Population density, Thai style

Car Design Misses

There's been a lot to admire in the field of automotive design the past few years. (Exhibits: Ferrari 599, Aston Martin Vantage, Alfa Romeo 8C) There's also been a lot of controversy. (Bangle, anyone?) For all the controversial designs, you couldn't really point to too many outright design misses. But two cars were recently introduced at the Chicago Auto Show that really miss the mark, in my mind.

1. 2009 Acura RL
I used to be a big fan of Acura. They were fun cars with Japanese reliability plus an added dose of sportiness and subtle luxury. The model names imbued each line with their own identities (Legend, Integra, NSX). They were competing and winning in Formula 1 by supplying engines to the McLaren team.

However, since the early 90s Acura has steadily slipped further and further behind the other aspirational brands. And a company that had some sense of styling sanity and direction now appears to have none. To wit, the 2009: Acura RL:

This is supposed to be the flagship of the Acura line, but where is the boldness? Where is the presence? The '09 RL has the blandness of an Accord. Look at the side flanks: Minimal surface development, parts bin rub strip molding, uninspiring profile. Cover up the front and rear, and you'd swear you were looking at a previous generation Malibu.

Even worse are the front end styling miscues: A grill that is a caricature of the Acura chevron design cue, and doesn't harmonize with the rest of the front end at all. A clumsily executed falling waterfall fascia that makes the car appear bucktoothed. Lines that don't flow to the rest of the car. But that's not even the worst part of the car.

This is a Bangle Butt done completely wrong. As jarring as the original E65 7 Series rear end was, you could at least make the case that the forms, shapes, and lines were guided by a consistent, if not entirely aesthetic, approach.

The '09 RL's rear is a jumble of competing design elements, completely at odds with one another. How else do you explain the wacky 5 line join at the top of the rear lamp cluster: from the top, you've got 1) the trunk lid cut line, 2) the rear fender character line, 3) the top edge of the lamp cluster, 4) the trunk opening cut line, 5) the crease from the rear deck lid spoiler.

The chrome strip above the license plate just sits there, uninterested in anything else around it, yet crudely housing the backup lights like lesions.

The rear decklid rises slightly as if to give a spoiler effect, but ends up disassociating it from the rest of the rear end, calling attention to itself in a bad way.

And the exhausts are a sort-of flattened hexagon, um..... why, exactly?

The 2009 RL is a jumble of a front end, a jarring mess of a back end, and blandville in the middle. So very disappointing.


2. Volkswagen Routan
Here we have Volkswagen's first minivan sold in the US since the Eurovan, which was the successor of the Vanagon, which was the descendant of the venerable VW Bus.

For their latest US van offering, VW chose to join up with Chrysler and offer a rebadged version of the latest Chrysler minivan platform, and as such shares its underpinnings with the 2008 Dodge Caravan and Chrysler Town & Country.

Design-wise, the end result is less than successful, as VW design had to be grafted onto a Chrysler platform.

The front end actually isn't bad. All the VW elements are present and accounted for, but somehow they don't work within the confines and proportions of the Chrysler front end. The hood seems to squish all the front end elements into the lower half of the front fascia.

The rear is worse off. Somehow the rear design, particularly the shape of the rear lamps, reinforce the low overall position of all the design elements. The vertical balance is thrown off in that the rear window appears to be oversized and pushing down the lights, license plate, and bumper step.

Finally the interior just screams badge engineering. If there's one thing the VW Group can do well, it's interiors. Just look at Audi.

Here? Not so good. The blocky forms in the IP of the Chrysler vans persist here, despite an attempt to break it up with a horizontal faux-aluminum strip. The VW switchgear somehow looks out of place as well. They kind of look lost within the spartan Germanic design aesthetic that's been laid on top of the simple, blocky American shapes and forms of the IP.

Iron Chef Fairfield

Took Miranda to a Breakfast with Santa event put on by the Parks and Rec Dept. last weekend. The middle school choir was singing carols, and I took Miranda up front to watch them sing.

As we got up to go back to our table, I turned around and who did I see? Iron Chef Bobby Flay.

I was pretty sure he didn't live in town, so I guess he was visiting a friend and they both came to the event to see the friend's daughter sing in the choir.

