Good morning all – It is a fine Sunday morning here in Carlisle and I have a nice cup of coffee in hand while I surf the internet and listen to music from Firephly – aka my sister-in-law Meghan. I have done a couple of brag posts about my other sister-in-law Tenley and my Mom – … Continue reading “And yet more bragging about a relative”
Good morning all –
It is a fine Sunday morning here in Carlisle and I have a nice cup of coffee in hand while I surf the internet and listen to music from Firephly – aka my sister-in-law Meghan. I have done a couple of brag posts about my other sister-in-law Tenley and my Mom – those were more event driven. This time, I just thought I would share the good stuff Meghan has been doing for a quite awhile – since I was late at posting her latest album release on Bandcamp.com . When the family was visiting Carlisle this past summer, Meghan used a digital recorder to capture some outdoor sounds, which I think made it into her latest album Rhythm & Development
I really like listening to it early in the morning with coffee in hand – a quiet start of the day. My favorite tracks are
It is rather warm today (low 40’s) and raining rather hard. This is a good thing since it is erasing the ice that has been coating our driveway since Christmas. Long term, I would like to see snow so that we can go Nordic skiing – but getting rid of the pond ice on the … Continue reading “Rainy January Sunday”
It is rather warm today (low 40’s) and raining rather hard. This is a good thing since it is erasing the ice that has been coating our driveway since Christmas. Long term, I would like to see snow so that we can go Nordic skiing – but getting rid of the pond ice on the ground is going to be really nice.
Meanwhile, on the house front, we are in a bit of lull. HVAC/Geothermal installer has been dealing with a personal family issue and has not been able to finish the installation. Paul is waiting for the heating system to come online so he can get the house heated and the interior wood/structure up to temperature and stabilized before moving to the finish work (floor and tile work). With this lull, Paul is taking advantage and going out on a cruise – nice and well deserved vacation!
Paul and I spoke on Friday and we made some decisions
1) The steps down from the carport – we are going to do an upgrade from bare concrete to sliced stone / veneer stone that will be similar in look to the front
2) Move the tentative location of the propane tanks from behind the garage to over along the side by the generator. Code requires 10’ of space between the generator and the tanks – if there is not room along the wall between the generator and the electric meter, then the thought is to move the tanks away from the wall towards the septic. Depending on how things work out, I will disguise the look with shrubs or something if the tanks stick out like a sore thumb
3) The driveway electrical positions, Paul will have the electricians install all weather electrical sockets and I will figure out what to do with them latter. I will put in lights (with remote sensor at the driveway head) at some point – I am just not sure what they will be just yet – I am concerned about snow plowing and haven’t figured the style out yet….
Meanwhile, the window seat and more kitchen cabinetry has been installed. The front door has arrived onsite and the master bath walk in shower is getting roughed out.
On the personal front, my Dad and I were going to go see Star Wars, The Force Awakens but all the theaters around here were sold out for the entire weekend – we couldn’t purchase seats. So instead, I have been working on trying to design a couch/sofa design. More on that later when I have it figured out – however, in general, I realized that a seating area facing the window seat would be great – another way to take advantage of the view.
Good morning all. I was down and out for several days with a cold, starting with Christmas. We got a snow/ice storm with some freezing rain as a follow on and it got sufficiently heavy that when I felt better and was able to go to work on 12/30, I couldn’t break through the ice … Continue reading “Happy New Year. 2016 opens with snow and ice”
Good morning all.
I was down and out for several days with a cold, starting with Christmas. We got a snow/ice storm with some freezing rain as a follow on and it got sufficiently heavy that when I felt better and was able to go to work on 12/30, I couldn’t break through the ice on my car to leave for work (it had solidified into 4″ deep in some places)! All is well now however
This however generated a nice opportunity to judge how our planning was working out for the shedding of snow and ice at my house. Seems to me like we are pretty on target. As far as shoveling/plowing goes, there will be some work at the front of the house as the carport roof sheds snow and ice out into the driveway, but it should be pretty easy to shovel and/or pull it out with the snow plow. The plow itself should be able to run up to the house and push right on past – near infinite room to move piles onward.
