A PreFab Project

Why did it have to be snakes?

2009-08-02T08:25:00.001-04:00

Despite the kind offers from her children, Mom does NOT want to hold the baby milk snake.

Treehouse Taste Test

2009-05-01T08:57:00.003-04:00

Since we're trying out different options for when we do this in WV, we went with two different rain screen applications:

Still have some work to do, but getting there...

Modern Treehouse Test Drive

2009-04-29T11:43:00.005-04:00

So we're giving the LostRiverModern treehouse a dry run here in our full-time backyard:

We're working with three trees as our supports, which lends itself nicely to a modern shape, and to a fun triangular pitched roof.

Hard to keep kids off as you build...

Probably a little overbuilt, and it'll be a pain to take apart if our landlord makes us dismantle it before we move on to greener pastures.

The floor is 7/8" BC board (sometimes called project board), which has a nice smooth finish and is plenty sturdy. Most of my power tools are out in WV (including my jig saw), which meant some tricky and not-recommended improvisation with an old skil saw to shape the floor around the trees...

The plan is to use 1x2 slats in a rain-screen application for the walls, and to screen it in (mosquitoes are tough in these parts). About $350 in lumber and misc. materials. I fastened the beams with 1/2 x 6" lag screws. Not much to it after that. Framed the floor, roof and ladder; the roof will be corrugated plastic. Should finish today or tomorrow...

Michael says it's "awesome."

My kind of DIY

2009-04-21T22:01:00.005-04:00

If I were building a modern home for us to live in, I would definitely be looking hard at these. Get the satisfaction of building Ikea cabinets yourself but with gorgeous exposed stained 7-ply instead of fiberboard...

Wanna go halfsies?

2009-04-20T00:07:00.003-04:00

I don't think I could ever live in the desert, but I'd love to have a west coast version of LostRiverModern and man do I wish it could be this:

With apologies to all the wonderful prefab designs out there, this very first version of the Marmol Radziner entry into the prefab world still blows me away. Dwell has detailed the home and the process here. And if anybody out there wants to help me scrape together $1.2mm...

Guest Book

2009-03-31T08:21:00.001-04:00

I've been toying with asking guests to send us any fun pics of their trips for me to post over here - kind of like outsourcing my blogging responsibilities. I haven't followed up on it yet, but here are some guests' own blogs where visits to (or hopes to visit) LostRiverModern have been memorialized:

Simplesong

ThreePotatoFour

and more from TPF

Sweaty Guinea Pig (these guys put our kitchen through its paces)

The Mark Pike

Samantha Hahn

Something's Hiding in Here

In the Press

2009-03-27T10:24:00.003-04:00

So we've had a very positive response to our little fifteen minutes of fame in Dwell (though for my money, the pictures are much more fun than the article).

And while we don't yet have a "Press" link on the real site for the house, we should. So I'm going to aggregate all the press we've had in this post, and eventually migrate it over to LostRiverModern. We've been very fortunate to have some wonderful sites write up little bits on our place and owe a big THANKS to everyone who has been nice enough to point people our way, including:

I'm sure most of you have already visited these sites, but if you haven't head over and check them out. Great reading for anybody interested in a modern aesthetic...

Bus Shed

2009-03-26T12:25:00.001-04:00

We had a contractor out to at the house this week to talk about landscaping and that's what he called my wood shed. He said you see sheds like ours at the end of driveways in WV for kids to use while they wait for the bus for school in the morning (or to hide from the school bus in the morning). With all this wood in it, I think it's actually starting to look like a wood shed.

I wish I could say I filled it myself. But I'd been going at the giant log pile out there an hour or two at a time and not making much progress (enough to keep guests with wood for fires, but barely). So I broke down and hired someone local to have a go at it. He's making better progress than I was (and for $400 for what it already about 3 cords of wood, I think it is money well spent).

Yes, I like birds...

2009-03-26T06:21:00.000-04:00

I am so building one of these (after the downstairs deck, the landscaping, the basement closets, the treehouse...):

Speaking of birds...

2009-03-24T08:29:00.000-04:00

I hung this out at the house last week:

Sarah got it for me for Christmas from Nova68.

Stimulus

2009-03-23T19:16:00.002-04:00

DWR is having their fifteenth (since I started counting) "once-in-a-lifetime" sale, which ends tonight. Seem to be some good deals, but too rich for my blood, with the exception of this:

Looking for ideas

2009-03-23T00:00:00.000-04:00

I've got about 200 sf of 3"x6' bamboo floor boards left over and I'm brainstorming ideas for what to do. I am dream-sketching a treehouse for the boys and wonder how the bamboo would do outside. Anyone know? How bout as a rainscreen on a treehouse like this:

(That's the model for our treehouse at the moment - we're reaching for the stars...)

So will bamboo swell/contract enough left out in the elements to cause a problem on a rainscreen? I'd rip it lengthwise into 1" wide planks, then fasten to furring strips. Will it pop the screws?

Other ideas for the bamboo: a table top (maybe a coffee table?), shelves for the downstairs closets, a bench...

So many blogs to read

2009-03-22T12:04:00.002-04:00

Looking around for modern landscaping ideas and stumbled across PLASOLUX, a pretty fun modern-everything blog. Since I seem to be getting the blogging itch again, I think it's about time to update my blog roll and highlight some of the regular sites I've been visiting...

Spring

2009-03-21T15:53:00.004-04:00

Michael and I have both been a bit sick, and we thought he had strep, so even though he was feeling better we thought we should keep him home from school. And since the weather was supposed to be great, we headed out to the house. Hung a swing we'd picked up from Ikea, met with a couple of different landscaper options, and talked through some details about the next projects on tap. But mostly just enjoyed the warmth...

Welcome Dwell Readers

2008-12-27T20:57:00.004-05:00

So Dwell has a bit in this month's prefab issue about our cabin. While it's "told by" me, I have to say that the voice and the points of emphasis aren't what I'd have picked. And they linked to the luminhaus instead of our site! But who can really complain about an article in Dwell, right?

So I'm going to stick this at the top for awhile. If you're new to this blog and looking for LostRiverModern's site, click HERE. New posts will appear below this one...

The Verdict

2008-12-21T21:53:00.005-05:00

It's official. We love the Dutchtub. Sorry to say that Todd is going to take it away next week. But we're working on getting one of our very own...

Honeymoon Suite

2008-11-25T12:29:00.002-05:00

Got this email from Todd, a new friend of ours from Saranac, NY, who we met this summer and who is staying out at the house the next few days on his honeymoon:

we are safe, sound, comfortable and married at the lost river modern.

fabulous.

will post and update with our progress next few days, with tub and observations.

t+h

They brought a Dutchtub with them and they're leaving it til New Years! (As you can see from below, Todd takes his Dutchtub with him when he travels...that's him in the back of the canoe.)

I Recogize Those Cabinets, and Those Floors, and Those Views...

2008-11-20T09:31:00.003-05:00

Res4 has managed to get themselves into the paper again. Here's a NYT profile of a prefab they finished in the Bronx on what is basically an urban infill lot - on the water. (Even having grown up and lived in and around NYC, it still surprises me that there are so many working-class neighborhoods with homes on the water.) This house was in design when we first met with Res4, and was a point of reference for a lot of Res4's answers to our questions (timeline, matls, etc.). Fun to see it finished.

The Site

2008-10-03T00:19:00.001-04:00

We knew this going in, and it turned out to be true - the steeper the land you're working with, the more complicated the whole process will be. That meant more money spent on the driveway, less flexibility with respect to actually choosing a building site on the property, and importantly with respect to prefab, more difficulty in actually getting the module up to the site (with the attendant stress on the module: drywall cracking, flex on the windows, anxiety for me when the box actually got stuck on the tight turn). On the flip side, the steepness of the site means we get a view. So we've got that going for us.

Second, and this was hugely important, I think, the decision to go with unrestricted land as opposed to buying in a sub-division was the right one for us. It means we don't have to worry about aggravating a homeowners' association when build a modern home or rent it to weekenders. It meant some more money up front for the driveway and utility infrastructure, but we probably got a bit of break in $/acre in buying unimproved land in the first place.

