Cassilhaus

Note:  If you are reading this by email it is best to view the blog directly at www.cassilhaus.typepad.com

Regular readers of the blog know by now that Ellen and I had always planned to have a gallery space in the house to enjoy our photography collection.  We also always had a notion that we would stage other shows in the gallery but weren't really sure exactly what kind of shows or whether it would be for artists in residence, members of the community, or other artists whose work we admired. With all the effort of finishing the house and getting settled we just decided to let it evolve on its own.

Back in August I received a call from my good friend MJ Sharp who is an amazing photographer based in Durham. We have collected her work for a long time.  She wanted another set of eyes on her recent body of work and invited me to her studio to get some feedback.  Let's just say that MJ is not a neatnik. When I arrived it looked like there had been a photography explosion--images everywhere on every surface covering boxes and boxes of more photographs stacked next to tubes with rolls of more photographs.  MJ works with traditional film in large format old school cameras with bellows and dark cloths. She shoots very long exposures, mostly at night, exposed only by moonlight, streetlights, or stray light from the man made environment. 20 and 30 minute or longer exposures are not uncommon.  The magic of her work comes from an incredible eye for composition but also the nature of analog film that allows accumulation of light on the film over time-- rendering a scene that to the naked eye would be barely visible as if it were lit by theatrical lighting. "Outside Amarillo" below was taken in the dead of night and the scene was so dark MJ could not see to focus on the silo without temporary use of a spotlight.

Without special effects in PhotoShop or any other techniques (except patience) she has managed to create surreal worlds while using the most traditional methods of straight photography. 

Anyway, when I looked at one of her new images I said, "MJ this is YUMMY!" Unbeknownst to me I had just complimented one of her secret favorites (she thinks some of her pet images could only be loved by a crazed photographer) and she then brought out a treasure trove of her favorites and I was hooked.

When I saw "Laundry with Wreath"  I got all the way to "MJ, this is SUPER YUMMY!" Within an hour we were talking about doing an MJ SUPER YUMMY show as the inaugural exhibition at Cassilhaus Gallery.

MJ shoots her best work under the winter moon as it is high in the sky.  She had been dreaming about going to Scotland to photograph ruins in February in some of the "more remote" sections of the country where it is freezing and gale force winds are not uncommon.  MJ had a brilliant plan to borrow the idea of the CSA from the local food movement and port it over to art--Community Supported Art.  The idea is simple.  We would sell "shares" that correspond to print sizes i.e. 20x24", 30x40" etc., folks would pay in advance but get a discount from MJ's normal print prices, and in the process she could fund her trip with an assistant for two weeks in Scotland!  Upon her return shareholders would have their pick of the work she creates on the trip or select from her previous work--a win win scenario.  Why didn't I think of that?

 We grabbed a scrap of photo paper and started to compile our list.....

MJ's plan of "we'll just tape some work prints up on one of the walls" fell prey to Frank's desire for a major gallery retrospective.  It was an enormous amount of work but we had such a ton of fun and got to spend gigantic amounts of time together.  There is no better way to get to know a person and an artist's work than curating a show with them.  MJ did most of the heavy lifting of digital scans of her negatives, working with the lab to get perfect prints, shipping them to NYC for mounting, etc. etc.  MJ is a perfectionist and a stunning image would come back from the lab and she'd get that "it needs one more percent of magenta" look on her face and you knew the FedEx man would be back tomorrow. 

MJ's partner BethAnn demonstrates the MOMA approved Tidy Cat bucket mounting method on a stunning 40x50" print of "Purple Coneflowers"

Fripp the cat was a HUGE help with expensive prints all over the floor

After a couple late nights a girl needs some serious caffeine.

MJ's sculptor friend Steve Cote made some beautiful custom metal frames for a few of the pieces. (pardon the glare)  

It was cost prohibitive to mount and frame every print.  Ellen and I stumbled upon these great aluminum print hangers called Posterhangers while we were on a house tour and they turned out to be one of the hits of the show! Shown with "Night Watertower 2009"

The final show looked glorious if I do say so myself. It spanned from her earliest work as the photographer for The Independent Weekly up to images she had just shot that week and had never printed before. 

MJ included an "ephemera wall" with a fascinating collage of shooting notes, poetry, prints in progress, oddball variants, and souvenirs from the road. 

We elected to have a big opening/fund raising party over two nights in December.

I surprised MJ for her birthday with homemade alphabet Scottish shortbread cookies that spelled out SUPER YUMMI and MJ SHARP

 
The parties were a smashing success and we had over 100 people join us.  MJ gave a very engaging artist talk each night, explained her technique, and showed a wide range of images covering her career. I am very excited to say that we sold over $10,000 worth of prints and MJ and her intrepid assistant leave FRIDAY for the Outer Hebrides.  Stay tuned for updates upon her return.  

There is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described.

         Garry Winogrand

                       (photo courtesy of Tom McGhee and Vietri) 

 My Dad always told me that when times are tough you have to leverage your assets.  We'd been thinking about ways to supplement our income in this wonderful economy and friends of ours told us about renting their contemporary house for use in location film and print photo shoots.  I was intrigued and did some web research on location scouts and put out some feelers.  We had heard that film shoots are a little rougher on a house than print work so we focused our attention on the latter.  As is usually the case, opportunities come from where you least expect them.  We had a "Meals from the Market" fundraiser for Durham Central Park last September and at that event we met John and Sue McGhee, transplants from Austrailia, who had just moved to the Triangle.  Turns out Tom is a professional photographer and Sue is the creative director for Vietri based in Hillsborough.  They were crazy about the house and it wasn't too long that Cassilhaus was the site of a catalog shoot for a new line of Vietri China!

The crew was fantastic and our house looked like a movie set.

Sue and her team staged a feast on our dining table. A huge unanticipated score was the massive quantity of fabulous food they left behind.

