- 4 months ago
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00Now we've come to the point in architecture where the thing is one with nature, one with
00:13the materials of which the building is built, and a building where you can ask why concerning
00:19everything in it and get a good answer from the building itself.
00:25At this point, we are now owner-builder, general contractor.
00:30Congratulations.
00:31We've had some great days.
00:32How do I go left?
00:34Look at her smiling.
00:37And we've had days that all I want to do is crawl back into bed and cry.
00:41Steel's not coming.
00:42Why not?
00:43The truck broke.
00:45We've had, actually, a pretty mild winter, and we were able to get all the footers in,
00:50get the steel in, as well as the subroof, so we've gotten ourselves a structure.
01:02We need to figure out what materials we are going to use for our roof.
01:07And we have to source our stone and then make sure that we get the color on the red floor
01:12right.
01:13We're getting ready to do what I call the skin of the house, and it's really quite a
01:18bit of pressure because this is what people are going to see.
01:20It's time to move forward with some of these other decisions.
01:23Are you confident yet to take that rein?
01:27No.
01:28You're not getting off the hook that easy.
01:30Okay.
01:31You better take a nap.
01:32All of these decisions keep me up at night or wake me up in the middle of the night.
01:36It's the last thing I think of before I go to bed.
01:38It's the first thing I think of when I get up in the morning.
01:41We're just going to go ahead and push forward.
02:08In my normal work life, I don't necessarily go outside in the morning before I start work.
02:18However, I have grown to like getting up and going out there, whether it's right when the
02:23guys get there or before the guys get there, and it's super quiet.
02:26It's kind of become a habit now.
02:29She's cleaning up the pile she should have cleaned up yesterday.
02:36That's what she's doing.
02:39So this will be the front door.
02:42You'll walk in and take a step down onto the landing.
02:46And then there will be cabinets here for coats and such.
02:50And then there'll be six steps down, which they haven't done yet.
02:56And this was just poured on Friday.
02:59And I'm not feeling very confident about the room we have left.
03:04In our floor, we have three layers.
03:06We have the subfloor, which is concrete, and then what we call air floor.
03:09And that air floor system is basically radiant heat that makes a grid on top of the subfloor.
03:15And then on top of that, we'll put the red finished floor.
03:19I thought we were going to have about six inches at the top, and it's not looking like six inches to me.
03:24This top of floor is poor old.
03:28I think we are slightly off in the subfloor poor, which will only compound problems as we go up the walls.
03:34Depending upon where you're looking on this mark, because there's a couple of them, it's still too short.
03:40I need to call the mother.
03:42And the reason it's so important is because next we have built-in cabinets.
03:46Within the plans, Frank often included the furniture.
03:49And those built-in cabinets are a certain height.
03:51They're in the plan.
03:52They're spec'd out.
03:53They go right up to the windows.
03:54So if I'm off, you know, half inch here, an inch here, I get to my window, and all of a sudden, my cabinet comes up into the window.
04:01So it all builds upon itself.
04:03We need three and three-quarter inches for the air floor.
04:08Mm-hmm.
04:09And we need one inch for the concrete.
04:11So we need four and three-quarters inches.
04:13Yep.
04:14On top of this floor.
04:18That's four and three-quarters.
04:19Yeah.
04:20Right on the number.
04:21But this one, that's four and a half.
04:24That's too short.
04:26How did they get it wrong?
04:29But when you were out here on Friday and you felt comfortable leaving this as it was...
04:35That's because I was down there.
04:37You couldn't walk down here.
04:38It was wet.
04:39So how are you gonna...
04:40Down there, it was right.
04:41So there's nothing that can be done about that at this point.
04:44You have to accommodate it some other way.
04:47So how do you do that?
04:49Well, you can't make the air floor smaller.
04:51You can't make one inch of concrete smaller.
04:53It has to have one inch of concrete or it'll crack.
04:56Mm-hmm.
04:57You can't make a cabinet smaller.
04:58I mean, you can, but I'm not making a cabinet a quarter inch smaller.
05:02Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do.
05:04But it's still not right.
05:09There is no house that is perfect.
05:11There is no house that follows the plan per the millimeter.
05:15None.
05:16Why?
05:17Because they can't.
05:18You have people doing this.
05:21They just can't.
05:25I don't like changing the dimensions of the cabinets, but it's okay.
05:29It's just a quarter inch.
05:31We've gone through all the options and that's where we landed.
05:33I trust my mom and I respect her opinions.
05:36I feel responsible for it.
05:37I don't know how I could have done it differently, but it's still my job.
05:44We are struggling with many issues.
05:46One of them is our long metal roof.
05:49I want to make sure that the house is authentic, but I also want to make sure it doesn't leak.
05:54And most of Mr. Wright's roofs are known to leak.
05:58It's just something that's known.
05:59The self-avowed egotist, Wright puts on a good show.
06:03Overseeing the construction of a house or telling a client who complains of a leaking roof, move your chair.
06:11People would refer to their roofs as the amount of buckets they have to catch all the leaks.