West Virginia - I have to say I was a little nervous about picking a site in WV. Wasn't sure about the mix of people, or the proximity to services, or how receptive guests would be to the idea of a high-end cabin in WV. But all in all I think things have been great. The people have been wonderful, from all the guys working on the house to our neighbors and the businesses in the area, just very welcoming of new people. (Part of that, I think, is a function of being so close to a town that is so popular with DC's gay community.) The light regulation of development (and the absence of any building code or inspection process) meant that we could move the process along much more quickly than we could have in VA or MD, where just getting a building permit could take a year. On the down side, and speaking generally, the local contractors we used did not have a familiarity with a lot of the modern style materials that we spec'd. We did a lot ourselves, so it wasn't an issue, but I have to say I would be really nervous trying to build an affordable modern house with builders in a really rural area that haven't done it before.

The Design

2008-10-02T21:27:00.008-04:00

I'm going to blog while I watch this debate. I know I still haven't blogged a final post mortem for this whole project, and I haven't updated the final numbers of our budget page. So here are some of the things that I think went well, or I could have handled a bit better, or that would have improved the process. (This will probably span a few posts...)

First things first: WE ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS HOUSE. Experiencing the play of light and space, the sense of being up and in the trees, the efficiency of the design - it's perfect. And the reaction of the guests who've stayed has been exactly the same. The windows and sliding glass doors are spectacular, not only in the transparency they create but in the way they allow the air to circulate. The house doesn't just open up to the outside, it allows the outside to move through the house - sound, light, air. There's a dynamism to the space that you really can't appreciate unless you're in it.

As for the nuts and bolts of what went where, this is the first time I've had any experience with the process of designing a house. I didn't know a thing. I wanted to squeeze two bedrooms into a 1000 sf space, and I'm really glad that we didn't go that route and that Res4 found a reasonable way to get us some more space (with a cost-effective walkout basement). The deck is spectacular, and nearly doubles the space of the upstairs. (Each iteration of the design for the house had a bigger and bigger deck, and that impulse really paid off.) The pitched roof really opens up the space to the view, and was an aesthetic element that we really wanted (and that the weehouse and the lv don't have). The butterfly probably was not necessary, and maybe complicated more than helped the upstairs space (we have a 7' soffit that runs the length of the back of the house), and meant we had to incorporate scuppers that - while I love the idea and effect of them - were a difficult element for the metal workers to flash.

The windows that wrap around the corner in the upstairs bedroom, reaching almost from the ceiling to the floor, are genius. You can look down into the woods from the bed, as opposed to up - another effect that you really have to experience to appreciate.

We don't have a mud room or an alternate entrance for bad weather, which is something that would be really nice, seeing as how we're in the woods and it's messy all the time. We don't really even have a good place for shoes/coats. We never even talked about that at the design stage. The downstairs sliders desperately need a deck or something on the outside. And I'm not sure I love the car parking area/retaining wall; new visitors to the house don't recognize it as a functional parking spot. But we needed something to level the entry area, and this works well for that.

Looking back (and considering how little we knew about what questions to ask during the design process), Res4 really anticipated our needs pretty well as far as how best to utilize the space. The upstairs is completely functional, and you can be out at the house and never have to go downstairs for anything. The downstairs is a great overflow space that doesn't distract at all from the living space upstairs.

I think we probably have too much storage upstairs in terms of drawers in the bedroom and cabinets in the hallway for a house that will be used mostly by renters (nobody brings that much with them, as far as I can tell).

We have outlets on the floor in the upstairs - I realize now we will never use them. We didn't put any place in the upstairs living space for a tv, and I'm glad.

I really don't like the location of the mechanicals outside (below the retaining wall, where they're pretty visible). I wish they were on the far side of the house, but that wasn't really practical.

The 419

2008-09-22T23:43:00.004-04:00

Apparently that's the criminal code for fraud in Nigeria. (I've been pretty good about keeping all the posts on this blog related to the house, so - to keep that streak alive - let's call this post a follow-up to Dr. Fred's inquiry about visiting on his honeymoon.) This American Life aired a story last week about "Enforcers," and turns out there's a whole little army of people on the internets who counter-scam Nigerian fraud scammers. Telling them "I'd love to send you the money you're trying to extort from me, but I can only do it if..." And they do it. Like re-enact Monty Python sketches. Or risk their lives in war-torn lands to try to make a buck.

The New Yorker ran a piece a couple of years ago about victims of this kind of fraud. It references a song by a Nigerian comic called "I Will Chop Your Dollar," the lyrics of which include: “I go chop your dollar. I go take your money and disappear. Four-one-nine is just a game. You are the loser and I am the winner.” Chorus is kinda catchy.

Fetishizing the Object

2008-09-16T14:31:00.003-04:00

Here's Allison Arieff's take on MOMA's prefab exhibit, wondering as I did way back when why none of the people who are actually BUILDING prefabs are featured.

And Morning Edition had a profile of prefab and the exhibit yesterday as well.

Jumping the Shark

2008-08-28T00:17:00.002-04:00

We've come a long way on this little blog - it's served its several purposes pretty well, I think. Posterity for us, information resource for others doing the same thing, getting the word out about our house as a rental cabin. I'm not blogging a whole lot lately - not as much to do out there for me. I suppose I could turn this into a "what it's like to rent out your cabin" blog...

And though I'm sure I'll keep popping over here to blog about the house (I'm of course feeling invigorated as a blogger by the start of the academic year and the real world responsibilities blogging can distract me from), this post would certainly be the perfect way to wrap it all up. We've gotten a few inquiries from folks interested in writing about the house (Emily's blurb on Washington Spaces being the first to actually spill some virtual ink about it). An editor from the spectacularly-named Garden & Gun spoke with us a couple of times and actually asked for a release to use some photos from the blog, so I expect they will actually run something too (alongside what seems to be some pretty impressive content). And then last month I got an email out of the blue from Aaron Britt at Dwell, who wanted to know some details about our place and the narrative, see some pics, and asked whether we'd be interested in being in the magazine (some people apparently say no). I sent him what he was looking for and didn't hear back and figured that was the end of it. A week later and I get another note from Aaron that if we're still up for it, they'd like to run a story about our place in their upcoming prefab issue (Feb 09) in the "My House" section (a smallish column written in the subject's voice with pics and some nuts and bolts "how/why we did this" details). We were traveling a lot last month, and I went right out to the house when we get back to meet with a freelance reporter for a couple of hours (kicking some very understanding guests out of the house for a bit - thanks Heidi!). Then last week we met my mom and her husband out at the house for a couple of days. And after they left some fancy freelance photographers from NYC came and shot a day's worth of pics. Which was exhausting for all involved, but I think they got some pretty good shots (our kids are pretty photogenic, I have to say), and they even took a couple with an extra fancy camera in the format they use for the cover...

We let them have some leftover soft tacos and wine:

We spruced up the house a bit - this piece over the bed upstairs is borrowed from Michael's friend Ezra, whose parents picked up this scrap of sheetmetal that some artist punched circles out of with plasma cutter - so perfect that we almost "lost" it on the way home:

Chris the photographer was persuaded by his assistant David and me to take a sunset shot of the house from the top of a tall ladder, which Chris wasn't thrilled about but his inner photographer trumped his fear of heights:

And our kids finally crashed after being troopers for an entire day of "go stand over there and smile":

All in all, pretty exciting. Who knows how it'll turn out - we'll see how well the writer can turn two hours worth of blabber into 700 coherent words. And even if I come off like a moron, I saw some of the pics (they take polaroids before they take the real thing) and I know they got some good ones. (It costs $3k/month just to advertise in the back of Dwell - a couple of nice pics and our website name in the middle of the magazine certainly beats the pants off of that! And for free!)

If this blog were a movie, this post would have to be the equivalent of the nerdy guy finally falling into bed with the beauty next door, roll credits. I'm sure I'll keep blogging and ruin this perfect ending. But if I ever have Blogger print this up into one of those book blogs, you can bet this will be the last entry.

Adirondacks in Appalachia

2008-08-27T23:08:00.003-04:00

Love these chairs, btw. (The boys do too, I think it goes without saying.) Talk to Nate at Loll Designs.

Easy Come, Easy Go

2008-08-25T23:59:00.002-04:00

I'm going to tell the short version of this story so as not to reveal all the details of what a dope I am. The one-sentence abstract is "back up your stuff." I've been pretty lax about getting data from our laptop (a Powerbook) to our external hard drive, which I keep in the basement, and don't hook up very often, and blah, blah, blah. Computer crashes and lots of stuff from the last year is gone. Pictures and music, mostly. Including all 1100 or so pics of this project, which had been on my iphone until just days before the fateful moment. C'est la vie. Sarah doesn't want to even think about all the family pics that are gone. I feel terrible. So back up your stuff.

