Cassilhaus

Happy Birthday Barb and David!

A full complement of sibs this weekend! Ellen and I had asked my sister Ann and her husband David to come down from Lynchburg to see the house in progress. When my brother, who is currently in Boone with his wife Sara, said they would come too, he also suggested we ask Barb to fly down from PA for her birthday and the reunion was born. David also has a birthday Monday so we had a double celebration. My niece Betsy, her husband Dan, and our two grand nieces Amelia and Nicola also joined the fun.  It was brutally hot, but a great time was had by all and we got the family stamp of approval on the house.

Left to right are David, Ann, Amelia, Dan, Barb, Ellen, Betsy, Me, Nicola, John, and Sara in the dining room.

Ellen and I are both the babies in our family and we anxiously await the Cassilly sib reunion (6) TBD.

In between bites of strawberry shortcake Ellen and I attempted to change the laws of physics by colocating lighting fixtures, plumbing waste lines, and HVAC supply lines in the kitchen. Family is VERY helpful with this sort of thing.

The God I believe in isn’t short of cash.                                                         

            Bono

The Gallery Object (and other stories)

I spoke briefly about the "gallery object" in the last post.  When we designed the gallery we wanted to maximize display space and because the gallery is a trapezoid, the western most side is wide enough to accommodate display space in the center so we designed this 3/4 height piece of millwork to add display space, a cherry bench and cabinets, and a shelf and pedestal to display sculpture and other objects. There are dimmable fluorescent strip lights on the top of the unit to uplight the ceiling. (Click above to see plans). The top of the "T" serves as a natural room divider that forms the library in front of the bookshelf at the main stair.  We were very fortunate to be at a jobsite meeting when they had just started to frame this piece.  Ellen and I set up some chairs and realized that this wall was too big and too close to the bookcase to feel comfortable so we moved it east about 17" and cut off 7" on the side to have it line up with the corridor wall all the way back to the master bedroom and it made a huge difference.  We now have a much better library space.  There is no substitute for sitting in the actual spaces--we were lucky to catch this.  Thanks to Steve and Dwayne for being so willing to shift this.  

The Corian shower bases arrived and were installed.  They were a bit of a fight with Leon.  I really wanted tile shower floors and he was adamant about possible leak issues down the road with 2nd floor showers.  I lost.  For Corian geeks out there we got Gobi, Serene Sage, and Shale.

We had the Corian routed to accept glass to avoid having a metal U channel.  The master shown here has a notch for a bench which extends through the glass and out to the tub.

The also did some work on the outdoor shower.  We meet with artist Al Frega next week to talk about a custom shroud made of recycled metal.

Work on windows and doors continues...........

 

This is the SW door to the screened porch and below is the window wall to the south at the master bath and master stair.

HVAC work is picking up.  Jesus is doing a great job.

Ellen and the framers worked out an interesting detail.  The master bedroom door did not fall in the same plane as the mullions on the clerestory above so they kept the door where it needed to be and fabricated a trapezoidal (surprise!) shelf above so they can extend the wall (not finished yet) to match the asymmetrical mullions above.

I close with a shot of our fabulous crew.

Left to right are Myron (LEMB super), Joe, Steve, Robert (with Hillsborough plumbing), and Dwayne.

I am afraid of losing my obscurity.  Genuineness only thrives in the dark, like celery.

                                                                                                --Aldous Huxley

Windows of Opportunity

 The first big shipment of windows arrived and they were installed at the end of last week.  It seems like each window is a unique size!  They all have Low E glass for best energy performance. They are wood windows with bronze colored exterior aluminum cladding.

We did decide to add back the large window on the east side of the living room.  I don't know what we were thinking when we deleted it.  It will make a HUGE difference in this space and lets you see the beautiful beech tree and the rest of the house from inside.

Friday we had a visit from Marc Maiorana (see previous post) and his girlfriend Robin and brainstormed about custom railing design for

both sets of stairs.

Marc's work is so beautiful and organic. 

Ellen and I are very excited about this kind of artist collaboration on the house. The whole house was designed around celebrating art and artists. Marc and Robin were very excited about the project.  They made a million measurements and we talked about a lot of design options.  They will now send sketches and we will develop the final concept.  Marc also does free standing sculpture and we have one at home now called Draw #4.

The master closet was also framed last week and Ellen and I keep joking about living in it.  By today's his and hers walk-in closet standards it is not so huge but compared to our current closet if feels luxurious.

It is a free standing volume on the east end of our bedroom.  There is a donut circulation pattern around it with our bed at the back and a hallway for dressing in the front.  There is a huge storage area above.

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

CATCH ALL/CATCH UP

I had to give myself amnesty from staying current on posts.  I got officially overwhelmed with the pace of things on the site. I feel bad about not getting progress shots up but dealing with the real thing takes priority.  I decided to just summarize all the progress and just redouble efforts to stay current after that.

1) Main Stair.  The main stair is almost complete so we have full circulation in the house. This shows construction just underway of the landing between the main entry and the kitchen. After a few treads it makes a right angle up to the gallery/master suite.

We are going to be working with an artist named Marc Maiorana to design and fabricate custom stair rails.  We discovered his incredible work at Penland School of Crafts in Penland, NC.  He’s coming down tomorrow to brainstorm ideas and take measurements.  Here is a sample of his work at Penland.

2) Living/Dining.  The double high space in the main pod comprising the Living and Dining areas is now framed and roofed.  Things are a lot darker in the house but it is wonderful to see the full house shell now complete.

3) Windows.  The window installation starts next week and Ellen and I took a great deal of time this past weekend going through the entire house and looking at framed views and angles to verify correct window placement.  We decided to move a few windows up a foot of so and swap the two NW corner windows in the master bedroom.  We also added a window over the large millwork cabinet on the East wall of the Living Room.  I think we did incredibly well on siteing and sizing windows but there is nothing like looking at your actual views to do final tweaks.  We went all Pella on our window and door package and they have been great to work with.  One of Ellen’s favorite views inside is the view looking south from the living room where you can see up over the glass railing (not in place yet), through the clerestory at the low roof and to the trees south of the carport.