Somehow, I pictured a star chef spending winter weekend mornings whipping up a gourmet breakfast spread as celebrities dropped by his house to drink mulled cider in front of a roaring fire while awaiting a sumptuous brunch.

But I guess they just trudge to a local middle school to watch youngsters sing, like the rest of us.

Serialism and Tots

Lileks continues to hit the funny bone:

most attempts to turn your baby into a SuperGenius via instructional tapes or early exposure to Schoenberg (teaches them how to count to 12, at least) or in-utero projections of high renaissance art are folly, and reflect the insecurities of narcissitic [sic] parents who think that showing a kid Van Gogh when they’re six months old will help them get into Harvard.

Tee hee.

And just for context, Lileks manages to go through the following topics in the subsequent two paragraphs:

1. Baby Einstein
2. Serialism
3. Sesame Street
4. 9/11

And it all makes sense.

Back to the Future, today

Another tidbit from James Lileks today.

Maybe it was something I realized last weekend, when posting that Back to the Future YouTube link - the movie, which I still think is a perfect little thing, was made in 1985. Marty was sent back to 1955. If they made the movie today, he’d go back to 1977.

Think about that. 1977 would look like today, minus computers. Same clothes, same Pink Floyd tunes on the classic rock station, same smear of gimcrack commercial architecture interspersed with stalwarts from the 20s. Color TV, Star Wars, angry Iran. Marty could order a Pepsi Free in 1977, and they’d think it was a sugarless brand they hadn’t gotten yet.

BTTF was an iconic movie for me growing up in the 80s, and its timeline transposition from 1985 to 1955 placed me inside a world I knew nothing about. Thinking that the same transposition today would make me 8 years old is a bit of a shock.

Lileks Does Disney World

I'd never heard of James Lileks before, but was referred to this Minnesotan journalist/blogger's first entry on his series about visiting Disney World with his family.

Who hasn't been to Disney World? Who couldn't relate to this? Lileks has a nice, sardonic writing style, but this sequence convinced me to add James Lileks to me blog list:

"The breakfast? The best hotel breakfast ever. They don’t take your order. There’s no point in taking your order, because they know what you want so they might as well bring it. You get a big plate of eggs, bacon, potatoes and sausages, plus tiny Belgian waffles shaped like you-know-who. This is what it means to be an American: pouring syrup on Mickey’s head and eating him. It’s secular communion. And it’s delicious!"

Good stuff.

New Specialized Servers from IBM and Sun

A short article in the New York Times technology section caught my eye today. The title in the Times is "Sun and I.B.M. to Offer New Class of High-End Servers," and I thought it would describe some new, run-of-the-mill server offerings from the tech giants that offered grid capability, more processing cores, hot-swappable blade configurations, etc. You know, the standard server enhancements that have come down the pike the past few years.

But IBM and Sun are both offering something much different. Something that I think could be signaling a shift in high-end server design.

For a couple of decades, high-end servers were typically massively-parallel affairs built with cheap commodity-level items. They were designed to be flexible enough to tackle most problems that required large amounts of raw computational power. These new machines are built with specific applications and purposes in mind.

Sun's machine -- called the Sun Fire X4950 Streaming Switch -- is designed to be an ultra-fast video server, capable of streaming out millions of discrete video streams simultaneously. It's target audience is cable and telcos, who would presumably insert these machines into their digital video broadcast infrastructure to enable personalized advertising and on-demand content.

It signals the advent of the new, digital video era, and could change the landscape of broadcast TV and advertising. Imagine that instead of buying ad time during, say, "Lost" to be shown to everyone, advertisers could choose instead to show their ads only to those people watching "Lost" who had also watched "Heroes" and "24." While another advertiser could air their ad in the same slot, but only to those watching "Lost" who had also watched "Desperate Housewives" and "American Idol."

More interesting, I think, is IBM's new server. IBM has integrated their mainframe technology with their Cell processor, to create something called a "gameframe." The design is optimized to be able to support hundreds of thousands of simultaneous users in an online virtual world, such as Second Life or WoW, with "an unparalleled level of realism to visual interactions.

This is an implicit acknowledgement from one of the pioneering computing companies that virtual worlds are here and are here to stay. And rather than just being an entertainment medium, I believe IBM envisions such virtual worlds as the next step in collaboration and interactive communication, moving towards where Instant Messaging is today.

