Uncategorized – Page 14

22 04, 2007

Rome – 1982 – five weeks

By Steve McKee|2007-04-22T04:32:19+00:00April 22nd, 2007|My favorite columns, Travel Tales, Uncategorized|Comments Off on Rome – 1982 – five weeks

In the spring of 1982 I got to go and live in Rome for five weeks with nine other UCLA grad students to study architecture in the most amazing city in the world. No adventure of mine since has surpassed it in tone or texture, or had such a perfect blend of fun with a-sense-of-purpose that all the most fulfilling adventures seem to have. Those were heady times, at age twenty-three and off to study and play with likeminded comrades in such an architectural treasure trove. There were so many layers to Rome, and we had all those days to [...]

2 03, 2007

Haiku moments and performance art in the comfort of your own home

By Steve McKee|2007-03-02T04:31:10+00:00March 2nd, 2007|My favorite columns, Uncategorized|Comments Off on Haiku moments and performance art in the comfort of your own home

In the middle of the night, when the world is dark and utterly still, my upstairs bathroom has a pattern of rectangles of soft light on the wall created by streetlights that are a block or more away shining through my bathroom windows. These rectangles of light are sort of gold or maybe orange, but mostly are just easy on eyes that have adjusted to the dark of night. The rectangles overlap each other and create a wonderfully abstract composition that breaks the darkness just enough to be a sort of perfect nightlight. When there's a breeze outside, one of [...]

28 01, 2007

Countertops: We live in a stone age

By Steve McKee|2007-01-28T04:33:55+00:00January 28th, 2007|Elements of Design, Uncategorized|Comments Off on Countertops: We live in a stone age

It’s actually sort of thrilling when you enter the warehouse to pick out the stone slab that will be a part of your home. You’re not just picking a color from some chart or discussing a concept, you’re selecting the very slab that will be cut to the shape of your countertop. By the time you enter that warehouse your project is probably about halfway built, you’ve been faxed a list of the stone suppliers that are used by your contractor’s stone installer, and most of the hard work on your part is done, like the decision to do a stone [...]

31 12, 2006

The day the Thompson-Joy house came to town – PART 2

By Steve McKee|2006-12-31T04:35:10+00:00December 31st, 2006|Phil Joy's big house move, Uncategorized|Comments Off on The day the Thompson-Joy house came to town – PART 2

The big house-moving day at last arrived, two days before Christmas. The factors had finally all lined up: the PG&E wires across the empty field had been temporarily lowered, the big barge was available, the railroad tracks the house needed to cross would have no trains running on the weekend, the rain had mostly held off and, although the field was soft and difficult for the big house to cross, it at least wasn’t totally impossible. The Thompson house, one-hundred-and-sixteen years old and weighing two hundred tons, started December 23rd in the Napa countryside that it had always known, and [...]

3 12, 2006

The revenge of the unpaid carpenters (and other true stories)

By Steve McKee|2006-12-03T04:36:33+00:00December 3rd, 2006|Random observations, Uncategorized|Comments Off on The revenge of the unpaid carpenters (and other true stories)

You hang around enough jobsites you hear things. The following incidents came to me from various builders or homeowners and are recalled here as best I can. The dog and the pier hole One of the best foundation systems a house can have is a concrete “pier and grade beam” system in which eighteen-inch-wide holes are drilled about eight or more feet deep into the ground at various intervals along where the foundation is going. These holes are temporarily covered with octagonal plywood hole covers but are still hazardous enough that an effort is made to fill them with concrete [...]

29 10, 2006

A house move for the ages – PART 1

By Steve McKee|2006-10-29T04:38:22+00:00October 29th, 2006|Phil Joy's big house move, Uncategorized|Comments Off on A house move for the ages – PART 1

On a recent Friday evening Melody and I visited Benicia’s next architectural treasure, and we went to the Napa countryside to do it. Because I wanted to see history in the making, we accepted an invitation from house-mover Phil Joy and his wife Celeste to come visit their latest project in mid-move. After a drive along an obscure access road towards the Napa River we could see it: A three story Victorian house looming out of place in an empty field surrounded by some parked trucks and tractors. It was up on beams on a big flat bed trailer which [...]