I will tell this part of the story in some detail: Apple sent me a brand new MacBookPro out of the kindness of their hearts, though I was one day past the expiration of the 3-yr extended apple car warranty. They probably could have just fixed the hardware problem on the old machine and been done with it (or worse, told me tough luck). So I've got a brand new fancy pants computer (albeit with no pictures or music on it). Now it's kind of their fault that all the data's gone from the old machine (they erased it in trying to fix some minor problems the machine was having), and it's kinda their fault that the computer crashed (it was fine when I sent it off to have the mouse pad - which was acting up - replaced just before my warranty expired). But they tell you over and over again to back up your stuff before you send it to them, and I didn't.

Anyway, they sent me a new $2k computer when they didn't really have to and when I fully expected I was SOL.

And back your stuff up.

Web Extra!

2008-08-23T23:30:00.004-04:00

We've gotten a bunch of press inquiries from folks interested in doing a story about the house. Emily Ruane's Washington Spaces prefab article is the first to see the light of day - our first official press clipping!

Calder Court

2008-08-23T21:26:00.005-04:00

The mall we used to go to when I was a kid had a giant Calder mobile in the center of the food court. It was built in 1969, and as this article in the Times recounts, the developer's wife basically held her breathe until he agreed to put some money aside to commission some fancy artists to install public pieces in the mall. Calder's was the centerpiece. (During a renovation of the mall in the 80s, Calder's mobile was packed away in storage and LOST! Sotheby's auctioned it for well over $1M in 2002.)

So I've had a bit of a love affair with mobiles (and Calder) ever since. (The Phillips Gallery here in DC had a pretty great Calder exhibit a few years back that focused on the close working relationship he had with Joan Miro.) I didn't actually ever buy one until Sarah was pregnant with Michael, and we managed to get my job to pay for her to meet me in Paris at the end of a long arbitration. We found a small mobile at the Picasso Museum that has hung over all our kids in their cribs. And now I've got this one:

Which is my new favorite thing about our cabin. It is just fantastic. So thanks again to Matt and Kathryn at Ekko Mobiles and HangingMobileGallery - check them out.

Thinks he's a rich guy...

2008-08-13T21:57:00.004-04:00

I'm still on vacation, so haven't done anything with the house to really blog. But we have continued to buy stuff. I remember when I first started reading other modern construction blogs and I was seeing people throw absurd amounts of money around on furniture. We've been pretty good about reigning in the urge to go all out (even though it's easy to rationalize that it's all in the name of attracting renters, it'll pay itself back over time, etc.). Got all the Eames chairs used on craigslist; ditto for the coffee tables, beds, nightstands and Corbu reproductions downstairs. Lots of Ikea accessories. Only big purchases were the couch and the dining table, but even those were relatively modest. All of this is really to say that furnishing an entire house is expensive, and I have mixed feelings about the more recent - and expensive - things we've bought.

So we've been looking for lounge chairs for the deck for a long time, but nothing really made sense. All the chaises we really liked were a billion dollars, and the cheap ones looked exactly that. I've really like the loll adirondack chairs for a while, and being up here in the adirondacks got me looking at them again. Bit the bullet and got two (plus two ottomans - $1000) - they're recycled plastic, so we'll never have to buy another lounge chair. Nate, the sales guy there, was great - he'd come across our house online and was thrilled that we liked his chairs and gave us a trade discount and free shipping...

Bare Walls

2008-08-10T22:01:00.004-04:00

Sarah and I are still accessorizing. Been thinking about a mobile for over the stairs for awhile and finally pulled the trigger today:

Catherine at HangingMobileGallery was a big help...

Bring Your Own Firewood

2008-08-10T21:48:00.002-04:00

Looking at the rain on the river from the porch of Sarah's parents' place this morning we watched a bunch of paddlers go by in canoes and kayaks. Figured there was a race going on, so we followed them along to the finish (of a 40 mile paddle from Saranac Lake to Simonds Pond) and saw one of these:

A Dutchtub! Fantastic. I talked with Todd, the head of the American version of the company, all about them. It takes about 2 hrs to heat the water (with a wood fire in the coils); you should change the water pretty frequently (some say as often as each use). We're still in the market for a hot tub, and I think this one's great. But for renters? Love to hear what folks think about renting a place that has a fire tub that requires this kind of attention to get going...

Nice Chairs

2008-08-08T15:42:00.002-04:00

Our cabin certainly could have been included in this story about rental homes and their furnishings. I'd say in our case it's as much for us as it is to attract renters - no way we could get away with having this kind of modern furniture in our regular house while our kids are still accidents waiting to happen. But a treat to enjoy it every once in awhile when we get out to the cabin...

All Aboard

2008-08-08T15:30:00.003-04:00

The Times has a fun story today about personal railroad cars, focusing on a trip a bunch of enthusiasts take from Petersburg, WV through the Potomac River Valley (just a bit down the road from our place).

Good Design?

2008-08-05T08:00:00.006-04:00

Dwell's got a piece in the Aug issue about good design - what it is, where it comes from, if it's nessarily modern. Sarah and I are on the road taking pictures; made our way from DC to NYC to the Adirondacks. I suppose here's a range of form v. function.

Eliasson's waterfalls:

Richard Meier's glass buildings along the West Side Highway near our apt:

And finally our cousin Dane's spectacular homemade woodburning pizza oven:

There's a bird nest right above my shed

2008-07-26T16:57:00.004-04:00

It's like parking your newly washed car under a power line...

Got almost all the shingles on yesterday:

I threw some aluminum flashing on the eave as a temporary finish; I've got some cedar left over that I think will be the permanent finish. Not sure what I'll do with the horizontal space under the eave - I've got a lot of tile left over, so maybe more of the same. Also need a door. I love those sliding barn doors - see if I can find some cheap hardware. Not sure what I'll use for the door yet.

Cut, Sand, Paint - Repeat

2008-07-23T08:59:00.001-04:00

111 times, that is:

I got all the Hardipanel tiles finished up for the shed yesterday. Painted them a handful of different colors, and they should be a lot of fun to look at.

The Hardipanel comes with a note that basically says "try not to machine cut this stuff - it'll kill you." Scoring is recommended method (it is VERY easy to score, even easier than drywall). The problem with scoring (and that's how I cut the pieces for the retaining wall, which I still need to blog) is that the edges aren't nearly as clean as machined cuts. They have that raggedy, fuzzy appearance to them, and sanding Hardipanel is apparently even worse for you than machining it. Suffice it to say that I used a circular saw with a cement blade to cut these 16x16 squares - it was pretty dusty. I stayed upwind, I wore a respirator, I held my breath. But it's hard to keep those cuts straight - the saw's fence isn't long enough, and though I made my own 2x4 fence the saw was still jumpy (I was cutting a few sheets at a time).

It took the paint REALLY well. I'm just using a flat exterior paint (Valspar, the Lowe's store brand), and two quick coats (only about 15 minutes apart) did the trick - rich and deep color. It rained and I wasn't able to hang them...next time.

TIred

2008-07-20T00:01:00.001-04:00

Built a shed yesterday.

***UPDATE: OK, I got a long nap in today and I'm ready to blog. (I really was tired, and only a few hours of sleep last night on top of two days of pretty hard work...)

Wednesday afternoon Sarah's dad and I drove out to the house in his truck with a pit stop at Lowe's. $1200 later I had all the materials I needed to finish the retaining wall (which you can see in the foreground in the pic at the top - more on that soon) and to build a shed. Hardipanel, lumber, cement, polycarb, etc.:

I had in mind something along the lines of the ModernShed - simple, sloped roof, 8x12, enough room to store the cords and cords and cords of firewood we have waiting to be cut and stacked, and someplace to keep all the stuff that's inside the house cluttering up all the closets right now (generator, tools, leftover cedar/bamboo/construction matls, etc.). I figured I could frame that myself.

Here's the spot - about 125' from the house as you come up the driveway, in the space that the well guys leveled to get their equipment in:

So Tony helped me a bit with the retaining wall and took off around 5. I spend the rest of the daylight hours excavating/leveling the footprint and digging the holes for the footers and pouring cement. (That sentence does not do justice to the amount of work that took place in those 4.5 hrs.) By Wednesday morning I was ready to start framing:

But I also had to finish getting the Hardipanel up on the retaining wall, which took most of the morning. Add in a trip over to Moorefield to get some more pressure treated lumber (I didn't have as much on site as I thought I did) and it's 4 o'clock before I really get going.