4) Rough in.  Electrical rough in is done in the guest pod and ramping up to full speed in the main house. We hit a snag on cable distance for the low voltage track runs. The transformers live in the ¾ height "gallery object" in the bridge and we would have had to run wiring down into the floor, across the gallery, up the walls and into the ceiling but there was no space between the gallery clerestory to get such a large amount of cable through. After many design proposals we settled on extending a small section of the gallery object wall up to the ceiling to enclose the wiring.

HVAC ducts have been marked and they are working on the main arteries of that system.  Plumbing rough in is complete on all items they can get to at the moment.

5) The stucco on the upper soffits is about 70 percent done and looks great.  They should finish next week. 

 I am not sure when they will start the stucco on the main pods but if you are looking for a job it is a wonderful view.

6) Millwork.  Ellen and I continue to refine the millwork designs.  We spent most of the night on Friday working on the main millwork piece for the living room.  Here is what we came up with--

7) The bracing in the gallery came down and we can finally experience the full space.

Thanks to all for your patience and for going along on this wonderful ride.

       

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.  To know the dark, go dark.  Go without sight, and find the dark, too blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings. 

Wendell Berry

                                                                                                      

           

 

Let the Rough-In Begin

The rough in phase has begun with a vengeance. It feels like a very significant shift.  We have gone from a three man framing crew with a singular focus to a much larger team including HVAC, Electrical, Plumbing, and Stucco all working in different areas. I think Ellen cringes when the almost finished beautiful framing comes under the hammer, the drill, and the dreaded Sawzall and saw dust is flying everywhere as plastic pipes penetrate the floor, ducts go through the walls, and electrical boxes get nailed in place. It's a mental shift too as we have put all of our energy into making sure the structure works as designed and the larger elements of the house come together as planned--a more macro thinking--to focus on the inner workings and pathways at a more micro level that we spent so much time trying to work out in advance.

So far it is all working like a champ.

We can't be accused of having an inexperienced crew.  Leon has assembled an amazing team of seasoned pros.  Robert, one of our plumbers, has been working for Hillsborough Plumbing continuously

for 56 years!!!!  He started when he was 14 and said he started before there was plastic OR copper piping.  He also started before I was BORN!  What a great guy.  Rafael from EQC is an artist with a pair of tin snips. I heard this clicking noise coming from the guest pod and I

discovered him meticulously cutting out the lip of a piece of custom duct work that looked like a factory machined edge. These guys are all the best of the best.

 

 

Don, the electrician from P&L Electric, has been very thoughtful about all things electrical and made some really good suggestions about fine tuning our electical design.  I have been in high gear trying to get all of our light fixtures in on time to stay on track.

Even more scaffolding is being set up on the site as the stucco guys from Reynolds Construction set up to do the soffits under the upper overhangs of the bridge.  They are just beginning to grok how high up those soffits are.

The last phase of the framing has finally started as the tall walls of the living/dining area go up.  It is also very sad to see the beautiful views of the forest and house slowly go away. We are reconsidering

one of those deleted windows on the east side of the living room.

To achieve the marvelous it’s precisely the unthinkable that must be thought.

Tom Robbins

1000 STRONG

We had our 1000th blog visit yesterday! The Sitemeter software that tracks our visits is incredibly fascinating.  We can see where are visitors are from, how they got to our site, what their Google search was if they used one and a whole host of other info. Raise a glass to Cassilhaus for reaching this milestone. Thanks to everyone for checking in on our little project.  It is really getting exciting so please stay tuned. They finished the upper roof framing and sheathing yesterday and I got up there to take some photos.

This was taken from the highest point on the house above the master bedroom.  It is WAY up there--about 35'. This area with the chairs is the living/dining room and the only part of the house that has not been framed yet.  Ellen and I invited everyone in our offices (Ellen Cassilly Architect and KONTEK Systems) for a pizza, beer, and Locopops party after work and there were quite a few wide eyes!  Everyone seemed to love the house very much and a good time was had by all.  The most important piece of intelligence gleaned from this outing was that Papa John's Pizza delivers to our new house!

I spent the day ordering light fixtures, window blinds, and in-wall loudspeakers.  I have a serious weakness for Italian light fixtures.  I found an amazingly cool one today by a company called Flaver. Take a look at LOOP. It is alternating/undulating plates of white and red glass. I also fell in love with a fixture called HOLE from Itre. I am very grateful to Teresa Teachey for all of her help today with these fixtures.

The 14 page quote from Lutron on window blinds was less stimulating but needs to move to the top of my list so I need to wind this up.

Be wary of any enterprise that requires new clothes. 

    --Henry David Thoreau

You can BANK on that

I won't bore you with the long ugly saga of our construction loan but suffice it to say we got a big dose of "Big Corporate Bank".  35 years of banking relationship and 6 months of regular loan meetings at CCB/SunTrust ended up being worth less than a cup of coffee when 2 days before our closing (and with construction already started), having outsourced loan decisions to folks in Georgia, we were informed that we couldn't have a loan because our house design "had features that lacked broad appeal to the wider market". They were adamant that there were no financial or credit issues--only DESIGN issues.  They'd had the plans for 6 months and they wait for 48 hours before closing to decide our house is too weird?!?!?! Our local SunTrust friends were fantastic through the whole thing but when the people in the best position to make decisions about loans are no longer allowed to make those decisions it is time for a new bank.  Thanks to a referral from our builder Leon, we met Larry Loeser, the president of Harrington Bank in Chapel Hill.  WOW.  Talk about night and day.  We had our approval in a day and who do you think comes out to the job site every month to approve draw requests?  Larry.  He showed up to meet Ellen and I out there on Monday sporting blue jeans and a Michael Jordan T shirt and brought us lunch from Subway.  We gave him the 10$ tour and walked down to the stream to get the lay of the land. I can't tell you what a breath of fresh air it is to find a banker that really walks the local service talk and invests in your dreams because they think you are doing an interesting and worthy project rather than only loaning money for the lowest common denominator thing that checks all the right safe boxes.  Thank you Larry!!  I forgot to bring my camera to lunch so you get only words today.