06:16And here we do it by bowls.
06:18We have gotten up to three bowls at once for our leaky roof in Penfield House.
06:23So we would like, again, no bowls, no buckets at River Rock.
06:33So for River Rock, we have a 164-foot long metal roof that is sloped, which is unlike the Penfield design.
06:41The Penfield is flat.
06:42Normal metal roofs, the ribs where they're conjoined in the panels, are vertical.
06:47On our house, they run horizontally, and that detail can catch water or, in the winter, can allow water to freeze there.
06:55That's the most detrimental thing because that could then lead to, like, pitting of the metal.
07:00And if it's not protected, it can get damaged and start leaking.
07:09So we asked Rob, our coordinating architect, to research and see if he could find some alternative roofing systems
07:15that's guaranteed to not leak that will give us that security for the home,
07:19and as well as meeting the color of the roof.
07:22Because I think that's more important than necessarily sticking with metal.
07:27Watch out, Mom.
07:29Oh, wow.
07:31Score.
07:36So you just threw this together on Monday night.
07:38I could either watch TV or do this.
07:39So I did this.
07:41He's ready to show you the Kemper.
07:43We have an option, and it's called Kemper.
07:46And it's a roll-on waterproof system that's guaranteed there's an extended warranty on it.
07:52And our thought is that we can build the triangular seams that run along the roof with wood,
07:57and then put the Kemper over the top of that.
08:00Having a warranty of some kind for this massive 164-foot-long roof would definitely help me sleep better at night.
08:08Here it comes.
08:10One of the things that we want to look at with this material, it doesn't look like painted metal.
08:15It's got a weird, like, almost sandy, grainy texture.
08:19And the rep assured me that we can fix that with additional coats.
08:24So I want to apply that to here so that we can make sure that what it looks like is what we want.
08:29If we can get the texture that we want and the aesthetic of the ribs that we want, then maybe that's the way to go.
08:36But we're exploring options.
08:37Yeah, of course.
08:38That's what this is about, is to see what the best material is for the job.
08:40This Kemper product is not what's in the spec book.
08:43Yes, it gives us all these great things, but if we want to be authentic, people will see it.
08:47It's one of the first things they see about the house.
08:50But we really don't want a leaky roof.
08:56Pretty color.
08:57Yeah, this is the patinaed copper.
09:00This is almost to the turquoise.
09:02Yeah.
09:03It would just need a little bit more blue.
09:05If it ever does leak, Sarah is learning how to do this so she can figure it out.
09:11Because she's going to be up on the roof.
09:13Sarah's calling Rob.
09:14That is the other thing, though, that's good about this material.
09:17If there is a leak, just go up there and put a little bit more on.
09:20Right.
09:21Instead of replacing and patching something that's metal.
09:24You can kind of see that texture coming through, right?
09:26Right.
09:27Yeah, now you can for sure.
09:28And I'll recoat it as many times as it takes to get it to be smooth.
09:31Yeah, keep an inventory.
09:32Right, and then we'll show you the finished product when it's done.
09:35Cool.
09:36Yeah, sounds great.
09:37Awesome. Thank you.
09:39It wasn't called out in the spec book as being a Kemper roof.
09:41It wasn't even around back then.
09:43So we still have the question of whether or not we're going to use it.
09:46I'm not a big fan of this Kemper.
09:49To me, it doesn't look like you could fabricate it enough to look like a real metal roof.
09:55We have to wait until it dries to make that decision.
09:57They've given us quite a bit to think about.
09:59We still have to figure out if we want to stick with the materials that are called out in the spec book and be 100% authentic.
10:10Unfortunately, we can't talk to Frank Lloyd Wright.
10:12We can't ask his opinion on Kemper, you know?
10:15Hey.
10:16Nice to see you.
10:17Good to see you too.
10:18I can't wait for this conversation.
10:20So we're going to meet with Ashley Mendelsohn, a former Guggenheim assistant curator.
10:25Hi.
10:26Good to see you.
10:27Nice to meet you.
10:28Because the Guggenheim was started when he was alive, but it wasn't finished.
10:32And there's a lot of correspondence with regards to that because Frank wasn't there to help make decisions.
10:38The Guggenheim Museum in New York is a great conversation point for us because it was on his desk when River Rock was on his desk.
10:45Right.
10:46You know, they were ultimately conversations happening at the same time.
10:49Oh, that's awesome.
10:50This building was commissioned in 1943.
10:52Okay.
10:53And it wasn't actually done until 1959.
10:56It's a 16-year period.
10:58Oh, wow.
10:59A few months after Frank Lloyd Wright's death.
11:01So he died in April of 59.
11:03The museum opened in October of 59.
11:06So, of course, they were making decisions after his death as they had to to finish the building.
11:11Right.
11:12We are constantly saying, what would he say if we asked him questions?
11:15If we're making changes, what is kind of the philosophical thought pattern we should have?
11:21His focus was about a holistic design.
11:24Every element feeling like a part of the whole.
11:27He really thought of buildings as...
11:30Yeah.
11:31I feel better.
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