By Thursday afternoon I was finished. Nothing fancy; 8' on the front, with a 4' wide opening (not sure yet whether it'll get a door); 7' on the back; the triangle at the top will be open and screened to keep the air moving. Simpson ties for the joists:

Polycarb for the roof (keep the light coming in):

We're going to cut Hardipanel into 16" squares and paint them some fun colors and get them up as siding (like the recycled metal squares that were on the home on the cover of Dwell a few months back). Probably get some sheathing up on the inside to give it a little more lateral stability. I have to say it's a little more imposing than I thought it was going to be (up on the columns and with the framed floor and the joists on top it's a good deal taller than the 8' I was imagining it would be). But I think it's going to be fun to look at once we get the siding on. And I can finally start working on the pile of tree trunks on the side of the driveway...

"A Delightful Surprise"

2008-07-19T07:53:00.004-04:00

A surprise to some, I guess. The NYT has very nice things to say about MOMA's PreFab exhibit...

Barely Blogworthy

2008-07-10T23:20:00.005-04:00

Two tidbits:

Deer chomping on the trees just in front of the house when I got there yesterday. My hummingbird feeder was empty, though I've yet to see a hummingbird. And Stephanie, who's cleaning our place between renters, scared off a bear when she got to the top of the driveway this morning.

On my way home today from WV (I started work on the retaining wall, prepping it for the Hardipanel - framed a box on top to raise the height of the wall and attached furring strips...), I was fiddling with the radio. No good stations out there - the local NPR plays classical all day long. But there IS American Family Radio. Man, those guys. So I listen to that for kicks sometimes. And today they told me that "it's not just embittered feminists" that are tearing down the institution of marriage. And coming on the heels of this, it really hits home every once in a while that there actually are red states and blue states...

Beta

2008-07-06T21:24:00.000-04:00

Our website is ready for public consumption - LostRiverModern. Hopefully we can begin circulating it pretty soon, so I'd love to hear thoughts from our loyal readers: how's it look, how's it feel, suggestions, etc.

HUGE thanks (and beer on its way) to Marc and Mine and Gabe.

Mookie HATES Fireworks

2008-07-04T14:35:00.003-04:00

Happy Fourth.

UPDATE - This photo is by David J. Nightingale...

REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

2008-07-03T10:21:00.004-04:00

I'd heard ambiguous references to Nigerian email scams back when I was a lawyer, but had never been solicited myself. The first one I ever saw was actually during a document review of some client files that dated back to the 80s; there was a hardcopy of a letter from the Nigerian Oil Ministry (on pretty convincing looking letterhead) asking for help getting some "funds released." By the time I read this story in the New Yorker a few years back, I still don't think I'd actually gotten any "requests." But over the last couple of years they've started to trickle in. Got one from a Sudanese refugee camp a couple of months ago, in fact.

But this is a new wrinkle to me. And with apologies to the good Dr. Fred Silva of Stoke City, UK if I'm jumping the gun, lostrivermodern seems to have gotten its first "solicitation" from a Nigerian-inspired fraudster. Started with this:

Hey There,

Good day to you. Kindly check if we can use 3 nights (August 18,19,and 20) at your place. However, this dates are flexible but it should be within the 10th to the 29th of August.

I want you to email me the availability an cost.We are 2, My Wife and I.We are coming for our honeymoon. we don't smoke and we don't drink neither do we have pets.

I await your swift response.And enjoy your day!

My Due Regards.

Obviously pretty suspicious. For fun, we googled him but couldn't come up with anyone local with the name drfredsilva (which was his email address; no salutation on the inquiry), though there is a pretty reputable Dr. Fred Silva who is apparently the head of the Canadian American Academy of Pathology. So no harm in responding, right? Trying to draw him out a bit, I sent:

Hi Fred. Rates are $200 on the weekend (Fri, Sat and Sun nts) and $125 during the week. I have availability right now on the 18-20, which would be $375 total.

How'd you come across our cabin?

And the good doctor responds:

Hello,

Thanks for your prompt response.I have discussed this with my Wife about this and we have agreed to use your place,and as for the cost,we are alright with it.We are stay at No4 stoke city,United Kingdom +447024068105

ur our vacation expenses as a wedding gift and they have promised to send you a certified check as soon as you have penned these dates down for us.

Kindly email me your full name,physical address, home and cell phone number so that the payment can be mailed out to you soon.

Waiting to read from you.Have a great week ahead.

Regards,

Dr Fred

More googling fails to find a Dr. Fred in Stoke City (home of Stoke City F.C., the Potters, founded in 1863). But I googled the phone number and found a couple of spam advertisements (sports apparel) associated with it. Pretty sure that it's a scam, but not totally willing to give up on Fred, I told him that we only accept paypal and I'd be happy to confirm his reservation once we receive payment. No word back. Poor guy isn't going to have anywhere to stay on his honeymoon...

Around Town

2008-06-28T18:55:00.001-04:00

Inside

2008-06-28T18:43:00.003-04:00

Outside

2008-06-28T18:33:00.001-04:00

Big Sky

2008-06-27T23:03:00.000-04:00

Military Industrial Complex

2008-06-24T23:57:00.003-04:00

I've been meaning to blog this for awhile. When we stayed at the Luminhaus (I'm beginning to sound like a broken record) we were awoken in the middle of the night by the most outrageous roar. Took it happening a second time a bit later to realize that some military aircraft were flying what must have been RIGHT OVER the house, and I mean spitting distance away. Gets the adrenaline going to wake up that way at four in the morning.

Fast forward a year to last summer and Craig and I are sanding cedar before the house has even arrived. The sanders are loud, and Craig has on ear muffs AND his ipod. I'm going au natural. And with no warning at all two jets streak right over our heads, and again I mean RIGHT OVER OUR HEADS. Couple hundred feet about us, tops. Insanely loud. They're gone in an instant, and I look over at Craig and realize he hasn't heard or seen a thing. Later I asked some of the guys working on the foundation about it and they said it's not uncommon for jets to run the valleys, often below the ridge tops. It's happened a few other times when I've been out there (including a not-so-subtle wake-up call at 6 or so last week) and whatever you may think about our $450 billion dollar defense budget, I have to say that it is awesome - in the very literal sense of the word - to get buzzed by one of those things. And I suppose I should add this scenario to the "What to do if..." section of our little instruction book for guests.

With these kinds of guests...

2008-06-23T07:38:00.008-04:00

When we stayed at the Luminhaus, we had a sense of how much time and labor had gone into building it (of course not as much as we do now). And we took care of it accordingly. We broke the coffee pot and I drove twenty minutes to find a replacement. And I hope that's the attitude people have at our place. So far it certainly has been. And I can't imagine we're ever going to get renters who are partying or beating on stuff.

But all of the folks who have stayed so far have been superstars. John and Laura, our first guests, talked with me for an hour on the phone about their visit, and took copious notes. (And have already booked two more weekends!) Chris and Ritamary chipped in one of those wire brush scrubbers for the grill. Ross and Libby sent along a professional-quality blurb and a fancy corkscrew. And Jake, whose Herculean bicycle trip from Pittsburgh to our cabin really cannot be appreciated unless you are a biker (and I am and I still can't really get my arms around three consecutive 100-mile days in the mountains), sent along these pics:

What Part of Lockbox Don't You Understand?

2008-06-19T22:59:00.003-04:00

Anybody use one of these lockbox things to keep keys for visitors/contractors? Have one that you particularly like/dislike?

Some things you just can't do yourself

2008-06-15T23:33:00.004-04:00

Here is the working version of our website right now. Front page (which has gone through a bunch of iterations) and subpages (first crack at these). And to think we were going to try to pull off a .mac page. SO GLAD we decided to pony up for this. (Blue boxes will have pics, and the photo gallery will run through flickr.)

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

2008-06-15T15:29:00.004-04:00

My brother Brian very generously offered to come down from NYC during his week off from work and pitch in. I figured the right thing to do was not let him pay for anything while he was down here. Until I forgot my wallet when we drove into Harrisonburg to hit Lowes, grab lunch, get gas, etc. (I paid him back when Sarah showed up with some cash...)

We got a lot done, including hanging the closet doors in the basement hallway:

Simplex sent along 20" solid core doors and Stanley mounting hardware. I wasn't really excited about them (I wanted to put in some sort of sliding system with stained plywood or polygal). But you work with what you have, right? And they look pretty good.