Stairway to Heaven

There’s a feeling I get
In the pod for the guest
After the week of the leaving
In my thoughts I have seen
Risers, Treads through the trees
And the echoes of previous ladders
Ooh, it makes me wonder,
Ooh, it really makes me wonder.

If there’s a bustle in your job site
Don’t be alarmed now,
It’s just the ringing of the nail gun
Yes there are two paths you can go by
To level two now
There’s still time to change the floor you’re on.
And it makes me wonder

Your head is humming and it won’t go
In case you don’t know
The 2-bys are calling you to join them.
Dear lady, can you hear the steps though
And did you know
Your stairway goes to the sleeping loft.

And we’re buuuuying a stairway to heaven.

With apologies to Mssrs. Page and Plant we are very excited that we finally have a stair to the second floor.  We were out of town and much was

accomplished in our absence. I think I will go away more often--much more fun to see huge changes. The guest pod stair and landing, sleeping loft knee wall, and closet framing all took form.  No more climbing ladders to get upstairs.

This is the artist's studio space with the sleeping loft above.  We can't wait for our first visitor!

The lower part of the upper roof was also framed and it is an unbelievable set of complex angles.  Kudos to Dwayne, Steve, and Myron for figuring this out!

This is the view down the gallery and you can see where the drop down roof forms a soffit for the library.  To the right we will have this amazing hall to the master suite with clerestory on both sides and a glass rail overlooking the living room below.  There is a built in bench at this spot at the top of the stairs (the ones that aren't there yet)

In other news they put the septic field in.  I was really pissed off at the amount of tree damage caused

and vented some to Leon and Myron.  It is difficult to stay mad too long in this place. The house seems to get more complicated and intricate every day yet it seems so settled here and feels very much like home.

STEELing Home

The final bits of steel went in at the end of last week.  The two frames where the bridge interesects the main pod were installed.

Zack has fabricated and installed the two pieces that drop from these frames to hold the LVLs that support the lower area of the bridge roof.

The framing for the guest bath is now complete and includes the wacky shaped closet from the guest sleeping loft behind.

In order to maximize the light from the clerestory we put a ceiling in the closet and developed a little alcove above facing into the project studio with a small box out for the diagonal steel support.

We are gone all this week so we expect a big change on our return.

To achieve the marvelous it’s precisely the unthinkable that must be thought.

                            --Tom Robbins

Let the Sun Shine In

Ellen and I met with Graham of Southern Energy Management about solar hot water for Cassilhaus. He brought this cool gizmo that tells you what sort of efficiency you will get in different months of the year given your surrounding trees. Here you see them on scaffolding approximating the location of the panels.  We will have partial shading November to January but the system is still very viable.

Our system would have 2 4'x8' solar panels on the section of roof that drops down below the bridge's metal roof (in front of 3 small windows toward top center).  The panels have food grade glycol running through them which heats the water in the solar storage tank using a heat exchanger.  There is a backup hot water heater for periods of extended shade.  We are very excited about harvesting the energy of the sun.  Stay tuned.

Speaking of the sun it will be in plentiful supply in our master bedroom.  Framing is nearly complete.  It is unusually short and wide as it comes at the widest point of the trapezoid.

There are three very generous windows in addition to the clerestory around the entire perimeter and a soaring ceiling that comes to a peak at the NW corner.

The sun also brought out another picnic crew on Friday--my friends MJ, Saskia, Elizabeth, Deborah, and David enjoyed quite a spread

in our soon to be dinning room.

More internal framing is underway with the footprint plate of the guest bathroom in place. We discovered a conflict with wall

locations in this bathroom and the mullions of the clerestory windows above but thankfully Leon, Myron, Dwayne, and Ellen were able to resolve it quickly, adjust the mullions and come up with a more interesting design in the process.  Fortunately Leon decided to order the windows in stages anticipating such shifts in the sizes during framing.  Each day there are issues and conflicts to resolve but the team is fantastic and most things get solved on the spot. I'll close with another shot down the bridge showing our lovely "floating roof"

There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience and that is not learning from experience.

                                                                                                                        Archibald McLeish

A Tree Grows in Cassilwood

Ellen and I got out our picks and shovels to do some do-it-yourself landscaping this past weekend.  It was our very first thing we have planted on the land and very very satisfying.  We bought about 15 plants/trees to make a visual shield to our neighbor's house (don't ask) and are placing them in the woods.  With the criteria of reasonably fast growing/shade tolerant/unappetizing to the roving packs of dear we choose viburnum, green giant, osmanthus, and illicium.  We have all but three planted as of this evening. 

Planting at dusk was quite an adventure and we capped our evening by sitting on the deck and watching the moon rise.  The sound of the water below is magical-almost magical enough to make us forget our aching backs.

Bedroom Picnic

We celebrated progress with our first picnic in the Master Bedroom (or any room for that matter) with our dear friends Scott, JJ, Hannah, and Kaiya last night.  What a glorious day!

There has been a strong push to box and wrap the guest pod and the east end of the bridge. Below you can see the small viewing opening in the west wing wall of the guest pod deck.

They are coming up with some crazy jack/scaffolding combos:

You can get a much better sense of the final views from the guest pod sleeping loft with the cladding on and the one scaffolding removed.

The box down under the far east bridge cantilever is complete and is deeper than at the main part of the bridge as the beams are smaller and the siding needs to come down to the same height.

I am hopeful they will start the framing on the west end of the bridge and the north end of the main pod next week.  I hope everyone has a great weekend.

If we think of defeat, that's what we'll get. If we are undecided then nothing will happen for us. We must just pick something GREAT to do, and then DO it. Never think of failure at all, for as we think now, that's what we'll get.

                             --Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

The WRAP-ture

I got the rare opportunity to spend about 3 hours on the land today by myself.  It was a gorgeous sunny day and got up to about 85.  I spent about an hour with a pick axe working on a trail down to the water--nothing like digging out rocks and roots to cure what ails you. I just kept walking around the house imagining what things will look like. For a guy that doesn't visualize well in 3D there is nothing like the real thing to get you charged up. I am discovering so many wonderful angles and views and connections. I have to give my wife serious kudos for the design on my new favorite spot in the house.

