The second *official* week of our icehouse rehab project has come and gone. Please excuse the tardy week-in–review. Better late than never! (Did you miss last week? Here’s the link: “Icehouse Rehab 01: The Ice Hook“.)
The idea behind these weekly updates, chronicling our progress on the icehouse rehabilitation project is multifaceted (ie. muddled and evolving.) As I recap the second week, here are few of the underlying objectives:
recognize/celebrate our distributed team (Trello to coordinate, @rosslynredux to showcase, rosslynredux.com to chronicle, etc),
transparently map our rehabilitation process, accounting for the ups and the downs without “airbrushing” the journey (rehab inside out)
document our fourth and final historic rehabilitation project at Rosslyn,
inspire others to undertake similarly ambitious and rewarding rehab adventures, ideally with an eye to adaptive reuse of existing structures,
and leverage this current experience as a way to revisit and reevaluate our previous sixteen years of Rosslyn rehab ad infinitum.
Overview
Code officer and carpenters troubleshooting (Source: R.P. Murphy)
In broad strokes, the week started with a site visit from Colin Mangan, the Town of Essex Code Enforcement Officer, included a site visit from John Bean, the sales rep for Windows & Doors By Brownell (who is coordinating new windows and doors), and ranged from prepping foundation for concrete forming and pouring to refastening the existing cladding (two layers s) to the studs. Also lots of small projects and final materials estimates for insulated panels, replacement clapboard, etc.
In addition, Hroth was able to begin work first finisher/refinishing lumber that we will be using in the project.
Garapa Re-Milling
We have begun re-milling and re-planing garapa decking salvaged from Rosslyn’s summer 2022 deck rebuild. These sample boards are among the many weathered specimens carefully removed this spring and summer prior to rebuilding Rosslyn’s deck substructure and re-decking with new garapa. Hroth’s patient. Hroth’s patient exploratory experimentation is the first phase in our effort to adaptively reuse this character-rich material in the icehouse. Still preliminary, but exciting possibilities ahead!
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Homegrown Lumber
Another exciting milling and planing project underway is looong overdue. Rosslyn’s carriage barn is stocked floor to ceiling with years and years of lumber grown, harvested, milled, and cured on our property. Two local sawyers, Mark Saulsgiver and Andy Vaughan, labored over the years to transform trees felled by storms (and for reopening meadows) into finish lumber. Well cured and stable, ash and elm is now being planed and dimensioned for use inside the icehouse. That’s right, it was grown, harvested, milled, and dried on site.
Thank you, Hroth, for painstakingly preparing and analyzing this beautiful material to help plan icehouse rehab.
To remain nimble amidst unpredictability and unforeseen challenges, optimistic astride setbacks and failures, innovative and creative under duress. And to navigate gratefully and passionately at all times.
From carpentry fiasco (boathouse gangway) to carpentry triumph (house deck), from summer to autumn (bittersweet seasonality), from hale and hardy to COVID crash dummy, from perennially postponed icehouse rehab to 100% timely reboot, from Adirondacks to southwest,… We are awash in transitions!
Fabricating Boathouse Post Wraps (Photo: Peter Vaiciulis)
It’s time for a progress report on Rosslyn’s boathouse post fabrication. Peter Vaiciulis and Sia Supi Havosi have been beavering away lakeside as autumn blurs into winter. Unfortunately, their decking progress has been stalled because the moisture content of the lumber is still too high. In contrast to the previous contractor whose work required extensive remediation, Peter is prudently allowing the decking sufficient acclimatizing and drying time to rnsure stabilization (and to ensure that we don’t once again wind up with inconsistent gaps ranging from 1/8” to 7/8”). In the mean time, Peter and Supi headed inside to shop-fabricate components for the post and railing system.
Successful repair of the boathouse posts and railings started with dissecting and documenting the existing conditions, deciphering the *how* and *why* of the existing conditions, and executing a meticulous rebuild with discreetly integrated improvements to function, structure, and endurance ensuring safety and longevity despite the challenging location and harsh environment.
Supi Sanding Boathouse Post Wraps (Photo: Peter Vaiciulis)
Supi is sanding a post wrap that will get installed over the structural posts that have already been integrated (correctly this time!) into the substructure.
Peter Chamfering Boathouse Post Wraps (Photo: Sia Supi Havosi)
Chamfering edges along the midsection of the post wraps, Peter has clamped stops on either end to standardize the offsets. He’s replicating the design that we developed about fifteen years ago during our original rehabilitation of the boathouse, gangway, and waterfront access stairway. This subtle but comely detail that we included in similar situations elsewhere in Rosslyn’s four historic buildings, offers a practical benefit in this waterfront location where waterskis, surfboards, windsurfers, etc. are quick to nick sharp corners. The eased edge is also friendlier to shins and knees usually protected with little more than bathing suits in this area.
Chamfered Boathouse Post Wraps (Photo: Peter Vaiciulis)
Up close and personal with the post wraps. Note the chamfered midsections and wood filler curing for Peter and Supi to sand.
Supi Priming Boathouse Post Wraps (Photo: Peter Vaiciulis)
After wood filler cures and sanding is complete Supi begins priming the post wraps. Because of the intense weather changes — from rainstorms and dramatic temperature fluctuations in the summertime to snow, ice, and deep freezing in the winter — that the boathouse gangway posts and railing will endure, two coats of primer (including concealed end grain, etc.) and two coats of exterior paint will be installed in the shop. Although some touchups will be necessary during and after installation, this will streamline the late season installation and improve long term weatherproofing.
Although historic rehabilitation took place a decade and a half ago, the lakeside location accounts for the accelerated deterioration of Rosslyn’s boathouse gangway, posts, and railings. This go-round we’ve been able to tweak a few mechanics based on previous performance, hopefully improving performance and extending the useful life of these repairs to 20+ years. Even though Opud’s disastrous attempt last year cost us dearly in time, expense, safety, and usability over the summer, Peter and Supi’s rebuild is superior through and through, ultimately affording us solace after a year of headaches.
Let’s wrap up with a mashup of the dissected, well documented prototype guiding Peter and Supi’s repairs.
Our first full workweek is in the rearview mirror, so Rosslyn’s icehouse rehabilitation is officially underway. No gold plated spade plunged into the earth, no glossy speeches, and no hoopla aside from a collective sigh of relief, some well earned rest today, and an antique ice hook. A what?!?! More about the ice hook in a moment.
Let the photo above be proof that clean-out and demo are now complete. It’s time to commemorate the ceremonial starting point for our long anticipated quest to rehabilitate Rosslyn’s historic utility building into a functionally relevant utility building for the 21st century. In the weeks ahead we’ll share the vision, introduce the team transforming this vision into reality, and invite you into the collaborative creative process.
Week 01 Recap
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CjcS50UA2nu/
The short videos above and below offer the best insight into progress and present conditions.
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Although last week was the first *official* foray into this project, it was made possible by several weeks of preliminary work completed by Pam and Tony (emptying the contents of the building, inventorying the architectural salvage and building materials that will be repurposed in this project, transporting and storing everything into the carriage barn and a rented storage container parked west of the barns for the duration of the project.) There’s always a lot more to launching a new construction project than expected, and ample credit is due to everyone — Pam, Hroth, Tony, Eric, Andrew, Justin — who successfully tackled the site prep. And behind the scenes, Tiho Dimitrov spent the week fine-tuning construction plans in conjunction with Thomas Weber who’s responsible for engineering the structural plan. All of these committed collaborators have gotten us to the starting gate.
The Ice Hook
I mentioned above an antique ice hook, and the photograph below illustrates exactly what I was referring to. Disinterred by Tony while cleaning out and grading the dirt floor of the icehouse, this badly corroded artifact bears an uncanny resemblsnce to a common tool of yesteryear: the handheld hook. This implement was most often used for 1) grabbing and hauling ice blocks and/or 2) carrying hay bales. The location where this relic was discovered (as well as plenty of examples uncovered by quick research online) strongly suggest that this is an antique ice hook. What do you think?
