Day Thirty Four

And then the rains came. Noah like. Sixteen hours of water, water, water. Tom told me that the little place took in the odd drop or two - I take his word for it; there were too many roads closed, power lines down and crashes for me to leave the apartment. In London it drizzles for, ooh, 20 minutes, your shoes may get a touch damp, everyone worries about their hair, gets on the Underground, steams slightly, and then sits outside while the sun sets with a glass of wine.

It's been a quiet day for the White House. Tomorrow I'm off to West Supply in Philly to look at doors - being a partner at Goldman Sachs has got nothing on that.

Day Thirty Three

This is going to be short, more Mickey Rooney than Liam Neeson.

As much as the world staggers me every day, it's nice when that remarkableness is uplifting rather than depressing.

I put a call in this morning to West Supply in Philly, the company closest to us who distribute the recycled denim insulation, and talked with a lady who aside from advising me on insulation also opened my eyes to recycled dry wall, baseboard, doors and glue. Glue. They recycle glue. Locally. The carbon footprint is tiny.

Compare, if possible, with Home Depot's one insulation offer of Pink Fiberglass - not only is this a nasty product and horrible to install, but it slowly seeps into the air of the office, and then when removed will sit in a landfill for a thousand years killing everything it touches.

Of course these eco-friendly products are more expensive now - actually not by very much - but the long term damage caused by the conglomerate, oil and man-made default products is immeasurable. And frankly (I'm on a very high horse now) it's inexcusable that companys the size of Home Depot or Lowe's do not offer alternatives to Pink Fiberglass (at least change the sodding name).

Here endeth the eco-sermon.

Day Thirty Two

The response was incredible, after last night's post I spent the entire morning wading through the generous offers to take 775 square feet of organic bamboo off my hands (thanks Mrs. A.), but the photos below are more eloquent than me in explaining why the bamboo is rather badly needed.

Tom told me that while the small area of wood floor I saw on Sunday was in poor condition - warped and barely supported by the struts - the flooring they ripped up yesterday was appalling and looked worse than an Englishman's teeth. He then discovered that some of the floor struts are 'floating', meaning they don't hold anything at all up, aside from the prayers of the people who were walking across them.

It was a busy day.

The chandelier is still holding the room together.

A small place to stand when rearranging the ceiling.

The little house was hiding the history of many families.

My first thought today was that not much is left of the original building and wouldn't it have been better to raise the place and then drop a modular home on the site (but that would have cost double if not triple the budget) - I was feeling worried, call that scared witless, by the complexity (to me) of this project; however, having spent nearly all of my working life deciding on very flimsy data where to spend enormous sums of other people's money without a second thought, I think being scared witless is a good control mechanism when it comes to ours.

I guess that means the loo and sink are going to be very simple affairs. No Philippe Starck stuff, more along the lines of the public toilets you find in Istanbul. What do you think Emily?

Day Thirty One

A few days back all that remained of the original building was the wood siding, a crumbling foundation, a roof and some old framing. A filthy carpet covered the floor. The carpet was ripped up this weekend and underneath lay a wood floor, an old wood floor in what, to the old-wood-floor-judging-novice (me), appeared to be in recoverable condition. As Emily said, "Save everything that we can".

Fantastic. Jump up and down with joy until the middle-aged brain swells and the heart gives out. Except I ordered a new bamboo floor two weeks ago. That's when the arteries really say they've had enough, don't give two hoots about the disregard you've shown to your body for three decades but stare blankly at the credit card bill and hop on the next bus South.

So, tomorrow I'm meeting Tom to inspect the floor and decide whether it makes sense to try and save the original floor or install the new boards.

Does anyone need 775 sq ft of organic, Scandinavian light, vertical bamboo flooring?

Day Thirty

I wandered through the little place this afternoon, picked through the rubble and came up with these fascinating finds;

The chandelier is still hanging from a ceiling beam. Did Tom take me seriously when I mentioned The Big Lebowski and said that it tied the room together?

This is all that's left of the chimney.

And this is me looking rather bemused at the Sculpture Park in Seattle last week.

Day Twenty Nine

It's not possible that we've covered all of the main structural decisions in such a short period of time, we must have missed something off the shockingly long list - I really hope I remember to order the loo, the sink and the front door; even in South London these are generally considered to be necessities - but today I took a break and started to think about the internal decoration.

In other words I spent today watching the Yankees get boxed by the Red Sox because the internal decoration of the office is so very not an area for me to poke my nose into. If it was left to me the place would be plastered with framed photos of David Bowie, Raymond Chandler, Charles Dickens and Paul Bowles. Yeah. Not good. Uh nuh.

The one screaming thought I woke to at 4am this morning was "Will it be ready in time?"
After a couple of paces around the bedroom I remembered the line from Tom Stoppard's screenplay for Shakespeare In Love, that moment when Will asks Burbage how Romeo and Juliet can ever come together in time for opening night and Burbage pauses and then says... "It's a mystery".