      (above photo courtesy of Tom McGhee and Vietri)

They also used our lovely Seth Rolland table to feature another product line

             (above photo courtesy of Tom McGhee and Vietri)

It took all day but we had a great time and they got some great shots for their website and upcoming catalog.  We got some VERY NICE china for our trouble.  Thanks Tom and Sue and crew!

  
 We would LOVE to do more of this work so tell your location scout friends!!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

We weren't sure when we moved here whether we were going to let the cats go outside or not.  We opted to plan for that eventuality but not execute.  We left the stud bay next to the frig in the kitchen completely open so we could cut a cat door down to the basement stairwell if we needed it and then we were going to cut a door into the metal basement door to the outside.  We ultimately decided to not let the cats go out but then Fripp, our male cat, started to have litter box "issues"  The solution turned out to be moving his litter box to the basement and so we needed the upper cat door if we were not going to leave the basement door open all the time.  We contacted Mark Burford who did the wonderful work on our dining canopy and stairs in the house.  His email reply came back with the subject title "Feline Egress Project".  Ellen drew  up a sketch and Mark made us one beautiful cat door.  There is an extra locking panel that allows us to close off access if needed.

(view from basement stairwell side)

 
Fripp loves the new arrangement and also seems to enjoy chasing his mouse toy into the big mouse hole.  Siberry is very happy to have the upstairs litter box all to herself.

 MEOW!
 
 

OK so I will never say never again. It has been 5 months since my last post. I thought I'd do a post on the visitors we've had over the past few months--Lot's of great excitement here. Our second fabulous artist in residence, Beverly McIver, was here for 7 weeks last summer.  She is a painter based in Durham and due to a studio stanfu was really looking for a place to paint for upcoming shows and we were thrilled to oblige.  Beverly is a night owl so we didn't overlap much--we are early to bed--but it was great to follow her progress as she worked on multiple canvases simultaneaously.

Her principal subjects are self portraits and portraits of her sister Renee. She completed 7 pieces while she was with us.

 Beverly was a delight to be with and it is so much fun having art made in our home!

My wonderful 87 year old Aunt Helen came down at the beginning of September to spend a few days with us.  We had never spent that much time together and we all had the time of our lives.  She had such a wealth of stories about my Dad and her other sibs and about her travels all over the world--I videotaped her for several hours and hope to find the time to edit them all together soon.

  We went everywhere--

  to the Durham Farmers Market and to the Duke University Lemur Center

This is an incredibly random picture but Superman was perched on a fence at the Lemur center and I couldn't resist

 We had a lovely walk and lunch at the Duke Gardens

We made a visit to the Scrap Exchange which turned out to be Helen's favorite spot in town! We couldn't get her out of there. After picking up some metal bees (from Burt's Bees), an I'm Here to Party button, and a campaign sign from some Helen in New Jersey we headed on to tour downtown.

Ellen's office celebrated 10 years in October with a great gathering of clients and friends at the house.

 
 Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world.

Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves.

All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.

George Bernard Shaw

Well it has been almost 2 months since my last post--mea culpa! It's not like there hasn't been anything going on--quite the contrary.  I am happy to say we seem to be entering the "enjoying phase" of the project.  Most of the bugs have been worked out and the remaining issues are plodding along and will eventually sort themselves out.

I have instituted "maintenence day" every second Tuesday to try and keep up with the prolific spiders and other creatures taking up residence in dryer vents, eaves, window sills etc. as well as all the little tweaks to keep Cassilhaus running smoothly. An unexpected benefit of cleaning off the roof was some great new angles on the house!

One of my first maintenance day projects was a street address sign for the driveway. For someone who is not very handy with tools and rarely makes anything I was very proud of my creation--trapezoidal of course! I used some of the left over western red cedar from the house and got the numbers at Home Depot.

The solar side lighting ended up not working so I went for a ground mounted solar spot light.

There has been enormous interest in seeing the house. It doesn't seem to matter if we have 2 or 100 people over--the house seems to accept them graciously and it still feels open and relaxed.  We had a very successful Meals from the Market event to benefit Durham Central Park last weekend with 70 people and raised over $2200 to support the incredible progress there. If you haven't been to the park in a while you should check it out.  In a few weeks we are having sneak preview screening to support a fabulous new film by Kenny Dalsheimer called A New Kind of Listening. It is an incredibly powerful film and there will be a free community screening on October 15th at 7:30 at the Carolina Theatre in downtown Durham. If you would like to make a donation you can do so here or contact Kenny about the screening here at Cassilhaus. Ellen is throwing a party next month to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of Ellen Cassilly Architect and there is likely be a crowd of about 150. 

The response to the house has been overwhelmingly positive. I love it when people notice the subtle details of the design.  It is funny that so many people associate contemporary architectural with cold and sterile and are so surprised when they see all of the wood in the house and how warm it is.

There is tons more news but I need to sign off for now.  I promise it won't be two months before I post again.

To the extent that this world surrenders its richness and diversity it surrenders its poetry.  To the extent that it relinquishes its capacity to surprise, it relinquishes its magic.  To the extent that it loses its ability to tolerate ridiculous and even dangerous exceptions, it looses its grace.                   

 

Tom Robbins

It has been 3 weeks since the Times article appeared and it has created quite a buzz.

• Ellen and I have each received hundreds of emails. Several of Ellen's grad school buddies from around the globe whom she hasn't seen in 20 years contacted her to congratulate her and catch up.  The Times has an amazing reach.
• My blog had 749 visitors in one week after the article! This is about 8 times normal traffic.
• Ellen's website had over 500 new visitors
• We have been picked up by no less than 10 other blogs including Apartment Therapy, Nasher Museum Blog, piedmont plots, swipelife, and bull city rising.

