This morning (Sunday), at sunrise, it was a chilly -21 degrees Fahrenheit on our front porch (indicated at -16 but we normally find a 5 degree difference due to heat from the house impacting the thermometer). The temperature at the town center is showing at -11. I think the difference is that we are downhill in a bit of a hollow and at this temperature, the cold air is pooling. Brrrrr! good thing we have coffee!
I took Friday off to do more house stuff. My Dad and I went up to Essex MA to visit Atlantic Industrial Models. Joe Fossa (the owner) and my Dad go way, way back and I have heard, many, many good stories but have never met him before. Joe and his team, over the years, have done a LOT of prototyping, model making and small production runs for my Dad – both at GTE Sylvania Lighting (think lightbulbs, camera flash – all sorts of lighting products) and various businesses that I my Dad and Mom started after my Dad retired from Sylvania.
I am having Atlantic Industrial Models machine the aluminum I-Beam for the cantilever section that will underlay my counter top on the kitchen island. Despite my ‘not to scale‘ drawings, he got it right away. I get the impression that a lot of what they get is a verbal description and a lot of hand waving – so the fact that I had drawn plans and written things down was a general added bonus. We also got to spend some time shooting the breeze about his Cessna 180 float/ski plane which sounds really neat and looking at some of the photos of some custom automotive work they do. A shop down the street is a super high end historic car restoration shop (they restore cars that are entered – and win – at the Concourse d’Elegance at Pebble Beach). Some of the total one-off machining that Joe’s team did is just out of this world. They also do need it, but can’t get it anywhere else type of work like casting custom rubber pads for the pedals on a pre-WWII Hispano-Suiza or something equally exotic. They are really, really capable folks
Below are the plans that I gave to Joe – hopefully it will help describe what I am doing. The core idea came from “Atomic Ranch Midcentury Interiors” – Modernist Tract House, 1958 on pages 123-145. If you are interested in this stuff, I suggest picking up a copy of this book or subscribing to their quarterly magazine (Atomic Ranch)
In flooring and tile news – the pricing came back on the materials I picked out and the cost was 3x my budget plan. Not good. So I am back to re-thinking things. I am kind of leaning towards doing the floor in Home Depot Montauk Black slate (like this below) – picture from a Houzz article on slate floors