Indeed it is.

Day Twenty Eight

I convinced myself before flying to Seattle last week that I would keep an uninterrupted record of the story of the small white house. Yep. Failed. My only consolation is Beckett - Ever Tried. Ever Failed. Fail again. Fail better.

Nevertheless, I have ordered the bamboo floor from Cali Bamboo and Emily and I finally made a decision on the ceiling; no to the high cathedral opening. After much discussion we agreed it did not make sense to elaborate on such a simple building in such a simple setting.

I'm driving over there tomorrow to take a few pictures of the latest developments. Exciting stuff, even after arriving home at 2.30am this morning and now flagging with jet lag.

Day Nineteen - Letter from London - a Big White House

All this past week, whilst I've been feeling regretful about being 6000 miles away from the build site, and not around to see each day's progress in person, I have been to and fro to work at Chelsea College of Art, so busy that I barely noticed that our central courtyard, aka 'The Parade Ground', is currently a massive temporary building site. Here's the Big White House that's gone up, over the course of just 5 days:

It's London Fashion Week, and this is the Burberry tent. All of the great and the good, the soigne and the self-absorbed, should turn up for the big night. I'm not sure how outraged one should be about the cool £4M it costs to put on this show - which will last for all of 20 mins and then be dismantled in under 24 hours. I do know that the build is one hell of an impressive thing, proceeding with military precision and put up by a crew of well over 100, FAST.

Here's a link to a time lapse vid of last year's build of the same thing. I am in awe of such a project; but what I also love is that the uncredited video editor has very slyly put it all to the soundtrack of 'From the Stars' by White Lies - sample lyrics below. Take that, global capitalists.
He said "Driver, what's happened to these buildings? They all look run down and so alone."
He took a shower in the bathroom of his penthouse,
Put the Do not Disturb on his door
He catches raindrops on his window, it reminds him how he falls,
From the stars back to our cities, where we've never felt so small

Day Eighteen

I wonder where this young man is today?

Tom found the photo in one of the walls a couple of weeks ago - I then put it in the back pocket of my jeans, forgot about it, put the jeans in the wash and found it lying at the bottom of the drum the next morning. Either our washing machine needs replacing or the ink used in 1983 was tough stuff, because the following is still legible on the back of the photo;

Phillip Cline Jr

Age 6 1/2 1983

(K)

  

OK Marlowe, what does the K in brackets mean?

I know this is a dull post, but at least it's not about windows.

The next subject I'm going to bore you with is decking. I made a feeble attempt today at persuading Emily that because the organic bamboo decking from Cali Bamboo will not be available until March/April 2011, perhaps we should consider other options. Mrs. A found a company in New York called Advantage Lumber who supply sustainably grown Cumaru (Brazilian Teak), Garapa (Brazilian Ash) and Ipe (Brazilian Walnut), all of which look stunning. However, as Emily pointed out, just because they say it is farmed sustainably doesn't mean a darn thing. Very true. And the timing of March/April next year works - I have no wish to be sipping a gimlet on the deck this winter while three feet of snow rapidly builds up around me.

Day Seventeen

It's rather likely that if I write another word about 'windows' the two people who actually read these ramblings will stop instantly. So, without using that word I will limit my excitement to saying - I drove down to Delaware and ordered them this morning. After all of the ping-ponging between suppliers, the fact that Home Depot offered a 25% discount, and Delaware has no sales tax (what a wonderful State), the saga of the w******s came to a relatively quiet conclusion - aside of course from constantly worrying for the next four weeks about whether I ordered correctly.

The entire internal structure of the building is now bare; the struts of the roof are visible and the space beneath the roof is fascinating - irregular angles meeting in the middle of the room - which means the imagination starts to think "what-could-be?"

When Tom and I met at the building earlier this evening, and while we were having a three-way conversation with Emily in London, the idea of opening the entire reception area upwards, to create a cathedral ceiling, hit all of us as being a way to make a simple cottage into something special. Tom is working out the implications of this new idea - my w******s suddenly seem simple.

The central chimney comes down tomorrow. If the poor little place is still standing after that incredible act of confined demolition it's a tougher building than I ever imagined.

Day Sixteen

When I woke up this morning, windows open to the first cool breeze since April, I checked who was playing who on the opening day of the NFL season, made a cup of tea, read a chapter of Postwar by Tony Judt, put some washing in the machine and read about restaurants in Seattle.

When Emily woke up this morning in London she constructed a scale model of The White House, including movable inner partitions so that we could compare the options we have for walls, desks, whether to have a separate storage room, and what the sight lines would be. Immaculately designed. Perfectly proportioned.

Words fail me.

I really do need to do more with my time. Knowing where to eat in Seattle this Thursday is one thing, building this model from scratch before lunch is another world.