Some of my favorite comments:

• YEEEEEEEEEEEE -firgging-ha y'all!!   Wenny
• Fan-F#@*ing-Tastic!                        Scott
• Wowza! So Darn cool! Even though it’s my homepage I will have to go get a paper copy today!                                            Sioux
• It looks as though you were in some sort of Buddhist hyper state of awareness the entire time you were thinking, designing, and building this masterpiece.       Katharine
• ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!   Heather
• This is HUGE!                                                         Nancy and Chuck

The folks at the Herald Sun in Durham saw the Times article and sent Monica Chen to write a really nice FRONT PAGE article about Ellen's work and the house.

Chapel HIll Magazine also caught wind of our artist in residence program from the Times and will feature Cassilhaus and our current artist Beverly McIver as part of a story on interesting artist studios in their next issue. And of course every artist from here to San Francisco wants to be an artist in residence! Sorry folks but we are booked up.

We are ecstatic that the New York Times featured Cassilhaus in today's editon with full page coverage, multiple photographs and online extras. It is a great honor to be recognized by what is arguably the world's greatest newspaper.  We are grateful to Tom DeKay,Trish Hall, Sara Barrett, and Samantha Storey of the New York Times, writer Michael Welton ([email protected]), and photographer John Hall for such a great piece.  Mike was like a pit bull getting this story in the Times.  He REALLY wanted to tell this story and we are so grateful for his persistence.  Also a tip of the hat to Andrew Rook of Clearscapes Architecture for putting us on Mike's radar screen and to Frank Harmon for giving us the courage to approach the Times.

There are so many people to thank for this amazing project.  Anna Wirth helped with the design throughout the project and made a beautiful plan set. We are particularly thankful to our wonderful builders and true craftsmen Leon Meyers and Myron Weiler with LE Meyers Builders who built an incredibly complicated house with a lot of compound angles and made our dream home a reality.  Elsewhere in this blog I talk about all the other artists and craftsman that made it all come together.

I can't even begin to express how grateful I am to the love of my life Ellen for making all of this a reality.  Her creativity, incredible design sense, patience and love got me through all this and realized our dream.

Check out the Ellen Cassilly Architect site for lots of photos of all of her projects . Raise a glass of champagne with us tonight!!!

One of the true treasures of living in the Durham/Chapel Hill area is having the American Dance Festival here every summer. The ADF is the premiere modern dance festival in the world but with 30+ years here you sometimes forget the greatness in your own back yard.  Ellen and I were asked this year to host a post performance party at Cassilhaus for an amazing Japanese dance company called H. Art Chaos. We got to see their unbelievable performance the night before the party. It is difficult to describe but it was an evening of brilliant dance theater with extensive aerial moves with minimal but magically exploited simple props and elaborate costumes.

The company, their technical crew and ADF staff including director Charles Reinhart arrived around 11 pm this past Tuesday. We had some trepidation about the language issue because no one in the company spoke English and they had only 1 translator with them.  It was not an issue at all.  Art, architecture, and good food proved a good common language and everyone seemed to have a genuinely great time. Having been confined to rehearsals and their hotel with restaurant food for a week they were delighted to get out and about and see a little slice of North Carolina.

H. Art Chaos with Ellen in the "girl power" room.

Dancers discover the Bongo Board

Ellen and director/choreographer Sakiko Oshima chill on the hammock.

Everyone loved the house and it seems to thrive on parties. We are trying to convince Sakiko to come back and choreograph a piece for the gallery......................

All genius is a conquering of chaos and mystery. 
    ---Otto Weininger

We noticed the other night that our motion detector exterior downlights that are under the bridge and the cantelivered section of both pods were not going off at night.  After fiddling with the breaker and consulting the directions I was at a loss.  A brief look at the motion dectector under the bridge solved the mystery.

Mom has been a busy gal at night.

In honor of our fathers Ellen and I wanted to plant trees at Cassilhaus. I just lost my dad a month ago at age 90.  "Bus" was a great man and I will miss him. 

Ellen lost her Dad in 2001 and I was so sorry I never got to meet him. This is Bill with daughters Anna and Ellen.

My parents used to live on 85 acres of rural land in Pennsylvania and my Dad created a paradise there of wonderful plants and trees.  Among his favorites was a Dawn Redwood Tree which he planted 25 years ago as a sapling and is now over 70 feet tall! 

 We planted one in the front yard of Cassilhaus and gave it lots of room to grow.

Ellen's Dad was a master gardener and would have had so much to talk about with my Dad.  We planted a Pawpaw tree for him in the side yard--he loved puns and we thought he would like the name.

The night we planted the Pawpaw tree we had friends over for dinner.  As they were leaving and we were seeing them out the front door we were greeted by quite a surprise on the front railing.

Our visitor was in no hurry to go anywhere, even with 5 humans staring at him.  He was playfully going up and down the railing uprights and winding through the cables. We both felt like it was Bill thanking us for the tree and checking out the new house.

The next day Ellen came home from work and swerved to avoid our new friend in the driveway.  He proceeded up the bank and stopped for a long time in front of the Dawn Redwood before dissappearing under a pile of rocks.

Happy Fathers' Day to All.

We've had a lot of rain lately.  The creek has been raging and serenading us at night.  Ellen awoke at 5:30am with a craving for kayaking.  She used to kayak alot before we got married but lately her kayak has been collecting cobwebs under the house.  She asked if I would help her carry the boat down to the water, get her launched, and pick her up an hour later at the Erwin Road bridge.  I was totally game--I love her spontaneaous heart.  About an hour and fifteen minutes later she emerged from the trees--a little damp, a little bruised, and a big ol' smile.

