Skim coated and not yet primed

The Project’s interior priming is complete. We selected AFM’s Safe Coat HPV primer for new wallboard. We’re now ready for Farrow and Ball Estate Emulsion…it’s time to think about color.

Gimme Shelter on the home stretch

With Hurricane Earl bearing down on the East Coast, it is time to tighten up some loose ends and tie down anything that could become a flying projectile. We are a bit shy on roofing shingles and still waiting for a door that will enable us to finish up the shingling, but for the most part we are ‘dried in’.

I think the palette is showing itself well now and the exterior is soon complete.

Most of the siding is cedar shingle with an oil dip with the lightest gray pigment.

The aluminum roof shingles in a diamond, or fish scale, pattern have been.

I thought to give a quick update on garden progress, as I have spent my weekends trying to stay ahead of weeding, planting, harvesting and eating . . . ., of course after doing site review

It has been a BIG year so far, with volunteers of lettuce (heads of Black Seeded Simpson the size of my head!), tomatillo plants that are knee-high, and prolific fruit and flowers. I have also had the best luck ever with Pac Choi, Mixed Braising Greens, and a healthy crop of Sugar Snap Peas.

The Great Blueberry haul begins

Yellow Raspberry crop looks to be prolific

Sweet Peas have decided to keep on coming back along the Garden Fence

The transition from Foxglove to Black-eyed Susans is complete

The kitchen has evolved, as all kitchens do, from broad functional, lifestyle, and aesthetic concepts, into, well, reality. It’s time to order the kitchen, any minute now! I may have said this before, but I’ll say it again. This kitchen is probably the most innovative kitchen I have had the pleasure to be associated with.

Leslie and I had many animated conversations. “Animated” is an important description, as, when it translates into authentic conversation, it means enthusiasm and passion, at the very least. We did not always agree and were animated about that as well, which was especially productive!

I wish I could share details of the kitchen furniture, but I do want it to be a surprise! I will say this. The design works precisely for Leslie’s lifestyle and that is all that matters. Whether one feels positive, negative, or indifferent about the design, doesn’t matter…Leslie is 100% on board with it, so it is already a success.

Another hint is that the kitchen furniture is 100% eco friendly, made of walnut and sourced in a nearby region to the artisan’s workshop.

Here’s another hint…one word: induction, and another surprise cooking element. In fact, the cooking surfaces are, well, awesome. It’s not about style, it’s about performance in this situation.

I’m contemplating this post with a 1/2 glass of wine after dinner. I’m signing off before I say too much…. I’m being coy and adding a fuzzy image!

~The following is an excerpt from the Swiss essayist Alain de Botton’s ‘The Architecture of Happiness,’ a terrific read on how we interpret buildings and how they speak to us..

I recently spent a weekend out on Shelter Island to add bleaching oil to the cedar planks on site, which will eventually be used for as soffit and ceiling material. Enlisting the assistance of a terrific painter (and bassist of These are Powers) by the name of Pat Noecker, we set out on a chilly Saturday morning from Brooklyn. Upon arrival, we took a look at the two stacks that had been delivered and covered and quickly realized that we had a lot of board to stain. After laying out scrap material to keep the boards above the ground, we began to apply stain. With 2300 or so lineal feet of board to stain, we discovered that the most efficient way to work was by applying the Cabot Bleaching Oil with a roller on an extension pole (also saves strain on the back) and then brushing out the material so that it penetrates and does not leave the ‘orange-peel’ look that a roller pad creates.

This image represents about 2/3 of the boards stained

Leslie wisely requested applying the product to both sides, as it adds significantly to the lifespan of the soffit and requires just a little more work at the outset. So on Sunday we flipped each board and repeated the process, this time being sure to apply product to both the tongue and groove of each board. We also had to devise a means to stack the boards so that they were 1. protected from imminent rain, 2. easily accessible for the carpenters, 3. separated while stacked so that the boards, slightly tacky due to the longish drying time of bleaching oil, did not stick to one another. Chuck popped in at that time and helped us to find an empty guest room to store the boards, as well as cutting thin ’stickers’ to separate the boards. Leslie and I also took time to clear space in the garage for the longest boards, which did not fit into the guest room.

The final organized stack of Cedar planks in a guest room

We ended up putting in a 10 hour day on Sunday and enjoyed a nice break by the ocean before heading back to Brooklyn.

A bit of relaxation

Yellow Jonquils are first up

With the flowers starting to pop, the gardening team is gearing up for early planting. The Fedco seed order arrived a couple of weeks back, and this past weekend I managed to break away from construction related meetings to start turning soil and preparing to put seeds in the ground. With Easter weekend upcoming, we will plant peas, lettuce, spinach, radishes and the really early stuff. I will also start the peppers, tomatoes and eggplants in a sunny window in the City for planting later.

On Saturday John Moriarty, my electrician and long time solar installer and Joe the Plumber were on site to lay piping and conduit under the slab. On Sunday Jimmy Lenzer, who has worked with me for years on landscape work that required more than a few hand tools, came by and dropped off his tractor to start the grading around the house. Melanie and a few pals came by later, and she just could not resist climbing up and dreaming of driving. Good thing Jimmy didn’t leave the keys!

