All in all, the casework is quite beautiful and we could not be more pleased.

Matt also built a bathroom vanity of us out of teak veneer shown below – it looks really smart under a concrete sink (by Concreteworks) shown below:

Also some pictures of tile work in various bathrooms.  The green circles are a matte-glass penny round tile that we found for 50% off as it was being discontinued.  Note the stainless-steel edging strip (Schluter Systems JOLLY) used to bound he cut edges of circular tile for the shampoo niche.  The little finger-line-tiles were a splurge.

In the 1970s, polymer-based terrazzo was introduced and is called thin-set terrazzo. Initially polyester and vinyl ester resins were used as the binder resin. Today, most of the terrazzo installed is epoxy terrazzo. The advantages of this material over cementitious terrazzo include wider selection of colors, 1/4 inch to 3/8 inch installation thickness, lighter weight, faster installation, impermeable finish, higher strength, and less susceptibility to cracking.

So we installed epoxy based terrazzo in the entry foyer and kitchen!  Its a white epoxy terrazzo base with 60% size 0 “chewelah” domestic marble chips, 30% size 1 “chewelah” domestic marble chips, and 10% size 1 mirror particles:

Installed, they provide a spectacular  view!  As the corners are mitered, you can barely tell where the corner is from the inside (you can see a slight white line).  From the outside (bottom pic) you can see where the miter is.

More glass for the second and third floors will be installed shortly …

We’re not particularly “green” people, but a couple of developments pushed us to do this:

• The federal government recently changed the law so that now you get a 30% tax credit on solar PV systems with no cap on the maximum credit
• California CSI Rebates were going down from the $1.10 per watt tier down to the $0.65 tier
• California (thanks Arnold Shwarzenegger) recently passed a law that mandates the electric utility pay you back if you generate more electricity than you consume
• In the past 24 months, prices on equipment has really dropped by a huge amount due to oversupply in the PV Panel industry (due to recession)
• The roof just got replaced  - so its was an optimal time to install PV panels on the roof (you don’t want to install new panels on a roof you need to replace in 5 years)
• Our house has a looooooooooot of halogen recessed lights (which suck up electricity)  (yeah yeah, I know compact flurosecents and LEDs consume much less electricity.  I don’t like the quality of light that they put out)

I contacted six different local PV installers and ended going with Occidental Power.  Actually, I was looking around the SF Solar Map and noticed that many of the solar-enabled houses in my area used Occidental.  In fact, not just “many” ….. MOST of the houses in my area used Occidental.

Occidental did a great install.  The process was painless – they navigate the State and City rebate process for you – and they were faaaast.  Every one of their guys, from the rebate administrator, the owner of the company (who sold me the system), the foreman, the field manager, the system designer, and the production coordinator was extremely professional and efficient.  Its pretty rare that you run into a company where everyone is just totally with it.

You know how when you go to a fancy restaurant everyone on the waitstaff seems to know exactly what their job is and executes their job with impeccable timing and sharp precision?  The host shows you your table.  The sommelier recommends just the right wine.  The waiters bring every course for you and your companions at exact same time… and clear your dishes right after you are done.  Crumbs are wiped off the table cloth before you even get a chance to say anything.  It was like that.

Anyways, Occidental put in a 6.9 KW DC System.  This is about as much power as I can possibly produce from my roof and not run into shading problems from adjacent panels or shading the skylights.  It consists of 30 Sunpower 230 panels.  Each panel is rated up to 230 watts …. and the reason why I went with Sunpower panels is because of all the panel manufacturers out there, Sunpower produces the most power per square inch —- this is very important when the house is in San Francisco with very limited roof space.  The system has exceeded my expectation – on two sunny days in late May (long days in the summer) the system generated 50 KWh each day!

So without further ado, here are pictures of the installed system!

A modified bitumen roof comes in strips and the strips get heat welded (torched) to form one big membrane.  Tony’s opinion is that a tar and gravel roof is quite good, but difficult to find leaks in  (as a nail may be hidden among all the gravel) and that the tar sometimes cracks in cold weather without the sun be available to soften up the tar to self-remedy the crak.  A 2-ply modified bitumen roof has a base APP80 ply and then a smooth APP160 ply.  You’re supposed to paint the APP160 ply once every few years to protect it.

I got a 3-ply roof, which consists of the base APP80 ply, the smooth APP160 ply, and then a top APP180 “granulated” ply that has what looks like little gravel bits all over the surface.  This is supposed to last longer and not require regular painting.  The picture below shows the APP180 ply being rolled out on top of the APP160 ply.

Here’s the finished roof:  The two silver roof jacks are for a clothes dryer and a bathroom respectively.  The black tubes are vents for sewer gasses, and the green thing is the main roof drain:

Good thing we finished because the rain came the next day!

A view of the sliding doors at the west end of the courtyard.  Behind the doors is a small 11′ x 10.5′ bedroom or study.  Note the sliding doors run from the floor to ceiling – every attempt has been made to maximize the size of the glass.  You can see that a temporary roof has been erected to keep out the rain:

A view of another set of  sliding doors at the east end of the courtyard.  Behind this set of doors is a another bedroom, about 18′ x 10.5′:

Here is a north-east view while standing in the courtyard.  The red box shows where a glass swinging door will be (entry into the courtyard from the hallway) and the green box shows where the bathroom will be fronted with white laminated glass (for privacy):

Here is a northeast view while standing in the courtyard.  You can see again green-bathroom and the red-swinging-door.  The yellow box will be a window set against the stairs behind it.  At the left of the picture you can see the installed sliding doors at the west end of the courtyard:

Below is the 27′ skylight designed to bring light down in the the 2nd floor.  There are 9 panels, of which 2 can be opened.  The below view is looking west:

Finally you can see the sliding door on the ground floor.  Everything is boarded up right now for security.  This sliding door is quite heavy – its about 14′ wide and 8.5′ tall in total.  The purple box outlines where a window will be.

