Doors and Salvaged Windows

“...so I wait for you like a lonely house
till you will see me again and live in me.
Till then my windows ache.” Pablo Neruda

salvaged doors and windows yard

We went to nearby Albion to look for an old window.  We have six salvaged windows in the interior to let light into the bedrooms.  Our shower looked a bit dark so I asked Tim if we could put in a small, rectangular window in the interior wall. The sink and mirror is on the other side.  If you stand at the sink you can peek into the shower or vice versa.  Herr, at first, thought it should be frosted.  Huh?  As if I would sneak a peek? So clearly, he needed some disillusionment. I wanted an old window with clear glass.  I looked all over at Urban Ore and Omega Salvage in Berkeley, but all were too big.  Surprise! Tim found one nearby, in the coastal town of Albion.  Perfect in its imperfections.  We loved it.  It even had lavender paint painted over its once turquoise frame.

  

 the outside facing is lavender, the inside is painted white

Well, Herr broke the glass when he was trying to photograph it.  He felt so bad that we immediately drove up to Albion to see if they had another.  We were in luck as there was only one more in that size. We got it and returned to the house.  Then we started thinking how easily the glass shattered.  Not so good for a shower.  Herr took the glass bits out of the first window. It is now at the glass shop getting tempered glass. It was a good thing after all the window fell and the glass broke.  I think the house was telling us something.  

 

a small kitchen makes one think about function, utility and paring down to essentials

Now to decide on the wall color in the kitchen area.  The cabinets are in and I forgot to pick out hardware.  We have no upper cabinets on the window side as we plan to put up shelves for our daily dishes.  I don't know what's with all the outlets, but apparently it's code.  Tim put up 3 plaster swatches.  They are all too dark. And I think it needs a bit more ohhhh. It even seems like the house is saying, "No dull clouds, no drabby fog---make it thunderous!  Have an adventure in purple gray of driftwood and wet sand."  I say okay, lighten up the swatches and the house will say AHHH!

 

Finally. We went around and around about the front door. The door's framing was on hold until the plaster color was done. It was too pale and blah.  Then just yellow. Tim wasn't happy with the color.  I wasn't happy. Definitely the house wasn't showing a happy face.  So finally I asked if he could just do a wash of green pigment with a bit of blue on top and ta-dah---there was the color and texture we were looking for........

just the right green and now the door frame is next

From the road it appears more mossy green. Up close more verdigris with chalky straw streaks.  It has depth and hidden character now.  It gives this passive solar house a voice. Enough to say:

Happy New Year!

Trees, Stars, House and Me

Not just beautiful, though--

the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they're watching me.

 

~Haruki Murakami from Kafka on the Shore

 

The fans are up and look like stars to me!  They look small in this photo, but they are big!  They will push down the warm air (if it ever even gets a little warm on the coast.)  During the winter the sun will mainly shine through these windows. This area is what they call "banana belt" and that means we get a little more sun.  Or a little less fog than other parts of the coast.

This redwood tree supports one corner of the cupola.  The cupola is done in a pale purplish white.  During the day it looks nearly chalky white, but later in the day it takes on the blush of sunset.

And the custom made doors finally got here from Washington! It was good to see them installed.  It took a while, but worth it in many ways.  It is hard to see, but these doors open out a little more.  They are protected by two walls and a gable.  The "meadow area"  has Bishop pines and alders saplings now.  In 2004, the area was clear and level.  Even the small redwood to the far right is now about 20' taller. Over eight years, nature reclaimed and healed this clearing with native plants of the area.

Nature reclaims quickly if left alone. 

The lesson which life constantly repeats is to 'look under your feet.'

You are always nearer to the divine and the true sources of your power than you think.

The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive.

The great opportunity is where you are.

Do not despise your own place and hour.

Every place is under the stars.

Every place is the center of the world. 

John Burroughs from Studies in Nature and Literature

In the scale of living small

 

There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination.  Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.