Wendy works on a website: www.askdrjudy.com

Wendy designed a website for a doctor in Miranda's pediatric practice who specializes in pediatric endocrinology. The website support Dr. Judy Hochstadt's HELP program, which stands for Healthy Eating Lifestyle Program (alternatively, Healthy Eating Loses Pounds).

It promises a "simple yet effective six-week nutrition and lifestyle management program, to realize goals of reversing childhood overweight and obesity and its associated health risks."

The site is located at http://www.askdrjudy.com

Easily create movies from photos

I've been playing around with trackingshot.com, which provides an easy, automated way of creating movies (with soundtrack ) from photos. You simply upload a bunch of pictures and an MP3 file, and this site will automatically arrange the photos with transition effects and add the soundtrack.

Apparently, the site will analyze the uploaded photos and music, and make a movie with cuts to the beat, appropriate transitions and pans, etc. I haven't experimented enough to really see if this is the case. My first movie uses an acoustic guitar soundtrack that probably doesn't "analyze" very easily. Check it out:

Miranda TrackingShot.com movie

Tongue-twisting CPU description

Just when you thought the PC desktop CPU field couldn't get more confusing, along comes this gem of a phrase that describes Intel's upcoming CPU, code-named "Kentsfield:"

"two dual-core Core 2 Duo die"

San Diego in a Shelby GT-H

The original plan was to turn in the Ford Escape I had been driving on the company's dime for 3 days in exchange for a Mustang convertible -- that I would spring for -- for my remaining free time in San Diego.

I had flown into town late Sunday night to attend a Gartner conference. While waiting for the lone counter agent to finish up with the customer in front of me, I looked around the Hertz establishment at Lindbergh Field looking for something interesting to rent on my last day. There were a few Hummer H3's out in the parking lot, but those did not interest me in the least. There were also a smattering of Hertz' Prestige Collection cars: Volvos, Jags, Lincolns, etc. Again, no interest. I decided that since I was in San Diego, a Mustang convertible was the way to go. Having decided this, I completed my transaction for the Ford Escape that would be my ride during the conference, and headed to my hotel.

After the first day of the conference, I met up with my old fiend Julie, who is a bio-med post-doc at UCSD. She took me to Station Sushi, which is kind of like a surf shack masquerading as a sushi bar. This was a super-casual sushi dive with a definite SoCal surfer vibe. Plus they served up the best California roll I've ever had.

During a conference session on Tuesday, I was IM'ing with my friend Ken about where to go for dinner that night. He suggested an In-N-Out burger, since I was in California. This sounded like a great idea. While researching In-N-Out locations however, I read about an establishment touted by many as the best burger in San Diego: Hodad's. I decided In-N-Out could wait until my next trip to Los Angeles in July.

So, after the conference I hopped into the Escape and headed to Newport Ave, Ocean Beach. Ocean Beach is the artsy, funky, bohemian area of San Diego (they call themselves The People's Republic of Ocean Beach), and Newport Avenue is the main commercial strip, running from the hills straight towards the Pacific Ocean.

Hodad's is an open front burger joint, with (surprise!) a surfing theme. Old license plates from around the country cover the walls, along with other surfing-related memorabilia. Surfboards hang from the ceilings. You grab a menu from a stack by the door, and seat yourself. Eventually, a server takes your order. And I do mean eventually: The surfer vibe trickles down to the service as well.

I ordered a cheeseburger basket and a vanilla milkshake. The milkshake came first, served in a frappe cup and topped with an additional scoop of ice cream. Perfect. You can either eat the ice cream, or let it slowly melt to maintain optimal consistency and temperature throughout the milkshake lifecycle. Then came the burger. This was a 6 inch tall tower of a burger, with fully 4 inches taken up by the veggies and condiments: lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, ketchup, mustard, mayo. The menu advises that unless stated otherwise, all burgers come with the works. My server did ask me if I wanted everything on it. I went for the full experience, and it was delicious. There's a lot of veggies to go along with the beef, so it's not the "beefiest" burger I've ever had (Louis' Lunch in New Haven takes that title). But it was definitely very tasty.

