Cassilhaus

Playing Catch Up

Well it has been almost 2 months since my last post--mea culpa! It's not like there hasn't been anything going on--quite the contrary.  I am happy to say we seem to be entering the "enjoying phase" of the project.  Most of the bugs have been worked out and the remaining issues are plodding along and will eventually sort themselves out.

I have instituted "maintenence day" every second Tuesday to try and keep up with the prolific spiders and other creatures taking up residence in dryer vents, eaves, window sills etc. as well as all the little tweaks to keep Cassilhaus running smoothly. An unexpected benefit of cleaning off the roof was some great new angles on the house!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of my first maintenance day projects was a street adress sign for the driveway. For someone who is not very handy with tools and rarely makes anything I was very proud of my creation--trapezoidal of course! I used some of the left over western red cedar from the house and got the numbers at Home Depot.

 

 

 

 

The solar side lighting ended up not working so I went for a ground mounted solar spot light.

 

There has been enormous interest in seeing the house. It doesn't seem to matter if we have 2 or 100 people over--the house seems to accept them graciously and it still feels open and relaxed.  We had a very successful Meals from the Market event to benefit Durham Central Park last weekend with 70 people and raised over $2200 to support the incredible progress there. If you haven't been to the park in a while you should check it out.  In a few weeks we are having sneak preview screening to support a fabulous new film by Kenny Dalsheimer called A New Kind of Listening. It is an incredibly powerful film and there will be a free community screening on October 15th at 7:30 at the Carolina Theatre in downtown Durham. If you would like to make a donation you can do so here or contact Kenny about the screening here at Cassilhaus. Ellen is throwing a party next month to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of Ellen Cassilly Architect and there is likely be a crowd of about 150. 

The response to the house has been overwhelmingly positive. I love it when people notice the subtle details of the design.  It is funny that so many people associate contemporary architectural with cold and sterile and are so surprised when they see all of the wood in the house and how warm it is.

 

There is tons more news but I need to sign off for now.  I promise it won't be two months before I post again.

 

To the extent that this world surrenders its richness and diversity it surrenders its poetry.  To the extent that it relinquishes its capacity to surprise, it relinquishes its magic.  To the extent that it loses its ability to tolerate ridiculous and even dangerous exceptions, it looses its grace.                   

 

Tom Robbins

BUZZ

It has been 3 weeks since the Times article appeared and it has created quite a buzz.

• Ellen and I have each received hundreds of emails. Several of Ellen's grad school buddies from around the globe whom she hasn't seen in 20 years contacted her to congratulate her and catch up.  The Times has an amazing reach.
• My blog had 749 visitors in one week after the article! This is about 8 times normal traffic.
• Ellen's website had over 500 new visitors
• We have been picked up by no less than 10 other blogs including Apartment Therapy, Nasher Museum Blog, piedmont plots, swipelife, and bull city rising.

Some of my favorite comments:

• YEEEEEEEEEEEE -firgging-ha y'all!!   Wenny
• Fan-F#@*ing-Tastic!                        Scott
• Wowza! So Darn cool! Even though it’s my homepage I will have to go get a paper copy today!                                            Sioux
• It looks as though you were in some sort of Buddhist hyper state of awareness the entire time you were thinking, designing, and building this masterpiece.       Katharine
• ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!   Heather
• This is HUGE!                                                         Nancy and Chuck

 

The folks at the Herald Sun in Durham saw the Times article and sent Monica Chen to write a really nice FRONT PAGE article about Ellen's work and the house.

 

Chapel HIll Magazine also caught wind of our artist in residence program from the Times and will feature Cassilhaus and our current artist Beverly McIver as part of a story on interesting artist studios in their next issue. And of course every artist from here to San Francisco wants to be an artist in residence! Sorry folks but we are booked up.

NEW YORK TIMES!!!!

  

We are ecstatic that the New York Times featured Cassilhaus in today's editon with full page coverage, multiple photographs and online extras. It is a great honor to be recognized by what is arguably the world's greatest newspaper.  We are grateful to Tom DeKay,Trish Hall, Sara Barrett, and Samantha Storey of the New York Times, writer Michael Welton (mike471@gmail.com), and photographer John Hall for such a great piece.  Mike was like a pit bull getting this story in the Times.  He REALLY wanted to tell this story and we are so grateful for his persistence.  Also a tip of the hat to Andrew Rook of Clearscapes Architecture for putting us on Mike's radar screen and to Frank Harmon for giving us the courage to approach the Times.

