one for my baby

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so the other night v and i are tivoing through a week's worth of final jeopardies, and the following question comes up:

In 1906 he launched Conjurer's Monthly,
a magazine that he pretty much wrote & edited himself

we look at each other in mild surprise because they're usually tougher than this--i mean, is there more than one early-twentieth-century magician you can come up with?--but it makes me turn to v and ask, "have i ever told you my favorite limerick?"

turns out i haven't, so i do--which then leads to my next-favorite. he says, "you gotta blog these," so, for v--and for you--i present the following (runner-up first):

there was a young man from degrasse
whose balls were made out of brass
when he clanged them together, they played 'stormy weather'
and lightning shot out of his ass

and now, the best limerick i have ever heard:

there once was a teacher named sweeney
whose girl was a terrible meany
the hatch on her snatch had a catch with a latch
she could only be screwed by houdini

some days it's drunken ranting, other days it's architectural digest, today it's limericks, tomorrow--who knows? because i sure as hell don't.

tryin' to get the feeling again

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[if you can't stomach all the introspective crap that is about to follow, feel free to scroll down to the pictures]

this is a totally self-indulgent post (but then again, what blogpost isn't?), because the last one got me thinking about things i've avoided for awhile.

my memories of that little house of horrors are not fond ones--by the time it was done and sold (which occasion shoulda been cause for great exultation, triumph and satisfaction--and woulda been for anybody normal), i was so exhausted after four years of juggling finances and working 90-hour weeks that, within two months of my "success," i was in cedars-sinai with spinal meningitis, fighting for my life.

and i've spent so much time beating myself up over everything that went wrong with that project--and for it taking so long--that i lost sight of all the stuff that went right.

so yesterday i went back through and looked at the pictures, and thought about what i--a guy working a full-time day job, with limited money and construction smarts (and no plumbing, electrical, stonemasonry, foundation-leveling or finish-carpentry experience whatsoever)--had managed to figure out on his own and accomplish almost single-handedly.

and with the perspective four years and fresh eyes have given me, i gotta admit that i was fuckin' fearless and amazing back then--i thought i could do anything, and i pretty much did.

so, the reason for this post? well, there are two reasons, actually.

one is to show the folks who faithfully come here a side of me they haven't seen up to now (i.e., the competent, creative, non-falling-down-drunk side)--because i know some of you wonder.

the other reason is to remind myself of what i was not so very long ago--because i need to get that back.

see, i haven't handled my success too well--i recovered from the aforementioned illness, but i've never even come close to bouncing back all the way--and, frankly, the booze ain't helping.

and the thing is, i've got another house to finish--one that's been waiting for me, and that i've been living in virtually like a hobo for years now. and it's not because i don't have the money, the time or the vision to finish it; it's because (a) i haven't been able to work up enough feeling to care; and (b) the mere prospect of picking up a saw or hammer again fills me with dread.

and that's just not like me; i used to love to rip into shit and make it better--hell, the whole reason i went to architecture school in the first place was so that i could buy houses, remodel 'em to my taste and move on to the next one, each time having left the world a little nicer in my wake.

so why is it that when i worked so hard and sacrificed so much to achieve that goal--and then actually pulled it off--everything fell apart afterwards?

i dunno--all i know is, i need get back to that state of mind, because time is fleeting and i'm tired of living like this.

so enjoy the following slide show--or not; it's just a tiny little house somewhere that really doesn't matter much in the overall scheme of things (and as always, the pictures enlarge nicely if you click on 'em).


and when i said "tiny little house," i wasn't kidding--we're talking an 850 square-foot, two-bedroom, 1-bath cabin. to add the necessary second bathroom, i tore out a huge masonry fireplace and a laundry closet at the back of the living room. the original bath and kitchen got carved up in order to give the second bedroom a closet it didn't have before, and to add an entertainment center, new fireplace and new laundry closet.

i spent a lot of time on this plan--i agonized over the utilization of every square foot of the limited space i had. my goal was: if it can't be big, it'll be the nicest little house anybody's ever seen.

until that finally happened, however, it pretty much looked like this:



i wish i could maintain a neat, orderly jobsite like bob vila and the guys on this old house, but that's not how i roll.

it eventually cleaned up nice, though


i'm not crazy about the fireplace.  sheathed in this really nice limestone i salvaged from a tear-down in bel-air, it was my first attempt at stonemasonry [which was stupid, seeing as how since it was the focal point of the goddam house, i shoulda saved it for later when i had developed some skills. oh, well--live and learn).


is it obvious i watched a lot of frazier in the 90's?