On Wednesday morning, I headed back to Hertz to turn in the Escape and pick up the 'Stang vert to tool around in after the conference ended later that day. As I walked from the return area back to the rental building, I noticed a couple of cars that had not been there Sunday night: Prominently displayed in front of the rental building were 3 Shelby GT-Hs. I asked inside if any were available, and the agent nodded "Yes." Woo-hoo! I knew it would be expensive, and it was: $199/day. I also sprang for the damage waiver, as I anticipated some spirited driving. Wendy also probably wouldn't have approved. But a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, etc.

The rental process for the Shelby was more drawn out than just handing over your credit card and getting the keys to a Dodge Stratus. First, a Hertz manager needed to get the keys from a locked safe and pull the car around. Then, you must show proof of a departing airline itinerary; local residents are not allowed to walk in and rent this car. We had to call Continental for them to verify that I indeed had a ticket back to Connecticut. Finally you must go through with the manager an extensive car condition check and inventory, including in the engine bay and trunk.

So how does it drive? To answer that, you have to keep in mind a couple of things: 1. We live in an age of marketing and bling, and 2. we live in an increasingly litigious society. As such, despite the Shelby name, I believe the GT-H is much closer to a base Mustang than the Shelby GT500. I'm no Mustang expert, but I think the GT-H is basically a Mustang GT with a cold air intake, and cat-back muffler and pipes upgrade. On the suspension front, there's a front strut tower brace, recalibrated shocks, lowering springs, upgraded roll bars, and a shorter final drive.

The suspension upgrades seem to pay off well. Again, I'm no Mustang expert, and have not driven a current model GT. But the GT-H tracks nicely through corners, even if it doesn't feel nimble or spry. You can sense the front strut bar working to keep the front end planted. The solid rear axle also works well, but you can still feel the rear end step out a bit when disturbed.

You can definitely sense the weight of the car (>3500 lbs). The car will push a bit and start to understeer at the limit. Also, the all-seasons (235/55-17 M+S PZero Neros) that were probably mandated by Hertz' lawyers conspire to lower the limits. Most tragically, traction control cannot be disabled on GT-Hs. The button is there, but can't be pushed.

As for the engine, it's the same 4.6 V-8 that's in the GT, but with the aforementioned intake/exhaust upgrades. Throttle tip-in is very gentle, so there's no great neck snapping torque available just off idle. The DOHC engine needs to be revved a bit to really get on cam. Plus, the automatic tranny seems to rob a lot of this engine's power. I guess in those respects the power is a little underwhelming.

However, it sounds great. The CAI and muffler improvements really let the V-8 rumble out. That, plus the bling package (black w/gold racing stripes, upgraded front fascia with hood pins) really gets heads turning on the street. I had one jogger chase me down in the streets of San Diego to ask what car I was driving. Another time, a pickup truck full of teenage girls came alongside and tried to pick me up. A man crossing the street in front me pointed at the car, said "V-8," and gave me a thumbs up. So the car definitely attracts attention.

Bling for the driver comes in the form of a Shelby commemorative inscription on the dash between the front vents.

With the GT-H at my disposal, I proceeded to explore the rest of San Diego: Coronado, Silver Strand State Beach (nice night-time high speed runs there!), Mission Beach, La Jolla, Torrey Pines. I had dinner Wednesday night at a downtown BBQ place where they filmed a couple of the bar scenes from Top Gun. I sat right in front of the actual piano used in that scene where Goose and Mav sing Great Balls of Fire.

I enjoyed my time in San Diego. It's a beautiful city with lots to do. And with a Shelby GT-H, all the more so.

Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana in Fairfield

The best pizza in the world is coming to within a mile of my house!

Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana is widely regarded as the best pizza in the world. And after 80-some-odd years of operating establishments on Wooster Street in New Haven, CT, they are opening a new location mere minutes away from my house in Fairfield.

Now, it was never any great hassle to travel 30 minutes up to New Haven for great pizza. But this new Fairfield location will change the dynamic of take out pizza for us at home.

I swung by the new location today -- which is still under construction -- and managed to snap a couple of photos. Pepe's is taking over the location of CJ's Restaurant on Commerce Drive in Fairfield. This is an up-and-coming area, but is currently home to some auto dealerships and other industrial and trade-oriented supply shops. It's a little off the beaten path from the typical Fairfield restaurant locations, being located across from a electrical supply store, and a quarter mile down from Connecticut Limosine's Bridgeport station.

