Staircase (Phase Two)

Phase two of the staircase turned out really well.  It took a couple of attempts and quite a bit of effort, but I am very happy with the results.

The architectural is designed to provide depth beneath the stairs while breathing life into what would otherwise prove to be a very dark area of the long hallway.

This is actually the second install. After I installed the first, I ended up destroying it.  I found myself explaining what I wanted it to be, and looking at something that wasn't really what I had in mind. I think it stays much more true to the intimate, organic nature of what I wanted, not really able to discern where one element stops and another begins.

Indirectly lit by 640 programmable LEDs, I can dial in virtually any color I wish.

The architectural itself was milled in three sections and finished by hand.  I also designed the rails to provide indirect lighting at just the right angle, without ever exposing the actual light source.  The lighting is controlled by 640 RGB LEDs with a controller that allows me to dial in virtually any of 16 million different colors.  White, Blues, and Yellows seem to show the best.  Depending on the holiday season, this should prove very entertaining.

Now all that's left is to fabricate and install the steps themselves...

My Fascination with Hand Wheels

I like a good hand wheel.  What can I say?  It’s kind of like my thing for boxes, but that’s a whole other thread.  Not really sure where it comes from, but when I see an old hand wheel or valve shut-off, my imagination runs wild with the creative possibilities.

Mostly for style, but partly for vindication against all those who ridiculed me over the years for acquiring so many hand wheels, I have decided to incorporate them in a very prominent way throughout the space.  The most obvious installations of course being to control water.  Thought I would share a couple of examples here.  But keep in mind, we are not limited to flow control, for my fascination with hand wheels knows no bounds…

The big wheel controls the hot water, while the small controls the cold.
(the shiny part in the middle will go away once I fix the patinas)

The story behind these gets pretty complex, but let’s just concentrate on the valve and aesthetics part for now.  I wanted a more industrial feel to the hot/cold water control for the Jacuzzi I am installing (skip over the fact that it is in the middle of the bedroom, that too is a whole other thread).  Took a bit of engineering, but I ended up marrying these two hand wheels I got from an abandoned factory up north to modern gate valves used to fill the Jacuzzi.

Picked the hand wheels (out of my extensive and vast collection : )

Figuring out relative placement

Started a small (but contained) fire in the studio

Fabricated these cool mounts for the gate valves.

Figured out how to link the hand wheels to the valves.

Built this cool cover...

Set everything in place until the brick was finished.

But it doesn't stop there.  I have these three hand wheels from a decommissioned power plant in Connecticut that would be perfect to use in the showers for the three other bedrooms.  Trick is to marry them to a modern valve control with temperature/flow control and anti-scalding, kind of a requisite for any modern shower.

A little prototyping and fabrication later...

One finished shower valve.

Based on the prototype, I will fabricate all three and finally install them in the wall.

They will eventually end up here, once the showers are completed.

Floorniture

Floor-ni-ture (noun) - that part of a room, hallway, or the like, that forms its lower enclosing surface and upon which one walks… after which you have invested so much time and energy where it becomes more like furniture than a floor.

That about sums it up… just registered floorniture.com in case you were thinking about it.  Just spent the last 2-weeks installing the flooring that I bought in July (Down on the Floor, July 15 2012).  This is one of those endeavors that make you question everything when you are half way through, but the end results were certainly worth the effort.

One of the beautiful knots that make this material so interesting.

Reclaimed flooring is, to say the least, very irregular.  The typical method for installing flooring like this is to simply nail it down, float it with a huge amount of neutral wood filler, sand the hell out of it, stain, and urethane.  What you end up with is a smooth floor with a lot of detail, but certainly not something that was true to the original wood you laid down.  I wanted something different. 

We ended up running every plank through the shaper.... twice.

If you will remember, this was wood pulled from a barn in West Texas that was built in 1901.  With its quarter sawn grain and scars from heavy use, I wanted to preserve as much of that character as I could.  So after careful consideration, I decided to run each plank through the shaper again to round over the edges and committed to laying down and finishing each plank by hand.  This would give me a floor that actually looked reclaimed.  A much more authentic and irregular floor, made up of individual hand crafted planks.

Some of the initial planks we laid down.

Beautiful stuff, but a real pain to work with.

How we laid the floor was just one aspect of the project.  The other was how to fill the immense number of holes and imperfections in the wood without losing the detail.  After deliberating for several days, I came up with the idea of using black wood filler, thinking that it would provide a good contrast and highlight the imperfections that make reclaimed wood so interesting.  I spent quite a bit of time researching black filler and couldn’t come up with anything I could get in quantity that wasn’t cost prohibitive.  Not deterred, I set out to create my own tinted wood filler.

Experimenting with filler bases and tints, came up with several viable formulas for bulk tinted wood filler.

