About Steve McKee

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30 05, 2008

On turning fifty, crescent moons, and Frank Lloyd Wright

By |2008-05-30T22:22:15+00:00May 30th, 2008|My favorite columns, Uncategorized|Comments Off on On turning fifty, crescent moons, and Frank Lloyd Wright

I have recently come to grow very fond of a mood that exists in my neighborhood after darkness comes and things grow still. The streets are empty of movement in all directions as far as I can see and the night is mine, at least in this corner of the world. With me is my canine companion Zoe, the mellowest eighty pounds of dog you’ll ever meet, pursuing her usual agenda of sniffing the edges of the sidewalk and selected bushes. The “sniffing place” is what we call our favorite bit of street-side over on West Tenth. With the tall [...]

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22 04, 2008

Building green, getting real

By |2008-04-22T22:22:54+00:00April 22nd, 2008|Before you begin, Elements of Design, Thinking like an architect, Uncategorized|Comments Off on Building green, getting real

To build green is to create a structure that is designed and built and operated in an ecological and resource-efficient manner. This includes the use of energy efficiencies in every way, lowering water consumption and selecting building materials for durability and performance and also providing for healthy indoor air quality. Just about every article I’ve read about green building discusses this subject in big general statements like the above paragraph, and when I’m finished reading I usually feel no closer to being able to do anything real about it. It would be very easy for me to write my own [...]

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27 03, 2008

Benicia versus the country club

By |2008-03-27T22:25:43+00:00March 27th, 2008|Benicia, My favorite columns, Uncategorized|Comments Off on Benicia versus the country club

About fifteen miles south of Benicia is a small town called Alamo, a place really more suburb than town. In the way that Benicia is about the water, Alamo is about hills and oak trees. I know because I grew up there. In the seventies, right before I shipped out for UCLA, developers had the idea of transforming nearby cow grazing land at the base of Mt. Diablo into a “gated community” where quarter acre parcels of land could be sold for top dollar. They named it Blackhawk Country Club. Because I had lived in Round Hill Country Club in [...]

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27 02, 2008

Stone arches totally rock

By |2008-02-27T22:26:56+00:00February 27th, 2008|Benicia, Elements of Design, Uncategorized|Comments Off on Stone arches totally rock

Unexpectedly, I recently found myself in a building made almost entirely from stone, created by world-class stone cutters no less. This sort of thing doesn’t happen everyday, not in the U.S. anyway, not in small towns like Benicia, and especially not in secluded little valleys up in the hills of places like Benicia. Melody and I were taking our son to check out the Camel Barn in order to bask in our Benicia-ness. (The Camel Barn isn’t the cool stone building I speak of, but is near said building.) As all true Benicians know, the Camel Barn is a building [...]

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23 01, 2008

These are a few of your favorite things

By |2008-01-23T22:27:58+00:00January 23rd, 2008|Elements of Design, Uncategorized|Comments Off on These are a few of your favorite things

While planning a new house or remodel with a client I will sometimes hear them rave about some unusual feature that they’ve lived with and have decided they simply can’t live without in their new house and meanwhile the rest of us have barely even heard of it. I find out about these features mostly from you, my clients, and enjoy hearing about them from people with direct experience. So, without further ado, and so we all might learn from your collective wisdom, here are a few of your favorite things: Dual dishwashers Having two dishwashers isn’t just a Jewish-kosher [...]

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6 01, 2008

Another vintage house is delivered to Benicia – PART 3

By |2008-01-06T22:29:15+00:00January 6th, 2008|Phil Joy's big house move, Uncategorized|Comments Off on Another vintage house is delivered to Benicia – PART 3

I almost got to watch Phil Joy’s second house come in to his boatyard, pushed in on a barge, pretty much just like last year’s house-move that you may recall was a pretty big deal, except this time it happened without it being such a big deal. There were a lot of similarities to last year: a cool looking nineteenth century house that was destined to be demolished at its original site in Napa was instead acquired by house-mover and Benicia boatyard owner Phil Joy and then moved by barge a few days before Christmas to find a new life [...]

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