Teeny Tiny House Renovation

Thank you to my clients-turned-friends Jim Brodsky and Huck Hirsch for sending me this fun video of Jim installing a flush girder along with their contractor Adam West.  Obviously Jim is a really hands on kind of guy on the job site as well as the kitchen (see my previous blog post).  

Architectural Lesson of the Day: Flush girders are structural members that are recessed into the ceiling above to conceal or minimize their visibility at the ceiling line below.  Dropped girders are structural members that sit below the joist at the ceiling.

Smitten Kitchen

Smitten Kitchen is the name of one of my favorite food blogs.  Deb Perelman has a beautiful site with delicious, inspiring recipes and stories about her adventures in her tiny NYC galley kitchen.  I love to cook, and I love to read about food, and I especially love to eat.  I'm an architect, however, and you didn't come here to read about food!  Here's the point of this post:  

I went to a friend's birthday party last weekend and met someone who told me that they are renovating their kitchen.  They asked me about contractors I have worked with and spoke of their design ideas.  Then they asked if I had ever worked with Ikea kitchens.  (I have once).  I learned that Ikea has a kitchen event every three years or so.  They auction off the display kitchens including appliances, hardware, inserts, countertops, plumbing fixtures and lighting to the highest bidder.  Well...these folks bid $3200 for an entire kitchen more cabinets than they could ever fit in their kitchen and they won.  What a deal!  Most kitchens cost at least $20,000 with appliances and countertops.  

The above photo is a custom kitchen that I designed for a sweet little cottage in Sag Harbor.   The photo below are squash blossoms that we stuffed with ricotta cheese filling.  After the photo was taken, we dipped the blossoms in a light batter and fried them to crunchy perfection.  

It's Not the Size that Matters....

Ive been meeting with many potential clients these days.  Some of the projects are for new homes, some are for additions, some are for renovations.  Most are projects located on the water.  When I ask how they found me, people almost always say they found me through my website.  Most of the projects on my website are house renovations.  However, I enjoy working on smaller projects as well, such as sun room additions and kitchen renovations.  

What matters to me is that my clients share my design philosophy: Clarity.  My primary goal in design is to derive uncomplicated solutions that solve spatial organization problems, both from usability and visual standpoints.  

I use honest, sustainable materials whenever possible to achieve the highest energy efficiency. By investing wisely in materials and equipment we can increase the intrinsic value of a property.  Most people can "feel" that a house is designed well without being able to tell you why.  

Top 10 Things You’ll Never Hear Me Say

1.    You have way too much money budgeted for this project

2.    You should listen to the contractor instead– he has fantastic design ideas

3.    Designing that project was so easy…it took almost no time at all

4.    I am going to reduce my fee since this project is so straight forward

5.    Your house is under budget and ahead of schedule

6.    I think I’ll take the weekend off

7.    No one else besides me will notice it…leave it like that

8.    I like vinyl siding

9.    Architecture school was a breeze

10.  I’m planning my European Summer vacation

Uplifting News

Most people have never seen a house lifted before.  I had never heard of the process until I moved to the East End of Long Island 20 years ago.  The house renovation and addition that just commenced last week began this way.  The general contractors, Seifert Construction hired Dawn House & Building Movers to do the job.

There were 15 hydraulic lifts, supporting 6 temporary steel beams synchronized by controllers located on two separate trucks that raised the house incrementally.  This house will be raised four feet to allow the masons to add to the existing foundation.  It will then be lowered back down 2 feet to its final resting height. 

The owners wanted to raise the house higher than the code requires to minimze the risk of another storm event like Sandy.  According to FEMA regulations, this house will not have any mechanical equipment in the crawl space.  In case of flood, the smart vents that I specified for the foundation wall will allow the water to flow through the crawl space rather than damage the wall and undermine the stability of the house.  

Incredible view of Peconic Bay from the back of the house

Diversion

Right now I’m designing a house renovation and addition.  Actually, I’m NOT designing because I’ve hit a roadblock.  I’ve “designed myself into a corner,” as my college professors used to say, and I’m not sure how to get out at the moment.    I thought I’d be productive in a different way and write about it for a little while.  Sometimes when I take a break, my subconscious continues to problem solve.  When I return to the drawing board, the answers are more easily accessible.  I’m hoping that will happen this time.

Lately I’ve been thinking about an interview with Pharrell Williams I heard on NPR last New Year’s Eve. He speaks about the creative process.  It resonated with me:

And it would have never happened if the studio wouldn't have kept telling me, "No, it's not good enough. No, it's not good enough."

