Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Virgina Plat House - a quick update

At the Virginia Plat House everything has been trimmed and is ready for the siding to go on. HVAC, plumbing, and electrical work should be under way as well. The color stain on the trim looks like a nice natural cedar. The owner told me that the siding boards were pre stained to make the finishing go a bit faster. You can also observe the steel brackets for the overhang in the photos of the back side. One thing that is different in this build is the owner has opted for shingle roofing - obviously more affordable than the metal roofing shown in the illustrations. For that they had to extend the plywood deck out to the end of the overhand, and I am guessing they did this with a double layer to build up strength and some bite for the roofing nails. The underside of the plywood deck is exposed at the overhangs. I'm not sure what their plan is for this. They may put up soffit boards, or go with the ply face which is cool too. There are three new photos of the house posted at the flickr set for this project. Also remember to look at the LamiDesign Flickr photo pool to see all the photos from customers documenting the house designs under construction. Our thanks go out to them for sharing their projects with us.

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Friday, April 18, 2008

0751 Suburban House - second scheme

Today, the second scheme first shown on the original post introducing the Suburban House project. In this scheme the house takes on a "T" shaped massing, with the garage front and forward creating an entry courtyard between itself and the house. Although this scheme was a different configuration than the first scheme, there was the same mission to attempt to gather the spaces around the living room. To that end the plan repeated some of the changes in level we saw in the first scheme, however with much less success. click the link below to continue reading. You'll see in the ground floor plan here that you enter a half level down from the living spaces, but on the same level as the master bedroom. The bedroom is remote from the door giving it privacy and a corner view out to the site, but this is essentially the same configuration as the other scheme. From the entry you would proceed up a half flight of steps to the living area. At the top of the plan there is a similar entry sequence coming from the garage which brings you into a mudroom entry of sorts, a half level down from the kitchen. Meanwhile upstairs resides the two additional bedrooms, but they are reached from the stair at the far end by the kitchen which takes you on a long path, a gallery of sorts, overlooking the living space and kitchen to bring you to the secondary bedrooms which are also open and overlook the living space a half level below. From this gallery there is also a passage to the home office/studio over the garage. This passage on both levels distances the garage from the house creating the entry court. the back corner where the master bedroom overlooks the site the back wall of the house where the kitchen and living spaces would open out to a terrace The conclusion was that while there were many interesting aspects to this plan it was simply stretching too much to try and make the multi level circulation work. It was set aside, but ended up re-entering the mix later on in a new form. We will get to that later.

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Thursday, April 10, 2008

0738 Palo Alto - Done! Construction Prints available now

Construction Prints for the 0738 Spirit of Palo Alto House are done, ready for order, catalog page updated and ready to roll. Thank you everybody for your interest, and my apologies for the wait on this one.

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Wednesday, April 09, 2008

New Mexico EcoSteel House - more and better photos

The Owner of the New Mexico EcoSteel House posted a slew of new photos at his Picasa photo site, and we have reposted many of them to our own flickr group of the house. The interior fit out of the house is well along, and there are many photos of the inside work. There are also many more photos of the outside work that give a good show of the structures Inside you can start to see the shape of the rooms now that there is some wall board over the studs. You can see how one space over looks another, and how the bridge and stairs are like a sculpture in middle of the house. The Owner also took some great photos of the view enjoyed from each side of the house. Its a dramatically beautiful land out there. click the link below to continue reading, and for a browser of the new photos. Outside there are many more views of the house and garage than we have seen before, and particularly images of them framed together so you can get a better experience of the two together.

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Sunday, April 06, 2008

Common Pond Plat House - construction almost complete

Its been some time since we last reported on the Plat House being built at the environmentally sensitive development, Common Pond, in Georgia. Last time we saw it the roof was going on and the rough "framing" was almost complete. Well the inside and outside are nearly complete now and the last details are being finished up on site. You may recall from the previous posts that this was the first Plat House built from SIPs panels. That has gone well and as you can see there is little in the outward appearance of the house that reveals the energy efficiency of the SIPs construction. Here we see the side of the house facing their view, with the decks. I was told that the final grade around the decks will be filled to eliminate the code requirement for railings which will leave the views unobstructed. The beautiful siding that has been used is cypress boards in a true board and batten pattern. This sets the batten strips on a close repeat as the width of actual boards is much smaller than the spacing of battens placed on sheet siding materials. click through the link below to read more and see more photos. In the photo browser below you can see some interesting shots of the fit out of the interior. The owner's have opted for a beautiful pine flooring. Pine is a soft wood, yet it was very common for floors in the past none the less. My house has pine on the second floor, and since we are without shoes there most of the time its worn well. You can also see some of the interior doors in a couple of the shots. They are fully glazed with a reeded pattern glass - very nice. All in all it is another unique Plat House. I'm continuously amazed at the individual expressions created by each customer of what is essentially the same house. Each one plays out with unique materials and varied priorities to make a unique home for each owner.

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