Some progress is pretty. Framing new window aprtures, for example. And some progress is practical. Installing helical piers, for example. Insulation installation is *indisputably* in this second category. And yet, aaahhh… What a relief to have the first phase of insulation complete!
The crawlspace beneath the main floor is now isolated from what will become the first floor by a whole lot of insulation. If you look closely in the photo above you’ll see small furring strips installed at the bottom of the floor joist. We installed 2″ rigid foam insulation board on top of these and then sprayed in XXX of closed cell foam insulation.
Because this is an historic rehabilitation project, preserving the original stone foundation was critical. Successfully pinning the new foundation to the old (ensuring structural integrity for new construction) prevented us from isolating the thermal bridge (old stone foundation plus new concrete foundation and slap). So we framed in a gap around the entire perimeter of the building that allowed us to create a spray foam insulation barrier, minimizing the transfer of cold exterior temperatures during the wintertime. We also foamed the entire curb inside the crawlspace, to further isolate the thermal bridge and reduce interior and exterior temperature exchange. The photo above shows the framing gap around the perimeter, filled with foam insulation.
After Insulation Installation…
Once the spray foam insulation installation was complete, it was time for a subloor.
Supi guided this important step forward so that we can set up staging to frame the west and east gable end windows.
Icehouse Subfloor Installation Almost Complete (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
In this final photo you can see the last narrow strips of subfloor are about to be installed. Not bad for a day’s work!
Insulation Installation and Subfloor Mashup
Haven’t done an exceptionally thoughtful writeup with this post, so perhaps remixing into a begin-to-end recap of the first phase insulation installation and subfloor installation will fill in some gaps. Hope so!
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cl_Sk_Gg7Xo/
Thanks to Kevin’s spray foam insulation team and everyone else who helped us to reach this next significant milestone. Just imagine once the walls and roof are insulation and the ZIP System panels are installed around the interior exterior envelope. Might start to warm up a little…
Icehouse on ice. Yes, this tidy clutch of words and ideas appeals immensely to my poetic perspective on living, but there’s more to it than that. Like so many of the posts I’m revisiting lately, the earliest iteration of this originally somewhat melancholic reflection is nearly a decade old. Like many blog drafts it became an “orphan”, put aside for a day when my time was more abundant or my melancholy was less crowding or my thoughts were better gathered or…
You get the point. As with my poems, I frequently launch into a draft with the passion and clarity of purpose propelling me. And then, something stalls. And the initial foray falters. Or, at the very least, the seed for what I envision writing is cast aside indefinitely.
Often enough I circle back, allowing the persistent relevance of the idea, the recurring urgency to undergird a certain confidence that I might be on to something. That I need to revisit the seed, germinate it, nurture it.
This is the case with my work on preservation by neglect. The idea is baked into my love for and efforts toward rehabilitating old buildings, and it’s in many respects more compelling to me than the finished accomplishments of a preservation project. Not sure I’m ready to put my finger on exactly why yet, but it’s akin to my penchant for wabi-sabi. In my perspective there is profound beauty in the imperceptibly slow entropic forces revealed in aging, even failing, man-made artifacts. Sorry, that’s a major mouthful and earful, and it’s a bit of a mind bender. That’s why I’m not yet ready to flesh this idea out. I’m still trying to sort it for myself. Hopefully soon I’ll be able to better articulate what’s percolating in my noggin.
I’m wandering afield, so I’ll lap back to my earlier intentions.
Ice House, Northeast Side (Source: Jason McNulty)
Icehouse Rehab Revisited
Icehouse on ice. Again.
Rehabilitating (and repurposing) Rosslyn’s historic icehouse is an ongoing desire. Has been since the outset. But advancing this desire to rehabilitate the icehouse has been chilling on ice almost as long.
Going all the way back, since the summer of 2006 when we purchased this property, we’ve wanted to transform this obsolete utility building into a relevant-for-the-21st-century utility building. But, alas, we’ve perennially and indefinitely postponed the project for a variety of reasons. Actually that’s not 100% true. We ensured the building’s preservation back in 2006-6 by tackling the most pressing challenges.