There are so many people to thank for this amazing project.  Anna Wirth helped with the design throughout the project and made a beautiful plan set. We are particularly thankful to our wonderful builders and true craftsmen Leon Meyers and Myron Weiler with LE Meyers Builders who built an incredibly complicated house with a lot of compound angles and made our dream home a reality.  Elsewhere in this blog I talk about all the other artists and craftsman that made it all come together.

I can't even begin to express how grateful I am to the love of my life Ellen for making all of this a reality.  Her creativity, incredible design sense, patience and love got me through all this and realized our dream.

Check out the Ellen Cassilly Architect site for lots of photos of all of her projects . Raise a glass of champagne with us tonight!!!

 

H. ART CHAOS

One of the true treasures of living in the Durham/Chapel Hill area is having the American Dance Festival here every summer. The ADF is the premiere modern dance festival in the world but with 30+ years here you sometimes forget the greatness in your own back yard.  Ellen and I were asked this year to host a post performance party at Cassilhaus for an amazing Japanese dance company called H. Art Chaos. We got to see their unbelievable performance the night before the party. It is difficult to describe but it was an evening of brilliant dance theater with extensive aerial moves with minimal but magically exploited simple props and elaborate costumes.

The company, their technical crew and ADF staff including director Charles Reinhart arrived around 11 pm this past Tuesday. We had some trepidation about the language issue because no one in the company spoke English and they had only 1 translator with them.  It was not an issue at all.  Art, architecture, and good food proved a good common language and everyone seemed to have a genuinely great time. Having been confined to rehearsals and their hotel with restaurant food for a week they were delighted to get out and about and see a little slice of North Carolina.

H. Art Chaos with Ellen in the "girl power" room.

 

 

 

Dancers discover the Bongo Board

 

Ellen and director/choreographer Sakiko Oshima chill on the hammock.

 

Everyone loved the house and it seems to thrive on parties. We are trying to convince Sakiko to come back and choreograph a piece for the gallery......................

All genius is a conquering of chaos and mystery. 
    ---Otto Weininger

 

New Arrivals

We noticed the other night that our motion detector exterior downlights that are under the bridge and the cantelivered section of both pods were not going off at night.  After fiddling with the breaker and consulting the directions I was at a loss.  A brief look at the motion dectector under the bridge solved the mystery.

 

 

Mom has been a busy gal at night.

Honoring our Dads and The Omen

In honor of our fathers Ellen and I wanted to plant trees at Cassilhaus. I just lost my dad a month ago at age 90.  "Bus" was a great man and I will miss him. 

 

 

Ellen lost her Dad in 2001 and I was so sorry I never got to meet him. This is Bill with daughters Anna and Ellen.

 

My parents used to live on 85 acres of rural land in Pennsylvania and my Dad created a paradise there of wonderful plants and trees.  Among his favorites was a Dawn Redwood Tree which he planted 25 years ago as a sapling and is now over 70 feet tall! 

 We planted one in the front yard of Cassilhaus and gave it lots of room to grow.

 

Ellen's Dad was a master gardener and would have had so much to talk about with my Dad.  We planted a Pawpaw tree for him in the side yard--he loved puns and we thought he would like the name.

 

The night we planted the Pawpaw tree we had friends over for dinner.  As they were leaving and we were seeing them out the front door we were greeted by quite a surprise on the front railing.

 

Our visitor was in no hurry to go anywhere, even with 5 humans staring at him.  He was playfully going up and down the railing uprights and winding through the cables. We both felt like it was Bill thanking us for the tree and checking out the new house.

 

The next day Ellen came home from work and swerved to avoid our new friend in the driveway.  He proceeded up the bank and stopped for a long time in front of the Dawn Redwood before dissappearing under a pile of rocks.

Happy Fathers' Day to All.

 

 

KAYAK ATTACK

We've had a lot of rain lately.  The creek has been raging and serenading us at night.  Ellen awoke at 5:30am with a craving for kayaking.  She used to kayak alot before we got married but lately her kayak has been collecting cobwebs under the house.  She asked if I would help her carry the boat down to the water, get her launched, and pick her up an hour later at the Erwin Road bridge.  I was totally game--I love her spontaneaous heart.  About an hour and fifteen minutes later she emerged from the trees--a little damp, a little bruised, and a big ol' smile.