The extended eaves over the front walk way seem to be working perfectly as designed.
One thing that Paul and I have been discussing is where to put the propane tanks for the generator. Our current thought is that they would be downslope/behind the shop. However, we do have the concern about falling ice/snow sliding off onto them and this storm definitely confirmed that this is a valid concern – based on the pattern of fall. So we will either need to build a structure over them or relocate to the side of the house. This may be the better plan because I definitely found it very tricky to tip-toe around the back corner of the shop – the slope and the ice was challenging. This might be a serious problem for the propane truck man during the winter.
I have also been doing some thinking about how to lay out my shop. First up will be to build a work bench so I can use it to build some furniture. I am thinking about building a Roubo style French workbench (a bench designed for hand tools instead of power tools). One of the things you need, when using hand tools, is stability – either by bracing the bench or making the bench heavy (over 300#). The Roubo style bench does this through heavy timbers. I am thinking the same thing – except instead of using expensive and difficult to find monolithic timbers, I am thinking of gluing up 6×6 dimensional lumber or some other construction grade timber for the top. The plan is get some saw horses, build the top and then use the top to build the legs. I am thinking it will need to move around but mostly live on the side of the shop with the window. More thinking definitely needed and will flesh out once we put the 350 gallon water tank in (for the sprinkler system)
Finally, huge milestone, the cabinetry has arrived and has started to be placed. It looks fantastic!
I have been on the road for the last three weeks and didn’t really have the time or energy to make an update – so this one will be a bit on the rambling side. I was able to get a cheap American Airlines ticket – so I was able to go from Boston, to … Continue reading “Happy Week before Christmas!”
I have been on the road for the last three weeks and didn’t really have the time or energy to make an update – so this one will be a bit on the rambling side.
I was able to get a cheap American Airlines ticket – so I was able to go from Boston, to San Francisco to Pittsburgh and back to Boston for only $360. This let me visit our offices in San Francisco and Pittsburgh, go to both the San Francisco and Pittsburgh holiday parties AND also go to my friend Allison Cepkauskas’ birthday party. While I was travelling, things worked out that I could attend a Cloud Computing workshop at our offices in New York City immediately after arriving in Boston – so I did a bit of heel and toe – stopping in Boston for the evening and recharge the suitcase – then off to NYC.
San Francisco was really fun – I got to spend time with folks at work instead of being in meetings all the time and we had our holiday party as well. It turned out to be in the exact same building as my first holiday party in San Francisco 25 years ago when I worked for GT Global (the Tera Design Center by the Bay Bridge). I hung out for about 90 minutes there and had a good time and then walked to Union Square to meet up with the Cepkauskas and friends at the Bourbon and Steak restaurant. We had a REALLY fun time until the early AM 🙂
Off to Pittsburgh, I got to meet up with old friends and some of my team that I had never actually managed to speak with face to face (which was embarrassing because I didn’t recognize someone from the tiny video chat windows – facepalm). On Saturday, Rose Huening-Clark and I (Rose is from the SFO office) went to the enormous and very, very good Andy Warhol Museum. I have never been that big a fan of his work, but I have been meaning to go to the museum for a number of years and it was very interesting. The volume of work that he generated was immense and very groundbreaking – we take it for granted a bit now, but when you look at what was happening just before he started working and what was going on in contemporary commercial art – it was a total sea change. If you are in Pittsburgh, regardless of what you think of his work, I highly recommend it – the place is very interesting.
The Pittsburgh Social Committee put on a really nice shindig on Saturday evening at the local Wyndham hotel – a nice sit down dinner and lot of good conversation. Then off to Boston for an evening at home and then NYC
I took the MBTA Redline to South Station and then the Acela Amtrak to Penn Station in NYC – it saved about $600 each way over flying on the shuttle – presumably because of the holidays. While in South Station, I noticed that they had a couple of Big Ass Fans up near the ceiling. While these 20′ models are totally different than the Haiku model I am having installed in my great room. They were very quiet but seemed to be mixing the air very well – good stuff !