Next week we’re going to get a new roof put on the house – a torch-down 3 layer (APP80 / APP160 / APP180) granulated modified bitumen roof.  This will replace the current tar and gravel roof.  The current tar and gravel roof is around 20 years old – it has never leaked and has worked well.

I’ll have more to say about tar and gravel vs. modified bitumen roofs in my next post.

So we had to notch out the upper plate in the floor below (2n dfloor)  in order to lower the floor joists to get the subfloor back to level:

Now the 3rd floor study subfloor is level, being glued and srewed back to the floor joists:

Here is the 1st floor bathroom, with the “Durock Next Gen” used as a tile backerboard – this stuff is supposed to be an improvement from the original Durock, being lighter, easier to handle, and easier to score and cut without crumbling.

Here is the master shower skylight again – you can see the progress of the durock:

Here is the plan on how to tile the master shower – we plan to tile just the back wall (and the skylight curb).  Anyone have any suggestions or opinions on this strategy?

Here is a cross section of the aluminum window extrusions being manufactured (awning type shown).  This color is known as “bronze anodized” … but it pretty much looks black:

Here you can see an example of “white laminated glass”, which is what we intend to use in one of the bathrooms that face the outside to allow for light to come in while still maintaining a sense of privacy:

Here you can see we’ve had the alarm people come by and pre-wire the place for an alarm system – in this picture, you can see the alarm wires coming out of the door jamb to provide for a sliding door contact:

I installed a wall safe:

The exterior of the house has tar-paper and wire mesh installed in order to take the first applications of stucco:

And the rains this winter has really encourage weed growth in the yard!

Bao Bao says bye!

Master Bathroom
We’re going to try to go with some cool striated tile on the floor with long thin blue glass tiles on the wall in the shower:

1st Floor Bathroom
We’ve already purchased a teak-colored vanity from Duravit’s X-Large collection, so that means one of the unknown variables are known!  Anyways, we’ll go for green matte glass penny round tiles on the shower walls and a large format tile called “celery stalk” on the floor:

Bao Bao’s Bathroom
We’re not sure exactly what to do with Bao Bao’s bathroom.  It will, however, be completely bathed in light, as it has floor to ceiling frosted glass looking outside to a courtyard.  We’ve already purchased a Duravit Fogo Vanity on Bleached Oak – so that’s a fixed variable.  We’re thinking a large-format tile on the floor that has a textured-textile look, with a mosaic of red glass tile on the shower walls.  We’re not sure we want to use the green theme again though – perhaps red?  Anyone think this proposal below would be okay?  Or would it be too daring?

the vents for the kitchen hood.  the Kitchen hood is supposed to be able to extract 565 cubic feet per minute of air.  However, This 565 CFM is surely measured in optimal conditions – completely optimal venting, no bends in the ducting, and zero backpressure.

However, real life is never optimal.  The ducting needs to make bends in order to get to the roof.  Because this is an urban environment, there’s a whole other floor above the kitchen – and there’s no space directly above the kitchen to run ducting – which means the vent needs to run up in an exterior wall all the way to the roof.  The exterior wall is framed with 2×4 studs, which means the vent needs to have a rectangular (instead of circular) cross section, which of course is not optimal.  And finally, city codes force us set the vent on the roof back from the property line, necessitating more bends!

So, the best thing we can do in this instance is to:

• Run rigid ductwork instead of flexible ductwork – the smooth walls will promote laminar airflow.
• Run ductwork with as big of a cross sectional area as possible to reduce back pressure.

Miscellaneous Detail:

View of the kitchen looking East:

View of wall just outside kitchen:

Basement Detail:

Master Shower:

Stairway Detail Looking from the 3rd floor down:

You can see below that the open area is where the outdoor courtyard will be.  Its currently a big hole in the 3rd floor because it still needs to be framed out, but we’re hoping this will be a fantastic space – we’re purposely *subtracting* square footage on the top floor in order to make room for this space, which should bring lots of light into the bedrooms that are adjacent to it with floor to ceiling glass:

Here below, this is a shot of where the staircase will be.  The staircase will be a square shaft that cuts through three stories.  You can see below that the staircase will be structurally supported by steel beams on two sides and GluLam beams on two other sides:

Finally, below is an example of just taking-care-of-business.  The structural steel at the lowest level is still exposed the the elements – while its sunny season here, the nightly salt-air-fog really starts to attack steel and make it rust.  So, the steel has now been cleared of surface rust and treated with a white titanium-dioxide based rust preventative primer.

you’re looking at:

8 dining chairs at 40% off
107 recessed light fixtures at 75% off
1 bathroom tub at 30% off
1 Kitchen Hood at 55% off
Ceiling Speakers at 60% off
Various plumbing bits….

And here’s a look at the extension from the 1st floor from the south as well as from the north:

Also, the lateral steel beams have been installed in the floor above the basement.  You can see how the lateral steel beams rests upon steel sections that transfer the load all the way to the bottom floor:

Rear facade without decks: