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Cottonwood Modern

January 14, 2013 by Bob Borson 14 Comments

Wow! I can’t believe I have let it go almost three months without an update on the Cottonwood Modern project. I actually have about three of four posts started on this project that I just haven’t been able to find make time to work on. Eventually I will focus on the fireplaces and the tornado shelter/ safe room, but today I wanted to catch up and take a look at the soffits.

New Project 3d view 02

This is a 3d image of this house and I thought it would be beneficial to include here just as a reminder of where this project is headed. The cantilevered rooms on the rear elevation have really started to take shape and now the pool has been dug in and received its structural shell (gunite), I think it is safe to safe the people who visit the site are starting to be able to visualize where we are going.

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Cottonwood Modern main living room framing

This is the view of the Main room … I am standing on the ground looking into the cantilevered space that’s on the left – the kitchen will be on the far right of this picture. You can see where the transition will take place by looking at the framing where we have lowered the ceiling height. Kitchens are typically a more intimate space and we can to make sure that the scale reflects this concept. The fireplace in this image is an “Isokern” fireplace … I have a post that will focus on these types of fireplaces in the next week or two so I will largely ignore them today.

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Cottonwood Modern pool shell with void cartons

This is the pool, well, it’s the hole for the pool. If you live in an area of the country/world where pools are not all that common you might be thinking to yourself “That pool is lined in cardboard? Those Texans don’t know what they’re doing.” It’s okay, we actually do know what we’re doing. The area where this project is located has very active soil (which means it expands a lot when it gets wet and dries. The cardboard you are looking at are called “void forms.” This is a structural pool so you see the concrete piers (the concrete posts that have rebar sticking up) are located and the pool shell will get poured on top of the cardboard which will decompose over time and create a “void” between the ground and the bottom of the pool shell. That means that when the ground expands and contracts – as it gets wet and then dries – it won’t move the pool. This is important for lots of obvious reasons but particularly so because we have an infinity edge that runs along the entire right hand side. If that edge isn’t perfectly level, the water won’t flow over the edge evenly and will look terrible.

We don’t like terrible in my office.

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Cottonwood Modern pool shell with frozen water

Here is a view of the pool after the shell has been poured. You might be surprised to know that the water that has collected in the middle of the pool is actually frozen solid (people don’t think it gets cold in Texas … it does, just not for months on end, more like a week or two.)

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Cottonwood Modern rear elevation looking towards pavilion

From this picture you can look back from the opposite end of the pool towards the pool pavilion … way … in … the … back. This is a 5 acre lot and the house and pool run across its width so that most of the lot still looks and feels undeveloped, raw, and in its natural state.

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Cottonwood Modern cmu work at pavilion steel framing

The pool pavilion is still a ways off but the steel is in place – most of it will remain exposed and visible from the underside of the pavilion roof. The masons were on site blocking out around the fireplace and the grill area and I thought it would be interesting to show how the steel was embedded into the concrete block. The edge of the roof cantilevers out beyond the line of where the CMU (concrete masonry unit) ends so we needed to extend it into the wall to achieve the structural support we needed.

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Cottonwood Modern steel post at pavilion

This picture isn’t particularly interesting other than the holes that were cut into the steel column – or more specifically why those holes were added. Since the steel is exposed along the ceiling of the pavilion, we needed a way to distribute power to things like ceiling fan … but who wants to look at an electrical conduit running up the side of an exposed steel column? I don’t, and you shouldn’t either.

The holes allow us to run the power up inside the steel column. Maybe I am overly excited about something so insignificant but these are the little things that you don’t learn about in school.

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Cottonwood Modern front entryway

This is a look at the front approach – the large window on the right hand side is the kitchen and you can see though this window all the way through the main space out into the rear of the lot. This view – and the trees on the lot – are why the owners bought the lot and it’s our jobs to take full advantage of the resources presented..

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Cottonwood Modern roof deck equipment layout

This is a picture of some on-site problem solving. We ended up with more equipment on the roof that we had originally planned for and although we had the space to accommodate that equipment, we still needed to work out where it would go as well as allow for convenient servicing of that equipment.All told, there are 4 air-conditioning compressors for the main house, two for the garage, and a generator if the power ever goes out. These are cut out templates so that we could review our options with the HVAC contractor.

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Cottonwood Modern cantilevered boxes rear elevation

We are back at the rear of the house looking at the cantilevered rooms. All of these walls are mostly glass so you will be able to see the soffits that project out from these rooms. As a result, they needed to be designed. Maybe it’s just me but I am a HUGE fan of designed soffits. They don’t have to be ridiculously expensive but it is a feature that is largely relegated to flat painted surfaces with the idea that nobody will look at them. We do those kind as well but not on a house like this. On this house, we have something much nicer.

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Cottonwood Modern mahogahny soffit 04

Cottonwood Modern mahogahny soffit 01

We have mahogany boards that will receive a slight stain finish to even out the color and protect the wood. We originally were going to use Douglas Fir boards – which would have looked great but we found out that the mill had a deal on mahogany boards at 25% of their normal cost (we got these boards for around $2.25 a board foot.)

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Cottonwood Modern mahogahny soffit tongue and groove boards

We had the boards custom milled to have a square edge reveal so that the boards would be articulated and their pattern more discernible. Normally tongue and groove boards don’t have a gap and the joint is expressed in a “v” pattern. The square reveal is just a slightly modern interpretation of a more traditional detail.

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Cottonwood Modern mahogahny soffit 02

Another look at the soffit with the mahogany boards in place and the pattern we designed in the corners.

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Cottonwood Modern mahogahny soffit 03

This is another look at the soffit but if you are observant, you will notice the gap at the right hand side. This gap is in place to allow the passage of the stone veneer up and through where the soffit is located. This is a cleaner detail than framing the soffit all the way back to the sheathing (plywood) and then having a new flashing condition.

As I mentioned in the beginning, there are a few other partially complete articles I am working on, things are just now starting to move a little faster on the job site and there are all sorts of interesting things to share.

Cheers!

Bob signature

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Filed Under: Construction, Modern House, My Work Tagged With: Construction Observation, Construction Process, Cottonwood, design, Materials, modern house

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