The train ride was easy. Our office is in the same building as Grand Central station, which appears to have received a fairly recent refurbishment. Apparently they recently cleaned the ceiling – it had been blackened by so many years of train grime that people thought they had painted in green – but that was its original color!
The workshop in NYC was very interesting and was focused on best practices to run enterprise applications & services in a cloud environment. It was heavily tilted, by design, towards Amazon’s AWS cloud offerings. I was mostly interested in learning and trying to figure out how to adopt some of these techniques for our internal operations. Well worth my time
Meanwhile, over the last 3 weeks, Paul’s team has been making big strides forward. They have all the dry wall up and mudded. Primer is on all the drywall from what I can see. The ceiling and beams are sanded and oiled. Doors and trim are being finalized, along with the remaining windows. I believe this coming week (Christmas week), the water is going to be turned on for the Geothermal system – which means the heat will be turned on. Outside, the stone patio/entrance ramp has been completed and it looks fantastic.
Finally, I took a walk around the property yesterday (Saturday 12/19/2015) and took this pano shot downslope from the house
Everyone have a great holiday and fun end of 2015!
This past week has been very mild in Carlisle, though it rained most of the day on Saturday. Today my dad and I took care of some stuff that needed doing We cleaned out the wood shed in preparation for fixing the roof Cleaned out all the leaves in the Sea Pearl (my parent’s whale … Continue reading “Getting ready for winter in Carlisle”
This past week has been very mild in Carlisle, though it rained most of the day on Saturday. Today my dad and I took care of some stuff that needed doing
We cleaned out the wood shed in preparation for fixing the roof
Cleaned out all the leaves in the Sea Pearl (my parent’s whale boat sailboat ) that came in when the old tarp shredded. We put a new tarp on it but it needs another in a crisscross pattern
cleaned up the garage a bit, re-organized things and put others in the attic
put the Old Town big canoe back up into the boat rack
now I am having a glass of Hearst Ranch Winery Cab – via their Wine Club. If you haven’t tried their wines, it is excellent. I highly recommend them 🙂
A little bragging here – my Mom was invited to show and sell her quilting at the local art co-operative in the center of Carlisle – the Carlisle Artisans Their shop is very small but the stuff they have is great. They saw her work during the Old Home Day art show on the town … Continue reading “Guest Artisan at Carlisle Artisans: Nancy Fohl”
Their shop is very small but the stuff they have is great. They saw her work during the Old Home Day art show on the town common. Based on what they saw, they thought her stuff would be a great addition and she was invited to be a guest artisan for the end of 2015. Quite a lot of sewing later, her stuff is on view and for sale!
At this point in my process, I had the land, the permits (thanks to the Fields hard work prior to selling the land to me!), and a builder picked out. I also had a lot of years of thinking about the feelings and features I wanted out of a house and some interesting photos of other projects (see my Idea Book on Houzz.com for Kitchen, Bath, Bath and Bath ideas )
458A SDSB_FF this is the final stamped and approved plot plan
I purchased a copy of Google sketchup – because that is what Deck was using for pre-visualization and that turned out to be unnecessary as I gave them PDFs only – lol. I started planning layout ideas for them to work from.
I had the general idea of layout for passive solar gain – orienting the house for the sun and correct calculation of the eaves for sun in the winter and shade in the summer – but what next? For simplicity, I wanted the utilities to be compact and central within the house, and the amount of wasted space with hallways to be minimized. We put the mechanical room, the wash room, kitchen and bathrooms all back to back in the central core of the house – and with easy access to the outside via a carport. The original thought of a 3 bay garage (two for the wood/metal shop) had gone out the window due to cost.
Centrally locating all the utilities does a couple of things – one, it reduces the run of water (less leak opportunities and cost) and it puts these spaces in well insulated interior areas while leaving views from all the more public areas.