We stabilized the failing structure, replaced the failed roof, repaired the crumbling stone foundation and upgraded the mechanicals. But then we mothballed the project, deferring the next phase indefinitely until circumstances warranted moving forward. For several years we’ve used the ice house as a storage and maintenance annex for the carriage barn, but recently we’ve begun to address a sustainable plan for use. I hope to address this in more depth over the course of the next year. But for now, I’ll just say that we understand that simply stabilizing the building is not enough. Successful rehab demands a sustainable plan for use. And we’re working on it! (Source: Demolition Dedux )
But once the icehouse’s structural integrity was restored, we shifted further rehabilitation off the short-term priority list. It could wait. It would have to wait. Completing the house rehab (and the boathouse rehab) had proven challenging enough. Hemorrhaging time and money, our scope of work had been repeatedly curtailed, narrowing to the two most essential buildings.
Ice House, East Side (Source: Jason McNulty)
Icehouse On Ice, Hurrah!
Let’s step back a moment, before moving onto the exciting update (in the next section as well as several other recent posts) about the looong neglected icehouse rehabilitation coming to an end at last.
This handsome little outbuilding has endured for six score and more — probably about 130 years or so, but how could I resist the chance to borrow that linguistic artifact when polishing an aged subject?!?! — rugged winters and sultry summers. And looking around it’s pretty evident that most icehouses haven’t endured. They’ve largely vanished from historic view-sheds throughout the country. But this well built, classically proportioned addition to Rosslyn’s timeless property remains with us, ready for a new chapter.
Although various reasons likely underpin the icehouse’s endurance, and the attentions of previous owners are no doubt high on this list, I would suggest that one of the reasons we’re now fortunate to undertake a purposeful re-imagination of this building is that it’s been preserved for more than a century, in large part, by neglect. First and foremost it wasn’t demolished to make way for other needs (such as the clay tennis court that adjoins its west and northwest flank). And it wasn’t adapted into a chicken coop or conjoined with the carriage barn or… It served a limited functional purpose for at least two previous owners that I’m aware of (one as part of honey-making accommodations and another as a woodworking shop), but the building wasn’t irretrievably bastardized to fulfill its temporary needs. And this, as mentioned elsewhere, so forgive my repetition, is the best argument for preservation by neglect.
Ice House, Northwest Side (Source: Jason McNulty)
Icehouse On Ice No More
After sixteen years, we’re finally moving forward. And not just baby steps this time. Building on the original infrastructure improvements from 2006-7 and drawing upon a decade and a half of perspective gained from actually living on this benevolent property, we’re now ready to rejigger our original vision, tempering the lofty, grounding the capricious, and infusing new relevance into this landmark utility space.
Ice House, North Side (Source: Jason McNulty)
I will be sharing new plans as we move forward, showing here what we presented to the Town of Essex Planning Board last month. There are still some adjustments to be made following our public hearing and project approval last week. I’ll delve into those details separately as well. But in the mean time I’ll like to honor the beginning of the thaw, the un-icing of this too long postponed project. And it struck me as a poignant opportunity to showcase images that were gifted to us by Jason McNulty. The photographs taken by him on November 8, 2004 and were sent to us on July 6, 2010 following his first return visit back to Rosslyn, the house where he grew up. There is a personal appeal for me, glimpsing the property well before we owned it. And the gratitude we felt upon receiving the images a dozen years ago is rekindled now as we initiate our preliminary stage of rehabilitation.
Piece-by-Piece: fabricating post bases for Rosslyn’s boathouse railings (Photo: Peter Vaiciulis)
As temperatures drop and winter weather threatens, Peter and Supi are toiling against the onset of winter. They’re taking advantage of shop work when possible, fabricating post bases — piece-by-piece — painstaking duplicating our boathouse‘s existing post and railing details while ensuring the most hardy, weatherproof construction possible to ensure the longevity of these handsome architectural elements that will be installed in the most challenging conditions on the entire Rosslyn property. It takes master craftsman to to marry these delicate aesthetic details with such a demanding, punishing environment. And there is no other way to describe the conditions endured by the boathouse and the boathouse gangway.