It looks like the restaurant will take over the entire first floor of the building. I don't know what's on the second floor. (Rooms to rent?) There is a modest sized parking lot (15-20 spots) to the side of the building, and the entrance is on that side as well. As you walk into Pepe's, you'll notice what I presume will be a dining area to the left. This could also be the waiting area. Straight ahead is a short, shallow ramp up to another dining area. What looks to be a service area already has a beverage refrigerator installed (labeled Foxon Park, of course). To the right is the counter, pizza-making area, and the oven.

Ah, the oven. If you've seen the oven at Pepe's in New Haven, you'll know that it is a beast of an oven. It takes up the entire wall, and is coal-fired. It looks like they've built a replica for the Fairfield location. Interestingly, when I was there taking pictures today, the restaurant was clearly weeks away from opening. But someone was already there firing up the oven. I presume this is to break-in and "season" the oven for Opening Day.

I'm already plotting my first visit pies: 1 white clam, 1 sausage. Stay tuned for the first report...

Mimi Wins Barrymore Award for Outstanding Set Design

And the Barry goes to...

It's a couple of months old, but I did want to mention that my sister -- Mimi Lien -- won a Barrymore Award for Outstanding Set Design! Mimi won for her design for the Wilma Theater production of Outrage, in which she designed a "sprawling vertical set [that] looks like academe in collision with history."

The Barrymores are like the Tonys, but focused on the Philadelphia theater scene, so it's obviously regional and not national in scope.

Still, this represent a significant achievement as she was up against some pretty established set designers. Our entire family is so very proud of Mimi, and we're sure this is just the first in a long line of feathers in her cap.

Congratulations, Mimi!

House Project - Day ???: Tunnel<-Light

Keeping to my recent bi-monthly update schedule, I thought I'd take the opportunity to write-up another entry about the status of our house remodeling project.

In the last episode, the drywall had just been installed. Since then, as expected, a lot more has happened, and we're getting really close to being able to move in.

The kitchen cabinets got installed, and they really look nice and crisp and clean. The color we chose for the cabinets -- Bisque Glaze -- was a little yellower than we expected, especially when seeing them next to the flat white of the wall primer. It would all turn out for the best, as we shall see later.

On the exterior of the house, the existing roof shingles were taken off, and the entire house reshingled with the Certainteed Independence Weathered Wood shingles that we used on the new garage a couple of years ago. In addition, the existing furnace chimney was also rebuilt.

Then the siding crew came in and started to trim the windows and put up the siding. The trim for the older windows ended up being a bit wider then originally envisioned, and perhaps a tad off from a proportion standpoint. It was necessary to add this width due to the construction of the original window trim, and the fact that it was necessary to retain this original trim.

Meanwhile, work continued inside as Kevin the tile guy laid down the tile in the powder room, kid's bathroom, and master bathroom. We chose hexagonal ceramic tiles for the upstairs bathrooms, to try and retain some period flavor. For the powder room, we chose a simple, squarish pattern with natural stone, to complement the natural material richness of the kitchen countertop.

After the tile got laid, the bathroom vanities got installed.

New windows were punched through and installed in the dining room and Miranda's room.

John started milling and installing the window trim work, as well as the baseboard trim, trying to replicate the original trim work as much as possible.

Outside, the siding continued to go up, along with detail pieces for mounting lights. When done, the new siding gave the house a nice and cleaner look. The 5" clapboard might not be absolutely historically correct for our Dutch Colonial Revival style, but we think it looks good. The deck railings are PVC and maintenance-free (yea!), and look great!

It then came time to paint the interior of the house. Originally we planned on tackling the painting ourselves, but when it came time to paint, neither Wendy or I thought we could muster the energy to tackle the painting ourselves. So we hired a painter. And thank God we did, because the painting was truly a larger task than we had anticipated, and the painter we hired has been doing a great job.

Finally, within the last month, came the installation of various finish materials. First, the masons installed the brick surround of the fireplace. We had a choice of tumbled or non-tumbled brick, and we chose non-tumbled for, again, a crisper look.

