Cottonwood Modern Update

The weather is finally starting to warm up and progress on the Cottonwood Modern house appropriately enough seems ready for Spring. So far, our job site meetings have been held on an “as needed basis” … which basically means whenever something interesting was happening and I “needed” to *wink* go see the progress. This particular job site is about a 40 minute drive from my office/ house so I can’t pop over whenever I want – but now that things like HVAC, electrical rough, plumbing rough, and A/V rough are mostly complete, the interior finish out will begin and the job will appear to start moving along much more quickly.

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The glass and window system at the cantilevered boxes are the last windows/ doors to get installed … figures right? Since there isn’t any scale to this pictures – at least not much, I thought it would help to know that the ceilings are at 14′-0″ tall. The lower portion of the window is at 10′-0″ … it’s a lot of glass. Pay particular attention to the corners – there aren’t any vertical mullions here.

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This house is on a large lot – 5 acres – something pretty uncommon for an urban lot. I’m not sure I can really call it an “urban” lot, but it is in the middle of the city, it just happens to be a fairly unique set of circumstances. There is a very pastoral view looking out through these large windows.

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Here is a close up look at what is actually happening in the corner of our large windows … steel rods. When the insulated windows get installed, you won’t actually see these rods but they are necessary to actually support the large cantilevered window sections.

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This is a view looking up at the corner  windows at the soffit. The glass goes all the way up so you can really start to get an appreciation for why the soffits are as decorative as they are – they are extremely visible. I still think having the T&G (tongue and groove) boards custom milled so that the joint is a square section and not the more traditional ‘V’ shape was a great decision. It is so clean-looking, I just love it.

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This might seem like a random set of images to include but the two pictures above are of the sliding door that leads into the study. It is 10′-0″ tall and 8′-0″ wide. The owners walked by this door on several occasions once it was installed and didn’t even realize that it was there. It isn’t a pocket door, more like a large sliding wall. When it is in the open position (which the owners insist it will be 99% of the time) it fills in the wall and visually goes away. We’ve also decided that the interior face of the door should be painted in chalkboard paint, making it easier to leave “surprise” messages for the 1% of the time the door gets closed … [shudder]

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The stone masons have also been making a lot of progress on the job. We have four major exterior finishes on this project – stone (like you see above which is a 25%/75% mix of two different types of stone), Lueders limestone large-scale cut panels, hybrid masonry stucco, and glass.

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The masons started on the pool pavilion and are about 90% complete. It has given us a good look at what the rest of the building will look like once the stone gets put in place. I am really excited to see the rest of the pavilion come together, the underside of the roof is the same exposed T&G wood boards that are on the rest of the house, structural wood decking, metal roof … it is going to be great!

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Another interesting addition to the job site recently is the addition of the pre-cast concrete counter top out at the pool pavilion. We discussed several different materials but in the end, the nature of the material, the finish, color, ease of maintenance … concrete was the right decision.

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The counter was cast in two sections – the large one on the left hand side weighing in at a whopping 750 pounds and spans the firewood bin.

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Here is a close up look at the joint between the two concrete panels – you can also get a better feel for the silvery grey color of the concrete. The edges are nice, smooth and tight. Soon the rest of the stone work will get put in place and the conduits and switches will get hidden.

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Just another look at the wood bin – you can see the edge of the fireplace just off to the right hand side.

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I included this picture (despite it sucking) just to show how close the pool pavilion actually is to the rest of the house. Everyone in this picture is standing on what will eventually be the deck of the pool pavilion – just a few long strides from the main house. On the right hand side of the picture you can see the pool – all of the cantilevered boxes on the rear elevation look out over the pool, and eventually out onto the pasture.

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This last picture gives you an idea of the relationship between the main house and the pool – like I said, they are pretty close to one another, about 18′ separates them. The deck to the pool pavilion is also about 5 feet lower than the finished floor elevation of the main house. This means the main house will be looking down on the pavilion (and vice versa for the pavilion looking up a the main house) and the nature of the exterior finish materials will really help connect these two structures to one another.

If you are new to the site, follow this link to catch up on all the development on the Cottonwood Modern House posts.

Cheers,

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