In a nutshell, a corner is being turned. The trigger has been pulled and we're off. Being weathered in (well, at least 99% weathered in) is such an incredibly satisfying achievement, especially since it has taken so long and has been fraught with so many setbacks. Considering that all of the trades and components have been staged for completion, the challenge now will be to prevent all of the horses from tripping over each other in the mad dash to the finish line.
(NO LONGER) CURTAILED BY CURTAIN WALL PT. III
After dumping Curtain Wall Clown Number 1, I almost felt like Wile E. Coyote running off of a cliff- it felt good at first, but then, when the gravity of what I had done hit me, I started to freefall into a sort of panic state. What am I gonna do now? Can I order curtain wall in a box from Acme? What impact will this have on the project? Will I even be able to find someone to take over? If I do, will they charge an arm and a leg (i.e., union)?
So what does one do when he runs out of options? He turns to the Blue Book and starts letting the fingers do the walking, that's what.
I must have cold-called literally 40 glazing contractors located between Westhampton and Brooklyn- the vast majority, as expected, were strictly commercial or strictly union. I must have sent drawings/pictures/elevations to 20 of them. About 10 of them went out to visit the site. About 3 of them provided written proposals. At one extreme, the proposal to finish the job was actually MORE expensive than the total cost of the job by Curtwain Wall Clown Number 1! The others fell within a wide spread ($25K!) under that.
Ultimately, out of the gazillion contractors I contacted, it really only came down to one- a small father-son glazing contracting business located in Jackson Heights, Queens. The young son in particular was especially taken with the design of the Greenbelt house and seemed very enthusiastic about having the opportunity to add it to his portfolio of projects. And based on some of the other work they did for businesses in the outer boroughs as well as Manhattan (including a wonderful modern penthouse triplex on a rooftop on Warren St. in TriBeCa that I had always admired [that was owned by that CEO in that drug stock scandal that wasn't "a good thing."- hint, hint]), I felt like they had the right mindset and pedigree to do this. And not only was the proposal very reasonable, their specialty was on custom-fabricating everything precisely to spec. And you can't put a price tag on enthusiasm; there's nothing worse than being treated like you're just another McCustomer doing just another McJob.
Less than a month after signing the dotted line, things started happening- most of the operable window units and all four of the sliding doors and the front door frame were installed. I was very pleased, especially by the sliders, which were anodized alumninum on both the inside and outside, and had super, super-narrow profiles. Tres chic!
However, as you can see, the door hardware was, for all intents and purposes, major-league FUG. They are presently scouring their catalogs and online resources to find something decent. I provided them with an Omnia door leverset which they are going to try to marry up with the lock/mortise mechanism in the door just in case they were not able to find something decent.
Last to go up were the freakin' triangle end gables in the roof, which required on-site glass pane fabrication since these were all odd trianglular/polygonal shapes. Quite fascinating to watch. After repeatedly taking precise measurements of lengths and angles, templates of each glazing section were made. Then they scored large sheets of glass along the templates that were then snapped perfectly along the score with a strategic tap at just the right location and intensity (apparently this is a bit of an art). After thorough cleansing, the cut glass panes were bonded to metal channels/gaskets, evacuated and sealed with some kind of a suction machine. Almost immediately they were ready to be popped into the curtain wall frame.
FIRE IN THE HOLE
After bouncing around a bunch of ideas about how to plug that big hole in the living room curtain wall for the fireplace, we just decided to do the most straightforward thing- a masonry box. And in my classic display of overkill, I ordered a monster of a fireplace (Lennox Col-3629) that necessitated a monster of a masonry box. Ron the builder thinks it looks awful, but I kind of like the scale of it- in a jail cell for dwarfs kind of way.