The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. --John Muir

The river Called. The call is the thundering rumble of distant rapids, the intimate roar of white water…a primeval summons to primordial values. -- John J. Craighead

You don’t drown by falling into water. You drown by staying there. -- Robert Allen

Cassilhaus is about art and artists.  Even before we started the design process we knew we wanted a space for artists to come to live and create. We designed an artist studio pod with live/work space, sleeping loft, kitchen, and a full bath with an eye toward an artist-in-residence program.

Ellen and I were anxious to see how it would work.  I did a bunch of reading about other artist retreats and residencies and put together a draft document about our own informal Cassilhaus visiting artist program as a way of collecting our thoughts. To kick things off we needed a professional artist who we knew well enough to ask to be our guinea pig and work through some of the inevitable kinks of the new house and the new idea but not someone so close that we would not get objective feedback.

Enter Walter Angehrn.

I met Walter in 1986 when I moved to Switzerland to be with my then girlfriend Susanna. Walter and Susanna were close friends who had gone to medical school together and were now in their residencies. We did a lot of hiking together and became fast friends.  Here is Walter atop Niesen after our very long climb 23 years ago.

When my relationship broke up and I moved back to the US, Walter and I lost touch with each other.  In 2007 Ellen and I planned a trip to Europe for me to meet her French relatives, and I decided I wanted to try and track down Walter. 20+ years seemed like 2 months and we clicked again instantly and had a marvelous reunion in St. Gallen where he lives. We traveled around Switzerland and Austria

and got caught up on each others lives.  Walter had just made the monumental decision to leave medicine to pursue art full time.  He had always been an artist but his schedule never allowed him to pursue it seriously.  We told him about our house dreams and asked him if he would be our first artist-in-residence at Cassilhaus and to our delight he agreed.

Walter's work is abstract and for me, a lover of photography, it was a steep learning curve to try to understand his process and media and step outside my narrow figurative photo world. It was such a joy to have him here to share and explain his work. When he arrived Walter had just completed a very successful show of his new series which was a group of 28 dyptics (drawings and paintings) created in response to JS Bach's Cantanta #21. A bit exhausted from all the work and stress of a big opening, he said he just wanted to retreat and enjoy his first visit to NC with us rather then diving into a new project. We gladly obliged and showed him around the Triangle and even got him down to Ocracoke Island and Wrightsville Beach.

We also took him on an excursion to NYC.  Ellen and I wanted to go to a contemporary furniture fair to scout furniture for the house and Walter suggested we go a day early and visit Dia Beacon and Storm King north of the city.  It was definitely a full day but both were unbelievable.  If you ever get the chance to go do not hesitate.

The Richard Serra pieces at Dia were overwhelmingly beautiful.

Walter, a devotee of artist Cy Twombly, went on an excursion of his own to Houston to see the Twombly Pavilion on the Menil Collection campus there. It was a true pilgramige for him and he was very moved by his visit.

It is clear that there will be no "typical" visit for an artist here but it was very useful to have this first experience.  It was very odd for me to negotiate that line between my normal inclinations of a host with a visiting friend and the host of an artist that we wanted to give time and space and privacy to work.  The first night with me eating alone on one side of the house and Walter eating alone on the other was a new experience for me!  The only critical feedback we got from Walter was that the refrigerator was too loud and that the place was "too nice" for him to feel comfortable working in.  We addressed the latter problem by putting heavy paper down on the entire floor so he could paint outside the lines. 

He also asked me to remove some of the photographs on the wall in the studio to give him more of a blank sheet of paper in the space.

When I get anxious about whether we are doing things "right" or providing the right environment for creative work, I need to remind myself that there really is no right way and that the artists will tell us what they need. Our only expectation at the moment is that our visiting artists have a great experience with us and we achieved that with Walter.

His whole time here was magical.  We shared many walks and meals and visits with good friends.  The potential for richness in surrounding ourselves with artists sharing our home was apparent each day of Walters visit. Ellen joked as Walter left that we were going to abandon the idea of the artist residency program after Walter as it couldn't get any better.

As a parting gift Walter surprised us with a beautiful dyptic of the first piece in a new series, "responses," that germinated here at Cassilhaus. The series will pair abstract photographs with drawings/paintings that respond to or answer the photograph. I don't have it properly matted yet but here is a mockup.

Walter we will miss you! Thank you so much.

When I work, I work very fast, but preparing to work can take any length of time.

--Cy Twombly

We recently decided to hire world class architectural photographer Jim West to further document our home.  We are quite happy with what we shot ourselves so far but we really wanted to pull out the stops and we were not disappointed. Ellen and I worked with Jim and his assistant Jeff over 3 partial days and got some fabulous shots and had a great time. I'll let the photos speak for themselves. Thanks Jim!  All photographs are copywrite 2009 by JWest Productions and cannot be copied or used in any way without written permission.

There is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described.   --Garry Winnogrand

I mentioned a few posts back that we were looking for a table for the breakfast nook and that we had seen a table called the Oxeye table by an artist in Washington state named Seth Rolland.

This stunning table top is made from a single piece of sustainably harvested ash that is cut and splayed to look like the opening of a flower.  We called Seth to see if he could make us a version of the table that was a full circle as we wanted to face out toward the kitchen when we ate. Seth was fantastic to work with and entirely game to take on the custom project.  He felt like he could do it using two pieces of Ash bonded together and by adding a stretcher below the top to ensure rotational stability. We exchanged some sketches and worked out the details. He sent us progress photos of our table. The first photo shows the table in its linear form for finishing.

He chose this piece of walnut burl for the center.

This shows the bottom side of the top clamped in place.

and the top side

and the legs get attached...

Seth crated it up and sent it to us.  We got a 38" round piece of ultra clear (low iron) glass and voila we have an unbelievable stunning table. 

Here is the finished table without glass

 The "fins" touch the glass only near the center and at the edge so there are these beautiful "scoops" visible under the glass.