John Moriarty, Solar technician & electrician// Jimmy Lenzer, Equipment manuever extraordinaire// Melanie wishes she could drive this thing...

With all of the interest in the rooflines, on both the interior and exterior, I thought I’d contribute a little narrative to illustrate the design process, and give everyone a look at the evolution of the form and materiality with some of our original design renderings. From the outset, Leslie wanted to collect rainwater and use it to irrigate her extensive garden, but the idea was not central to the form of the house the way it is now. When we first began talking, she had a design she had developed with another architect that put the new 2nd floor bedroom on the eastern end of the house. My feeling was that the view was better on the western corner. With the new plan arrangement, I was looking for a way to make the upper floor cleanly integrate into the form of the other roofs and not appear “tacked on”. The “big wedge” (as Leslie later deemed it) accomplished what I wanted in terms of form and also would drain most of the roof run-off to a central point.

For a while, Leslie had some misgivings about the shape being too strong, but I think she eventually embraced it because of how it poetically expressed her program requirement of collecting rainwater. At that time, there was not the idea to add onto the back of the house, but when Leslie suggested that we do, it became clear that it helped in many ways: it mitigated the scale of the “wedge” and set up for the inclusion of a greenroof and the courtyard space. A gutter running along the face of the old garage presented an esthetic challenge to the courtyard, and the addition of the flat greenroof at the intersection of the “big wedge” and the existing roof complicated the drainage issues further. . .gutters and roof valleys  are tricky things to construct well (as Nick has pointed out in another section of the blog).

Struggling with the nightmare of waterproofing and flashing the many intersecting planes and levels, but excited about the potential of the big idea, the solution to clean it all up and integrate the gutter as an extension of the greenroof became clear to us as the best alternative. It also pulled the many design intentions together into a cohesive and clear whole.

Its easy to look at a finished building and think that it sprang fully-formed from the designer’s mind – but that is rarely true (the myths about Fallingwater aside). In my experience, the best designs have always come out of a dialogue involving the individual personality, ideas, and dreams of the client, the functional requirements, the character of the landscape, and a designer’s intuitive sense of material and form. In this case especially, it was the client’s experience and knowledge of building in general, and green building in particular, and her personal way of living connected to the natural ecology of the site and the broader landscape that inspired me and helped shape the project’s unique design. Also, very much to her credit, Leslie’s willingness to engage in the dialogue actively and with an open mind and let the design evolve to its own unique resolution was instrumental in allowing us to achieve something great. I think that one of the dangers to good design is being constrained by conventions and preconceptions. By embracing the idea of collaboration on all levels (and ongoing) I think we escaped that pitfall and were able to develop a design that was more than what anyone might have initially imagined. This house has a lot to teach about sustainability and design, but I hope that the lesson of collaboration is one that other designers and clients will take away from it as much as any.

Picozzi's Gas Station on Shelter island

I immediately thought of the Victorian cottage style that is prevalent on Shelter Island, as well as the Shingle Style that is throughout New England seaside towns when considering the proposed design for Gimme Shelter. But the strongest and immediate reference for me was the red diamond shaped shingled roof of Picozzi’s Gas Station in Dering Harbor on the Island.

The recently built North Ferry building

Saw this as a common roofing pattern in Denmark

Looking at the ceiling/underside of roof to decide best planes to finish

There has been an ongoing question as to whether we would Sheetrock the underside of the roof planes – a fairly complicated shape for a ceiling – or drop the ceiling into one plane of a consistent cathedral ceiling. This is a bit hard to describe, and has been even harder to decide. Steve Hoffman, the architect who conceived of the roof shape, has felt from the beginning that the exterior roof shape should transmit itself onto the ceiling. (He has promised to weigh in here, so I don’t want to tell you too much about his perspective on the subject.)

I was concerned that it might be too busy. The house has this fabulous view of the water, and the last thing I wanted was to enter the space and have your eye drawn up, rather than out at the view. And I was also concerned about how the height and business of the ceiling might dwarf the kitchen – which aims to be a central crafted element in the main living space.

I invited Susan Serra, the kitchen designer, to come out and take a look and help decide on the best course for the ceiling geometry. She and Steve, her husband, ventured out in that terrible storm last weekend to come take a look and have a discussion about it.

Sebastian Bliss, the carpenter on the job, stopped by and joined in. I think we have all decided what we think is best – somewhat slowly and with a lot of consideration, but unanimously. We decided that rather than just plow ahead, and give you our solution, we would post a couple of pictures and ask our team, and all of you, to jump in and talk about it a bit. Let’s see where this goes. . . .

Gutter Action on youtube
There is a lot of water that comes down the roofs and then gets carried out across the face of the garage to (eventually) a gutter.

Nick and Rachel provided us with a great place to meet in the City

We captured it all on film, thanks to Nicole. It was also the first time the communications team had met most of the design and construction team. Concept overall is to build team into community. I saw some business cards moving:)