Brian also did a lot of grunt work, including caulking almost all the molding in the house and the stairs. We got the bathroom pretty much knocked out (vanity, corian, fixtures, toilet). We got the rest of the mulch down under the deck. (We didn't take very many pictures.) A huge thank you to Brian (and Michelle for letting him get away).

Viva le Tour!

2008-06-15T15:21:00.002-04:00

Yesterday began a stretch of nine straight days with guests in the cabin. Sarah's aunt Chris is there with a friend this weekend, and next weekend the very first people to inquire about renting (what seems like a year ago) will be coming. In between is Jake from Pittsburgh, who is RIDING HIS BIKE all the way to Lost River. He's blogging his trip on his iPhone - don't know how much he'll be able to update, but check in and wish him luck.

Happy Birthday to Me

2008-06-15T15:15:00.002-04:00

A roommate in college sang "Happy Birthday to Me" onto the answering machine of some girls in the apt downstairs who didn't show up at his birthday party.

We celebrated mine by cleaning most of the mess I'd made since the last time we cleaned the house. And with cake and sparklers:

Another Casualty

2008-06-13T08:43:00.003-04:00

Took the actual toilet out of its box (one full year almost to the day since the house was delivered) and it is also cracked. Not so bad, just a corner of the base. This is what happens when you have to move things around thirty times because they are on site earlier than they should be. Put it in last night and the crack is hardly visible, so now we just have to wait 4-6 weeks for the replacement top to come and we're in business...

Also just about cut my pinky off slicing a bagel.

Hope they eat slowly

2008-06-08T00:15:00.002-04:00

Having some trouble finding a good place for my bird feeder. So many oaks with no horizontal branches. This pine's first branches are about eye-level with the deck, so that's good. But don't want to have to drag out a 24' ladder every time I need to refill it...

Anybody out there run a B & B?

2008-06-07T20:51:00.003-04:00

We're trying to find an affordable merchant payment system that will allow us to authorize security deposits (and process charges against those authorizations in the unfortunate event that becomes necessary). I can't figure out a way to use PayPal to effect that sort of setup. Any advice?

Casualties

2008-06-07T20:25:00.002-04:00

Last week I dropped (and shattered) the tank cover for our Kohler toilet bowl as I was getting prepared to install it in the downstairs bathroom. Disappointing.

Who takes care of this when I'm not here?

2008-06-05T23:38:00.003-04:00

So the crazy weather in DC yesterday was crazy weather in WV first. Five minutes of watching BIG oak trees bend with the wind, then lots of rain. Repeat. Didn't have power for most of the day; we barbecued homemade pizza on the grill. Which was pretty great.

In a break between squalls, I went on a run to the hardware store to grab some things and saw this in the woods:

And this in front of me on the driveway:

And hour later (and after getting some help from the boys), we were back in business:

Can't very well ask a tenant to do this, though, can I?

Whatever the kids are listening to these days

2008-06-05T07:58:00.004-04:00

It'll sound (and look) pretty good in here. Hard to believe that these are the first (and only) nice pieces of audio equipment I've ever owned - the Sony receiver and cd player (anybody use those anymore?) date back to sophomore year of college - that's 1993 - and the Bose cube speaker system goes back to 1997 when my brother was a salesman there and hooked me up. The iPod docking station, I figure, is a necessary nod to a more modern moment...

Took this pic before I painted over the drywall repair spots:

These, however, are decidedly NOT fancy. $29 at Circuit City, but they sound fine outside.

In a world where I have infinite funds...

2008-06-03T07:58:00.004-04:00

...and am not horribly in debt, here's what would be going up on the walls in this house. These:

And these:

One Step at a Time

2008-06-03T07:08:00.004-04:00

This actually wasn't so hard. Used construction adhesive and my finish nailer (which is a little tricky, you have to get the angle and location just right to replicate the effect you get from a floor gun). One of the things that really hit home doing this whole house project has been how much each phase of construction depends on how well the last thing was done. Imperfect joists mean imperfect boards on the deck and lumpy drywall on the ceiling; poorly hung drywall means sloppy seams when you mud and tape; stringers on the stairs that don't perfectly match mean risers that have gaps where they meet the treads. But you make do.

The risers here are actually just two 4" boards of bamboo, with the top board ripped to size. The treads came from the manufacturer in 6' lengths that I cut to size. I was able to get them all to sit cleanly enough that we won't need to trim out the stairs. (John at Res4 was hoping I could do the landing that way too, but I'm not that good...) Caulking should hide all the gaps. (I've got a LOT of caulking to do; haven't done any of the cleanup on the trim yet, and lots of places outside could stand to be caulked as well.)

How much is 15 cubic yards?

2008-06-01T21:14:00.001-04:00

A LOT. I had the guy drop some of the mulch above the house and some below the carport. Spent probably three hours moving the first pile one wheelbarrow full at a time:

Here's the second pile, untouched. Gonna work on that this week.

Oh, and it came with A LOT of flies.

All Niters

2008-06-01T21:06:00.002-04:00

So the week before Memorial Day was kinda crazy. As one of my loyal commenters pointed out, sometimes it just takes a deadline to get things done. I administered my exam on Tuesday, slogged through a marathon grading session Tuesday night, got out to the house Wednesday evening in time to meet the mulch delivery, spent way too many hours Wednesday night laying out paper and tape for the final coat of painting, painted Thursday morning, spread mulch while Sarah's mom put some serious elbow grease into cleaning the floors, graded the last of my papers, installed the last two exterior lights, installed the outdoor speakers, moved all the remaining construction materials from under the deck to behind the far side of the house, finished putting electrical outlets/switches in the basement, tripped the breaker for the three way switches that I can't get to work about ten times, finished trimming the basement floor,

*at this point it is pushing two a.m.*

started laying the bamboo treads/risers/landing, finished laying the bamboo treads/risers/landing, trimmed the landing,

*at this point the sun is coming up*

moved all my tools/supplies to the boys room (which is my new giant closet), installed the brushed aluminum cans in the recessed lights, set up the dvd player, and cleaned. Oh, and I had a ridiculous running nose that is better left undiscussed. Drove home to meet Sarah and the boys on the way to the airport to catch a flight to FL for a long weekend that my mom treated us to. Whew. (Then, after arriving home Wednesday night and spending six hours in my bed, I drove to Pittsburgh to help Tom Oates drywall his handyman special, and finally got home for good yesterday afternoon.) I don't even want to think about Sarah's hour-by-hour diary at home with three sick boys.

There's still plenty to do (biggest items are finishing the bathroom, installing a closet system, and some semblance of landscaping). But all our renters so far are singles or couples, so I've got some breathing room. We'll head out for a few days this week and the following week, and then I've got to get a real job for the summer...

Anyway, the short version of this post is we went from this on Thursday morning:

to this by Thursday night:

Evolution of a Brand

2008-05-31T22:12:00.002-04:00

We've had a bit of a break from the house for the last week (after an all nighter and a week away from home). The most exciting thing we're doing right now is working on our website. The designer is Gabe, a friend of some friends, who is working for a generously modest price and in exchange for some free time in the house. The friends are helping with the architecture out of the goodness of their hearts. And its coming along great. We're working on a "logo" right now. Gabe asked for some parameters and he came up with two options on his first crack:

We gave him some feedback; we wanted the font a bit heavier and we wanted to see some options that incorporated a graphic element. He came up with these:

And then we asked him to mimic the lines of the house a little more closely, and here's where we are right now:

I think these are all pretty great. Sarah likes the second and third the best; I like them all, I think. Opinions?

Thanks to Our Test Guests

2008-05-28T22:58:00.004-04:00

I'll have more to say about this after I get debriefed, but our first visitors seem to have had a wonderful time. Here are a couple more pics of what they arrived to find. The stairs turned out well:

As did the tv room downstairs (though I didn't have time to fish the dvd hdmi cable through the wall):

Lots of trim work and other finishing items to take care of, and I still need to finish the bathroom and hookup the washer and dryer. Hopefully the next couple of weeks will find us really finishing the last of these things...

Five Thousand Words

2008-05-22T20:13:00.003-04:00

An absurd number of things have gotten done over the last 24 hours, which I will elaborate on later. For now:

And a HUGE thank you to Sarah's mom Beth for all her help.

