Slide Show:Tennis Court Cabana

The slide show starts with the excavation and setting of the tubes for the concrete piers and then continues with the erection of the walls and basic structure. And then contues on with the exterior finish carpentry and then shows a few photos of the framing as seen from the interior before the erection of the partition wall and paneling of the ceiling. The next group of photos then shows the cedar paneling applied to the partition wall and ceiling as well as the installed base cabintry. And the slide show ends with photos of the painted and roofed cabana and a few shots of the scenic surrounds.

We haven’t added any captions yet to help tell the story but we will soon.

We also have a lot more Galleries still to come so check back again soon for more.

Slide Show:Interior & Exterior Railings & Ironwork

The slide show starts with the templating for the railing location for the curved section of the main stair and then moves on into the shop where we erected a form to copy the curve and rise of that stair and then shows some of the fabrication that went on there to build both the interior railing assemblies (courtesy of Bedford Ironworks) and the fencing that would be used around the perimeter of the property. The slide show then moves on to a point where the interior railings have just been installed for the front main stair and the back kitchen stair.

Many people who see this project take special notice of the custom shaped wreath railing turn that wraps around the second floor newel post that makes up the kitchen stair railing. The owner decided she didn’t really like the lambs tongue ending on the kitchen stair railing and we all too happy to write up a change order and replace it with a vertical volute or what we called a "nautilus". In fact skipping ahead in the story line you’ll notice that the balusters and the baluster spacing in the Westchester Magazine Home & Garden postcard look different than they do in the original main stair installation. After living with the railing for a week or so the owner decided she wanted a thinner baluster than the architects originally specified and wanted them spaced a little wider apart. We wrote another change order and after having new balusters turned on a lathe in a local machine shop took the railing assembly down, took it back to the shop and set it again up on the form and replaced the original 3/4" with the 1/2" diameter ones.

There’s a before and after photo set showing the passage way in the cover walkway to the garage where we installed a custom iron gate and the slide show goes on to show the faux balcony railings we installed on the 2nd floor exterior of the house.

We haven’t added any captions yet to help tell the story but we will soon.

We also have a lot more Galleries still to come so check back again soon for more.

Slide Show:Interior Balustrade Remodeling of Iron, Brass, and Mahogany

The slide show starts with the before photos of the railing which the client had and described as "too cottagagy" for the remodeled look they we’re taking with the whole house and then moves on to chronicle the processes we took in the shop to fabricate a new rail to replace it, and then the installation , and photos of the final product.

We haven’t added any captions yet to help tell the story but we will soon.

We also have a lot more Galleries still to come so check back again soon for more.

Slide Show: Interior Koi Pond & Tropic Garden Environment

Back in the spring of 1996 after having successfully built scenic elements for a themed restaurant environment (see Paradigm@Work: Great American Cafe Glastonbury CT) we were referred by the interior designer of that project to a residential client of his that was an avid collector of Japanese Koi and other tropical fish who wanted a pond and tropical like koi pond environment for his fish built in the space of a garage addition he was having put on his home in Hewlett Harbor, Long Island.

After discussions with the designer regarding what he wanted to achieve we decided to build on site an epoxy fiberglass reinforced tub for the pond and after framing out our basic structure we would fabricate the rocky environment surrounding the pond using techniques I had used as a kid to build the mountains on my HO train set only on a larger scale and using QUIKWALL® Surface Bonding Cement (SBC), and/or USG Structo-Lite® basecoat plaster over expanded metal lathe instead of USG Hydrocal® plaster over window screen although we would still use those materials for the out of the way and high up sections that we wanted to keep thin and ultra light weight.

After the main structure was engineered and built the interior environment began to take shape by framing out the shapes that serve as the armature and structure for what eventually be the basic "geology" or the room.

The walls of the pond we formed by building short curved vertical 2 x 10 12" o.c. walls that were the sheathed in two layers of 3/8" bending plywood (also know as Flexply, Wacky Wood and Wiggle wood). The flex ply was laid out so that the butt joints of the different layers wouldn’t over lap and the layers were glued together with West Systems epoxy for additional strength and support.

Along the bottom of the pond where it met the vertical sidewall we then put in a small fillet of Structo-Lite just so we wouldn’t have a hard right angle in the base of what would eventually be our fiberglass tub.

Fabrication Notes:

• Rock Walls and Waterfall: fiberglass reinforced plasters; Structo-lite & Hydrocal, over metal lathe and styrofoam forms.
• Stream Bed & Waterfall: fiberglass reinforced epoxy.
• Synthetic Rock Surface Texturing: patching plaster and auto body putty.
• Faux Painting of Synthetic Rock Surface: done in modified sponging, airbrush and glazing techniques.
• Flagstone Floor: It’s the real thing "1" Pennsylvania Irregular flagging in a medium bed thinset application.