We are so happy with this beautiful work of art. So many people commented on it during the house tour.  It is a visual feast during breakfast!  Seth was a joy to work with and we had a textbook example of easy collaboration.  Check out his site to see his other work.

Greetings Cassilhaus Fans!  Sorry for my long delay in posting.  Despite the drizzly weather we had a fabulous house tour yesterday with over 300!!! very enthusiastic modernist fans touring the house.  Many thanks to our cruise director George Smart and Triangle Modernist Houses, everyone at Ellen Cassilly Architect,  and our wonderful sponsors L.E. Meyers Builders, Prescott Stone Fabricators, Unique Concepts, and Fireplace Editions.

Shoe Security was tight (these ladies are wearing badges!)

The irrepressible Chuck Prescott of Prescott Stone made us forget about the rain and passed out beautiful pieces of honed granite from our very own counters.

Parking was at a premium.

Note the uber-hip LE Meyers/Cassilhaus Tote Bag--already the fashion forward accessory of the season!

The house effortlessly welcomed large groups of people and seemed to thrive on it.  It really is a joy for us to share this house.

You couldn't swing a cat without hitting an architect.  It was very gratifying to hear such glowing comments from the design community about the design, craftsmanship, and detailing of our home.

I found one future architect staring at the house section on the side of the complimentary tote bag and I asked her if she wanted to see the real plans for the house and you would have thought I offered her a free Carribean vacation.  She headed off and poured over the plans with refreshing joy. It made my day.

The four stages in the career of an architect:

    Who is Ellen Cassilly?

    Get me Ellen Cassilly!

    Get me a young Ellen Cassilly!!

    Who is Ellen Cassilly?

Holy SNOBAMA! What a fitting metaphor to end the darkness of the last 8 years with a beautiful blanket of snow on Tuesday's historic inaguration day.  Ellen and I jumped up at dawn to take the first Cassilhaus snow shots and play in the snow.

Our view of New Hope Creek from the deck

Here also are a few sneak previews of the interior shots we are working on

 Enjoy the snow!

Ellen and I were awoken by a thud at about 5am yesterday and couldn't figure out what it was. We have been on a marathon photo shoot jag documenting the house in anticipation of publication in the design press and for submission to architectural competitions. The moon has been so amazing the last few nights and we had talked about doing some moonlit exteriors. We both looked at each other and at the thermometer (8 degrees--a record) and without words we sprang from bed, put on our long johns and headed for the icy roof of the carport. I have to paint the scene for you.  We wrestle the giant (22') A frame later up on the roof.  I am standing on the top step of the ladder on the high spot of the roof with camera mounted on tripod talking to Ellen inside the house on the phone and having her go room by room to set the proper light dimming level.  My hands are about to fall off.  The exposures we need are 30 seconds long and Ellen comes up to help me secure the tripod. We can't get quite wide enough so after a few shots we take the whole rig down and set up further back in the woods up a tree. Somewhere in here I realize that neither one of us questioned this act of either pure lunacy or pure love-I opt for the latter. (ladder?)

Wer gegen den Strom schwimmt, kommt in frisches Wasser

We are honored that the Triangle Modernist Houses website, now the largest of its kind in the country, has chosed Cassilhaus for one of its exceptional homes tours on February 28th.  See all the details HERE and get tickets while they last!

I have gotten alot of requests for up to date photos of the house.  We are working on that but here are some quick and dirty snaps!

Beth Ann, Charlene, and MJ make the international sign for a trapezoid.

Ellen and I decided to celebrate the moon a few mornings ago and walked down to the creek at 5am..............

We both hope you and your families have a wonderful holiday and a safe, happy, and healthy New Year.

Like so many things on this project I was stunned at how hard I had to work to find a decent looking version of some very common things.  Much like the doorstop adventure, finding a decent looking mailbox, that didn't cost the earth was quite an undertaking--fortunately the internet research was a real treat on this.  This is a real mom and pop profession and the offerings out there are staggering--staggerlingly ugly for the most part--but staggering none the less.  Kitch knows no bounds in this arena.

The very few contemporary options were obscenely expensive.  I finally stumbled upon a great maker in NEW ZEALAND!! and we are the proud owner of the Cadrona.

Send us some mail!

If you want to go quickly, go alone.  If you want to go far, go together.

                    --African Proverb

For those of you hanging by a thread to hear the conclusion of the Italian light fixture saga, it is fitting that in the end, despite being hand carried back to the US by my brother, the middle glass wafer of the fixture (the red one of course) shattered into a million pieces inside his luggage.

At first i just beat myself up for letting it go as far as it did and putting everyone to so much trouble and then my brother offered that he thought the fixture looked better WITHOUT the middle red glass and that is how I decided to hang it and if I do say so myself I think it looks fabulous.

Here my saint of a sister Barbara winds up day 4 of her moving volunteer stint alphabetizing the photography books in the library. As far as I know this is the only LOOP fixture in the US albiet 2/3rds of one.

Rumors of my death are exaggerated.  We have been in the house for 6 weeks now and absolutely loving it.  You gracious readers have been very patient with my pitiful blogging output over this time but I hope to get back on the wagon after Christmas. I'll start with a wrap up on our beautiful stair rails. I did two earlier posts about Marc Maiorana and his design process. We ended up coming down to the wire with Marc and his girlfriend Robin coming down the Friday before a Monday final inspection on the house. We loaded in all of the rail parts on Friday evening and decided to get some rest and jump in full force on Saturday morning. I was in awe of Marc's level of cool--he didn't even check to see that the rails fit.  I was nervous as hell.  There were a lot of inspection issues around the rails and so many opportunites to derail us getting a final. The tolerances were incredibly tight. The rails looked beautiful and Marc had come up with an ingenious design to give the illusion of a continuous rail through the stair tread.   