this entertainment center was designed and installed when most of us were still watching tube tv's; i'm sure by now the new owner has--with finesse fully equal to the sensitivity with which he modified the outside--taken a chainsaw and hacked out sufficient space for his 48" flat-screen.



the reason all the casework in the house is birch has less to do with my affinity for birch [actually, i prefer maple] than the fact that i came across a bunch of birch kitchen-cabinet doors for a buck apiece in the bargain bin at IKEA--and thus are weighty design decisions made.



as for the countertops, i couldn't afford slab stone, so i found 2x2 squares of this really beautiful (and really cheap) azul limestone and end-glued the squares together with color-matched adhesive to make my own slabs. they ended up costing only a couple hundred bucks and looked like a million (and took forever, which probably in the long run more than negated my savings--i've never been too good with the whole "time is money" concept).

another "before" shot...


so that you may more fully appreciate the "after" shot:



the floors were bleached, whitewashed pine--because pine had the virtue of being cheap, came in huge tongue-&-groove planks and was thus easy to install, and--being soft--easy for a newbie like me to sand and finish.

and, my god, were they gorgeous when they were done--until that first beverly hills real-estate agent clacked across the living room in her 5" manolos and left a trail of little divots in her wake. which was when i understood why you don't see more pine floors in houses these days (by the end of that first open house, they had become "distressed" pine floors--they still looked good, though).


this skylight was existing, but was originally just one big ugly hole with wire-mesh glass. and those arched windows were a pain in the ass (getting straight lines right is hard enough when you're an amateur--don't even get me started on curves).



the sliding door that divided the public/private spaces was a nice touch (or woulda been had it not ended up weighing 200 pounds, thus requiring hulk hogan to open and close--again, live and learn).



this is the only shot i have of the master bedroom--those niches eventually got finished with creamy limestone (but i don't think i ever did get all those little goddam puck lights to work at the same time).

now onto the bathrooms--and the exhibitionistic stonework.

people often ask me why it took me four years to get this tiny little house done. while there are all sorts of reasons (some of 'em actually good), the following four pictures are illustrative of one of the bad ones: namely, my tendency to get caught up in time-eating details that, while nice and everything, ultimately didn't matter to anybody but me.



case in point: the picture above is a progress shot of the floor in bath 1. anybody else woulda slapped down some 12" ceramic tile in there and been done with it, but not in my house--i was determined to do something special.

which "specialness" entailed (a) devising an intricate, one-off pattern, (b) measuring, cutting and dry-fitting each individual piece of the perfect creamy limestone i'd spent two weeks selecting, (c) numbering each tile (d) photographing the floor, (e) taking the whole thing up, (f) mortaring, and then (g) laying it all down again with the picture as my guide and hoping it all worked out. i cannot even begin to tell you what a time-consuming, motherfucking pain in the ass this turned out to be.

which was undoubtedly why i elected to do it again--this time with scrap stone from the fireplace and some tumbled pavers somebody'd given me--in the little bathroom:


and it didn't stop with the floors--intoxicated with my new self-taught stonemasonry skills, i next turned to the shower in bath 2:


actually, there's a pretty good reason for not going with simple squares in this shower--that part of the house was still just a little crooked, and this random pattern i devised effectively hid that fact (and yeah, each piece had to be cut individually--but so what? hell, it's only time and money).

and while there was no practical reason to do the same thing in bath 1, it sure turned out purty:



the following picture actually made me smile.  because by the time i got around to finishing bath 2, i was dead broke--this countertop was cobbled together from scrap left over from the kitchen

 

and that stylish little stainless-steel sink? that was a mixing bowl from my pantry.

* * * * *

so there you have it--i ever figure out a way to separate my resourcefulness and ingenuity from my neurotic self-destructive compulsions, you better look out world, that's all i'm sayin.

god will have his little joke

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since this week started with a joke, i think it's fitting to end it with one--but one of a more cosmic (and architectural) nature.

consider: a few years ago i was faced with the question of how to take a tiny, decrepit, plain-jane little canyon cottage and make it over into something special. [and since i can't for the fucking life of me find the file containing most of the preliminary photos and sketches, this one will have to serve as the "before" shot (click on any of these pictures you wanna see better).]

doesn't get much plainer than this, does it?

understand: i'd worked on a lot of high-end houses, and this was by far the smallest, most humble structure i'd ever taken on. but unlike the others, this one was mine--and when all was said and done, i would expend more time, energy and emotion on this little house than all the others i'd ever worked on put together.

from the start, i was faced with two challenges: (a) make it fresh and contemporary, yet at the same time keep it from standing out like a sore thumb among its rustic neighbors; and (b) do it with very little money.