 

 

 

 

 

The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. --John Muir

The river Called. The call is the thundering rumble of distant rapids, the intimate roar of white water…a primeval summons to primordial values. -- John J. Craighead

You don’t drown by falling into water. You drown by staying there. -- Robert Allen

WALTER

Cassilhaus is about art and artists.  Even before we started the design process we knew we wanted a space for artists to come to live and create. We designed an artist studio pod with live/work space, sleeping loft, kitchen, and a full bath with an eye toward an artist-in-residence program.

 

 

Ellen and I were anxious to see how it would work.  I did a bunch of reading about other artist retreats and residencies and put together a draft document about our own informal Cassilhaus visiting artist program as a way of collecting our thoughts. To kick things off we needed a professional artist who we knew well enough to ask to be our guinea pig and work through some of the inevitable kinks of the new house and the new idea but not someone so close that we would not get objective feedback.

Enter Walter Angehrn.

 

I met Walter in 1986 when I moved to Switzerland to be with my then girlfriend Susanna. Walter and Susanna were close friends who had gone to medical school together and were now in their residencies. We did a lot of hiking together and became fast friends.  Here is Walter atop Niesen after our very long climb 23 years ago.

 

When my relationship broke up and I moved back to the US, Walter and I lost touch with each other.  In 2007 Ellen and I planned a trip to Europe for me to meet her French relatives, and I decided I wanted to try and track down Walter. 20+ years seemed like 2 months and we clicked again instantly and had a marvelous reunion in St. Gallen where he lives. We traveled around Switzerland and Austria

 

and got caught up on each others lives.  Walter had just made the monumental decision to leave medicine to pursue art full time.  He had always been an artist but his schedule never allowed him to pursue it seriously.  We told him about our house dreams and asked him if he would be our first artist-in-residence at Cassilhaus and to our delight he agreed.

Walter's work is abstract and for me, a lover of photography, it was a steep learning curve to try to understand his process and media and step outside my narrow figurative photo world. It was such a joy to have him here to share and explain his work. When he arrived Walter had just completed a very successful show of his new series which was a group of 28 dyptics (drawings and paintings) created in response to JS Bach's Cantanta #21. A bit exhausted from all the work and stress of a big opening, he said he just wanted to retreat and enjoy his first visit to NC with us rather then diving into a new project. We gladly obliged and showed him around the Triangle and even got him down to Ocracoke Island and Wrightsville Beach.

We also took him on an excursion to NYC.  Ellen and I wanted to go to a contemporary furniture fair to scout furniture for the house and Walter suggested we go a day early and visit Dia Beacon and Storm King north of the city.  It was definitely a full day but both were unbelievable.  If you ever get the chance to go do not hesitate.

 

 

 

The Richard Serra pieces at Dia were overwhelmingly beautiful.

 

Walter, a devotee of artist Cy Twombly, went on an excursion of his own to Houston to see the Twombly Pavilion on the Menil Collection campus there. It was a true pilgramige for him and he was very moved by his visit.

It is clear that there will be no "typical" visit for an artist here but it was very useful to have this first experience.  It was very odd for me to negotiate that line between my normal inclinations of a host with a visiting friend and the host of an artist that we wanted to give time and space and privacy to work.  The first night with me eating alone on one side of the house and Walter eating alone on the other was a new experience for me!  The only critical feedback we got from Walter was that the refrigerator was too loud and that the place was "too nice" for him to feel comfortable working in.  We addressed the latter problem by putting heavy paper down on the entire floor so he could paint outside the lines. 

He also asked me to remove some of the photographs on the wall in the studio to give him more of a blank sheet of paper in the space.

When I get anxious about whether we are doing things "right" or providing the right environment for creative work, I need to remind myself that there really is no right way and that the artists will tell us what they need. Our only expectation at the moment is that our visiting artists have a great experience with us and we achieved that with Walter.

His whole time here was magical.  We shared many walks and meals and visits with good friends.  The potential for richness in surrounding ourselves with artists sharing our home was apparent each day of Walters visit. Ellen joked as Walter left that we were going to abandon the idea of the artist residency program after Walter as it couldn't get any better.

As a parting gift Walter surprised us with a beautiful dyptic of the first piece in a new series, "responses," that germinated here at Cassilhaus. The series will pair abstract photographs with drawings/paintings that respond to or answer the photograph. I don't have it properly matted yet but here is a mockup.

Walter we will miss you! Thank you so much.

When I work, I work very fast, but preparing to work can take any length of time.

--Cy Twombly

FAB FOTOS

We recently decided to hire world class architectural photographer Jim West to further document our home.  We are quite happy with what we shot ourselves so far but we really wanted to pull out the stops and we were not disappointed. Ellen and I worked with Jim and his assistant Jeff over 3 partial days and got some fabulous shots and had a great time. I'll let the photos speak for themselves. Thanks Jim!  All photographs are copywrite 2009 by JWest Productions and cannot be copied or used in any way without written permission.

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

There is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described.   --Garry Winnogrand

OXEYE TABLE

I mentioned a few posts back that we were looking for a table for the breakfast nook and that we had seen a table called the Oxeye table by an artist in Washington state named Seth Rolland.

 

This stunning table top is made from a single piece of sustainably harvested ash that is cut and splayed to look like the opening of a flower.  We called Seth to see if he could make us a version of the table that was a full circle as we wanted to face out toward the kitchen when we ate. Seth was fantastic to work with and entirely game to take on the custom project.  He felt like he could do it using two pieces of Ash bonded together and by adding a stretcher below the top to ensure rotational stability. We exchanged some sketches and worked out the details. He sent us progress photos of our table. The first photo shows the table in its linear form for finishing.

He chose this piece of walnut burl for the center.

 

This shows the bottom side of the top clamped in place.

 

and the top side

 

 

and the legs get attached...

 

Seth crated it up and sent it to us.  We got a 38" round piece of ultra clear (low iron) glass and voila we have an unbelievable stunning table. 

Here is the finished table without glass

 The "fins" touch the glass only near the center and at the edge so there are these beautiful "scoops" visible under the glass.

  

We are so happy with this beautiful work of art. So many people commented on it during the house tour.  It is a visual feast during breakfast!  Seth was a joy to work with and we had a textbook example of easy collaboration.  Check out his site to see his other work.

 

TOUR DE FORCE

Greetings Cassilhaus Fans!  Sorry for my long delay in posting.  Despite the drizzly weather we had a fabulous house tour yesterday with over 300!!! very enthusiastic modernist fans touring the house.  Many thanks to our cruise director George Smart and Triangle Modernist Houses, everyone at Ellen Cassilly Architect,  and our wonderful sponsors L.E. Meyers Builders, Prescott Stone Fabricators, Unique Concepts, and Fireplace Editions.

 

Shoe Security was tight (these ladies are wearing badges!)

 

The irrepressible Chuck Prescott of Prescott Stone made us forget about the rain and passed out beautiful pieces of honed granite from our very own counters.

Parking was at a premium.

   

Note the uber-hip LE Meyers/Cassilhaus Tote Bag--already the fashion forward accessory of the season!

 

 

The house effortlessly welcomed large groups of people and seemed to thrive on it.  It really is a joy for us to share this house.

 

 

You couldn't swing a cat without hitting an architect.  It was very gratifying to hear such glowing comments from the design community about the design, craftsmanship, and detailing of our home.

I found one future architect staring at the house section on the side of the complimentary tote bag and I asked her if she wanted to see the real plans for the house and you would have thought I offered her a free Carribean vacation.  She headed off and poured over the plans with refreshing joy. It made my day.

 

The four stages in the career of an architect:

    Who is Ellen Cassilly?

    Get me Ellen Cassilly!

    Get me a young Ellen Cassilly!!

    Who is Ellen Cassilly?

Snow Falling on Cedar Siding

Holy SNOBAMA! What a fitting metaphor to end the darkness of the last 8 years with a beautiful blanket of snow on Tuesday's historic inaguration day.  Ellen and I jumped up at dawn to take the first Cassilhaus snow shots and play in the snow.

 

 

 

Our view of New Hope Creek from the deck

 

Here also are a few sneak previews of the interior shots we are working on

 

 

   

 Enjoy the snow!