Free HBO

2008-05-21T01:22:00.001-04:00

[***I'm going to stick this post at the top of the blog for awhile - updates will appear below.***]

Just arrived at the house, where it's 45 degrees outside, and I can hear the roar of the creek at the bottom of the hill from the beginning of DC's monsoon season - something like 12 inches of rain already this May. I'll be here til Saturday. Hope to really bang the last few things out, so we'll see how much progress I can make in the next few days. I'll give "live blogging" a chance again...

And I'm starting to get a fair number of requests for reservations. Mostly weekends so far, and I'm slotting people into the calendar. We're going to have our real website up in the next few weeks (which Res4 is going to circulate to the 4000 people on their mailing list!), at which point I *hope* that we're going to get a mad crush of inquiries/requests, leaving all you loyal blog readers out in the cold. So if you're interested and have a date in mind, drop me a line: lostrivermodern AT gmail DOT com.

Baby...won't...sleep

2008-05-20T05:21:00.003-04:00

Dad...

wants...

baby...

to...

sleep...

Baseline, Revisited

2008-05-17T23:22:00.004-04:00

You may remember our tour of the house from Tuesday? Well here's where we ended up when I left today:

I still haven't started painting yet. Man. Taping and papering an entire house really is not fun. Hopefully with the paint gun I will be rewarded with a quick and painless painting experience. I understand that professional painters use a "shield" to screen off, rather than tape, no-paint areas. Man that must be nice...

Plan is to be back out at the house first thing Monday morning to paint. Then a final round of cleaning, some miscellaneous to-do-list stuff, and we're in business. Landscaping is going to be a continuing work-in-progress for the foreseeable future. (I remember when we first talked with Joe and Rob and John at the Res4 office in NYC, I was pretty focused on not disturbing the site too much, and in my construction naivete revealed some silly expectation about just sort of dropping the house of in the woods and being ready to rent it. I was imagining in my head a scenario where only the 65'x16' footprint of the house was excavated, and everything outside that footprint remained in its natural pristine state. They gently informed me that the process is more complicated than that, and as an aside talked about "a year or so" before the site no longer bears obvious markers of what took place. Short of bringing in a landscape architect or a truck of sod, there's no getting around the fact that backfilled dirt looks like backfilled dirt for quite awhile. We're going to start with mulch and go from there...)

80% Preparation...

2008-05-16T22:32:00.003-04:00

...20% execution. I read that somewhere about good construction practice. Well, I'm at the end of an entire day of prep for painting, and no painting yet...argh. There's a lot to clean up before I get started, and I haven't even laid down the paper and tape yet! But I finished the last round of mudding in the bathroom/boys' room, finished trimming everything except the tv room, moved the cable box to a new spot and fished the appropriate cables (always a treat when that goes off without a hitch), and rearranged all my materials so the rooms to be painted are ready to go. Finishing dinner now, then time to get the paper on the floor.

For those of you who are intending to hang your plasma tvs on the wall, remember that often times your cable isn't going into the back of your tv. I had the guys who roughed in the electric run the cable to where I'm going to hang the tv, but it has to go to the satellite receiver first. Duh. And then an HDMI cable from the receiver to the tv. So I had to both those through in their proper places:

And a pretty clean room, I gotta say. One of the WONDERFUL things about getting close to done is that instead of having to move stuff around all the time (like doors and trim and cedar and drywall - a DIY reality if you are working as slowly as I am and have lots of mat'l just sitting around), I am actually putting it where it's supposed to go! There's less and less stuff around here by the hour!

Not really a surprise

2008-05-16T10:25:00.005-04:00

More rain. Mosquitoes are going to be fierce this summer and DC is not going to be fun (though not out here - we have lots of flies, some gnats, the occasional wasps and bees - and the boys found three turtles this weekend! - but no mosquitoes here at our cabin; maybe because the grade is too steep for much standing water?).

I added the finish caps to the cable system yesterday:

I hope to get all the prep for painting done today, and paint today and tomorrow. I've finished most of the door trim, all the pocket door hardware, one round of mudding sanding to go. I have to move the cable outlet to accommodate the satellite receiver. Maybe mount the tv before the bball games come on tonight...

Work Hard, Play Hard

2008-05-16T10:20:00.002-04:00

My helpers have gone, and we didn't really get much in the way of cleaning done, but everyone was productive in their own way...

Helpers

2008-05-15T09:34:00.002-04:00

They came late last night to help with cleaning, so I figured the least I could do was make a decent breakfast.

I ate dinner at 10:30 last night

2008-05-15T09:28:00.003-04:00

Grouted the tub in the basement last night; pretty tedious job. And you can't really stop once you start, so I had to finish before I could eat...

I had 3x6 subway tile from two different companies (two boxes left over from Simplex that came with the house, and then two boxes that I bought at HD). They are ever so slightly different in color and size. Doesn't appear different in person, but it actually comes through a bit in this pic (the top two rows below the window).

Lunch Break

2008-05-14T13:58:00.002-04:00

Roasted chicken, hummus, tomato and swiss on a toasted everything bagel...

Started the decorative stone wall at the edge of the driveway - hopefully we can keep people from driving their cars into it.

Baseline

2008-05-14T11:01:00.005-04:00

Here's where we stand right now, in all its messy detail, and as if we're walking from the upstairs bedroom to the downstairs bedroom (one below the other):

Through the kitchen, dining room, living room:

Down the stairs:

To the tv room (and there's the tv!):

Past the boys' bedroom:

Past the bathroom:

And finally the big bedroom downstairs (the most finished of all the rooms, so naturally serving as a closet of sorts at the moment):

So that's what we're working with. Actually not too much left to do: finish mudding and taping the boys' room and the bathroom, finish coat of paint, toilet/cabinet/sink in bath, treads/risers/landing on stairs. Let's hope the "after" pics show some progress.

Hitting the Road

2008-05-09T08:30:00.002-04:00

Rocio Romero's LVL in Maine is going to have an open house as part of a series of open houses at four LVL's across the country. If you're near one and haven't ever been, definitely go check 'em out.

I was thinking I coulda just used Hardiboard, but...

2008-05-08T21:59:00.005-04:00

...this stuff looks great! It's Cembonit, a cement board product like Minerit. Never needs to be painted. Heavy, but not too bad too install. (The manufacturer has an entire book worth of installation instructions/warnings/qualifications of the warranty, apparently owing to excessive heat retention issues. You are supposed to use a rainscreen application. We've only got a few pieces, and only one in the sun, so no rainscreen for us - don't tell anyone...) When we were designing the house, we talked about Cembonit in all the spaces between windows and sliders. But the tolerances were awfully tight in those spots (usually about six inch gaps). And on-site cutting is really messy and difficult, meaning we were looking at pre-ordering all the twenty or so pieces. And that seemed like a recipe for trouble. John at Res4 recommended using cedar panels in those spots, which turned out really well. (Harrison Hays was my contact at CBF.)

(***UPDATE: I see at CBF's site that they are no longer selling Cembonit and Minerit owing to supplier issues. We had about a twelve week lead req't for our order, and Harrison had told us that there were HUGE demand issues from European builders that was making it really hard to get product into the US. Guess it got to be too much of an issue...)

Install was pretty easy, though the pieces are heavy. They came crated:

Here's the first piece, with rubber furring strips and stainless steel fasteners from the manufacturer):

Also lots of rules about where and how frequently to install the fasteners; this pic is before I got all the fasteners on:

Second location, under the deck; you can see the hot water heater's intake/vent pipes in the top corner. Unfortunate location; I wasn't there when the HVAC guy did it, and we hadn't talked about it. I used my grinder to cut a notch out of this piece:

Res4 recommended the pinwheel application for the seams:

***UPDATE: Here's the initial estimate from CBF (invoice was identical):

MATERIALS

QUANTITY DESCRIPTION UNIT PRICE TOTAL

3.00 5/16" x 4' x 8' Cembonit 144.25 432.75

1.00 5/16" x 4' x 10' Cembonit 180.40 180.40

1.00 Rolls of 1 1/4" EPDM Rubber Strips 40.00 40.00

1.00 Rolls of 3" EPDM Rubber Strips 58.50 58.50

150.00 Stainless Steel screws for wood furring 0.30 45.00

204.00 Cutting Charges 0.60 122.40

1.00 Crate Charges 75.00 75.00

1.00 Freight Charges 314.49 314.49

Materials total: 1,268.54
*Freight Quotes are good for 2 weeks only

Home Stretch

2008-05-08T10:08:00.005-04:00

Gotten a few things accomplished on my last two Wednesdays out at the house. Last week I got the rest of the tile up in the tub:

As you can see in this pic, the framers didn't center the window when they framed in these walls. Odd.

