Tribute to Hannibal?

On an entirely unrelated note, we had occasion to drive through "The Village" yesterday and stumbled upon this puzzling tableau: a Swiss chalet in the grotesque style, complete with a concrete elephant out front.

So...Randy's comment was, "What is this? A tribute to Hannibal crossing the Alps?"
What else could it mean?

Back in the Saddle

So, after a longish spell away from the blog about restoring the house (mostly due to WORKING on the house)...I am returning to chronicle our progress and experiences. I wish to acknowledge my thanks to my friends Lea Morgan, Jana Lamb, and John Joyce for their kind words and encouragement.


WE HAVE SHEETROCK!!! This is the penultimate piece of news...the last and best news is that we have Jason Wortham, lately of Medicine Park (formerly of Independent Vision and OKC) on the spot! More on that in a bit. Here are some photos post-sheetrock:

Part of the process of restoration is being a bit of an archaeologist. When we were looking closely at the windows at one point, about to remove several, Randy noticed that the sills had rather awkwardly been added on at a later date...probably around the same time that the 50's kitchen cabinets were installed, and the lavender bath tile replaced with plastic (!!!). We managed to find ONE original casement window that hadn't been tampered with. Lo and  behold...we discovered that originally the deep-set windows had a beautifully plastered bullnose edge all the way around. This original architectural detail highlights the lovely casements.

We were extremely fortunate to find Justin Hart to do the finishing tape-and-bed. He is so talented - it was very difficult, because we left the plaster intact everywhere that we could, and it is VERY tricky to seamlessly connect the new and old. He also reworked the bullnose finishes, not just on the window edges, but wherever they were original - mostly on the angled ceilings, and on a clever little corner nook in the mudroom (see photos below). 

Speaking of casements...many of you heard about our HP saga with the windows. I say "saga", and not "ordeal", because it was actually quite an enjoyable process (though a bit lengthy) to figure out: 1) what was original 2) what was repairable and 3) what was legal and/or appropriate under the City of Oklahoma City's Historic Preservation Guidelines. The house had a few original casement windows remaining, but many (including the major center window on the front of the house, sandwiched between two original casements) had been replaced with crappy aluminum windows from the 50's (again, what a difficult decade!)

Our best determination, with the help of architectural historian Randy Floyd, was that everything was metal casement, but that three of the windows were different - and it was unclear exactly what they were. 

Ms. Floyd and I undertook a survey of the windows in Edgemere Park to see what exists in the neighborhood, so that we would have a historical perspective rooted in fact and not supposition. The findings were interesting and counter-intuitive. Historically, the mixing of wood double-hung windows and steel casement windows was common, even on the front facade. But it was really all over the board - all kinds of conditions exist, both original and retrofitted. Based on the documentary evidence in our report, the HP staff and commission ruled that we could use double-hung wood windows to replace the aluminum windows, EXCEPT for the front of the house. We felt that aesthetically and historically the front should remain steel casement, and of course, the HP staff concurred. 

This is where Jason enters the story. He and Randy studied the existing windows, and the conditions at the openings (many were framed in to accomodate the standardized aluminum windows). They concluded that new steel casements could indeed be fabricated on site, and Jason had four windows finished in four days (see below). 

The workmanship is impeccable - Jason is a truly gifted artisan. The finishing touch was having them powder-coated in RAL Noir Graphite by our friend Joe Slack. We are going to try to reuse the old glass from the discarded windows, as it has that gleamy wave to it - and new restoration glass is around $36/s.f. OUCH! I find over and over again that reusing, repurposing and recycling forces one to be more creative, more responsible, and as an unintended consequence, more frugal!

And speaking of repurposing...more exciting developments. We found a huge (4' x 2' x 18") old concrete laundry sink in the basement and there is (totally serendipitously) a perfect spot in the mudroom for it! I am envisioning it as a second prep sink, a dog-washing vessel, a potting sink, and a giant party ice bucket for cold beer. Jason, coming again to the rescue, is welding an industrial-strength frame base for it.