At around the same time, the kitchen granite countertop and kid's bathroom countertop got installed by SMC Stone. They had to come back to install the master bath countertop, because the sink holes got cut incorrectly.

And the Kempas wood flooring was installed through the new portions of the house. The flooring installer originally started laying out the floor using a pattern, given the 4-5 differently sized pieces that the flooring came in. However, neither Wendy and I were very happy with the results, so we asked him to just use a random pattern, making sure that repetition in sizes, seams, and color was minimized.

The end is near, the light at the end of the tunnel grows brighter, and we are tentatively scheduled to move back in the weekend of September 24.

And of course, as usual, there are more pictures uploaded to my Flickr "House" picture set than I've shown and/or linked to on this blog.

House Project - Day 113 - Drywall

It's been a long while since the last house project update. Since then, a lot has happened in the house: plumbing and electrical rough-ins were completed and passed inspection. More doors and windows were installed.

Our existing house did not have any insulation in the walls, so we took the opportunity to have insulation blown in during the remodeling. One place they didn't blow it into was the ceiling above the sun room. John the Builder still has to get the insulation in there somehow.

A central air-conditioning was installed in the attic to service the second floor. And the electrical system was consequently upgraded.

The new Majestic fireplace insert got installed into the fireplace bay in the family room. As is becoming the norm, Wendy and I struggled to find the unit with just the right combination of: size, efficiency, viewing area, refractory brick pattern, and install dimensions. Some compromises were made, as you might expect, and we ended up with a Majestic unit that had slightly less viewing area than originally planned. But the brick patter of the refractory ended up being just what Wendy wanted.

The door to the basement had to be relocated to the foyer, with the stairs re-routed to match. This would have made for a tight squeeze for moving anything into and out of the basement. Fortunately, the new foundation area has a bulkhead.

Most of the drywall was put up this past weekend. In the family room, the application of the drywall has predictably made the room feel smaller.

In particular, the ceiling feels lower than we otherwise would like. This may be because we recently visited my sister's new place in Brooklyn, with its nearly 10 foot ceilings!

With drywall in place, the new master bedroom has turned into the most dramatic new room in the house. The transition from hallway to raised bedroom level accentuates the feeling of the ceiling's height here, and the tray ceiling adds depth (I'm talking like an Iron Chef commentator). It's sort of a Frank Lloyd Wright thing happening there.

I hope to update with a little more regularity, but with an upcoming business trip, the next update probably won't happen until a bit after that.

As usual, there are more pictures uploaded to my Flickr "House" picture set than I've shown and/or linked to on this blog.

ONE

House Project - Day 53 - Sheathing

One week later, and the addition is almost fully framed and sheathed. The window plan is now fully evident from the exterior, at least for the new-built portion of the remodel. And there is now a more fully-developed sense of space on the interior.

One of the critical areas that we've been wanting to take a look at has been the area in the kitchen-to-family transition space around the peninsula. There are a lot of things happening there: the wall jogs in, the countertop peninsula wraps around the jog, the ceiling height transitions, and a window is placed in the area. The location of the ceiling beam that defines the height transition was moved about 1 foot towards the rear of the house, so that the bathroom cabinets on the second floor would not have to be cut to "ride" the beam.

This means that the ceiling height transition happens right at the left edge of the window. It also means, though, that the height transition does not happen right above the heads of whomever happens to be sitting at the peninsula. Plus, it gives us more flexibility to use drawers in our bathroom vanity cabinets.

My favorite feature of the new addition, so far, is the walk into the master bedroom. It's still a bit misleading at this point since the ceiling isn't in yet, and it appears as though the bedroom will have cathedral ceilings. Part of me wishes that we had specified cathedral ceilings in the bedroom, but I'll just have to see how the tray ceiling looks.

A note to those clicking on the links to the pictures: in these blog entries, I've only linked to a subset of what's available on Flickr, the hosting site for the photos. There are more pictures in the "House" set of photos, which you can browse through using the navigation on the right side of each picture's page.

House Project - Supplemental: New Furnace

Back when they were laying the foundation, they also installed a new furnace. Our old furnace was an ancient model that looked like it was at least 50 years old. In addition to being inadequate to heat the expanded structure, it was also probably horribly inefficient.