The trim molding is being shaped, one router pass after the other to match the existing details. These will then be secured to the railing posts above the bases being fabricated below. Piece-by-piece the carpenters are transforming a vision into a railing. And today sections have been handed off to Erin who has begun installing the first coat of primer to cure, be re-sanded and re-primed. Once primers are properly cured we will begin to paint, again building up to well cured coats in a controlled, heated environment so that when these elements finally reach their destination along the shore of Lake Champlain, they will be not only beautiful, but well protected from the Adirondack Coast winter elements.
Piece-by-Piece: fabricating post bases for Rosslyn’s boathouse railings (Photo: Peter Vaiciulis)
Piece-by-Piece Mashup
In keeping with the spirit of previous updates, here’s a quick remix of Peter and Supi’s painstaking, piece-by-piece post base fabrication for the historic rehabilitation of Rosslyn’s boathouse gangway railing.
Rifle-ready aerating at Rosslyn (Image by virtualDavis, Fall, ’11)
“Mornin’,” Wes said as he pulled the pantry door shut behind him and greeted Griffin with a scratch behind the ears.
“Good morning,” I called back from the kitchen where I was scrambling eggs.
“You don’t want me to run that thing on the tennis court, do ya?” he asked, referring to the lawn aerator we had rented in Plattsburgh the day before.
Wesley Hackett had been working for us since the spring of 2005. He’d been a member of the contracting team that renovated the Lapine House, and then we rolled him over to work on Rosslyn. When our historic rehabilitation was complete (Is it ever complete? Rehab ad infinitum…) he stayed on as caretaker, quickly a becoming a jack of all trades who we relied upon heavily.
I’d wanted to revitalize our lawns, especially the front lawn where contractors had parked and pallets of material have been offloaded and stored throughout our endless renovation project. I was especially concerned about the compacted soil beneath the old ginkgo tree, the maple trees and the basswood.
But projects lead on to other projects, and it was the autumn of 2011 before we finally managed to rent an aerator to fill our lawns with small holes. The first step toward healthier grass and healthier trees.
“Good question, Wes. I didn’t think about that.”
The clay tennis court probably dated back to Sherwood Inn days. It was located northwest of the ice house and had long since been converted into a perfectly level lawn suitable for crocket and volleyball when the weather was nice and a grassy pond when rainy days stacked up.
“I was just thinking about the clay, you know?”
“You’re probably right. You don’t want to get bogged down in clay. Let’s skip the tennis court and focus on whatever else remains around the carriage barn and back around the gardens.”
“That’s what I figured. Just thought I’d check.”
“Thanks for asking.”
“Oh, and by the way… Do you think you could advance me $300? I mean, you’ll probably be paying me tomorrow anyway, so I could pay you back.”
The day the gingko leaves fell (Image by virtualDavis)
I’d finished cooking and plating my eggs and was headed into the morning room to eat.
“It’s just the simple fact that Elvin wants to sell me his rifle ’cause he needs the money quick. It’s worth $1,500 easy, but, like I say, he needs the money, so…”
“Planning to get back into the woods?”
“A little bit. You know, some.” When Wes first started working for us he hunted for deer each fall, but several times over the last couple of years he’d mentioned that he really didn’t do it anymore.
“I’ll talk with Susan, but seems to me that it might just make sense to pay you early since we won’t be here Friday.”
“That’d be perfect. Maybe before lunch? I told Elvin I’d come by during lunch if I could do it.”
Crib Dock more and more exposed in front of Rosslyn boathouse. (September 12, 2016)
Whether you call it climate change, “nature’s sense of humor”, or something else, Lake Champlain’s water level is raising eyebrows. Back in 2011 we experienced the highest lake levels in recorded history. Five years later lake levels are flirting with the lowest record.
The highest recorded level at the gage in Burlington was 103.27 feet above mean sea level on May 6, 2011.The minimum lake level observed in Burlington was 92.61 feet above mean sea level on December 4, 1908. (Source: USGS Lake Gage at ECHO)
As of today (September 14, 2016) Lake Champlain is 94.07 feet above see level. Lake Champlain has dropped just over four feet since this spring’s not-so-high high, and an annual drop of about five feet (from spring to late autumn) is normal.