You have to use your imagination a bit but this is basically the view from our small breakfast nook in the kitchen. This small area is open to the second floor and she has placed an all glass window wall right where the two big trees are facing south and light will come streaming down onto our table.

I absolutely love the way the small pod is angled to the bridge.  With the overhangs, bridge cantilever, and the new canopy there is a festival of angles

going on at this end of the house and I can't get enough of it.

I am not liking the house closing in.  As the plywood sheathing and the Tyvek house wrap go up the transparency of the framing has evaporated. I knew this was coming but it was startling to see it happen in a single day.

The view of the middle of the giant beech tree from the south is now gone.

A whole lot of building wrap going on today--Tyvek Stucco Wrap on the pods and Tyvek Drain Wrap on the bridge. I have a feeling we are going to be looking at that for a while.  I really like the canopies over the entrances.  They started them Monday with the steel infrastructure through the walls.

At the end of last week they put the final decking down in the master suite and I was able to walk out on our bedroom floor for the first time.

On the lower right corner of the image above (where the ladder is) there will be a 12' long glass railing that will allow you to look down to the living and dining area below.

Next week I think they will start framing the walls of the double high space in the main pod.

Imagination rules the world. 

                           --Napoleon Bonaparte

Shelter from the Storm

We've been fighting the rain the past few days and they are trying to get the roof in over the small pod and the bridge. Roof framing was

in full swing last week.  My sister Barb was down from PA for the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and got the chance to see the

house for the first time--she was blown away.  Roof decking is now nearly complete. We are getting to experience for the first time the

spaces without being totally open and I think we nailed the views.  The overhangs were designed to completely shield the artwork from direct sun in the peak of winter but that does make for limited views to the south inside the gallery. The northern views more than make up for this.

The overhang on the far east end of the bridge needed to be shortened to 18" to accomodate our favorite Hickory tree.

From the entrance to the driveway you can see straight through the south AND north clerestories to the forest beyond.

Tomorrow I think they will start to put down the decking in the master bedroom and bath.

“I think,” said Christopher Robin, “that we ought to eat all our provisions now, so we won’t have so much to carry.”

                                                                                                                                    A.A. Milne

TRUSS me on this.

On the large upper bridge volume we were able to use conventional floor joists from the far east end up to the stair of the main pod.

Beyond that we need custom floor trusses both for structure and to accomodate HVAC ducts. Very early in the design process in another of those discussions about why trapezoidal shapes would drive costs significantly higher, I was proudly sporting my devil's advocate suit and said "THESE days you just plug the dimension at one end and then the other into the computer and all the custom lengths spit out and you just order them.  Yeah it's a little more but not that big a deal." So I show up on the job site one day and Steve and Dwayne are standing on opposite steel beams on the bridge with a tape measure and writing dimensions for our trusses on a scrap of 2x8 as they slide the tape in 16" increments. Then we get this amazing 21 page set of truss shop drawings:

Download cassilhaus_floor_truss_shop_drawings_mar_19.pdf

with an individual page for each of our unique A-U trusses--holy alphabet soup Batman! Each has a unique design and load bearing requirement. OK so its not so simple...

The trusses came Tuesday and went in very quickly--

You can see above the box out for the HVAC duct in the center.

These will support the decking and framing for our master bath and master bedroom and allow them to finish up the decking on the house.

They have also done the waterproofing for the roof terrace immediately adjacent to these trusses and shaped the drain

area for the outdoor shower. 

There is a very nice slope down to the scuppers (at far right above) and after they apply the built up roof they will build an ipe deck on sleepers with a reverse slope so that the roof terrace will be flat.

Those who sacrifice beauty for efficiency get what they deserve. --Tom Robbins

You can't wear all of your Christmas clothes the day after Christmas

Part of my design process was looking at a HUGE number of contemporary house designs to stimulate ideas for all aspects of our house.  I have quite a stack of modern house coffee table books decorated with a splendid display of post-it notes.  There is Modern House, Modern House 2, Modern House 3, 100 Modern Houses, 100 More Modern Houses, Bride of Modern House, Son of Modern House, 20 Top Contempory Architects, inumerable single architect monographs, etc. etc.   We appear to be in good company as these books are filled with stunning designs of architects' own houses or commissions for their parents, siblings, or uncles--likely because no regular client would let them push the envelope so far.  What was so overwhelming was trying to synthesize and integrate all the disperate ideas that I liked and make them my own.

Ellen told me about one of her fellow architecture students at Texas A&M, John Paul Dunn, who used to admonish, "you can't wear all your Christmas clothes the day after Christmas".  I laughed out loud at this and it became a useful mantra to remind me that just because I like a design idea doesn't mean I need to incorporate it into our house.  Design ideas usually start the conversation rather than end it.  I've said earlier in this blog that some of the best ideas on this house have resulted from problems and budget constraints and in retrospect this should have been obvious because you are forced to look at things from a new perspective and you must work as a team and spend more time to find a solution.  The fabulous project gallery at the East end of the bridge emerged when we couldn't fit the bathtub where we wanted it when the bathroom was located there.  A new and better pocket door arrangement at the guest pod grew out of Orange County's building permit rejection of our initial plan (I lost some sleep over that one but now I embrace problems!).  The wonderful decorative cedar ceiling all the way under the bridge grew as an extension of our cedar canopy over the dining table which we put in to make the dining area more intimate in the double high space.  The list is long and the design keeps getting more refined.  This week's struggle is with millwork. The bid has come in way over budget and we have been scrambling to simplify the designs.  The most successful approach has been to look for off the shelf products that can substitute for or integrate with our custom designs to lower the overall cost. IKEA came to the rescue again in a few areas but one of the exciting finds was BLUDOT.  They are based in Minneapolis and make fabulous contemporary furniture--very reasonably priced and several notches above IKEA.  Ellen and I first saw this stuff at the Walker Art Center gift shop and logged it away in our brains until we were looking for just the right cabinet to replace the custom unit in the guest loft.  Enter the maple and powder coated steel MODU-LICIOUS 3. We were able to incorporate two of these side by side, modify the knee wall height and eliminate an all custom cabinet.  That also drove completely simplifying the headboard ($145 from IKEA) and wood cap in that area and saved several thousand dollars. We now feel like we have a better overall design in the guest loft.  We also found a simple beautiful steel micro-bookshelf from BLUDOT called TOTEM that we are integrating into our entry instead of going all custom--again we think it will be a cooler end product AND save money.