I did the first round of taping/mudding/sanding in the bathroom and in the boys' bedroom (which was basically a storage closet when I did the drywall finishing in the rest of the house; not ideal to have to do things twice). I had hoped to grout yesterday, but I got distracted by some outdoor projects that needed finishing.

"Due to gentrification, the Ear Inn now allows poodles."

2008-04-28T09:47:00.008-04:00

I mentioned how much I loved Philip Johnson's Glass House a while back; I didn't know that Johnson's last commission was a NYC development called the "Urban Glass House," a glass and concrete condo loosely reinterpreting the original (right next to the historic Ear Inn, and not too far from Bill and Amy's apt):

Turns out the developer who's responsible for the Urban Glass House is also building a hotel around the corner from our apt in the West Village (on a footprint that used to be the home of Mookie's vet). Though it's getting the usual NIBMY reaction from local critics (it'll be the only hotel in the immediate vicinity, and I suppose that risks undermining the small-town feel of the WV a bit), the proposed version looks pretty cool to me from a design perspective. Rather than a glass and steel design that has become pretty popular in lower Manhattan, it's going to mimic the brick facades that are more common in the neighborhood:

Seasonal View

2008-04-27T07:19:00.002-04:00

When we were looking at land to purchase, it always cracked me up to read about "seasonal views" or "winter views" - and of course that's what we've got right now. We probably won't do anything to change that anytime soon - maybe trim some branches to open it up a little, but nothing too drastic. The leaves come in at the perfect time to keep the late-day western sun's heat off of the house (we've got lots of exposures, obviously, and direct sun could really be an issue in the summer, I think). But we would like to keep some of this nice view of the ridge to the northwest and the notch to the west where the sun sets:

Four weeks to go

2008-04-26T09:03:00.004-04:00

We've got volunteers to be "test guests" Memorial Day weekend, so I've got one month to finish up...

I got a LOT of work done on Tuesday and Wednesday: plumbed the tub drain/overflow, hung the sheetrock/cement board in the bathroom, trimmed the bathroom window, tiled the shower until I ran out of mortar, hung and trimmed the basement doors. Forgot my camera, though, so the only evidence I have are these fuzzy phone pics:

I actually got most of the shower walls tiled - only about ten rows left to do, plus all the partial pieces to cut. Hanging tile is not rocket science - especially if you've hung your cement board well (with nice level seams), the only real tricks are laying it out so that you don't have to cut really tiny pieces of tile at the edges, and then getting the first row level. (I had an issue with the lip of the tub not meeting the cement board cleanly, so I've got a couple of pieces of tile that aren't perfectly vertical. C'est la vie. A whole post one of these days will be devoted to our DIY mantra of "it's good enough.")

Who's Overbudget?

2008-04-21T11:29:00.004-04:00

Yeah? Us too. A lot of debt on credit cards at the moment. We'll see what it all adds up to at the end of the day.

According to the Wall Street Journal, this is not an atypical experience...

So we've been thinking about having the boys paint some pics for us for WV

2008-04-21T10:34:00.002-04:00

Here's their first crack at it (it was a team effort by Michael and Joshua - they call it "Painting"):

Assisted by JacksonPollock.org (h/t AustinModHouse) - anyone with kids who want to use the computer all the time should check it out...

Finishing Touches

2008-04-19T15:10:00.001-04:00

We really are getting close to done with the upstairs. A couple of nits left here and there, but not much. I put in the pendant light (CB2, $49) over the dining room table when I was out dropping off some stuff. We were surprised when it came to find that it had a twenty foot long cord with a switch, and was intended to be plugged into an outlet. So I bought the mounting hardware myself (standard Home Depot cover plates were all pretty terrible), snipped the cord and hardwired it (Simplex had installed a junction box above the table). Looks pretty good:

Where's It All Go?

2008-04-18T14:27:00.001-04:00

When we were designing the house, John Kim at Res4 explained a rough engineering version of what effect water has as it moves downhill against a wall - I didn't really get it, but it sounded scary. And because our retaining wall opens on the uphill side of the house, it acts kind of like a giant catch basin for water coming down the hill underground. So it was really important to get the drainage right and send whatever water gets trapped by the wall through to the other side. The guys who poured the foundation took care of that with pretty extensive drainpipes around the footers that funnel the water through a pass-through in the wall (where it travels through an underground pipe to an outlet below the house down in the woods).

Because we also get a lot of water from the roof through the scupper above the retaining wall, the same process needs to happen - it all needs to get funneled through to the other side of the wall. So as they infilled the retaining wall they connected some black sewer pipe to the footer drains and ran it up the side of the wall to right below the scupper. I built the walkway with a box for a gravel catch basin:

When the stone for the driveway came a few weeks ago, I stole some of it and filled the bottom half of the box, cutting down the pipe:

Graded the stone toward the pipe and lined it with plastic and some chicken wire:

And filled it (almost) the rest of the way with stone:

Remains to be seen how it will handle a lot of falling water - how much splashing we'll get, how quickly it will drain through the gravel, etc. And I'll finish the open edges of the box with some leftover ipe.

Waiting for Spring

2008-04-17T08:26:00.002-04:00

Trees are popping here in DC, and even at the lower elevations in the Lost River valley, but not up on the top of our hill yet...

Happy Tax Day

2008-04-15T22:35:00.003-04:00

So it's been two weeks since I was last out at the house, so not much to blog. This is how I left things:

That's gonna be a cozy bathroom, by the way. (That's NYC realtor talk for tiny.)

In the meantime, I have done the following:

-bought a fancy plasma tv on craigslist (new Panasonic TH-42PC77U in an open box for $900 - won at a charity auction by some rich guy who already had two (!) plasmas in his house);
-arranged to have DirecTV installed;
-bought a reproduction Wassily chair for $20 (also craigslist);
-bought a nice aluminum and teak outdoor table (guess from where?);
-researched the staggering variety of mulch available for purchase just down the road from the house in WV;
-got a bill for (gulp) $4200 for the work the excavators did stoning the driveway and putting gravel around the house;
-did some homework re: website aesthetics/functionality at the behest of my IT consultants for our lostrivermodern.com homepage;
-presented a paper at a conference in NYC on early slave petitions;
-had dinner with Zach and Jen (Michael is looking forward to doing "karate" with Evan) and drinks with a bunch of old work buddies; and, finally,
-filed an extension on my taxes (merely to delay the misery of trying to figure out whether I am now, in fact, a "real estate professional" whose losses - and there are losses, believe me - can somehow mitigate the adverse consequences of borrowing from his 401k to fund this adventure).

Hopefully out to the house to deliver some of the aforementioned loot tomorrow, but have to come right back home for school. Next week I'll get a couple of days out there for some real work...

...oh, and when this thing starts making money hand over fist I'm gonna get a couple of these for the deck:

Penny Wise

2008-04-01T23:15:00.006-04:00

Dollar foolish. That's the saying, right? Well DIY can have that effect on a man. One of the VERY FIRST THINGS we should have done after the foundation was poured, or at least after the house was set, or at least after the siding was on, was get gravel down around the perimeter of the house. It helps drainage and it keeps rainfall from kicking dirt and mud up against the side of the house. (The ridiculous construction litigation in which I made my last contribution to the world as a lawyer had, as one of its subplots, the failure of anyone to install gutters/downspouts to protect the $20K custom made garage doors from splattering mud.) It also would have cleaned the site up quite a bit instead of being the mud pile it turns into every time it rains, with me dragging mud all over the inside of the house all the time.

But because I am a DIYer, and because all it takes is a strong back and a couple of days work to do this yourself, I made a conscious decision not to have any of the guys working on the house over the summer take care of this. And here we are, the beginning of spring, and I still haven't done it. So last week I finally bit the bullet and had the original excavator (who was coming back to put stone down on the driveway) take care of it. Of course, it was three fifty-year old guys using shovels, rakes and wheelbarrows. Which just KILLED me to see (I was out at the house working on the basement). This is one of the perverse consequences of DIY - you start to think, not that you can do things better than anybody else (I have no illusions about that), but that you SHOULD be doing anything that you CAN do. So the idea of paying someone else a not-immodest sum to do something that requires NO skill at all becomes galling. But at this stage of the game, something that takes three experienced laborers an entire day would probably take me months to get done, so there you go.