It took a few days, but I persevered.  I now have two or three alternative formulations for tinted wood filler that I can use depending on what I am doing.  Any color of the rainbow.  After a few tests, I decided to stick with more earthy tones for the floor and settled on a deep green, navy, and of course black.

What it means to fill each hole and crack by hand using a palette of different colors.

Navy and some black

Keep in mind that by the time these are stained and urethaned, they are super subtle. Since the filler is harder than the wood, over time they will become more pronounced as the floor gets worn a bit.  All in all, I am very satisfied with the results and especially like the creative options it gives me later in the studio.

First urethane coat (this was our test area, one of the bathrooms)

Once the staining was complete.

The final product.

I think the dark tones are going to go well with the steel and glass door I have designed for the wine cellar.

After the stain and urethane went down, the true character of the wood emerged.  This was certainly more difficult than I had originally anticipated, but whatever misgivings I had as we were going through the process evaporated once I saw the final product.

Staircase (Phase One)

The design of the staircase is coming along nicely.  It’s important to get this one right because it is a focal point when you first walk into the loft.  For a number of reasons (extensive indoor welding being one of them), I have decided to fabricate the piece in three distinct phases.  This first phase will be the design, fabrication, and installation of the supports for each stair.  Each tread will be a reclaimed 5” x 12” beam protruding from the wall supported by a steel upright welded to the beam already in place.

Initial sketches of the staircase design.

My initial prototype for the upright.

Straying from the original sketch, I decided to build a more elaborate prototype for the support using MDF and placed it on the beam to ensure I got the angle correct.  Once this detail was hammered out, I then started to fabricate 17 of these out of ½” steel.

The 1/2" steel version beside my final prototype.

Once complete, I then welded each of the uprights to the beam.  This will be as far as I go this round.  Most of the messy stuff is done and I feel comfortable laying down the floor.

Final fitting before I fabricate the remaining 16 supports.

Lot's of welding...

View from the side.

Once the floor is down, I will work on an architectural to go underneath the stairs to give it more depth (phase 2), and then there is the task of creating and installing the steps themselves (phase 3).  Stay tuned...

The Hard Stuff

Old school.  If it’s not steel or wood, then it’s brick or tile.  That’s the feel we am going for here.  I have been searching high and low for some good reclaimed brick, but continually come up empty handed.  The stuff that is out there is very rough, expensive, and only available in small quantities.  Who knew it would be so hard to make something look old?

After spending some time with my Dal-Tile rep here in the Design District, she turned me on to a local group that manufactures some good looking pre-fab brick.  I have experimented with a number of other types of manufactured stone and brick, and they all pretty much have the same limitations.  The main one for me being that they explode when you heat them up quickly.  This is important because I plan on melting things (or burning them off) to create more authentic patinas, mostly in place once they are installed.  Think sun bleached, pollution stained, peeled and chipped paint on a brick wall in an alley someplace…

Using an oxy-fuel torch to heat up a sample brick

Taking a look at what is on the inside and measuring the disparity between bricks

Pleased that it didn't blow up in my face

This stuff is great.  You can do just about anything heat related to it and it doesn’t seem to respond (and by respond I mean explode in your face).

As we begin to lay it down, the irregular nature of the castings begins to show.  Good stuff…

As for tile, nothing beats old school.  Subway tile, black and white, can’t go wrong.  Settled on this pattern for all five bathrooms. Here are some pics…

Trying to figure out what works...

We decided to use the studio bathroom as a test bed... perhaps a bit elaborate for a "shop toilet"

Start of the steam room

Déjà Vu… Another Warehouse

Things are getting a little crowded here at Studio #217. I was able to negotiate a deal on the adjacent warehouse which now gives me over 12,000 square feet of space.  There is much work to be done on this new warehouse as it is in pretty bad shape inside.  I won’t take possession of it until early next year, but went ahead and painted everything flat black out front.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Been a busy 14 weeks of construction.  Not much structure to any of this yet, but thought I would share some pictures of the progress.

Framing out the sub floor

Sub floor and rough plumbing and wiring in place

Nice shot of the wine cellar. The door turned out to be 4 ft by 9 ft... not sure quite how that is going to work out

Began framing about 30 days in

After 3 weeks of framing

Appliances conveniently showed up in the middle of the process, not sure how we are going to work around these, but at least they are here

The Jacuzzi showed up which was actually very useful since we weren't sure how we were going to plumb it

Upcycled this beam from the crane system in the studio to use for the staircase going to the rooftop deck... it was... the opposite of light and maneuverable 

Created the space for the steam shower and Jacuzzi. Since this is an open floor plan, I have big plans for this area.

Finishing up the sheet rock and some primer on the walls

Now the fun stuff begins...