Night Moves

Ellen and I were awoken by a thud at about 5am yesterday and couldn't figure out what it was. We have been on a marathon photo shoot jag documenting the house in anticipation of publication in the design press and for submission to architectural competitions. The moon has been so amazing the last few nights and we had talked about doing some moonlit exteriors. We both looked at each other and at the thermometer (8 degrees--a record) and without words we sprang from bed, put on our long johns and headed for the icy roof of the carport. I have to paint the scene for you.  We wrestle the giant (22') A frame later up on the roof.  I am standing on the top step of the ladder on the high spot of the roof with camera mounted on tripod talking to Ellen inside the house on the phone and having her go room by room to set the proper light dimming level.  My hands are about to fall off.  The exposures we need are 30 seconds long and Ellen comes up to help me secure the tripod. We can't get quite wide enough so after a few shots we take the whole rig down and set up further back in the woods up a tree. Somewhere in here I realize that neither one of us questioned this act of either pure lunacy or pure love-I opt for the latter. (ladder?)

 

Wer gegen den Strom schwimmt, kommt in frisches Wasser

CASSILTOUR!!!

We are honored that the Triangle Modernist Houses website, now the largest of its kind in the country, has chosed Cassilhaus for one of its exceptional homes tours on February 28th.  See all the details HERE and get tickets while they last!

QUICK PIX

I have gotten alot of requests for up to date photos of the house.  We are working on that but here are some quick and dirty snaps!

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

   

 

 

Beth Ann, Charlene, and MJ make the international sign for a trapezoid.

 

Ellen and I decided to celebrate the moon a few mornings ago and walked down to the creek at 5am..............

We both hope you and your families have a wonderful holiday and a safe, happy, and healthy New Year.

 

 

Mail Call

Like so many things on this project I was stunned at how hard I had to work to find a decent looking version of some very common things.  Much like the doorstop adventure, finding a decent looking mailbox, that didn't cost the earth was quite an undertaking--fortunately the internet research was a real treat on this.  This is a real mom and pop profession and the offerings out there are staggering--staggerlingly ugly for the most part--but staggering none the less.  Kitch knows no bounds in this arena.

 

 

 

The very few contemporary options were obscenely expensive.  I finally stumbled upon a great maker in NEW ZEALAND!! and we are the proud owner of the Cadrona.

 

 

 

 

Send us some mail!

If you want to go quickly, go alone.  If you want to go far, go together.

                    --African Proverb

Glass 2/3rds Full

For those of you hanging by a thread to hear the conclusion of the Italian light fixture saga, it is fitting that in the end, despite being hand carried back to the US by my brother, the middle glass wafer of the fixture (the red one of course) shattered into a million pieces inside his luggage.

 

At first i just beat myself up for letting it go as far as it did and putting everyone to so much trouble and then my brother offered that he thought the fixture looked better WITHOUT the middle red glass and that is how I decided to hang it and if I do say so myself I think it looks fabulous.

 

Here my saint of a sister Barbara winds up day 4 of her moving volunteer stint alphabetizing the photography books in the library. As far as I know this is the only LOOP fixture in the US albiet 2/3rds of one.

Rails to Happy Trails

Rumors of my death are exaggerated.  We have been in the house for 6 weeks now and absolutely loving it.  You gracious readers have been very patient with my pitiful blogging output over this time but I hope to get back on the wagon after Christmas. I'll start with a wrap up on our beautiful stair rails. I did two earlier posts about Marc Maiorana and his design process. We ended up coming down to the wire with Marc and his girlfriend Robin coming down the Friday before a Monday final inspection on the house. We loaded in all of the rail parts on Friday evening and decided to get some rest and jump in full force on Saturday morning. I was in awe of Marc's level of cool--he didn't even check to see that the rails fit.  I was nervous as hell.  There were a lot of inspection issues around the rails and so many opportunites to derail us getting a final. The tolerances were incredibly tight. The rails looked beautiful and Marc had come up with an ingenious design to give the illusion of a continuous rail through the stair tread.   

          

 

We arranged for Mark Burford who built the steps to come Saturday morning to make the tread penetrations.

 

 

 

 

The bottom section under the tread has a smaller diameter inner rod that penetrates the tread and inserts inside the upper vertical and is secured by flush allen screws.  The bottom section is bolted into the stair stringer.  The fit was unbelievably solid.

 

Marc makes a small edit on the connecting rod.

 

He went to considerable trouble to ensure that there were no openings in the rail greater than the code required 4 inches.

 

The guest pod rail verticals do not penetrate the treads as we don't have the overlap there but they presented their own challenges with a bump out for the slight overlap of the tread and the need to get a solid attachment to the stringer.

 

 

The infill panels required to meet code were the only nightmare on the project.  We decided on using formaldehyde free maple veneer plywood with iron on edge banding.  The four of us worked until 2:30 in the morning on Monday to get a crude but viable set of panels cut, fitted, sanded, and mounted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robin finished up with some touch up paint.