The most arduous repurposing so far, though, has been the kitchen floor. As some of you may remember, it was oddly enough a beadboard floor - not like today's beadboard, though (which is only 3/8" thick). It is 5/8" thick and has a different profile. It was used in the kitchen, the "breakfast nook", and in the odd little built-in office on the back of the house, so apparently it was a purposeful choice. We wanted to try to reuse it if at all possible, but it had a jillion cuts and had been covered along the way with nasty linoleum. First I tried stripping the mastic gunk. No luck. Then Randy sanded - that was better. But the final solution (that sounds ominous) was discovered completely by accident. Jason took the floor up to repair it and re-piece it. A sudden rainstorm blew up, and he noticed that the rainwater magically washed all the old gunk off - even out of the cracks! So he and our mutual friend Klint Schor built what they called a "water casket" and dunked all the boards in there. Then we laid them out to dry to my exacting standards of 7% (this is what furniture wood is kiln-dried to in percentage terms). We put fans (courtesty of Catheryn Koss) on them, then Jason ran them through a planer and relaid them horizontally, to harmonize with the floor of the adjoining dining room floor. Results below:

The grain is really wildly variable, as is the color...but somehow, it works. It reminds me of the really old factory floors in North Carolina. 

Next up: landscaping, geothermal and more! Stay tuned!

Permaculture and stacking functions

Since Randy (my husband) went off to Santa Fe a few years ago to learn about permaculture, I have been learning about some of the major permaculture principles. I must say, "permaculture" as a concept/activity is astonishingly difficult to define. It can often mean different things to different people, and can be very abstract. So reading about some of the core principles and their application is useful. One of my favorites is called "stacking functions":


"Stacking functions - In permaculture we speak about getting many yields (outputs) from one element (thing) in your system.

For example, a tree might be an element in your system. A tree can provide shade, shelter wildlife, produce mulch and building materials, be a wind break, fertilize the soil, prevent erosion, raise the water table, etc. A tree can do a lot of different work for us in our system, and that's what we mean by stacking functions." www.heathcote.org/PCIntro/4Principles.htm


We are trying diligently to put this principle to use in our renovation. For example, readers, you may remember the photos of the ill-placed trees coming down...dead and/or too close to the house. One of the first trees we will plant will be a distance away from the house, but not too far...about maybe 10' or so. It will be sited slightly to the southwest so that its leaves will shade the large three-part window on the facade of the house (which is SW-facing) during the summer, keeping the house cooler. In the winter, the tree drops its leaves, and VOILA! The sun is used for solar gain to warm us up! Now, this is an extremely simple concept, yet I defy you to wade into the giant suburban orchard of Bradford Pears and find even 1 in fifty that are placed with any mindfulness. BTW, BP's are invasive, and accurately described as "malodorous". Quick-dying little crazy falling-over lollipops. But I digress. 


http://www.invasive.org/species/subject.cfm?sub=10957


My point is that trees, or certain kinds of trees, can certainly fulfill stacking functions, some of which are described above. Let's now think about a third layer of the stack: food production! Say we decide to use a pecan tree (again, certainly the branching pattern and eventual height have to be right - not every species is perfect for the solar loss/gain). Now we are blocking summer sun, acquiring solar gain in the winter, and producing a crop! Pretty nifty, n-est ce pas?


I've started playing with applying this principle to life. For instance, I love to find carelessly relinquished oddlets of furniture. This gives me huge pleasure (the thrill of the hunt, the thrill of the great find), it saves tons of money, it gives my home a unique, non-store-bought look, and it saves that piece from a sad landfill death. 


These ideas seem very simple, don't they? But so often we all fall into a trap of doing something because either we've always done it that way, or because someone else has. This is REALLY on my mind every time I deal with a subcontractor. It once was hilarious for me to hear them all say, one after the other "You can't do that" or "I can't do that" or, (this one really gets my goat) "You don't want to do that". I always expect them to say "little lady", or "just don't worry your pretty little head about that". There's that real undertone of condescension and "knowing better". Ok, to be fair, sometimes they DO know...well, if not better, maybe more. BUT! Almost always, whatever CAN be done. It's just that resistance, almost robotic, to thinking in a different way. When I told someone who came by the house the other day about some of the plans for the land, I mentioned that there wouldn't be much, if any lawn. She looked astonished and said "What do you mean?". I said "I mean that there won't be much, if any lawn!". She knitted her brow vexedly and asked what we would do, then. And so it went, rather rockily, and so it goes sometimes with changing things up and rethinking our ways in the world.