In other words, we’re unlikely to break the all time record for Lake Champlain’s lowest recorded water level, but it’s not impossible. And yet, record-busting aside, this is by far the lowest lake levels we’ve witnessed since purchasing Rosslyn, and by far our best chance to study the old crib dock extending out into the lake from Rosslyn’s boathouse.
Crib Dock Brainstorms
When we first imagined ourselves living at Rosslyn, we mostly daydreamed about the waterfront. And while the boathouse was the most enticing component of the waterfront, the former docks/piers interested us as well. We’re avid boaters, and we hoped that one or the other of the old crib docks would be recoverable so that we could enjoy convenient access to our boats.
Although neither of us can quite believe it, a decade has already snuck past since we first took ownership of Rosslyn. Ten years of gradual renovation, revitalization, rehabilitation,… And yet, many of the projects on our original punch list continue to be deferred.
For a variety of reasons restoring one of Rosslyn’s historic docks has eluded us so far. But this summer’s incredibly low water level has resuscitated our hopes that one day we’ll be able to transition from the aluminum docks we’ve been using to a refurbished crib dock pier. In recent weeks my imagination has been running wild, scheming up simple, practical solutions to the challenge of repairing a failing/failed crib dock.
I’ll post again with more detailed photographs of the crib dock in front of boathouse since it’s the most recently extant of the historic piers, and I will also find older photographs of the dock to better show what it used to look like. Until then I’d like to share some intriguing excerpts from a story produced by Brian Mann for NCPR back in December 1, 2014, How a North Country family harnessed an Adirondack river. Mann took an insightful look at a dam on the St. Regis River that was rebuilt by Wadhams resident and hydropower guru, Matt Foley, along with his brother-in-law, and nephew.
While the St. Regis crib dam is an altogether different beast than the crib dock in front of our boathouse, both are simple but sound timber and stone structures that post similar reconstruction challenges. I’ll share my current idea anon, but first I offer you several relevant riffs from Mann’s story.
Historic, Hyperlocal Crib Dam Rebuild
With the temporary coffer dam (on the left) diverting the St. Regis River, a local crew laid in a crib of tamarack logs stuffed and weighted with rock and boulders. (Source: NCPR)
This summer [2014], a family that owns hydro-dams in Essex and Franklin counties rebuilt the historic log dam [in St. Regis Falls] using local labor and materials. Using 19th century techniques, the Smiths and the Foleys preserved a dam that generates power and creates an important impoundment on the St. Regis River…
“We went to old books [Emmett Smith said]. We went to books from the turn of the century about how you build wooden timber crib dams.”
The last couple of years it was clear this structure needed to be replaced entirely after decades of floods and ice, partial repairs just weren’t cutting it any more. The family tried to find financing for a concrete dam, but that would have cost three or four times as much and the money just wasn’t there. So they went back to tradition, using native wood and stone…
Building the dam this way meant they could use local materials. But they could also use local guys. Crews from the North Country built the big stone coffer dam to divert the river while the log dam was rebuilt. They milled the big tamarack logs and hauled the rock…
Emmett says building this way was necessity. “Us doing it together and building this log structure in a traditional way is pastoral, but we didn’t do it this way for the poetry of it. It was a question of cost. This is the only way we could do it. This was the cheapest way we could do it. It had to happen now and the price of power is so low that this was the only way it was going to get done.”
[…]
There was a time when they did consider letting this dam go. There were so many hurdles, so many risks, and so little certainty of reward. But Matt Foley says rebuilding was important for the family and for the community of St. Regis Falls.