The layout of the house overall – the entryway /main door is to the left. We used this idea as well
The right hand side of the kitchen leads off to a more private area – with a blocking wall. I incorporated this flow by having the bedrooms and bathrooms in that direction – separating the public space from the private
The sink and main appliances are along the back wall with cabinetry flanking the sink. This fit well with my idea of placing all the water flow back to back in the core of the house
The island is a both a cooktop and a table – and is at table height instead of counter or bar height. I experimented and decided that the cook top at the 29″ of a standard table would work for me
There is an overhead, custom lighting drop panel. One thing I realized is that the island would not naturally have overhead lighting since the roof could be quite a bit above you at this point. This is a key design feature
We decided not to follow the design here with a few items
We are not going with the color scheme of the tile! Instead I am planning on white subway tile with an accent color tile stripe
The stainless steel ventilation hood has been removed in favor of a down draft vent through the floor and out under the building
In terms of bathroom design, I never, ever take a sit down bath so my initial thought was to have open air walk in showers (aka – Wetroom) for both baths. Ultimately, I decided that both for flexibility and cost, to put a shower/tub one piece in the guest bath. However for the master bath, I went for the wetroom feel. This ideabook on Houzz.com (I mashed Kitchen and bath together for no particular reason) had several ideas on how to design a walk in, curbless, shower.
Due to self imposed space constraints, I made the bathrooms big enough for use, but not palaces – under the idea that you used them and then left – the limited square footage was better used elsewhere. This I think is going to lead to the wetroom needing a glass partition that will keep the spray organized – just because there is not going to be enough square footage to have a ‘section’ for the rain fall shower that is isolated. That is ok I think.
The vanities in both baths will be floating for easier cleaning.
In terms of bedrooms, again, I kept them purposely small since my habit is not to hang out in the bedroom. My thought is that you sleep there, store your clothes there and change. Otherwise, they are not used. A smaller room is easier to keep warm and doesn’t waste as much space. The layout we came up with managed to keep the hallway run to an absolute minimum
my version 6 room design layout that I gave Deck – this is what they designed the house from
In the next Atomic Ranch post, I will tackle the great room
Very short post this week Roofing materials are onsite – Everlast metal – and are going up. The siding is going up too and the colors, layout and species of wood are really starting to pop. Plus some random, Cow, Sheep and Hawk photos
Very short post this week
Roofing materials are onsite – Everlast metal – and are going up. The siding is going up too and the colors, layout and species of wood are really starting to pop.
Fall has started to arrive in Carlisle and it is a misty Saturday here. Things are continuing to move apace at the job site. As you can see below in the pictures, things have moved forward quite quickly during the week, with lots of progress on the electrical, sprinkler system, fireplace and the cedar siding … Continue reading “Fall 2015 in Carlisle – a short construction update and other things”
Fall has started to arrive in Carlisle and it is a misty Saturday here. Things are continuing to move apace at the job site. As you can see below in the pictures, things have moved forward quite quickly during the week, with lots of progress on the electrical, sprinkler system, fireplace and the cedar siding – all moving simultaneously.
I did a mid-week update here. Below is a latter shot my Dad took (the date stamped photo) and the rest are from today, Saturday 10/3. You can see how things are really moving along!
Finally, I remembered that I had some shots I took last weekend when my Dad and I went to go look at the dam at Greenough Pond. The Greenough Land is a very large conservation parcel (200+ acres) owned by the Carlisle Conservation Foundation (a conservation non-profit that also owns the abutting land next to my parent’s house). My parents were involved in this purchase in 1973. I remember as a kid, helping Peter Webster (he and his family lived there at the time and were farming it.) bring in the hay from the fields several times. I have a very strong memory of riding across the top of the dam on the fender of his John Deere tractor with other kids scattered all over and several large loads of hay bales on the trailer – we were heading to the old barn across the pond. This barn is still there, probably thanks to its slate roof, but is pretty beat up now since it has not been in use for several decades – the town has recently decided to tear it down. But a really special property and I have a LOT of great memories of hunting for frogs and turtles here as well as hoisting hay bales, jumping from the rafters into giant hay piles and just enjoying the summer.
I have also included a snipped picture of what the Barn used to look like – from the cover of the very interesting (at least to the locals – lol) retrospective of The Mosquito. If you are reading this and are not from Carlisle, The Mosquito is the local town newspaper – its very name gives you a good idea of the local proportions of dry land vs wetlands!
