has no US presence so I would have to buy the fixture directly from Italy. I was told I would get a ProForma invoice for the $295 plus shipping.  This came from their export manager--let's call her Gia to protect her innocence. Teresa called me flabbergasted that the shipping quote was $700! and that was for pick up at the Charlotte airport. This is a box that is 27"x27"x7". I immediately thought that we simply had a language problem and I sent Gia an email explaining that I didn't need it overnight and that actually surface freight would be fine as I didn't need it for months. It actually seemed to be lost on Gia that they were not going to be successful selling into the US market when their shipping costs were three times the cost of the product. The response was simply that that was the best they could do on shipping. They do not ship glass via the post office and if I could do better they told me to contact my own shipper. It retrospect I should have thrown in the towel then but I was hyped up about being the first kid on the block with a Flaver Loop fixture. I contacted FEDEX and got a quote of $550--they said it had a large dimensional weight. Undaunted, I called my friend Dan you is a manufacturer's rep for Italian products and he offered to include it in his next container if I couldn't find a resolution.  He also said that it should be about 60 Euros (about 90$) to send it. After a week or so back and forth I decided to take another approach.  I asked Gia what it would cost to ship the fixture to someone in the European Union.  She said 40 Euros and I smiled that smile of someone who has beaten the system.  I have friends in Switzerland and a brother who lives in Holland so I called to see who might be coming to the US soon.  My brother offered to hand carry it as luggage the next time he came and I thought I had my solution.

With the shipping resolved I called Gia to give her my credit card.  I was told that Flaver does not accept credit cards. They would only accept an international wire transfer. In my country..........  The fact that there are approximately 2 billion international credit card transactions every day did not seem to matter. Feeling the forces of nature again beginning to converge against me I reconsidered bailing on the whole thing but decided to investigate the wire transfer thing.  My local bank couldn't do it so I called Charles Schwab and they said no problem and emailed me the form I needed.  Thus ensued about two weeks of hilarious miscues and language issues around finding out their SWIFT code and street address of their parent bank and the correct number of digits for their account code. I realized I had crossed the threshold of this being about the object of my quest and was about the quest itself.  It was ludicrous that I was expending this much effort to get a $295 light fixture that should have been a 10 minute transaction.  So I paid my $29 wire transfer fee and my money went off into the ether and 4 days later Gia emails to say that she has received my payment and will ship the fixture to my brother the following day. Yea!

Then came the arcane questions--did my brother live in the center of town or the suburbs (apparently it determines the kind of truck that does the delivery), what were his opening and closing hours?  Who did he work for?  Emergency contact numbers.  I don't think of the Italians as a beurocratic bunch but I began to think that Gia was simply jerking my chain at this point. Finally I satisfied all the questions and supposedly we were good to go.

Three days after the fixture was supposed to ship I get an email from Gia saying they couldn't ship the fixture until they get my brother's VAT number (Value added Tax). No exceptions. I'm sure I have lost my money and there is no way I will ever see the LOOP.  I gently explain to Gia that my brother is a private US citizen, not a company, and he does not have a VAT number.  Sorry--no exceptions.

My wife Ellen had the brilliant idea to call our friend Andrea who lives with his wife Allessandra and two daughters Antea and Anjeri in the Italian part of Switzerland (and of course speaks fluent Italian). Andrea lived with me when he was doing an international law degree at Duke a few years ago.  He is now a public prosecutor in Ticino. 

I called Andrea, embarrased with the extent of my folly on such a trivial prusuit, but he told me he would call Gia and get to the bottom of things.  He said she was very gracious and that the issue was similar to the wholesale/retail situation in the US.  If a manufacturer ships a product to a reseller they don't charge tax as the retailer will eventually charge the end user the tax.  When she was going to ship the fixture to the US this was not an issue as the European VAT (21%!) does not apply to shipments outside of the EU.  But now that she was shipping a product to a US customer but in the EU she couldn't ship it without a tax exemption number. Andrea told her that I would gladly pay the tax but that, of course, would require another international wire transfer. I was able to laugh about this and Andrea was able to convince her to ship the fixture on my promise to pay the tax unless my brother could get it reimbursed when he passed through customs.

My brother emailed me last week to tell me the fixture had arrived and was well packed but that he was not coming to the US as planned.  He is on the lookout for someone coming to the US and he will send it with them and then have them ship it to me from somewhere in the US.  I'm giving myself about 50% odds of actually ever seeing this fixture in one piece but if it ever finds its home into our library I am really going to appreciate that light..................................  Stay tuned for updates.

Cost of light fixture        $295

VAT tax                          $58

17 hours of my time to get the light fixture to my doorstep:  Priceless

Sorry, Master Card not accepted.

STAIR MASTER

The last time I focused any attention on the Guest Pod stair was in the Stairway to Heaven post when I was elated that we no longer had to use a ladder to get to the second floor.  I am elated again--Mark, one of our master trim carpenters with Trimmasters, has done a stunning job of the ash stairs--the attention to detail is obvious in the laying out of grain pattern and precision of the reveals.