We arranged for Mark Burford who built the steps to come Saturday morning to make the tread penetrations.

The bottom section under the tread has a smaller diameter inner rod that penetrates the tread and inserts inside the upper vertical and is secured by flush allen screws.  The bottom section is bolted into the stair stringer.  The fit was unbelievably solid.

Marc makes a small edit on the connecting rod.

He went to considerable trouble to ensure that there were no openings in the rail greater than the code required 4 inches.

The guest pod rail verticals do not penetrate the treads as we don't have the overlap there but they presented their own challenges with a bump out for the slight overlap of the tread and the need to get a solid attachment to the stringer.

The infill panels required to meet code were the only nightmare on the project.  We decided on using formaldehyde free maple veneer plywood with iron on edge banding.  The four of us worked until 2:30 in the morning on Monday to get a crude but viable set of panels cut, fitted, sanded, and mounted.

Robin finished up with some touch up paint.

Here's the final main stair rail with panels in place.

And final without.

The breakfast nook gets incredible light from the southern windows above.

Fripp can't decide which ray of sunshine to bask in.

We are talking to an artist named Seth Rolland in Washington State about a table for the nook.  It is a beautiful design called the Oxeye table.  The radial petals are sculpted from a continuous piece of sustainably harvested ash that was cut and opened like a fan.

Stay tuned and have a fantastic holiday.

In an unimaginable alignment of the cosmic forces of nature, we managed to elect the greatest and most inspiring leader in a generation to lead our country, sign off on our final punch list and reach 100% completion on our new house, AND sign a contract to sell our existing house ALL ON THE SAME DAY-Election Day 2008. All I can say is YES WE CAN AND YES WE DID! We move in tomorrow and in my copious spare time I am going to post past due posts about our beautiful custom stair rails, new AV cabinet, lighting installations and many many more photos.  Stay tuned and thanks for your patience.

(photo courtesy of durhamskywriter http://www.flickr.com/people/durhamskywriter/)

We will miss you Oberlin Drive. 

Note: A reminder to those of you who read this via email subscription that once you get notification you should always log on to the actual blog at www.cassilhaus.typepad.com rather than read it from the email because there is much better content formatting.  Thanks.

In the fine tradition of the run on sentence I offer the run on blog--I am so woefully behind on updating the blog that I just need to do a quick and dirty summary as the progress is amazing and I am unlikely to ever catch up and it doesn't seem to be stressful enough to have not sold our current house and be one week away from final punch on our new house that they had to throw in a global financial MELTDOWN in the mix so we should just forget about all that and let you know that the carport is now done and looking great and that there is a storage area at the back with 4 sliding doors which will be painted bright orange to give us a punch of color and all of the wood work will be painted Cedar Bark color and that we had another low voltage wireathon a few weekends ago and Julian, Cici, Erik, Scott, and I did final wiring for security, cable TV, telephone, speakers, and Lutron low voltage wiring and we installed this new wizbang audio control from Niles Audio that mimicks the full screen of an Apple iPod in every room and is quite a leap from my 14 year old Sony Receiver and it was great to hear music careening down the halls of the gallery

while Myron and Robert were installing the outdoor shower.......................

and in case you are worried about birthday suit exposure we have been meeting with artist Al Frega and he has nearly completed our shower shroud and speaking of beautiful metal objects our friends at Fireplace Editions installed our Rais Pina wood stove and we concealed its turnstile under the tree grate so we can swivel it toward the living or dining area and I have to give a shout out to Anna Wirth for coming up with that idea and to the fabulous team at FE for executing it so beautifully

but before we go much further we should talk about the amazingly beautiful floors 

courtesy of Bill Campbell and Select Forest Products in Chapel Hill where we have Pennsylvania Cherry on the upper level and Ash on the lower level and on the softer side,Ricky Creech (the floors not Ricky) of Frazee Carpet in Durham did a magnificent job on our Expanko XCR4 composite cork/rubber flooring in the basement  

and on the Bolyu carpet in our bedrooms (big thanks to Dianne Bostrom for her help on finding these products) while the millwork boys were finishing up our 

cutom cabinetry including this amazing cherry slatted HVAC grill in our main entry,

the bookshelves in the library, 

the flatfile cabinet in the project gallery,

and the frig surround in the main pod while in the next room Robert #1 installed our

super water efficient dual flush Toto toilets and  Frank's pride and joy Agape Spoon tub and

Robert #2 installed the beautiful custom cut Rex Ceramiche (from Best Tile in Raleigh) elongated mosaic tile backsplash in the lower bath 

and our friends at ClearVue Glass put in the frameless shower surrounds throughout the house

  and last but not least on the outside of the house Joe, Dwayne and Steve have wrapped up the project installing the ipe rail cap on our cable rail system on all of the decks.

We will really miss these guys.  They built the bulk of our house and it is extraordinarily beautiful.

I can't do the progress in this last stage justice by this summary but I hope you can get a glimpse of how far we have come in the last few weeks.  Please stay tuned as I cover the final punch out phase of the project!

Ellen and I designed a large millwork piece (12.5'x10.5') for the East Wall of the living room to house books/TV/Stereo etc. and we decided to ask David Curry at Unique Concepts in Wendell, NC to fabricate it. Unique builds beautiful AV furniture for my company, KONTEK, and I thought they would be a natural for this piece. We took a field trip on Thursday to check on progress and things look fabulous!

There will be one more section on the right hand side.  There will be a beautiful slatted cherry sliding door with a pully and counterweight system. The door will cover the TV area and three cubbies below.  When opened it will extend beyond the top of the cabinet by 2 feet.

Robbie is building it.

Fred manages the shop.

and David is the designer/owner.

We had a great meeting working out the details of the sliding door track, outlet locations, and wiring access throughout the cabinet.  We hope they will finish at the end of next week and be able to install soon.  The cabinet is made from formaldehyde free maple and cherry plywood.