Anais Nin

the cupola has a white plaster with a just a hint of manganese purple

Bit by bit, weight by weight, breath by careful breath, this structure, our home is coming together.   The walls are now plastered with rich, earthy hues of sunlight and sky.  Warmed and dried with summer, the living area walls take on the colors of our coastal grasses and rolling hills. 

 

  

earth plaster nearly dried-next step the windows will have some finishing touches--sashes and whatnots

 

Our sleeping room is the color of pale summer fog, that blue gray that shimmers with bits of silver.  Tim (of Vital Systems) added just a touch of mica to the earth plaster.  The walls seem to hum and sparkle with lullabies.  When the morning light streams in...the room shimmers shyly.  This room is intentionally small and boxy.  It has a high domed ceiling with a monastic feel.  I wanted it that way.  Very serene, spare and  simple.   

 

north side

This room is called the gallery by Herr R.  (It  leads out to a converted shipping container that will eventually become a small workshop studio.) It was planned as a breezeway.  It rarely gets hot on the coast here.  The breeze way is actually a fog way!  If we want we can open the french doors on the south side and the evening breeze can pass through.  The walls here had straw bits added.  The texture is rougher.  The timber is from our property.  They had to come down, along with one small redwood which now graces our living area and supports one corner of the cupola. 

 

Tim's and Earth's artful palette

There are so many more little things to do and think about.  Summer is coming to what I call  its western edge.  For us, on  the North Coast, comes the real summer.  The fog lifts very early in the morning.  The day is usually radiant and room temperature.  The ocean's cobalt color deepens and on the evening horizon line maybe just a hint of fog.  On this rising side of autumn I think of bathtubs and shower heads.  Of kitchen sinks and cabinets.  Of  California's GA1953 compliant faucets and GU 24 fluorescent compliant utility lights. I need to put this all in perspective of what is and isn't necessary.  What remains to be done and accepted.  And all in the artful context and scale of living small........

Singing the insulation Blues

Tucked and ruched into the walls, this denim insulation took on a sculptural look.  As we could not do a straw bale house this was the next best thing for us. No harm, no itch and no sneezing! It is comforting to know that we are insulated against the winter cold with blue jeans no less.  

sashiko-a type of Japanese embroidery done with running stitches,
white thread and indigo cloth

Looking at the walls with its inners exposed was a visual treat.  It reminded me of the running stitches on the flat fell seams of jeans, too. 

 I wish I had invented blue jeans. They have expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity - all I hope for in my clothes.

  Yves Saint Laurent

dome ceiling in one of the bedrooms

 There is no blue without yellow and without orange.

Vincent Van Gogh

"Pour down your warmth great sun!"

from Walt Whitman's Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking

salvaged windows from an old house in Albion (just south of here on the coast)

 

 

Visualize this thing that you want, see it, feel it, believe in it. Make your mental blue print, and begin to build. ~Robert Collier

kitchen area

Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.

~L. Frank Baum 

Now the walls are covered with its outer membrane of wood and plaster.  Still the house breathes in the ocean breeze and the cool air taste so clean.  The last layers are coming.  Selection of earth colors for the walls were chosen and it's a wait and see. 

Each time something is done, each stage, each step brings us ever closer to understanding and falling in love with the nature of this one simple house.

Splish Splash

 Everything is a miracle.  It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one's bath like a lump of sugar.

~Pablo Picasso

 

It is time to look for a tub/shower for the guest bathroom.   Tubs are highly personal.  Some people love to soak for a long time and listen to music.  Others love candles and a good view.  Oh la la and when love is in the air........

There are so many styles and shapes.  I love the clean lines of  the simple, stand alone tubs.  I wanted the white tub above.  It turns out they are all too wide for the space.  Very disappointing.  I had to look for something else.  Plus, after all, this bathroom is very, very small.  I just felt because it is so small it needed something special. 