Pattern Language vs. the Not So Big House series...the Smackdown

Some of you, particularly my architect and design friends, may have heard me wax rhapsodic about a book entitled Pattern Language. This seminal work was published in 1977, and was Volume Two of a three-volume series: The Timeless Way of Building, A Pattern Language, and The Oregon Experiment. To quote the authors, the books "describe an entirely new attitude to architecture and planning...intended to provide a complete working alternative to our present ideas about architecture, building and planning- an alternative which will, we hope, gradually replace current ideas and practices." 

The way I'd describe it is this: it's a book that tells you why some buildings and places feel so right, and others feel SO horribly wrong. Importantly, it explicates and quantifies, citing numerous academic studies, statistics,  and many actual examples. Reading this book was a very personal experience to me, as I would recall some of my real-life experiences and relive the reactions I'd had, good and bad, to places and spaces. Some patterns are obvious, but many are not, and many are interestingly counterintuitive. One of the most thought-provoking statements that they make - one of the "patterns", or basic tenets - is that buildings should not be more than four stories high. That's one example, but the ones that have had the most impact on me are more personal and speak mainly to neighborhoods and homes. 

I haven't been immersed in a renovation in some time, so one of the first things I wanted to do  was to find this book again so that I could reread the applicable "patterns". Note to the attention-challenged: the book is 1171 pages (as befits a tome whose stated purpose is to topple modern architectural theory with one fell blow).  

In addition, I have been browsing through bookstores for some inspiring books that deal with renovation and were very practical and detail-oriented, as opposed to merely beautiful styled photos (those are necessary too sometimes). I kept running across these books called the Not So Big series...the Not So Big House, the Not So Big Life, and others I'd enumerate except that I'm tired of typing Not So Big over and over again. 

So...I purchased this book called Not So Big Remodeling and a few thoughts immediately leapt to mind. First of all, it struck me that it was Pattern Language redux, or ripped off. I carefully read through the introduction and looked in the index, and PL wasn't mentioned anywhere. So I Googled "Sarah Susanka" (the author) and "pattern language". The link below came up:

http://www.powells.com/authors/susanka.html

It's an interview on the Powell's bookstore website (yo, Portland!) and in it she praises Pattern Language, speaks of its influence on her...yet somehow sees NO IRONY in totally taking those ideas, in some cases verbatim, and relaying them as hers! The biggest difference is that Pattern Language doesn't have anything but quaintly rendered sketches and drawings in it, in black and white. It's dauntingly thick. It's scholarly and well-researched. It's not been marketed (when did that become a verb?) to death, and hasn't tapped into a snide, "I'm smaller and therefore cooler and greener and smarter than you" mentality that brings to mind the Star-Bellied Sneetches. Its authors' photos do not appear.

Meanwhile, Susanka's book is large, colorful, glossy, and full of real-life examples. Her airbrushed photo is on the jacket. She has an entire industry of websites around this Not So Big idea. I don't want to say that she's dumbed it down, but it's a similar phenomenon. Her principles and examples somehow don't have the sweeping breadth and societal implications that are present in PL. She doesn't back up what she says, she just states it as though it were gospel, which invalidates the whole point she's making about architects being so didactic and inflexible and egotistical, doesn't it? 

Here's a great example of her "borrowing: Pattern Language, pg. 927, pattern # 203 "Child Caves". Susanka, pg. 182, "Child Caves". 

Here's another: PL, pg. 668, pattern # 141 "A Room of One's Own".  The NSB Remodel Book, pg. 232 "A Place of Your Own". 

So here's my question, or rather, questions...were the "patterns" or ideas that PL explicated already enumerated elsewhere, and PF merely reinterpreted for their place and time (Berkeley, CA in the sixties/seventies...of course)? Are these principles, or "patterns" so universal, so timeless that it is impossible to say who came up with them first? Actually, PL notes that many of the patterns evolved from very early periods of time, and are based on instinctual human behavior. BUT - it seems incontrovertibly true that the brilliant authors of PL spelled out the patterns in ways that had never been done before, and also made some radical, extremely provocative statements of their own that were indeed new and fresh and unstated hitherto. So maybe they distilled the essence of some already intuitive ideas, but then they went beyond that as well. 