You can see some of the dried mud on the siding in these pics; it washes off, and while it won't actually cost me any more money than if I had just had them do it when I should have, I'm still kicking myself...

Now as I understand it, the gravel in this pic below is probably too close to the bottom edge of the siding - you want to keep any critters that can climb away from any possible points of entry. So I'll have to pull it back a little (the appropriate distance, I think, is 6", though we don't have that much to work with).

Our plan for the short term is to put mulch down on the bare ground around the house; that's another project that needs to get done before we're ready for renters.

The last ten percent

2008-03-31T19:04:00.003-04:00

They say it takes the longest...

I took care of a lot of the trim work in the basement this weekend. The sliders in the tv room, the window in the downstairs bedroom, most of the floor. I'm not really sure how to trim the pocket doors (they're a little tricky). Here's how the sliders went:

Simplex sent a lot of the trim along loose in the house, so I just had to rip it where necessary, cut it to size, nail it in place. Already primed, too.

One of the mistakes we made was not cutting the sill plate across the slider thresholds before we installed the doors. So we'll need to trim those with something different (that doesn't pick up footprints, dirt, etc.).

And the bedroom windows:

Kid-Friendly Modern Furniture

2008-03-26T21:27:00.002-04:00

Craigslist. $50 for the (Ikea) molded plywood coffee table. $1150 for the (barely ever sat on) reproduction Corbusier couch and two matching club chairs.

The Paint Crew Has Arrived

2008-03-22T23:20:00.002-04:00

The Wagner Paint Crew 770, that is. Not in a million years would it have occurred to me to buy a paint sprayer, but Sarah - with a not-atypical focus on "how can we get this done faster" - suggested it and I have to say boy was that a good idea. I put 5 gallons of primer on the walls in a little over an hour, including the entire ceiling. Try that with a roller. I was a little scared of it at first, but got the hang of it pretty quick. $200 at Lowe's. And even if we never use it again after this project it will have more than paid for itself.

There are some tricks to using it (I recommend starting off in a place no one will ever see) and it apparently needs to be cleaned pretty well to ensure that it'll keep working, but I can't recommend it more highly for what I gather is a pretty entry-level paint sprayer.

Self-Assessment

2008-03-22T22:36:00.002-04:00

Sarah and I were talking the other day about our DIY competence. We both feel like we're pretty capable. But in the couple of big projects we've done, the thing that has always felt like the biggest impediment was just having the right stuff. We've both spent countless hours wandering Home Depot, searching for someone - anyone - to answer a question about what kind of supplies we need to finish something. The more we do of this kind of stuff the more comfortable I get just wandering into the store and finding things on my own. But still - there are 8 MILLION different PVC connections that you have to wade through if plumbing is not your first language (and it's not mine). So going to Lowes and being handed every single thing I needed to resolve my small plumbing issues in less than two minutes by the first employee I met was really pretty wonderful.

Proof that it works:

I'll say a couple of things about our faucet from Ikea. First, for $99 it compares awfully well to the various Hansgrohe Axor models we looked at that you can't get for much less than $400. But as we all know the installation "instructions" are in fact only pictures of a smiling stick figure and no words indicating which supply is hot/cold, which of those lines is intended to be removed during installation and which will leak afterward if you pick the wrong one. So a little bit of plumbers tape seems to have resolved that - we'll see.

For Kate, A To-Do List

2008-03-21T16:17:00.005-04:00

Here's what we've accomplished so far this week:

-last round of mudding in the basement;
-last round of sanding in the basement;
-repaired all the upstairs drywall cracks from the delivery and set;
-trimmed the excess deck cable and mounted the finish hardware;
-installed the kitchen faucet, sink trap and garbage disposal;
-installed dishwasher;
-installed the under-cabinet lighting;
-installed all the cabinet hardware;
-installed a new outlet behind the stove (house came with a 220 outlet for an electric range, but we changed to gas and needed a 120); and
-started painting.

Here's a rough list of what's left:

-I haven't yet done a thing in the basement bathroom, and the small bedroom in the basement is basically a storage closet right now, so its drywall hasn't been mudded or taped;
-all the basement doors need to be hung;
-w/d need to be installed;
-we need to figure out what we're doing about a closet system in the basement;
-bamboo treads and risers and the bamboo on the landing;
-basement trim;
-finish matl's for the basement recessed lights and we still need to find a pendant light for above the dining table;
-cement board and remaining couple of pieces of cedar trim;
-outdoor speakers;
-basement media (tv, satellite, audio system);
-finish coat of paint; and
-I'm sure lots of little things that we'll figure out as we go.

Mood Lighting

2008-03-19T23:45:00.002-04:00

I knocked out the under- (and over-) cabinet lighting this afternoon:

That's 2x2 aluminum angle from Home Depot. (John Kim at Res4, when I asked him exactly what they were envisioning for the flashing to cover the light fixtures, directed me to the exact aisle in Home Depot where these could be found. THAT is the kind of expertise you're looking for from your architect.) The fixtures should probably be located a little further toward the front of the cabinet, but I didn't have much wire to work with. They look great (though they're fluorescents and have a bit of a hum).

And as an aside, turns out I had no idea how to spell fluorescent. U then O. Who knew.

Family Affair

2008-03-19T23:42:00.003-04:00

I've had some welcome company the last couple of days:

And yes, the drywall is (finally) finished and we are painting.

Design Contest, Redux

2008-03-19T14:25:00.003-04:00

Here's another nit that Res4 is helping me with. Any suggestions appreciated.

The cleanest way to install my stair treads is flush with the drywall. But what to do about carrying the trim from upstairs? I also will have bamboo t/g flooring on the landing, which probably will require trim. So do I carry the trim from upstairs all the way down? And if so, what to do about the lower half of the stairs, where - as you can see from the last pic - there isn't enough clearance for the baseboard trim that's upstairs? (The treads that are on the stairs now are temporary and will come off before real treads/trim go on.)

Locals v. Interlopers

2008-03-19T08:05:00.002-04:00

We've had some cloudiness and occasional (what I thought was) sediment in our water. The well guys came out yesterday to check it out, run tests, etc. They found that what I thought was sediment was actually iron flakes (some manganese too - 2.0 parts of iron and .5 parts manganese). We talked about filtering options. And when I asked them about whether these levels were too high to just live with, one of the guys paused thoughtfully and said, "Probably for you."

Lloyd

2008-03-18T19:45:00.003-04:00

Sarah's grandmother's cousin - Phillip Lloyd Powell - died last week. He was a self-taught woodworker who was encouraged by George Nakashima to design his own furniture. Sarah's mom and uncle visited him at his studio a few months ago and he was still working away...

Live Blogging

2008-03-18T12:07:00.004-04:00

The faucet hole in the kitchen island wasn't drilled before the house left the Simplex factory - one of the very few items that just got missed. But it presented a pretty big headache, because the stone is Zodiaq, a material none of the folks out here in WV deal with. So the only folks I could get to even consider coming out to deal with it were DC stone companies, but once they figured out it was a two hour drive to drill one hole they didn't want anything to do with me. So I've been washing dishes in the bathroom sink and trying to figure out what to do. Eventually I had Simplex put me in touch with their stone people - DeSavino & Sons - who very generously put a used diamond-tipped hole saw in the mail. So I spent $60 on a grinder (which I also used to cut off the excess cable on the deck) and knocked out the hole myself (it was pre-drilled about 2/3 of the way):

That was my morning's work. Of course, the ball valves the plumbers had put it are a different size than the faucet's supply hoses, so still no water in the kitchen...

Design Contest

2008-03-18T01:21:00.004-04:00

Our retaining wall was originally designed to be the same height as the deck railing. But at that height the wall would have completely obscured any view of the house as you come up the driveway. So I had the concrete guys keep it at the same height as the rest of the foundation. Which means now we have a bit of an awkward transition from the deck to the retaining wall. These are some pics for Res4 so they can brainstorm some ideas for how to finish this area. Anybody else have any suggestions?

*UPDATE - Thanks for the ideas - keep 'em coming. I suppose I should clarify a bit. We'd like to extend some kind of deck railing around the retaining wall (and deal with the hideous faux-brick, so all landscaping ideas are welcome). The issue with a railing is that the deck is about a foot higher than the wall. So I could build a cedar box on top of the wall to extend the fascia of the deck and just continue the cedar/cable railing, but not sure how that would look. Or we could incorporate a different kind of railing that would separate the two spaces (which I think is Res4's preference) but still give us the safety we need...