“This dam has a pond that’s six miles long with twelve dozen houses on it and big wetlands,” he says. “So in addition to our generating plant, the town people here have a vested interest in having a dam here.” (Source: How a North Country family harnessed an Adirondack river | NCPR News)
Takeaways
I’ve promised to share my current thinking (as well as some past/present photos) soon, but for now I’d like to close by highlighting a few points that resonated with me.
a traditional (i.e. “old school”) repair/rebuild would be preferable to a new dock;
even a quasi-traditional hybrid would preferable to replacing historic crib dock with a modern alternative;
local lumber, stone, and labor would be more historic, more aesthetically pleasing, more affordable, more positively impactful to the community, etc.;
pastoral and practical are not mutually exclusive; and
we’ve almost been convinced to give up hope of rehabilitating Rosslyn’s crib dock because there are “so many hurdles, so many risks, and so little certainty of reward”, but we’re not ready to abandon the dream.
I’m still brainstorming, and each time I settle on a possible solution, I’m beset with further challenges. If clever ideas are swimming in your heard, chime in! I’d love to learn from you.
Hroth Framing Windows in Icehouse (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Although sourcing and designing the new windows and doors started this summer, the order wasn’t finalized until late autumn. Rosslyn’s icehouse is a small building, but there were many details to dial-in before production could begin. Precise pitch of the roof (echoed in several windows) and structural integration with windows and doors (especially in the west elevation where the fenestration-to-wall ratio is atypical) were among the challenges that delayed the process. But once the deposit was paid our focus shifted to framing windows.
Icehouse Window Framing Plans with Notes (Photo: Hroth Ottosen)
Starting with the north elevation, the constellation of six windows — three small upper windows echoing the horse stall windows in the carriage barn and three, six-over-six double hung windows, templated from the majority of the windows in the carriage barn — has been framed in. Especial gratitude to Hroth and Eric for jumpstarting this process so that cladding, siding, insulating, electrical installation, etc. can soon follow. Window framing would normally be an exciting step toward natural lighting, but given the lengthy production time on our windows and doors, the rough bucks (window and door framing) will serve as opaque placeholders for a few months longer.
Video Mashup of Framing Windows
Time for a quick zip through framing windows — precisely the first six windows — in the icehouse.
Rendering for Icehouse Rehabilitation, West Elevation (Source: Tiho Dimitrov)
Hat tip to Tiho Dimitrov for yet another whimsical rendering of the soon-to-be icehouse v2.0, this time imagining how it will appear (mas o menos, as we say in Santa Fe) from the west. In other words, this is what you’ll see as you come in from harvesting dinner in the garden!
Because this view is hidden from passersby we were able to modify the facade to showcase Rosslyn’s magnificent sunset views. The afternoon and early evening will be stunning from this hidden oasis.
Icehouse, West Elevation, November 11, 2023 (Source: Eric Crowningshield)
Progress: Icehouse West Elevation
As of yesterday this is what the icehouse’s west elevation looks like. Lots of structural work has been taking place in the interior to make these visible changes possible. I’ll post an update on those soon, but for today just a short sweet look at where we’re headed and where we are today. Exciting times! Thanks for joining us during this adaptive reuse adventure.
What a week! It’s been another productive stretch in the early phase of Rosslyn’s icehouse rehabilitation project. While site work ramped up outside, sculpting existing conditions into the vision percolating in my head, the icehouse’s interior underwent final preparations for structural steel, forming, and concrete. And, as of today, we are ready for rebar.
Icehouse Ready for Rebar (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
In the photo above Hroth and Peter are double checking footer depths and dimensions, checking levels with the laser, and putting the finishing touches on the dirt work in order to begin fabricating our rebar “cages”, etc.
Icehouse Ready for Rebar (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Resembling an archeological site with pits dug deep into the old icehouse floor, the trenches and holes are actually “forms” for integrated concrete footers, curbs, and stepped slab.
Icehouse Ready for Rebar (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Next, steel rebar and remesh will be cut, shaped, and structured per instructions of the engineer to meet or exceed structural demands of the rebuild.
Icehouse Ready for Rebar (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Once concrete is poured and cured, the substructure (consisting of new concrete footers, curb, and slab integrated into old stone foundation) will provide stability upon which to frame the new interior. The resulting monolithic foundation will enable us to confidently proceed with building the next first floor.
Icehouse Ready for Rebar (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Now that we’re ready for rebar I’ll add a new post when cages start to fill in the footer holes…
