remodeling
By Jim McCloskey The weather has taken a turn toward heat in the time since I wrote my last blog: It's been in the 90s several times recently, and it reminds me of an even hotter stretch early in May 1989, when we moved into our current house and settled in as a family with our first swimming pool. When we arrived with our
Before I walk away from my little series of blogs on big transitions, I want to call attention to renovations, which I consider to be both a generational phenomenon as well as the greatest potential source of projects and market growth through the next
The Concrete Protector (Wapakoneta, OH) produces the Graniflex concrete resurfacing system. The decorative, high-strength material…
When a backyard has a swimming pool, homeowners generally want their watershape to be a key visual component in the overall composition. Too often, however - and this is particularly true of many of the older ones I see - the pool is unexciting both on its own and as part of the landscape. That's definitely not the style these days. Homeowners either want to make a statement by having a pool that is a visual knockout complete with big rocks and grottos and waterfalls; or they want it to play a more understated role but be a major part of a
Back in 1949, a prominent couple living in Litchfield County, Conn., decided they wanted to build a contemporary-style home that would stand out among the classically styled residences that marked the area. After conducting extensive research, they retained the renowned Bauhaus architect and Modernist artist Marcel Breuer. The home Breuer eventually designed for Leslie and Rufus Stillman pays testimony to the stark beauty of minimalism: The daring, box-shaped, two-level structure featured an array of contemporary elements and appointments, not least of which is a large, rectilinear swimming pool accessed by a dramatic, cantilevered staircase from the home’s upper level. (Things worked out so well here, by the way, that this was just the first of three Breuer homes commissioned by the Stillmans.) The couple avidly collected modern art, so the home became a showplace for a number of original pieces by several of the mid-century period’s greatest artists, including Alexander Calder. Although perhaps best remembered today for inventing the mobile, Calder was asked in this case to paint an original mural on a large block wall set above the deep end of the pool. The results were, in a word, spectacular. But let’s fast-forward 60 years: By 2010, the Stillman House was in need of restoration, and even the vivid Calder mural had cracked and eroded from exposure to the elements. Happily, this proved a turning point, as the property’s new owners announced their intention to
I grew up in the Phoenix area and have known about Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West all my life. It was kind of unavoidable: One of the major streets here is named after Wright; the area is marked by examples of architecture that directly reflect his influence; and pretty much everyone in town knows that it was the place Wright used as a summer home while teaching his numerous protégés about his approaches to project design and execution. For my part, however, my closest association with the facility had to do with the fact that my dad routinely delivered produce to the 600-acre facility and often shared stories about the unusual buildings and the occasionally eccentric people he met there. Several decades passed in which I became a watershaper who specializes in contemporary designs, but until quite recently I had never been to Taliesin West. That seems crazy given its vast influence on design in this region, but I made up for my information deficit in a big way last November, after I received a call from a representative of the facility who wanted to speak with me about restoring the facility’s famous
Some projects start out on the right foot and stay that way: the right client, the right ideas, the right combination of skills on the design/construction team and a setting that inspires everyone involved to bring his or her very best to the table. The project profiled here is a case in point and is very specifically an example of teamwork at its finest. The result is a tasteful design executed to near perfection in a project that’s beautiful visually while being extremely functional through the fun and luxury it affords the clients. All in all, it’s one of those rare and wonderful projects in which all the right notes were hit. Located on an island off the Connecticut coast, the property is a second home for fun-loving family that had the resources to create a great venue for outdoor gatherings. The site is indeed spectacular, seven acres in all graced by a beautiful 12-bedroom house and
In renovation projects, preparation of the pool's interior surface for a new finish is truly where the rubber meets the road - a key step in which what you've planned and what you actually do must come together. With this installment of "Details," we're doubling back to the Los Angeles project we left behind in October as we waited for tile to arrive from Italy. If you'll recall, the pool had been built in the 1920s and graces a property with a magnificent Gatsby-era home. As I mentioned at the outset of this interrupted sequence of columns, the homeowners have been extremely involved, always wanting to know as much as they possibly can about what's going on in their backyard. As I mentioned as well, the challenge