It seems that Susanka simply took the patterns, literally copied them in some instances, made up some rather limp and diluted ones that are still uncomfortably close to those in PL...and of course, is making MILLIONS of dollars by bashing all those tasteless nitwits who live in suburbia and don't have the sense to hire her (she implies). Do I love suburbia and McMansions? Demonstrably NOT, but neither am I comfortable with the ethics of what I see as a dual insult: plagiarism and condescension. Yet we (yes, I'm part of it because I took the shiny bait and bought the book) are rewarding her for this! 

On a totally unrelated note (because let's face it - whether it's people or buildings or houses or stores, the shallowest of aesthetics matter)...I LOATHE her own NSB house.  She would have been better served by leaving it right out, instead of picturing it front and center and holding it up as a paragon of design. The house, in Raleigh, NC,  may have all kinds of intrinsic spatial righteousness going on, but there is just no excuse for a burgundy-painted bed cave trimmed in a cheapass-looking oak frame with contrived, clipped corners. ERGH. That photo alone turned me against her and her chirpy and disingenous remake of PL. Sometimes it's just the little things.

Check out this story about Detroit

http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/plowing-detroit-into-farmland/


This is very exciting stuff. Some of you may remember the article I posted on Facebook a while back, called "Feral Houses":


http://www.sweet-juniper.com/2009/07/feral-houses.html


What a smart solution! There is no way a city of the size of Detroit can go back in time to the way it once was...so accept
that and use the reality for the good of people.

Font memories and graphic content

I have always been fascinated by how graphic messages work in our brains. How is it that a certain word in a particular font can evoke an emotion? It's amazing how more than volumes and volumes of written history, just a logo from a certain era can bring that era to life. I've run across hundreds of boxes, papers, and books in cleaning out the house; below are a quick few of my favorites. Unfortunately, most of the books had been destroyed by moisture.

Doesn't this little memo pad reek with style and verve?

Handwritten caligraphy on a tag off of a leather gun case. Oh, for the days of parchment and ink!

A great pair of opposing fonts...

Look at this great devil logo...symbolizing that the heater is hot as hell?

An old shirt box...

An early version of the iconic Folger's Coffee label...

The Pulling of the Nails

This is just the beginning of a long, tedious, and necessarily difficult relationship with...nails. I am overcome with ennui when I think of how many nails went into just this one house...just this one room...just this one stair...how much steel is that? I wonder if anyone has calculated the environmental impact of nails?

Nails, of course, can be friendly, even welcome, when holding things up, like treasured pieces of art, or the bathroom wall. BUT! What happens when that day comes...the day that it is decided that for the greater good of the renovation, THE NAIL MUST COME OUT???

It's hellish. Once they are in there, they really just don't want to come out. Ok, some do...just like some people who shall go unnamed, they will readily just give it up with very little coaxing. Of course, these are the least memorable nails. Then there are the ones with little crownlets of fluff on them...insulation, carpet, carpet pad. These are a big tease, acting so coy. First, you have to rip their stupid little clothes off. HA! Exposed, they shiver before my able little pliers. But no, no...not so fast. The flufflets are underneath as well, so there's that whole coaxing...come one, come on, just let me work my toolish magic. 

It's one of the most satisfying things in the world when a nail, after just a little bit of sass, decides to sliiiiiiide out of there. Of course, the next one will be so vexatious as to make up for it, though. The worst, though, is when you think you've got it, making progress, come on...and then the head of the nail BREAKS OFF! Arrrrgh. I know EXACTLY how Charlie Brown felt when Lucy snatched the football. And the nail totally wins, because, there is no recourse except to nail the remainder flush, back into its nasty little home. Good riddance. I loathe you! Next!

A filthy and especially noxious subcategory of nails is staples. Why? Because if (more like WHEN) they break, you potentially have TWO peices of metal to deal with...and you can't hammer them in. So it's twice the work, and the potential for error is astronomical.

Some days, though, even all of this is less frustrating than working with computers. 

Some days.