Day Fifteen

This venture is the opposite of what happens on the UK Channel 4 programme Grand Designs. It's size, budget and pragmatic location are the obvious differences. But, the James Smith "I-Guess-That-Will-Work" school of renovation planning is the whopping difference - Emily is in London, so the normal efficiency she brings to my day has upped and ridden out of town.

Making a precise and lengthy record of who said what and when, and what rash decision I made, is one example from the bottom of the rapidly growing pile of stuff I'm not efficient at.

These are some of the (better) pages from my notebook for this project. Most of Emily's notes go directly onto her Mac, but she also keeps a notebook and it's a masterpiece of accuracy and detail.

Day Fourteen

I don’t know if Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh or even Michel de Montaigne ever renovated a building – well, Mr. Montaigne did pay a local craftsman to carve his favourite aphorisms into the beams of his study sometime around 1570, they are still there today – but if one of them did I like to think it would have been a chaotic mess. Because at the moment I need to think that even the people I admire for perfectly arranging simple words into simple sentences would get it wrong when it comes to choosing the windows, the floor, the decking, the HVAC, the trim, the insulation, and just how white the whiteness of the white paint is.

 

The person at the local builders merchants I’ve been talking to this week about windows and doors told me today, after I pointed out a discrepancy in his sizes and costs, that actually they were all wrong and he would have to recalculate – upwards of course. I was trying to be decent by using a small local company rather than one of the faceless conglomerates, but it’s difficult to shake the feeling that if the windows arrive with just one small detail wrong I’d be kicking myself until I ended up in Montana.

I’ll be thinking about that this weekend.

Day Thirteen

The ceiling was ripped out this morning and the following curiosities fluttered down; a letter sent from Coatesville to a town whose name I can't make out date marked 1955. This is a wonderful find, but I do need someone to decipher it for me. I wonder how much of the correspondence we send by email will flutter down from an attic in 60 years time?; and three coffee tin lids - interesting - why does anyone keep three coffee tin lids?

Day Twelve

The diagram in this picture looks strangely like the kind of thing I would have drawn to illustrate an utterly worthless point during a presentation to a room full of people half asleep when I worked in advertising – this one actually tells you something.

This is insulation from Idaho Blue, made from recycled denim, borate ( second photo - a chemically inactive, naturally found salt that inhibits the growth of mold, fungi, bacteria and mildew) and a binder.

It’s from natural recycled materials, has none of those nasty man-made fibers that irritate us and are appalling to the environment, and it has the LEED qualification – even though a programme about LEED that was on NPR this evening when I was driving home included some scientists who disputed how rigorous LEED are in awarding their symbol to manufacturers. Nothing but nothing is undisputed in the new world.

Day Eleven

This is a relaxing way to spend your birthday - get woken up at 5am by an insurance company in London calling to remind you that some policy or other runs out shortly, try to get back to sleep, fail - because your eyelids are now firmly attached to your forehead just thinking about the silly amount of stuff that needs to be done - get up, call Emily and open presents from Mrs. A. via Skype, and then shuttle for the rest of the day between building wholesalers to talk windows and doors.

Company number one was in West Chester, number two in Downingtown, three in Christiana, stop at office for 30 minutes, four in Exton, five in Frazer.

I did think that being armed with the correct dimensions would make this a relatively smooth process. Not so. I'm pretty dumb for every other day of the year, but I shot out of the apartment this morning believing the stars would be correctly aligned today and we could choose the windows and doors and order. Hah and bah.

In England you can walk into your corner shop, pick up a loaf of bread, a pint of milk, a copy of the Guardian, chat about the weather and politely request some new windows - not quite, but almost. America offers everything; windows of every shape, material and colour in any combination a window-fetishist could desire. Leather with steel attachments? You got it, Sir!

The result is mind numbing. I keep reminding myself that at least we do not have to order custom-dimension windows; when Tom and I met at the property the other day he worked out that even though each window was slightly different (really) he could build around a standard size - the difference this makes in cost and delivery time is significant enough for me to whoop.

Perhaps the stars will realign themselves tonight and the stack of options in front of me that need to be compared will be a breeze tomorrow. Uh huh.

Thanks for the birthday presents Mrs. A!

Day Ten

Here's a photo of the bamboo flooring that will be installed in the office. We have chosen the wide plank (6-1/4 inches) version. It''s vertical grain, organic and is free of halogenated hydrocarbons, heavy metals, herbicides, pesticides, urea formaldehyde and any harmful emissions.  Remarkable - I think all visitors should be issued with shoe covers before being allowed to walk on it.

Day Nine

We need to make a couple of decisions on this project.

What size wood for the flooring - double wide or classic bamboo? 

Should we delay the installation of the the decking until next year or go with the non-organic alternative? 

What’s the best place for the restroom? 

Where will the filing cabinets go? 

Have I completed the PECO form to request the electrical system is moved from the front of the office to the back? No. I’ll do that tonight. I'll put the form in the post tomorrow. Promise.

Day Eight