the first problem was solved when i happened upon this great pair of too-tall doors in a salvage yard and designed the whole facade around 'em on the back of an envelope in about 10 minutes--i slashed off the overhangs, bumped out and raised the plate on the gable to accommodate the doors, added complementary windows, threw in some arched windows over the doors to give the whole thing a kind of playful pseudo-palladian flavor, added a similar raised, bumped-out gable at the kitchen--and voila! it was done:

[i think this was the first measured drawing i did--i can't find the lovely finished one--but you get the idea.]

clean and simple, right?

yeah--well, this was the last easy thing that ever happened with this house as long as i owned it.

because (if by reading this blog you haven't figured it out yet) i am a classic neurotic perfectionist, and this little house became the perfect outlet for all my compulsions; consequently, i obsessed over every last fucking detail of its design and construction to the point of near bankruptcy, illness and insanity.

just to touch on a couple of the highlights:

1. siding. to fit properly into the neighborhood, cedar shingles are pretty much de rigueur. but since cedar shingles (a) rot, (b) curl and darken, (c) require ugly trim to cover their edges, and (d) are prone to fire and are thus no longer allowed by the city of los angeles in canyon regions unless specially treated--what's a homeowner to do?

answer: you're fucked--give up, save money and time, do what everybody else does these days and go with stucco or hardboard siding. hell, your budget's limited, time is money and nobody really cares but you, right?

right--unless, of course, you're me.

in which case you elect--at great cost--to go with high-grade natural cedar shakes, and to dip each and every one in an ungodly expensive semi-transparent stain/preservative of just the right carefully-considered shade, so that they become not only beautiful and preserved unto perpetuity, but also relatively fire-resistant and thus acceptable to the city. (oh, and it helps when you have a mom in town for a visit who volunteers to dip the shingles--little did she know what she was signing up for).

2. trim. conventional construction--especially with shingles--requires cover-up trim at edges, corners, and around windows and doors, right?

yeah, fuck that: as does any self-respecting modernist architect*, i despise trim. so i spent a lot of time coming up with a detail that would minimize trim and give me the clean--yet simultaneously cabin-y--look i wanted.

would it be unnecessarily expensive, require weeks of extra time, precision cuts and color-keyed caulk to pull off? well, of course it would--but again, this doesn't matter when you're mkf and you're building a mini-monument to ego and posterity.

3. windows. ah, yes, windows--architects just love to throw in crazy windows on their dream facades, even though they know they're impractical and will never make it into the finished project.

again, unless you're mkf--when i couldn't find windows in any catalog anywhere that would conform to my vision, i looked at having 'em custom-made. and when that proved to be cost-prohibitive, i did what nobody in their right mind does--i made 'em myself.

(you starting to see a pattern here?)

back to the story: slowly (because i was doing most of it myself), painstakingly and with great effort--my little house started to take shape.

at first, it wasn't much to look at:


yeah, it looked like that for awhile--and yeah, my neighbors loved me (but since i'd long since been branded the neighborhood eccentric, nobody gave me too much grief).


but then, shingle by torturous shingle--and almost in spite of itself--it started coming together.



(and aren't those just the cutest little porch lights you've ever seen?)

and then, finally, it was done:


i can safely say that the finished exterior of this little house is one of the few things i've ever done in my whole life that ended up looking as good to me in actuality as it did when it was but a flicker in my mind's eye.

and, exhausted and broke as i was on the day on which this picture was taken (not even having sufficient funds for pavers and sod to finish the landscaping), i knew in my soul that--thanks to my painstaking attention to quality and detail--it would look just as good 20 years from now. and somehow that made it all worth it.

but there was supposed to be a joke in here somewhere, right?

well, get ready to laugh: i decided to drive up my old street a couple weeks ago, just to see how the place was holding up.

and how's it doing? judge for yourself:











did i mention that my mother hand-dipped every one of those goddam shingles?

* * * * *

years ago, i got 86'd from a jobsite because i was thought to have thrown a hammer at a carpenter who had fucked up one of my details (that's his story, anyway--i've always maintained that had i really meant to hit him, i would have).

all in all, it's probably best that age and having shit to lose tends to mellow one out.


update: you wanna see the inside, click here.
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*in re-reading this post--and in the interests of full disclosure--i realized i'd used the term "architect" rather loosely; while i did graduate from a good school of architecture and practiced for a number of years, i feel i should tell you that i never sat for the licensing exam apprentice architects must take and pass after their internship in order to legally be able to refer to themselves by that term.