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

WE GET MAIL!

My generation is new to blogging.  I assumed when I started this that I would get tons of comments on the blog about my posts but instead all my friends call me and send me emails about the blog. I think I have gotten 2 actual blog comments since I started. Go figure. My friend Jim, a wonderful artist in Durham, passed this on--

"What I will miss are the details of the structure that will become secrets--The welded brace mated to the wood frame.  The way that corners are turned and beams are enmeshed in complex posts; this house is stretched out like a lanky runner going over a hurdle...those places where the structure is especially stout as if it were expecting a Great Wind.. are the places, images, that I carry away to ponder. So, get in closer with the camera to help us remember the Hidden Order that gives this project its integrity."

This is for you Jim--

Thanks Jim!  Keep those cards, letters, emails, phone calls, telegrams and whatever coming.

Will you tell me a Clerestory?

Clerestory--A clerestory, pronounced clear story, is a high wall with a bank of narrow windows along the very top.  The clerestory wall usually rises above adjoining roofs.

To get lots of light in the house without getting too much direct sunlight on the art, we designed a clerestory the entire way around the bridge, on the north and east sides of the guest pod, and on the north and west sides of the main pod.  There will be 3 foot overhangs all the way around that block the direct sun but still allow indirect reflected light.

Ellen finally was able to get me to understand that when you have a non-rectilinear form like a trapezoid and you have a constant roof slope that is not a hyperbolic paraboloid, one main side of the trapezoid will need to be constant height and the other increasing in height from one end to the other to meet the roof.

You can see this easily if you place a slopped piece of paper over a trapezoidal shape.  Our solution was to have rectilinear windows on the South side of the bridge and trapezoidal ones on the North.

They have been rough framing the clerestory this week and have finished about half of it.

There is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described.

                            --Garry Winogrand

Lofty Ideals

Huge progress in the last few days as the small pod is nearly completely framed and they have started to frame the walls of the bridge. The full height of the house is now apparent. Check out more framing photos on the sidebar.

The vertical scale is clear for the first time at the double high space at the North end of the guest pod.

The guest pod sleeping loft is turning out to be one of the sweetest spots in the house with views on 3 sides.   Here it is a few days ago before the rest of the wall framing was up.  There is a stair up to this level and then a small landing and then two more risers to get up to the level of the main gallery and the bathroom associated with this space.  There will be a knee wall along the north side where you can look down below to the studio space.  There are three clerstory windows facing east (one operable), gigantic windows to the north with a view to the creek and a very sizable window just at the stair landing facing west that allows views of the main house and the stream below as well as the entire bridge exterior.  The loft is quite cozy and we are wrestling right now with how to get some decent storage in there and still have some clearance around the bed.

You can get a sense of the views at the NE corner both from ground floor and up in the loft:

Ellen repeatedly warns me that a psychological hard rain is gonna fall when the house gets actual walls and roofs and I won't be able to see everything from everywhere.  Now it is just a wide open vista.

It is counterintuitive to welcome insecurity as a sign that something good is beginning.  I have never greeted it as a friend.  But I know that that is where the work is done, and premature comfort is a pretty good sign that nothing much is happening.

     --Sean Kernan

Wacky Neighbor

Driving to the site on Valentine's Day we saw this crazy group of decked out (in red) birds at the entrance to our neighborhood.  I am kicking myself for not taking a picture.  Looks like we have a tradition as we saw this today for Saint Pattys:

How cool is that to live in a neighborhood with people who do bird installations!

Thought for the day:

MORE WAG      LESS BARK

Quick Update

Just got back from a weekend away to see the steel cut on the east end of the bridge:

Lots of room to spare!  We get to keep the tree.  The footprint of the entire house is now complete.

So how long did you say you wanted this thing?

When I first walked onto the site after the most recent round of steel I figured we somehow screwed up our careful siting of the house and would have to lose our favorite hickory tree or live with a tree growing up throught the center of the project gallery at the far east end of the bridge.

It turns out that when you order steel they come in stock lengths and when they erected the steel they decided to just install it at full length and then cut it in the field when the figured out precisely how long they needed to be.  They worked on the bridge floor framing on Tuesday and Wednesday and figured out exactly where the end of the bridge will be and we will get to keep our tree and it will be hugging the house just like we planned!  The final joists are shown in the photos above.

The physician can bury his mistakes but the architect can only advise his clients to plant  vines.                                                Frank Lloyd Wright

VIV and LELA

Ellen and I rent children occassionally--much simpler than ownership.   Our weekly charges, Viv and Lela, arguably the cutest  two little girls in America, made their first trip to Cassilhaus today and boy did we have a big time.  Please don't tell their parents Char and Mark about playing with the rusty steel, nail strips, and the spent welding rods.  Vivian kept saying "we're fixing your house!!"

In about 30 seconds Vivian went from being terrified of the 2x10 ramp up to the deck level to maximizing the bounce as she skipped down.

They quickly discovered some loose bolts and washers and got very focused on having Ellen begin architectural apprenticeships.

With the last couple of days of rain New Hope Creek below was just raging--white water and lots of noise.  What a wonderful sound after so much drought.  The stream was also completely cleared out from the strong current.  Several visitors from the neighborhood today--Saturday is a big visiting day.  Lots of "lot envy" going on.  We feel so lucky to have found this stunningly beautiful place and to be able to share it with these two amazing young ladies.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

                Marcel Proust

                                     

            Marcel Proust

ART WALK

Yesterday Dwayne and Steve worked on the floor framing of the connecting bridge. This houses the gallery and it was my first chance to walk through it and get a sense of the scale of everything.  Ellen and I love art and collect photography. It was a balancing act of wall space vs. windows throughout the design phase and I think we found a great balance by using alot of high windows and having a gallery space dedicated to hanging art.  There are low windows at floor level on the north side of the bridge to allow a view down to the stream below.