Success can eliminate as many options as failure.

                      --Tom Robbins

You know at the end of the Car Guys when they say "well you've managed to waste another perfectly good hour." I find myself marveling at the number of hours it is possible to waste/spend on the minutest details. It is easy to fall down the proverbial rabbit hole on internet research.  Witness the humble door stop.  Leon called me and said he needed our doorstop selections. Who knew we would need 4 different types based on mounting site, height of door, etc. and that most of the offerings were spectacularly ugly. If you ever need some options for handsome contemporary door stops I'm the man to call. 4 more lost hours later, here are my finds:

Tri City poured the floor of the carport and the stairs to the house last Thursday.

The ipe ramps to the main entrance of both pods are now done. They are wide and gracious. 

The bad ass electricians are back with a vengeance!  P&L sent a team of 6 on Friday.

Light fixtures, outlets, and wall devices are flying in. Our groovy Modern Fan ceiling fans are hung. 

Doug installed the South side of the gallery object millwork so they can get started installing all of the Lutron dimming and transformer devices to service the gallery low voltage track light system.

Here's a peak at some of the 384 individual parts that make up the Tech Lighting track system.

A special shout out to Shelley Aldridge at Earp and Associates, the Tech Lighting rep, for her great assistance putting this complicated order together.

The light has returned to the gallery and guest pod as the painters finish there.  Now the main pod is going dark and coming under the sprayer.

David is working on installing all of our door hardware.

After quite a bit of research we decided the best combination of contemporary look and value was from Omnia.

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.  Art is knowing which ones to keep.

                                                    --Scott Adams

Tropical Storm Hanna couldn't put a damper on our appreciation party this past Saturday for everyone who has helped make our new home a reality. We had nearly 5 inches of rain overnight and New Hope Creek was higher than I'd seen it in 35 years. It was a raging river 100 ft. wide! What a fabulous sound.

We invited everyone-our builder, our consultants, bankers, all our subs, and others who have helped along the way along with their familes.  Thrills from the Grill catered the event and the sun broke through right on schedule at noon and a good time was had by all.

David and his family and John.

Mark and his wife Marie with Ellen

Our banker Larry and his wife Bev.

Our brother in law Don, who hadn't seen the project since it was stakes in the ground, chats with Leon.

My niece Betsy, her daughter Nicola, husband Dan, and my sister Barb get caught up on progress.

Anna, who did a huge amount of the initial design and the full construction drawing set, with her partner Kirstin. They were excited to finally walk through what had been hanging on their walls for many months.

The happy couple bask in the sun on the North deck.

David Swanson and his wife Terri from Swanson and Assoc., our landscape architects,stopped by with a beautiful Coneflower and forwarded some lovely photos of the late afteroon:

In other news Scott and David finished up the murphy bed in the study.

and Darren gets happy about the linen cabinet in the lower bath.

More soon...............

It turns out the best painters spray EVERYTHING these days.  Who knew paint brushes were out of style?  As a result every surface including the windows in our house are covered in paper or plastic--all the views are gone and the house feels claustrophobic.  I think its going to be like that for a month.

They are focusing on the guest pod and the gallery right now while the trim guys have moved into the main pod.  Myron put on his carpenter hat last week to help Dwayne and Steve with the decorative ceiling in the main entry.  They built a light cove for a low voltage lighting track.

They also got the screened porch framed.

In other news the first of the glass railings in the library was installed.

The two 4'x8' solar panels are now up on the roof for our solar hot water system.  The tanks and heat exchanger have been installed in the mechanical space in the basement.

All of the tile work has been finished up in the master bath. The floor is a light 24"x24" travertine.

We used the 1"x3" Tau Corten mosaics from our friends at Mid-Atlantic Tile Distriubutors on the tub filler. This and the shower bench have a 3/4" travertine slab top.

September is the last full month of construction and it is going to be crazy busy. Painting will be going on all month along with electrical, HVAC, and plumbing trim out.  They start building the carport and doing all of the final grading and driveway work in two weeks and tomorrow they start the exterior deck railings and cable system. Wish us luck..........

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

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

 

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.

The drywall is up and the priming is beginning.  We are using Philip Hansell Painting and they are doing a fabulous job.  The house already had a ton of light and now it is bouncing all over the place with the bright white primer!

In addition to priming, Luis and Crispin (sp?) are working on the second and final coat on the exterior cedar so they can take the scaffolding down.  Ellen and I were on the site today doing another marathon interior paint color selection session and they were out there with brushes smaller than toothbrushes doing ultra fine touchup down to the nail heads.  It looks stunning.

This weekend is all about part II of the Finish Olympics.  We probably will have 15+ hours in on interior paint color selections and we aren't done yet.  We are at least having a good time and made fantastic progress today settling in on Driftwood, Dark Celery, Ochre, Sea Froth, Tropical Orange, Rainforest Dew, California Copper, Creme Froth, Cork, and Smoke.  We are using low or no VOC paints primarily in the Sherwin Williams Harmony Line. It is difficult to start this process with a blank canvas.  It is easier if you have some reference point.  We started with some clippings I have pulled over the past few years from Interior Design and that led to some great starting colors.  We also referenced the great colors on the steel doors on a dresser we bought from BluDot called Modilicious 3 and that got us the scheme for the guest pod.

In other news they are getting ready to install some of the Ipe decking.  They have installed the tapered sleepers on the sun terrace to flatten out the deck surface. 

Next week promises to be an amazing one--hardwood floors, kitchen and bathroom cabinets, interior trim, and ceramic tile. The house is coming together so quickly it doesn't feel real. We are supposed to move in in about 3 months.  I should have some detailed posts next week. Stay tuned and thanks for reading.