Herr Reinhart suggested a clawfoot tub.  We had stayed in the historic Wawona Hotel in Yosemite National Park years ago.  Our room had a private bath with a clawfoot tub with a shower.  I began looking at clawfoot tubs.  Not as costly.  Will fit in the small confines of this tiny bathroom.  It has a specialness.  And I could paint the outside whatever color I wanted if I so desired! 

 

Off to Ohmega Salvage in Berkeley to do some tub shopping! 

Photos from various sources.  Click on for links.

Windows

All the windows of my heart I open to the day.

 

John Greenleaf Whittier

 

 

 

window shopping in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California

As a child I had an absorbing pleasure of drawing simple box houses.  I loved drawing the square, then the triangle and finally the little rectangles for the windows.  The real fun came with the windows.  I would make curtains or sashes or even a flower in a vase sitting on the sill.  Sometimes I would color the inside of the windows with bright yellow. To this day I love paintings of simple, block houses. 

 

 

Georgia O'Keefe   Barn with Snow  c. 1933

It is no wonder that I wanted a simple, box shaped house.  Built of straw.  But 2008 happened and no one would give us a loan for straw bale construction.  They would give us a construction loan for a stick house.  No bricks---earthquake country.  No straw---unconventional.  Just sticks.  This is getting to sound like Three Little Pigs.

 

There are some elements of a straw bale house that we were able to keep.  The window sills done in earth plaster, walls with lime plaster with clay paint and a few other things.  I love some softness that the windows provide, but I also love angles.  My eye needs some conventional space that provides a protective hardness, too.  A  stretched canvas board feeling.  Too much softness would swallow me up.  I need some framing solidness, too. 

first layer of earth plaster

The windows are in and we are happy with them.  I learned a lot about windows.  I learn that they are expensive.  We had to find windows with no UVA coating for the south exposure.  Which is harder to explain to salespeople why we want sun-damaging rays to fade our concrete floor than to get them to sell us non-UVA coated windows. We also needed hopper windows for the cupola (clerestory.)  Turns out that the bedroom windows need casement windows because of new changes in fire code.  We also needed hopper windows for the cupola (clerestory.)  Then hopper windows were switched out to awning windows which will open with old-fashioned climb up a ladder with a long pole and hook method.  I might add, with cross-fingers and someday a very tall visiting grandson.

  

At noon the winter solstice sun streams through this window!

south side

Where thy art, that is home.

Emily Dickerson

hand hewn logs-slight arch--has a very torii (gate) look

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same...

(music & lyrics by Malvina Reynolds--photo by Thomas Hawk)

Finding a little bit of dirt to build a house in California is not a fast process.  First, land here is premium.  In dollars.  I'm sure it's true most places, but in the state with $800,000 little boxes on a foggy hillside...it is hard, hard, hard.  Why do people live here.  Here in the fog.  Here where they never stop painting the bridge a golden red.  Here where you are room temperature nearly all year.  Here where a morning drive can bring you to snow, desert heat, redwoods, Big Sur, Yosemite Falls, an ocean and two dormant volcanoes (maybe more!)  It costs to stay here. We had to figure out whether or not to build a home in this state.  Why stay in this state?  Until we found this and knew the answer.

Because it's home.

Building a house.  A simple, small house.  Passive solar.  Natural insulation (denim.)  With a large loft and quiet reading nook.  Small cozy bedrooms with dome ceilings.  A breezeway that can work as an extra sleeping area.  The living areas face south.

cupola

 

reading nook

Tim, the architect, and I discuss the flow in the rain

The above photos were taken in January.  All the native grasses and irises were moved to containers for replanting.  Trees that had to come down as they were leaning are finding their way into this house. The remaining logs, mainly fir and bishop pine, were donated to an organization that cuts it up and gives it to seniors on limited income in the area.

  

In March, the cupola and outside walls were up.  There are so many decisions to make.  Bathtubs, windows, roofing, etc.  I am still trying to keep everything with a quiet elegance, but quiet elegance can get costly.  Natural it is.  Simply Home.