This new Weil-McLain unit comes universally recommended by many plumbers and heating experts, although if you squint at the yellow Energy Guide label you can see that it falls within the lower range, efficiency-wise, of other comparable units. Hmm.

You can also see from the picture that we're going to be set for 3 zones of heat: the original portion of the house (except for Miranda's room) will be on one zone. The master bedroom and bathroom, and Miranda's bedroom will be the second zone, and the new family room and kitchen will be in the 3rd zone.

House Project - Day 45: Framing

After a lull of about 2-3 weeks during which weather and delayed town inspections resulted in a slow-down of work, things have finally picked back up. Since the last blog entry on April 9, the foundation floors have been poured, and the foundation backfilled. The excess dirt that was excavated was then used to grade-off the backyard.

The delay by the town in the inspection of the foundation work resulted in the framing crew being reassigned to another job. When they finally finished with that job, the weather then conspired to delay them even more. However, they were finally able to start framing this past Monday. We've been told that this portion of the project goes relatively fast, and by Wednesday they had finished framing the first floor. And as of today, a portion of the second floor has also been framed.

From what they've done so far, we're able to get a sense of the rear exterior elevation for the first time. We can also start to get a sense of the interior of the new space: views from the kitchen sink, as well as across the new family room. One interesting view that I've always wanted to see was from the family room back towards the kitchen area, because of the fact that we designed the family room to have 9 foot ceilings, with a drop back down to 8 feet for the kitchen area.

That design choice also means that there will be a couple of steps up to the new master bedroom on the second floor, which in turn should afford some nice views of the wetlands/Ash Creek behind our property, as well as Long Island Sound beyond.

And at long last, we've reached a point where we can finally start to get a sense of the proportion of the addition as it relates to the old house, especially when seen from the road. We had been mildly concerned that the addition would loom gigantic, but thankfully that appears not to be the case. From the north west vista, the addition actually appears quite small, given that it is set in from the west side of the old house. From the north east side, the addition does appear larger, but the road is more even with the level of the house instead of being below the house as from the northwest, so the effect is diminished.

House Project - Day 17: Foundation Walls Finished

The masonry crew has essentially completed the buildup of the foundation walls. The exterior of the walls has been smoothed over by a layer of cement, and is awaiting the application of some sort of tar-based waterproofing agent before the backfill goes back in.

That waterproofing agent can't be applied until the cement layer is completely dry, which won't be for another couple of days. Also, they have to punch through from the new foundation area back into the old basement, and this will happen in the area of the old rear bump-out. After that, the floor slab will be poured, and then the foundation will essentially be complete.

There was a basement window placement issue that popped up, which Wendy's eagle eye caught today from the dining room window. She saw that the two northern basement windows were not lined up correctly. I teased her by saying she was in a horrible position -- being essentially perpendicular to the alignment plane -- to determine whether that was truly the case. Still she ignored me, grabbed the plans, and went out to discuss with the foundation subs.

Turns out she was right.

The foundation sub had built the bulkhead slightly off spec because:
a) the spec was for a prebuilt bulkhead, and they were building a full bulkhead
b) the foundation subs thought there should have been more space between the old foundation and the bulkhead wall for drainage purposes

The architect had originally specified a prebuilt bulkhead, which is more space-saving than a fully built one, as well as a fourth basement window for symmetry. And he squeezed both of them in the area to the left of the family room exit door landing and stairs.

With the moves the foundation subs made, the fourth window was now intruding into where the exit landing and stairs would be. The sub didn't know this because he was only working from the foundation plans and didn't have the elevations to see how the basement windows fit in with the structures above.

After a short consultation, we decided that the moves were made for good reasons and that sacrificing a fourth basement window was a small price to pay, so we asked to sub to fill in the fourth window.

Meanwhile, you can see the overall shape of the addition now from the 2nd floor hallway window. And eyeballing down the west wall back to the existing house, you can start to see how it'll lay out on that side of the house. The dining room and bedroom windows will be shifted left, and the family room exit will have a landing and stairs parallel to the driveway.

It's still a little bit hard to get a sense of scale just yet, although the addition certainly doesn't seems as massive as we feared it might have been when the foundation pit was first dug. "It's the perfect size addition for this house," John the Builder said when we asked him for his opinion, and we think he's right.