So all the no's actually brought about a product that you're really proud of.

Brought me to a place of zero, and that nirvana, that place of that stillness of nothing is when you can ask yourself a clear question and get a clear answer back. I just wanted to give that to all the listeners, because that in itself, man, when you feel like you don't have anymore answers, I want you to know that you're the closest to the best thing you'll ever do in your life. There's no ego in it, and you're just asking a clear question. You don't know where the answer's gonna come from, and that's when the answer comes. I just wanted to share that.

Because honestly that song called "Happy" and every lyric came out of that place. I'm just so thankful that all the factors and all the circumstances pushed me in that direction, because I would have never written that song on my own.

It’s intriguing to me that the creative process, no matter the medium, has common threads.

Memory Lane

I was looking through some photos from the archives and came across some images that I havent seen in a long time.  Here are two of the stair from the Pipes Cove house.  I'm thinking I might add these images to my portfolio on mkarchitect.com

Here are a couple of Aldo's before he asked me to help him figure out some new windows and walls!  For those of you who haven't had coffee, scones or biscotti from Aldo, you don't know what you're missing...It's worth a trip to Greenport to find out.

This is a construction photo of the Shulz Stein house in Orient.  Gary Loveless and his sons Tabor and Jared of Vector East Carpentry did a great job on this renovation addition.

Thanks to my dear friend Yvonne Lieblein who inspires me to keep on blogging, and to SHINE.

Flush it and Forget it?

Duravit Happy D Toilet (what a beautiful design)

When there is an opportunity to get lots of Continuing Education credits all in one day I generally jump at that chance.  Last week I attended a conference titled "Managing Cesspools and Septic Systems to Protect Long Island's Waters."  This is not exactly a glamourous topic, or something I dreamt of studying, but I must admit I learned a lot and by the end of the day, felt more passionate about.  There were many different presenters there, all giving evidence of how the nitrates produced by on site septic systems are negatively affecting the waters, and consequently the aquatic wildlife of Long Island.  

Many of the homes I work on are located on or near the Peconic Bay or Long Island Sound.  I feel that as an architect advising my clients on the construction of septic systems I can help minimize the effect on one of our most valuable natural resources.  I learned that it takes only 1 to 2 years for effluent from waterfront septic systems to reach the water body.

Here's a brief overview of how septic systems work:

We learned how leaching pools work best when they are located closer to the ground surface.  There, the soil is better suited for wastewater dispersion and oxygen diffusion.  It's also preferable to have shallow systems that are more spread out rather than those that are concentrated in a small footrprint and deeper.

Prior to the mid 1970's homes did have septic tanks to treat solids.  These old style systems are susceptable to failiure, causing backups, offensive odors, sluggish drains, and pooling water around the system. That's why almost every renovation project I work on needs to have a new septic system installed that must be reviewed and approved by the Suffolk County Department of Health Services before a building permit can be obtained.  

Most of us tend to think that once a septic system is buried in the ground it's a done deal.  Actually, septic systems need to be maintained just like boilers, air conditioning equipment, and automobiles. Tanks should be inspected and pumped out every three to five years.  

Awaiting Spring

Spring is less than one week away.  It's hard to believe when the temperature is below 30 degrees, and the wind is blowing hard and fast.  My favorite thing (not including my husband and kids) in my house these past few months has been our wood burning stove.  

It's an insert that we installed a few years back.  It's manufactured by a company called Morso.  I love their clean, modern designs.  Even though the stove insert is a modern design, it works in our 1920 four square home.  We use kiln dried wood from Long Island Firewood.  Their wood lights easily, and it burns hot.  It costs more than "seasoned firewood," but it's an indulgence that pays for itself.  We have saved money on our natural gas bill since we started using it.   It has a circulating fan that distributes the heat efficiently throughout the house.  The thermostat is located in the living room, so the remote rooms on the second floor can get a bit chilly…That's more incentive for us all to hunker down together in the living room.

In a month or so, we will be building two more raised beds.  We built one in the fall, using 2 12 foot  long 2 x 10s, 4 corner brackets, all of our compost, and a trunk full of organic soil.    The beds will be on axis with fruit trees already planted, thus appealing to my architectural sensibilities.

I grew spinach, kale and lettuces, over the fall and early winter.  I just love harvesting fresh greens and eating salad and juicing immediately after.  I recently bought LOTS of seeds from seedsavers in anticipation of warmer days and nights.  Here's to Spring!