Myron and his crew have come up with some ingenious custom scaffolding units to avoid having to set up ground based scaffolding on this incredibly steep slope.

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                   

Tom Robbins

CEDAR SKY

Framing continues on the main pod and is focused on the "stair object" Framing in this area is very complicated with so many angles and complicated duct work and millwork that starts on the ground floor and comes up through to the second floor as a continuous millwork piece.  One of my favorite design elements in the project is a decorative slatted cedar ceiling the runs the entire length of the underside of the bridge both inside and outside and defines the shape of the bridge inside.  When outside it consists of 1x4" cedar boards mounted horizontally with 3/4" gaps over black painted plywood.  When the ceiling moves inside we add 1x2" cedar mounted vertically in the gaps between the horizontal slats.  This pattern continues through the entry and kitchen of the main pod and part of the studio in the guest pod and then reverts to just the horizontals when it goes outside to the screened porch and the area below the project gallery on the far east cantilevered piece of the bridge. In the main kitchen ceiling the vertical members continue north in free space and form a canopy over the dining table to make that space a little more intimate.

Right at the point where the cedar ceiling transitions from outside at the bridge to inside at the entry hall we have placed a large high 10'x14" window to allow you to read this ceiling from outside to inside.

Stay tuned for finished photos.

A man sets himself the task of portraying the world.  Over the years he fills a given surface with images of provinces and kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fish, rooms, instruments, heavenly bodies, horses, and people.  Shortly before he dies he discovers that this patient labyrinth of lines is a drawing of his own face.

                                                                                                                        Jorge Luis Borges

THE BRIDGE

I've been sick for week like everyone else so pardon the slow posts.  The much anticipated connection of the big and small pods happened on Friday with the placement of the steel support structure of the large bridge volume that sits on top of the two

pods.  I could have killed Myron for not telling me it was happening and as a result I missed documenting a lot of it.  Hopefully Kevin with Custom Steel has some photos I can put up. It went up remarkably fast given the number of individual pieces.  The upper trapezoid can now be visualized and you can start to see how the whole house goes together.

The larger western end of the the bridge sits on top of the screened porch and houses our master bedroom and bath.  We have a huge window at the NW corner and the view to the stream below is magical.  The rest of the bridge houses the stair landing and hallway, a library, photo gallery, guest bathroom, and small project gallery.

One architectural element we like quite a bit is having a freestanding volume within another volume.  Our master closet is like this in our bedroom and the entire stair case is a freestanding sculptural element we call the "stair object" and it houses (in addition to the stairs) our regrigerator, pantries, and various millwork pieces. You can see they are starting to frame it up below with the regrigerator at the lower left of the image.

The "gallery object" is a 3/4 height volume in the gallery that will house artwork, a bench, lighting equipment, and some other surprises. These will be a lot easier to visualize once I can put some photos up or show you in person!

Last but not least we got a job sign up out at Erwin and Mimosa to direct traffic.

Verifying Birthday Suit Exposure

Many people find it strange that years before we started to build we decided that one of our #1 program elements was having an outdoor shower.  We stay almost every year at our friend Ann Ehringhaus's B&B Oscar's House on Ocracoke, Island, NC and we fell in love with her outdoor shower. Ann is such an amazing human and we love her so much that we had her marry us too!   This is the happy group at Lake Logan, NC back in 2004.  But I digress. So of course you want that shower on the south facing roof terrace and that will certainly be shielded by the tall trees on the lot right?  Actually there were a few more trees cleared due to grading than we had hoped and I had the first chance today to jump up on the framing that will be the location for our shower and see just how exposed we will be.

Fortunately our good friend and sculptor Al Frega will come to the rescue with recycled metal art shower shields!  Stay tuned. The shower is in the SE corner of the nicely sized terrace over our study and lower bath.  Three seasons of the year we will be able to walk right out of the master bath onto the terrace and out under the sky. Few details on the house involved so much wrangling between architect,  builder, plumber, roofer, inpectors etc. than this little 3'x3' piece of heaven but it is going to happen!  Come on by when its done.

Steely Beauty

Phase II of the steel got delivered today.  These are the BIG guys!

This guy is a 24" x 40 something I beam which weighs well over a ton.  It will be one of the two that spans the two pods in the center to support the bridge.

This is the first part of the first "frame" (of 4 total) at the west and east sides of each pod to support the bridge.

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

                                                                                                                                               --Scott Adams

Let's Get Vertical

WHOA! what a joy to check back into the job site after being away for a week. Ellen and I were in Missoula, Montana at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.  It was the world premiere of a movie called Bending Space:  Georges Rousse and the Durham Project that we were involved with. We saw great movies and had a fabulous time snoeshoeing. Lots more steel and framing photos on the photo galleries at the right.  The south end walls of the main pod are now framed up including lower bath, study, closets, and pantry.  You can see the parapet wall above for the roof terrace.  This comes right off of both the master bath and the gallery for both a public and private entry.  Nothing like seeing the real thing to be able to visualize what is bigger than I thought (living-dining area) and what is smaller than I thought (all closets and pantry).  We are getting the first chance (other than electronically) to see what our window views will be.  The stairs to the basement and utility room are in and of course not quite on a right angle.

I can't describe the feeling of walking around on that deck and visualizing our new home.  You can start to see how the house with bridge will wrap our favorite beech tree.

I would be remiss if I didn't give a shout out to our friend Ray Meeks and his family who we visited while in Montana.  Ray is a brilliant photographer with a show up currently at Candace Dwan Gallery in NYC.  Also if you are ever in Missoula check out the best B&B in Montana and meet the wonderful Blossom!