 

Here's the final main stair rail with panels in place.

 

And final without.

 

The breakfast nook gets incredible light from the southern windows above.

 

Fripp can't decide which ray of sunshine to bask in.

 

We are talking to an artist named Seth Rolland in Washington State about a table for the nook.  It is a beautiful design called the Oxeye table.  The radial petals are sculpted from a continuous piece of sustainably harvested ash that was cut and opened like a fan.

   

Stay tuned and have a fantastic holiday.

COSMIC HAT TRICK

In an unimaginable alignment of the cosmic forces of nature, we managed to elect the greatest and most inspiring leader in a generation to lead our country, sign off on our final punch list and reach 100% completion on our new house, AND sign a contract to sell our existing house ALL ON THE SAME DAY-Election Day 2008. All I can say is YES WE CAN AND YES WE DID! We move in tomorrow and in my copious spare time I am going to post past due posts about our beautiful custom stair rails, new AV cabinet, lighting installations and many many more photos.  Stay tuned and thanks for your patience.

 

(photo courtesy of durhamskywriter http://www.flickr.com/people/durhamskywriter/)

 

 

We will miss you Oberlin Drive. 

RunOnBlog

Note: A reminder to those of you who read this via email subscription that once you get notification you should always log on to the actual blog at www.cassilhaus.typepad.com rather than read it from the email because there is much better content formatting.  Thanks.

In the fine tradition of the run on sentence I offer the run on blog--I am so woefully behind on updating the blog that I just need to do a quick and dirty summary as the progress is amazing and I am unlikely to ever catch up and it doesn't seem to be stressful enough to have not sold our current house and be one week away from final punch on our new house that they had to throw in a global financial MELTDOWN in the mix so we should just forget about all that and let you know that the carport is now done and looking great and that there is a storage area at the back with 4 sliding doors which will be painted bright orange to give us a punch of color and all of the wood work will be painted Cedar Bark color and that we had another low voltage wireathon a few weekends ago and Julian, Cici, Erik, Scott, and I did final wiring for security, cable TV, telephone, speakers, and Lutron low voltage wiring and we installed this new wizbang audio control from Niles Audio that mimicks the full screen of an Apple iPod in every room and is quite a leap from my 14 year old Sony Receiver and it was great to hear music careening down the halls of the gallery

 

 

while Myron and Robert were installing the outdoor shower.......................

 

   

and in case you are worried about birthday suit exposure we have been meeting with artist Al Frega and he has nearly completed our shower shroud and speaking of beautiful metal objects our friends at Fireplace Editions installed our Rais Pina wood stove and we concealed its turnstile under the tree grate so we can swivel it toward the living or dining area and I have to give a shout out to Anna Wirth for coming up with that idea and to the fabulous team at FE for executing it so beautifully

 

 

but before we go much further we should talk about the amazingly beautiful floors 

courtesy of Bill Campbell and Select Forest Products in Chapel Hill where we have Pennsylvania Cherry on the upper level and Ash on the lower level and on the softer side,Ricky Creech (the floors not Ricky) of Frazee Carpet in Durham did a magnificent job on our Expanko XCR4 composite cork/rubber flooring in the basement  

and on the Bolyu carpet in our bedrooms (big thanks to Dianne Bostrom for her help on finding these products) while the millwork boys were finishing up our 

 

 

 

cutom cabinetry including this amazing cherry slatted HVAC grill in our main entry,

the bookshelves in the library, 

 

the flatfile cabinet in the project gallery,

 

and the frig surround in the main pod while in the next room Robert #1 installed our

super water efficient dual flush Toto toilets and  Frank's pride and joy Agape Spoon tub and

   

 

Robert #2 installed the beautiful custom cut Rex Ceramiche (from Best Tile in Raleigh) elongated mosaic tile backsplash in the lower bath 

 

 

 

and our friends at ClearVue Glass put in the frameless shower surrounds throughout the house

  and last but not least on the outside of the house Joe, Dwayne and Steve have wrapped up the project installing the ipe rail cap on our cable rail system on all of the decks.

 

 

 

We will really miss these guys.  They built the bulk of our house and it is extraordinarily beautiful.

I can't do the progress in this last stage justice by this summary but I hope you can get a glimpse of how far we have come in the last few weeks.  Please stay tuned as I cover the final punch out phase of the project!