This was a bit of a personal crusade for me.  In my 20 years as an AV consultant and contractor, my company has been acknowledged on a construction job sign exactly 1 time and that was after intervention on my part.  I wanted to fabricate a job sign for Cassilhaus that would acknowledge all of the consultants and craftspeople that made this project happen and here it is.  Many thanks to Anna Wirth and Hannah Peele for helping me with the design, Nik Shah for his rendering of the finished house, and Mark Gordon for a beautiful job fabricating the sign.  I should thank God too for perfectly positioning two trees in the right location and right angle to mount the sign at the entrance to the project. (I just noticed this sentence has all three spellings of the word 2 in it!)

In other news, drywall finishing continues at full speed.

Nelson and Luis do the drywall dance.

Don and Kevin attacked electrical central in the gallery object in preparation of installing six low voltage transformers for the low voltage track lighting system in the gallery.

Steve, Dwayne and Joe checked off the cedar siding on the West side of the Master Bedroom and were working on the South side when I left yesterday.

They are supposed to get the AC turned on today in preparation for hardwood floor installation.  Stay tuned.

On a whim Ellen and I decided we wanted to spend our first night in the house so we packed up the air mattresses and toothbrushes and headed out for camp Cassilhaus.

We invited our friend Scott over for dinner and played a few games of Farkle on the screened porch.

The only work light I could find on the site was broken so I had to hot wire one of the fixtures I just purchased for exterior lighting. Scott and Ellen each won a game.  I showed my usual games of chance karma.

Any romantic notions of a special evening were fairly quickly dispelled by both air mattresses losing their air, the fans kicking up enough drywall dust to choke us, and a generally hot and humid evening.  We had a great time anyway and it was great to be out there at night.  The big dipper hangs right over the house and we were serenaded by a million bugs and a rushing stream. The drywall finishers surprised us by showing up Saturday morning.  Who knew it was the day to work on the master bedroom closet?

In the morning the birds were singing in force and after a gala breafast of Raisin Bran on the deck Ellen headed off to the Durham Farmers' Market and I started to work on interior paint color selections.  I also noticed that they had finished the cedar on the north upper soffit of the main pod and it looks great.

We are starting to make the house a home.

I have spent the day looking and looking.  It is the same in art as in life.  The deeper one penetrates, the broader the view.

--Goethe

These images including our first interior rendering just in from Nik Shah.  I hope the construction looks this good!

From the very beginning of the project I knew I wanted Red Cedar on our house and it has been quite a journey working out the sourcing, finishing, profile selection, application techniques, etc. but finally the day has arrived.  Our cedar was prefinished in Greensboro and broght to the site last week.

We are using vertical grain clear Western Red Cedar on the entire bridge volume, the soffits for the two stucco pods, on the underside of the bridge on both interior and exterior runs, and to fabricate the dining canopy. We prevailed on Leon to use blind nailing to apply the siding and he even found some nails with colored nail heads.  Dwayne, Steve, and Joe started with the high soffits on the west side of the guest pod and it looks absolutely stunning.

For these soffits we are using a "V" joint profile while on the vertical siding we are using a "fineline" profile which has a very fine reveal.  On the siding we are also using a home slicker product  which allows for drainage behind the siding but makes for a challening installation to keep everything flat.

Here they are working on the North side of the master bedroom above the screened porch.  Myron helps Steve rip a piece of siding to make the NW corner.

I don't know the time table on the installation of the decorative cedar ceiling under the bridge but there has been some serious head scratching going on trying to figure out what is parallel to what and how they are going to get the vertical ribs on the cedar in the kitchen to line up perfectly to form the canopy over the dining table while navigating the light fixture trim rings in the kitchen ceiling.  Leon really has been sweating the details on the light fixture integration into the canopy as well.  He had Dwayne carve out a hole in the studs adjacent to where the canopy emerges so the the electical box for the low voltage lighting track that is on the side of the canopy could be installed with no visible wiring.  Kevin with P&L installed the box yesterday.

As of yesterday we have had 2250 visitors to the blog. There certainly seems to be loyal readership on the jobsite as everyone asks me about it.  Thanks to everyone for going along for the ride.

Frank

My first post about construction was 6 1/2 months ago and I still pinch myself every time I go to the job site--it hasn't really set in that we are more than half way done and that it is actually me who will be moving in in less than 4 months! The project is going fantastically well--we have bumps and frustrations like everyone--but our dream really is being realized. We have a great builder in Leon Meyers and a fantastic crew of really talented and dedicated craftsmen. Our little cul de sac is so jammed with trucks that I can barely find a place to park when I visit.

I don't know where to start with the progress report.  Drywall is going full steam ahead.  I try to keep one step ahead of them covering up my wires.

I came up with an interesting base trim detail involving a decorative reglet mated with a trapezoidal (of course) shaped piece of trim wood.  In the gallery the aluminum will be exposed and elsewhere in the house it will be painted the same color as the base wood. They have just started to install it.

Charles and his team from Pickard Roofing got started on the mop down roof on the roof terrace.

This roof will be covered by an ipe deck material.  Steve and Joe fabricated sleepers (Steve LOVED doing this) to counter the slope of the roof.

Rain water will go through the decking, run down the roof, out the scuppers, and be captured by a cistern under the screened porch and be used for landscape watering.

The interior and exterior HVAC units have been set.

Don and Jesus wired them up yesterday and are hopeful of doing an initial system test this week.

Larry with P&L electric came up with a very flexible scheme for emergency generator power.  We didn't want to invest in a large permanent generator system so they have placed a jack under the screened porch where we can roll in a portable generator.  The main electrical panels have been fitted with a change over interlock switch which allows change over from mains power to generator jack.  We can then decide (within the limits of the portable generator rating) on a case by case basis which breakers we want to energize during a power outage.

Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known. 

Garrison Keillor