Decked Out

At the end of the week they finished up the floor framing and started in on the decking on both pods.  You can see here additional blocking in the entry and bathroom area where we will have ceramic tile.  The are using Advantec for the decking--they tell me it is far superior to conventional plywood.

Ellen's office made a field trip out to the site.   It is great for all of them to see the site when they have been staring at these drawings for years and they hear so much about it at the office. Left to right are Erica, Ellen, Jessica, Sasha, Keith, and Esther.  I also had a visit from my friend Christina and her son Luca. Luca was mightily impressed with all of the construction.  We took a walk down to the water where we have a swing that used to belong to my parents.   We had a seriously steep climb back up. The house looks so beautiful from below. I was sad to see the basement go dark when they put the decking down but I am also excited about the progress.  They start to go vertical on Monday and we will be out of town all week so we should see lots of progress on our return.

Behind the Moon

The Swiss have an expression--hinter dem Mond (behind the moon)-- which is roughly equivalent to our "just a gleam in her daddy's eye".  I was, in fact, behind the moon when my parents started their contemporary house construction around 1955.

They certainly had a jump on me at 34 and 38. I'm 49 now. That's my grandfather in the background (you can click on any of these images to enlarge them.) They had 3 kids by then and had to expand to a bigger house.  I've always wondered where I got the modern design gene--none of my 3 sibs are inclined that way and I really don't think of my parents as contemporary design focused either.  But around 1954 they hired an architect named Ed Lenker to design a heavily Frank Lloyd Wright influenced modern house in New Cumberland, PA and I spent the first 18 years of my life in it.  Something must have rubbed off. The only stick of contemporary furniture in the whole house was an original George Nelson Bench which I think they got as a gift.  I remember telling my mom when I got my first apartment that the only thing I wanted in their will was the Nelson bench and she told me to save myself a bunch of time and take it now as she hated it.  I cherish it and already have the spot picked out for it in the new house. My parents are 85 and 89 now (shown here with my sister Barb and Ellen last year) and are following the progress of the house

from their home at Green Ridge Village retirement community in Newville, PA. They have been Valentines for 62 years and taught me everything I need to know about loving and making a home. A toast to Franny and Bus!!!  They don't know what a blog is but they'll be thrilled they made it onto one.

Finish Olympics

We've gotten to the place where most decisions are so intertwined with other decisions that you have to have all the pieces together in one place to make sure everything works together.  This floor material is next to this piece of millwork in the next room etc. etc.  Tuesday night Ellen and held the Finish Olympics on our kitchen island.  We brought together all of the tile samples, Corian samples, stucco finish colors, granite counter sample (honed and polished), shower trim materials, metal roof samples, backsplash materials, hardwood millwork and flooring samples, etc. and tried to wrap up all remaining finish choices.  Ellen brought some beech leaves from the land to help us choose the exterior stucco color.  The metal roof color choice came down to the color of the beech bark and highest reflectance value to lower energy consumption. On our granite counter tops we are working with the wonderful Nancy Lau Prescott at Prescott Stone Fabricators.  She sent us a birth announcement when our Cafe Imperial stone arrived at the warehouse! Download granite_birth_announcement.pdf  We completely trashed the kitchen but we had a great time and made some great choices. I'm sure it won't look anything like I imagine.

For an idea that does not at first seem insane, there is no hope.                               --Albert Einstein

ARCANA

ar·ca·num   (är-kā'nəm)   
n.  pl. ar·ca·na (-nə) or ar·ca·nums

1. A deep secret; a mystery.
2. often arcana Specialized knowledge or detail that is mysterious to the average person: "knows the arcana of police procedure and the intricacies of litigation"
3. A secret essence or remedy; an elixir.

I make no apologies for my design skills but I do have problems visualizing in 3D without a drawing.  Ellen and I had a big meeting yesterday with our builder Leon, his project manager Keith, and our tile guy Sam from Quality Tile Works in Durham.  I don't have much construction experience and it is a little intimidating sitting in these meetings with my architect wife and a builder with 30 years experience.   They get heavy into some amazing design or construction detail and ideas start flying faster than I can keep up and then Ellen needs to draw one of her amazing quickie sketches to bring me up to speed.  The issue of the moment was our desire to have this beautiful Spanish mosaic tile by Tau Ceramica (US source Mid-Atlantic Tile Distributors) called Corten (looks like Corten steel)

at the end of our master shower wall. We were discussing the best way to deal with the unfinished edges of the tile without Sam having to fabricate a bullnose. There's the glass shower door, Corian shower base, GWB wall, shampoo/soap insert all converging together. Leon blurts out "We could Schluter it." Ellen and Sam look on knowingly and I find yet another manufacturer of arcana that I was quite content not to know about even a day before.  Schluter makes all these widgets and trims and it turns out Leon is talking about using a tile edge trim protection strip--specifically we decide on the Jolly Profile

 

Next task is finding the perfect color to match the Corten tile--yet another research project I didn't know we had to do.

Let the Frames Begin

Framing started late last week and by today they had mostly completed the floor framing for the guest pod and a good chunk of the main pod. I started a new photo album in the sidebar and will add images as it goes up.  There are lots of joist direction changes dictated by the structural engineer to handle the various sheer forces of the bridge structure, canopies, etc.

Design ideas come when you least expect it. You may have noticed in the topmost image in this post that there is a large rectangular opening to the left of Myron where our front door will be.  I was at the new Denver Art Museum in 2006 and they had used a lot of those municipal cast iron tree grates outside to protect the trees. I decided I wanted to use one of them in an interior space and logged that away in my brain and forgot about it.  Then last March I was staying with my friends Lisa and Peter in Scottsdale, AZ and found new inspiration. They have this amazing contemporary house and at their entrance they have a beautiful glass tile in concrete entrance pad and I decided it would be great to have something similar in our house and I went off on this tangent of trying to figure out how to backlight the glass tiles from below in the basement.  That got way too complicated and  then the tree grate idea reemerged and I decided that we could have a tree grate entrance pad and commission an artist to make a "cornerstone" of sorts to fill the circle where the tree would normally go.  While taking a class at Penland this past fall I worked with one of our instructors, Pablo Soto , to make a test glass casting.