LOST IN TRANSITION
After waiting six months for my Duravit bath fixture order to be fabricated and shipped from Germany, the delivery date was set. I was like a kid on Christmas Eve waiting for the delivery truck like I was waiting for St. Nick himself. Rather than visions of sugar plums dancing, I saw myself plowing through the boxes, one-by-one, to take in all of the modern Euro-fabulosity. Box upon box upon box upon box of it. But when the delivery finally arrived, I quickly surmized that a lot of it was missing. A shitload, even. I basically received one of the tubs and a bunch of odds-and-ends and fittings. So where was all the cool schwag??? Wherefore the Starck X basin? The "In the Mood" vanity?? I called "that online e-tailer" to ask why over half of my order was missing (and arguably the cooler half!). Apparently my shipment should have arrived on two skids, but I only received one. Therefore, the second skid must have been left behind somewhere. Unfortunately that "somewhere" could have been any one of the bazillion freight hubs between the midwest and Long Island. To complicate matters, large freight like this may change carriers multiple times after it leaves its point of origination. So the search was on… in every port and dock between Chicago and Boston. Alas, after a couple of weeks and a couple of false positives, the trail finally went dead cold for the second skid around Indianapolis. It was almost, without a doubt, sent to someone else by mistake. It was officially branded "MIA" at this point.
All we know is that someone, somewhere out in the hinterlands of red state America, inadvertently received a large shipment of expensive merchandise that did not belong to them. It's time to 'fess up, whoever you are. It's times like this that I really question humanity, integrity and the goodwill of people. Yes, I have been checking in on eBay to see if any of my stuff ended up there.
Anyway, "that e-tailer" has committed to fulfilling the order by any means possible, but some of it will take another six months to order from Germany. Schießen Sie mich!
"CRACK IS WACK!"
The other day while I was checking on things I noticed that the front Superior Wall under the balcony had a hairline crack running through it. Top to bottom.
Hmmm… Then I noticed another hairline crack running… top to bottom… Then I noticed yet another hairline crack. Hmmm…
Immediately I remembered that two HVAC supplies were run through the recesses of this section of wall. In fact, the HVAC contractor went through the backbreaking effort of breaking through the concrete header/footer between the basement and first floor, as well as the concrete header to the second floor:
I suspected immediately that the herculean force used to create these passages most likely caused these cracks to form over time. We took pictures and immediately had Superior Walls have their say on it. Without sending an engineer out to assess the situation, SW surmized that it should not be a structural issue. Still, they said that an engineer should come out (hint: at my expense) to determine the cause of the cracks (i.e., to see if SW may be liable), and to determine the appropriate remediation. Ron the builder suspects that, at the very least, some form of lateral bracing will be required, even if it means having to redirect the HVAC supplies, filling the recesses between studs with concrete, etc.
I am not terribly concerned about this. All I know is that somebody else is paying to assess the situation and fix this. Not me. If it isn't an inherent failure of the Superior Walls system, then it's the responsibility of the HVAC contractor. They can fight it out amongst themselves; I'll just ring the bell.
GOOD GOLLY, I NEEDS A LOLLY
Maybe it was all of the heavy glass being staged on the garage roof. Maybe it was the weight of the garage door and motor. But in the end gravity won.
The first sign of trouble was the formation of a pond, er, puddle on the roof over the garage after a rainstorm. A pretty deep puddle. At first I assumed that the roof was not pitched sufficiently or that there was perhaps a deficiency of roofing material in that spot. Later, after some investigation, the roofing contractor determined that the LVL in the garage was starting to sag. In a nutshell, it seems that the beam was insufficiently sized to support the entire roof structure to begin with. In hindsight, this should have been a steel beam. But in the interest of saving a few drakmas, we went with an LVL instead. Penny wise, pound foolish indeed. So rather than undergoing the horrific task of replacing it with a steel beam after the fact, a lolly column will be installed to support the LVL. Ugh! I am definitely disappointed with having a column in the garage, but I suppose that is infinitely better than having the entire thing collapse during the next Nor'easter this winter.
ODDS n ENDS (mostly odd)
My mailbox:
Ron the builder is convinced that someone is going to a) steal it or b) knock it over with a baseball bat. I guess no matter where you go there will never be a shortage of bored teens.
Break Metal:
I didn't think I was going to like this (my heart was set on clear anodized), but I think it adds some depth/contrast to the curtain wall.
Stair Design:
No, this is not MY staircase (I wish!), but the new curtain wall contractor is going to take up the challenge of doing an L-shaped design inspired by this cantilevered design. He's a brave, brave man!
Dear OPEC and your $75/barrel oil: Drop dead.
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