The Cottonwood Modern residence has been making some steady progress over the last few months – thankfully we are moving out of the visually dull portion of the project (running HVAC and Plumbing) and start on exterior finishes and interior finishes. I always think this is one of the most exciting periods of construction because this is when the wheat gets separated from the chaff. This is the time when clients begin to truly understand what their house will feel like – how they can imagine themselves living in the spaces. On the rare occasion a client will say “Oh, I didn’t know that was going to be there…” or something along those lines but even when they do have some sort of spatial recognition come to them, it’s an exciting thing, like – “OOoooo, I didn’t know THAT was going to be there!!”
.
This is the front of the house … nothing really to discuss just yet, I just felt it was time to show the front. I like the geometries in this area and once the landscape walls get constructed, the entry courtyard sequence will be easier to understand. That big window you see on the right hand side is looking into the kitchen.
.
Most of the work that is going on at the site is centered around installing the windows and exterior doors, and starting the installation of the stone at the detached pool pavilion. The shot above is looking up at the row of 3 cantilevered rooms that project over the pack of the house. The site has some topography and the owners didn’t want to have any level changes in the house. To accommodate their programming wishes and provide some visual interest and drama, we decided to accentuate the elevation change from the interior finish floor and the grade of the yard along the rear of the house – which is why we have the three cantilevered rooms.
.
This picture is looking at the overhang of the Master Bedroom. You can see from this shot that there is quite a bit of open land on this site. These lots are all deeded to be 5 acres – there are several homes in this area that have horses…
Each of these rooms along the rear elevation looks down into the yard and out over the majority of the lot, and it’s a pretty nice view. Once we have come out of our winter period and the trees have some leaves and the fields aren’t quite so yellow/brown, I’ll take a panorama of the view and include it in one of these update posts.
.
I’m standing in the middle cantilevered room looking towards the Game Room (in the middle), the pool pavilion on the left, and the exterior covered patio to the right. We get some good-sized mosquitoes in these here parts and the exterior patio will be screened in so that you can sit outside and not have to worry about having some Texas sized mosquito making of with a liter of your crimson life force.
.
All of these cantilevered spaces are enclosed within glass boxes. I thought it would be interesting to show you just how fine tuned the floor structure and columns have to be to accommodate the large windows these rooms have. In the picture above shows a painted steel column resting on top of a steel floor beam. The wood subfloor had to be removed and the column slightly adjusted because is was about 1/4″ out of square with the window framing. I was on site inspecting the window wall and sliding door installation and noticed that the gap between the steel column and the window was slightly larger at the top than it was at the bottom. I called the contractor over and had this conversation:
Bob: “Hey Bruce, come over here.”
Bruce: “Yes?”
Bob: [pointing at column] “Did you see …”
Bruce: [interrupting] “Yes, I already know.”
Bob: “Is it the window or is it…”
Bruce: “It’s the steel column.”
Bob: “Is the column bent or …”
Bruce: [interrupting] “It’s straight, just out of alignment.”
Bob: “Yikes. When are they going to…”
Bruce: “They’ll be here tomorrow to adjust it.”
I am lucky because I work with good contractors who don’t play the “I hope the architect doesn’t notice that” game. They know what’s supposed to happen and they do it. It’s what makes them professionals.
.
I also included this shot to show you that the window installers spent a day on site spot leveling the subfloor where these giant window walls were going to be installed. See the lighter brown area around the perimeter of the picture above? They had a planer and were going around shaving a bit here, a tad there …
.
This is the exterior covered patio. Eventually the floor will be covered in flagstone and the fireplace will be covered in stone as well. The screened in portion will be able to roll up into the ceiling and disappear when the owners don’t want or feel like it’s needed. When the bugs are out, hit a button and the screen unrolls from a slot in the ceiling and BOOM … bug free. The white thing you see sticking up from the floor is a PVC pipe which is an area drain.
.
Now we are looking at the detached pool pavilion. There is a lot going on here so this space will be covered more thoroughly later on but I wanted to spend some time looking at the stone we are installing. And by “we” and mean 3 other guys who could probably squeeze my hand to pulp despite their diminutive stature.
.
This is a look at the stone we are installing on the house. It is a ledgestone (stone that will be approximately 4″ to 6″ high and about 4″ wide with two flat side for easy stacking) and is a mix of two different species – 25% “Oklahoma” ledgestone and 75% “Winter Blue” ledgestone. A word of warning though – these are quarry names NOT geologic names. They way we pick stones is by either physically showing the stone yards what we want, or showing them a picture of what we want … and then they go find it. What one quarry calls “Winter Blue” might be called “Blue Mist” by another quarry. At any rate, we tell them what we want, they bring out samples, prepare a mock up wall and we tweak the mix until it’s what we are looking for.
.
These pictures show what 3 guys have done working 8 hour days or longer, for 5 weeks. This is a dry stack installation and there isn’t one piece of stone that will get installed that doesn’t require some sort of “artisanal editing.” They dump all the stones around their work area, hunt around until they find what they feel is the right stone (color and approximate shape), chisel a bit off here, a bit there … well, you get the idea. It’s very labor intensive and the crews are small. You want the same small crew doing all the work so that one part of the house looks like the other parts.
.
I watched this guy chipping away on this one piece of stone for a minute or so – he was whistling the whole time. All I could think of was how easy that guy could beat me up if he wanted to . In fact, he was so skilled at chipping away exactly what he wanted, I’m pretty sure he could have sent a stone shard straight into my eye if he wanted.
Good thing I’m a popular guy on site, I know when to let people do their thing.
.
Just a shot of some of the mess that will be hidden behind the stone work. There is a neat little detail I want to share – and it involves the giant steel beam and where it penetrates the CMU in the picture above.
.
Here is the closer look.
This whole wall will eventually get covered in ledgestone, all you see now is the CMU backup wall. Do you see the little ‘L’ shaped piece of steel the is running vertically between the top and bottom flange of the beam above? I added this piece so the stone would have a flat edge to die into rather than require the mason to have to chip and chink the stone around the ‘I’ beam. It’s also recessed 1.5″ so that there will be a shadow line where the steel beam punches into the ledgestone so that it will visually appear that the stone is helping to support the beam – which will help the wall appear to be more “authentic” – at least that’s my idea. I am excited to see this area completed.
.
Just another look at the stone work going up on the pavilion. These guys have stuff spread out all over the place.
.
I included this last shot just so I could show you the lengths I will go to properly photo document the project. I am standing out at the very edge of the roof, centimeters from certain death. See the masons below and how two of them have their hoodies pulled up? It was really windy and I thought (because I’m stupid) that going out onto the roof would be a good idea so I could get this particular angle. Nobody knew I was going to do it but I’m pretty sure that if I fell, somebody (like those three guys) would know … it was high enough to scream twice on the way down.
Cheers,
.
.