We will see what moves us over the course of construction to fill the "hole in the house."  We plan to use another tree grate (round this time) in the living room beneath the Rais wood stove.  The stove will be on a turntable to allow us to direct the heat toward the living room or the dining room.

I guess I have rambled on long enough for today.  I will leave you with the quote of the day:

Let us be clear about this, the forms that people used in other civilizations or in other periods of our own country's history were intimately part of the whole structure of their life. There is no method of mechanically reproducing these forms or bringing them back to life; it is a piece of rank materialism to attempt to duplicate some earlier form, because of its delight for the eye without realizing how empty form is without the life that once supported it. There is no such thing as a modern colonial house any more than there is such a thing as a modern Tudor house. If one seeks to reproduce such a building in our own day, every mark on it will betray the fact that it is a fake, and the harder the architect works to conceal that fact, the more patent the fact will be. The great lesson of history - and this applies to all art - is that the past cannot be recaptured except in spirit.. Our task is not to imitate the past, but to understand it, so that we may face the opportunity of our own day and deal with them in an equally creative spirit.

                                                                                                           Lewis Mumford

Well Well Well

Headed to the site this morning expecting to witness the start of floor framing in the guest pod and found a cacaphony of activity on three different fronts.   The well drilling rig was going full steam and a small stream of water was cascading by the driveway.   The grading crew was working on a huge retaining wall east of the carport storage. Those guys are magicians making those intricate puzzles come together.

 

Steel has given over to wood as the first floor framing members appeared on the site. Dwayne and Steve are our two master carpenters and they had a beautiful day to start their work.  It is a very complicated framing plan with so many changes of level and the need to accommodate a sophisticated mechanical system--not to mention a shortage of right angels.

It is starting to look like a house!  I got my first responses about the blog and my dear friend Mona from LA who visited us last year before we started building sent some photos entitled "Love over Cassilhaus" This fabulous old beech is toward the western edge of our property.  Mona is an internationally know photographer who shows in top galleries around the world.  Thanks to all who have sent their feedback about the blog.  Keep the comments coming as I figure this out.

Steel Steel Steel

Big day today.  We started with an early job site meeting. From left this is Kevin from Custom Steel, Leon, Myron, Ellen, and Anna.  They are installing 1st floor steel today.  There is that tension when the tape measures come out to measure the steel and then the span where it is supposed to go.  Everything looks great and fits like a dream.  Check out the "Steel" photo album in the sidebar for more photos.

I walked down to the trail below the stream buffer to shoot some photos of the completed structure.  I can't believe it is finally becoming reality.

Before criticizing someone, walk a mile in their shoes.  Then when you criticize them, you will be a mile away and have their shoes.

                                                          --Jack Handy

Windows on Duke Forest

The view from the top of the foundation wall out over Duke Forest takes your breath away. And this is only the first floor! There are 97 windows in the house--not counting the glass doors.  I counted this morning and the lion's share are unique sizes.  The ramifications of designing completely non-rectilinear forms are becoming increasingly clear.  Trapezoidal windows look cool.  The plan sheet for windows and doors is a work of art unto itself.  Thanks Anna.

The closer you get to the edge, the better the view.                 --David Napp

Who Knew?

Who knew you could spend a whole day picking out exterior door trim hardware?  After reviewing a 15 page window and door quote with a gozillion options we find out that there are two-count em-options for the Pella door hardware and they are both butt ugly.  To make matters worse there is only 1 3rd party manufacturer on the planet that makes Pella compatible hardware.  Enter Rocky Mountain Hardware in Hailey, Idaho! Fabulous and fabulously expensive if not exactly heavy on contemporary options. Incredibly knowledgeable salespeople (Thanks Jubal!). Just pick one out I assumed.  A few questions--Dummy, multi-point entry, multi-point passage, or multi-point patio? 38 different lever options, 9 escutcheon plate options, Silicon or white bronze?, Light, medium, dark, rust, or brushed patina?  Left, Right, Left Hand Reverse, or Right Hand Reverse Handing, Backset mechanism for associated door, Door Thickness, American or Profile Cylinder Lock, and Center to Center Dimension Lever to Cylinder.  Just jot these items down and we will send out your hardware--and let us know if you have any special finish requests.

Time Capsule

The foundation was going in and Ellen and I wanted to put something in the concrete walls to celebrate our families.  We had a fun morning running around the house deciding what to put in our little time capsule.  The most fun was actually finding what we were going to use as a capsule.  I found a 1967 silver cigarette box golf "trophy" of my mothers and it was perfect.   We proceeded to fill it with a zip drive full of family photos, some actual photographic prints, coins from our travels around the world, a music CD, wedding momentos, a leaf from our current yard, a candle, some "passion" tea, a tweaker, my parent's 50th wedding anniversary announcment, etc. etc.   We watched while it was placed in the wall . In just one week we went from dirt through footers and foundations walls.  It is so hard for me to wrap my brain around all these guys working on this all day and its for US!  For so long these have been lines on a page and now it is real.

Let the Games Begin

5 years of dreaming and 3 years of planning and designing came together today for the ground breaking for “Cassilhaus”.  It was bittersweet to see some of those majestic trees fall but in a silent moment after all had left the site the energy was so positive that it was clear that we are being welcomed to this place.  The sun was beaming in where it hadn’t for a very long time and everything started to feel real for the first time.  About half of the site is cleared and the silt and boundary fences are in place.  We have saved many beautiful hardwood trees which will cradle the house.  The next phase of the odyssey has begun………….                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Whatever you do or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic to it. –Goethe

Blessing the Land

Ellen and I wanted to have a little ceremony to bless the land and make a sacred space for our new home. There is a beautiful old beech tree on the North side of the land.  We decided early on to wrap the house around it.  The ceremony was at the base of this majestic tree.  It was simple and private ritual but it felt very much like we were welcome here.  We made a little altar and said a prayer for the realization of our dreams and another prayer to not hit any rock during excavation!