Modern House in Dallas: Update

Things are coming together faster on this project than the frequency of these posts would imply. My last significant update on this project (here) was 5 months ago and a lot has happened. I am going to commit to providing more timely updates in the future – now that the finishes are going in, that’s an easy promise to keep. In fact, it will be easier to isolate some of the really interesting and dynamic parts of the project and devote an entire post on them rather than create these large update posts.

So here we are, approximately 5 months away from the owners moving into the finished house, and site visits are becoming a bit more frequent – probably 1 a week at this point. I have to resist going by the site too often – it doesn’t do anybody any good if I go over too often – I just don’t like missing out on anything at this stage. One day no tile … next day … tile. And yes, we did generate lots of tile plans to show where we wanted each joint to fall. In a house where the spaces are large and you can see through one space into the next several, little details matter a lot.

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The front of the house. One day I will go by the site and there won’t be any vans or trucks parked out front.

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This is the large window that is in the main stairwell at the entry. I’m not going to focus in on this area to much because there is a screen wall that is getting built that covers this entire window that will have its own post … but look for that probably sometime next week. The metal fabricators actually finished putting it together today but I haven’t seen it yet.

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This picture is taken from the first landing of the main stairwell. The window on the left hand side is the large window we just looked at on the front elevation. These stairs will eventually received a concrete tread and some pretty nifty hand-railing. The concrete treads will sit inside those metal trays – you can see how the trays turn up on the sides but it will be all concrete on the front and rear.

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This picture is taken at the top of the stairs, just before you walk out onto the rooftop terrace. The large window on the front elevation is the light source you see coming in from the right hand side. Eventually there will be large format art pieces on these walls.

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The roof top terrace. Large enough for group seating – there is a grill up here, an outdoor kitchen, bar seating and a fireplace. Half of the terrace has a roof over it but as you move out towards the edge, the roof stops and turns into a shade structure. Right now all you can see is the perimeter steel framing for the shade portion.

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This is the Great room looking back towards the dining area (where the site superintendent is currently standing). This is a large room with 14′ and 12′ high ceilings.

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In this picture, I am standing where the superintendent was standing in the previous picture (dining room looking towards the great room with the kitchen just over to the left hand side).

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Now I am standing on the outdoor terrace off the upper level master bedroom looking back at the terrace across the patio. Down at the bottom of the patio you can just make out the beginning of the small swimming pool. The large expanse of glass on the right is the bridge component that connects the front of the house with the rear of the house. It’s a 47′ free span complete with glass floor. Eventually the bridge will be wrapped in black zinc metal siding.

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This is the upper level master bedroom – on the left is the terrace from the last picture.

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There are several guest bedrooms in this house, this being one of them. The reason I included this picture was to show the shade pocket detail above the window on the right. Due to the steel structure in the ceiling, we weren’t able to include a recessed shade pocket when it was added after construction had begun. Rather than just build it out over the window, we extended the pocket from wall to wall. In the end, this will be a clean way to detail this condition.

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The first cabinets have just now started to show up on site. This happens to be one of the utility rooms and this is paint grade millwork – we have a combination of stain grade and paint grade on this project. Despite the obvious outward aesthetic difference between paint and stain grade millwork, we don’t detail how they are built any differently.

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A close-up look at how the cabinetry is set at the wall. This detail allows the millwork contractor a precise way to control the size of the joints while insuring that the cabinet fits tight to the wall.

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This is the ground level playroom located in the back half of the building right off the pool.

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Exiting the playroom out onto the patio, I am standing underneath the bridge component. The exposed structure that is visible under the bridge is the portion where the glass floor will be installed. At the far end of the bridge is an outdoor kitchen area. This area will change a lot from what you see here in this picture when everything gets built out. I’ll save those details for another day.

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I took this picture as I was leaving the property. Despite the obvious difference between our house and the adjacent house (located 10′ away), the scale of these two homes is fairly similar. Both are three stories in height and sit on their respected sites with the same side yard setbacks. Since these are both infill lots, the sites are somewhat narrow and deep and as a result, interior courtyards are common.

I am excited to show everyone this project and look forward to the next update! Cheers

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