Sorry about the blue tape. Mark is very protective of his edges.

Mr. Bell followed up with some precision drywall work of his own.

Mark made a mock up of the tread and riser for the main stair for our evaluation.  It is maple and has a half riser with a large drywall reveal and the tread overlaps on both sides by 4 inches.

We are working out how the custom rail will integrate with this unusual tread detail.

Frank's day at the paint stores

We are having a minor scheduling emergency because the decorative cedar ceiling is holding up construction inside as we have been unable to find a good interior stain match that meets our low or no VOC requirement.  We were hoping AFM Safecoat could match our exterior cedar but after a two week struggle we got their final attempt today and it was not acceptable. We feel like we have exhausted all of the eco friendly stain options so Philip suggested we try to get a PAINT match in the Sherwin Williams Harmony line (low VOC) and he would try to dilute it to look like a stain.  Our stain is pretty dark and unfortunately the Harmony line does not have an ultra deep base so we couldn't do the

match.  The great folks at SW did spend quite a bit of time with me today trying to match our stain sample in their conventional line.  I was then off to Tru Value Hardware which handles the Benjamin Moore Aura line and they do have an ultra deep base and very low VOC ratings. Tim and his crew there tried for almost an hour adding small amount of pigment and got pretty close but not an exact match.  The magic matching machine seems to work well matching paint to paint but not so well matching paint to stain.  Philip is going to try his dilutions tonight on a raw cedar board and all fingers and toes are crossed that tomorrow morning we will have an acceptable option to proceed with.

You can never solve a problem at the level at which it was created.  You have to go one at least one level beyond.

                                    --Albert Einstein

 

Progress and Virus

Greetings and sorry for the radio silence.  I got a wicked computer virus and had to have my entire laptop wiped and rebuilt and it has set me back by a week. It has been like a beehive at the site--hardwood floors, kitchen and bathroom cabinets, architectural trim, painting, stucco, ceramic tile, and HVAC all vying to occupy the same time-space continuum.

We are working with Bill and Kim Campbell of Select Forest Products for our hardwood floors and they have been a dream to work with-like having friends over to the house (we actually did just have them over for sandwiches at the job site!). We chose a beautiful Pennsylvania Cherry for the gallery level, quarter sawn ash from Ohio for the living,dining,kitchen,study and another ash from Kentucky for the Guest Studio. The toughest thing we had to do was decide which wall the floors would be parallel to.

Winning the award for coolest name on the entire project is Porfirio who is leading the ash installation crew. I make a habit of asking guys on the jobsite how long they have been working for their

 

company and what their boss is like to work for.  Porfirio spent about 5 minutes telling me how great Bill was as a boss and the best man he has ever worked for. It speaks volumes about a company when their emplyees rave about their boss and we are so happy to have those kinds of companies on our project.

They started with the floors in the Guest Pod Studio and then another crew headed up by Dan started on the gallery cherry.

The final phase on the floors is the downstairs.  They have completed the study but are held up waiting on the tree grates to complete the living/dining/kitchen area.

Speaking of great folks to work with, The Kitchen Specialist (Mary Liebhold and team)

kicked off the on-site phase of their work in the Guest Pod Kitchenette and the bathrooms. Darren is an amazing one man installing machine and has been burning the midnight oil.

The decorative cedar ceiling will fill in the area remaining unfinished above.

We chose an inexpensive but high quality laminate line of cabinets for the kitchenette and saved our budget dollars for the Siematic cabinets in the main kitchen.

Father and son team Doug and Patrick (Harry Potter's doppleganger) Smith of Certified Woodworking in Raleigh also got underway on their first on-site work.  They are building the stair object and gallery object. We are lining the main stair with beautiful maple panels with cherry reveals.

Dwayne and company have been cruising on the exterior cedar siding. They have finished the entire West, South, and East sides and are working on the North and the soffits on the Guest Pod.

Is that a treehouse or what? You can also see the "Pella Bronze" paint on the underside of the Project gallery (cantelivered volume) which will be under the cedar lattice ceiling. An example of a last minute design change the emerged from a site visit.  Ellen and I were having lunch on the screened porch last week and we looked up at the newly painted black (specified color) ceiling and then at the bronze metal of our Pella windows and quickly called Philip to see if he could do the second coat in bronze and we loved it.  This color will carry over to the entire underside of the house including the ceilings under the living/ dining and guest studio.

I went up on the scaffolding to take a close look at the cedar work and got this great shot of the side of the project gallery and the east soffit of the Guest Pod.

Dwayne, Steve, and Joe have also been working on the vertical cedar wing walls on the North decks of both pods.

ITC Millwork just got underway last week and will begin in earnest next week on window sills, pocket doors, stair treads, wall cap, closets, etc.  They are stocking their materials and making mockups for us to approve.

We had a visit last week from our friends Hannah and Kaiya (doing the Pella advertisement) who were stunned at the progress since their last visit.