construct(ure)s

UBER Rock 50k Race Report, et cetera

2011-09-26T09:51:00.001-04:00

Its been a long time since I've blogged. Even longer since I've run a 50k; which is what I did this past weekend. This is not to say that there haven't been any house projects to blog about since last October (there have been tons!) or that I haven't run any interesting races since my last 50k in August 2008 (I have!), but "running" thirty-one miles through the mountains provided me with ample time for introspection and prompted these reflections.

Still standing...!

Saturday morning started just before 5 AM, with a "shower" in Bodyglide. A friend showed me the stuff before the 2008 Death Valley Marathon and any run over 20 miles since then hasn't been pleasant without it. I ate half a Bodos bagel and poured two huge cups of coffee. My dad, who drove down from New York, and I jumped in his truck and were off. The race was being held at Wintergreen which is about an hour from where I live in Charlottesville.As we approached the Blue Ridge Mountains the fog started to descend on the mountains. The pre-dawn temperature was in the high 50s, fantastic for a long run. It had poured throughout Central Virginia the day before, which also helped cool things down.

The big event on the day was the UROC 100k race. Some of the best runners from around the country were at Wintergreen to compete in what was being billed as the Superbowl of Ultraracing (one of the many reasons I stayed away from the 100k!). The elites were off at 7 AM; the rest of the field at 7:15.

Something strange happened during the half-hour or so between the start of the 100k and 7.30. My dad, who hadn't run in some 6 weeks due to an injury, suddenly felt well enough to do the 1/2 Marathon. He had signed up in July but was "injured" in August. He took inventory of the clothes / gear he had brought up the mountain. If he wanted to run, he'd have to do it in a pair of hiking shorts and needed to borrow one sock and a running shirt from me. Other than that, and though he hadn't done a 10 mile run in over two months, he somehow figured he could run/walk his way through the whole thing.

While he was changing into my "backup" gear, I noticed that the race course had changed, A LOT. Apparently on Wednesday (three days before the race!) the directors decided to double up on some of the 100k course and avoid a grueling final 5-mile, 2500 foot climb. Luckily, I was fairly well acquainted with the revised section as it had been part of the the 1/2 Marathon course I'd run in the previous two years.

At 8 AM both the 50k and 1/2 Mar races took off. As part of a new strategy, I took off very slow. In the last 50k I ran, the Mount Disappointment 50k in Southern California, I started way too fast. By mile 10 I was exhausted and walked a good portion of the last 20 miles. This time would be different; I wouldn't get suckered into expending all my energy on the first climb. Admittedly however, I was a bit jealous of the general abandon with which the bearded-shirtless guy sprinted out of the gate.

In hindsight my strategy was probably off by 30 seconds, though I couldn't have known it at the time. Right after the first mile mark I was in roughly 20th place out of 200 or so runners. Accidentally (?), someone in those first 20 people set off a hornet's nest-booby trap that would entangle runners all the way back to my dad, who was running towards the end of the pack. Without warning, a swarm of hornets attacked me from the right side of the trail and I was swatting them off with two very ineffective, water-bottle holding hands. I felt stings everywhere and started hearing shrikes up the trail behind me. The stinging on my own body stopped after 100 years or so. And after another 1/4 mile I was mentally clear enough to take inventory: six stings, including the one that crawled up into my hat. My dad, about 150 runners back, got 5 stings. I hoped mine weren't enough to trigger an allergic reaction. The only other time I'd sustained multiple bee-stings was while mowing the lawn in high school. That adventure ended with me passing out in the ER. I didn't want a repeat. It would be 4 more miles to the first aid station (if I needed to drop), though it would definitely have sucked if I had trained all summer only to be taken out at mile-one by some pesky bees.

Whether due to the multiple stings or the 1500 foot climb in the first few miles, by the time I reached Wintergreen summit, I was feeling pretty loopy. No hives, I just felt "off." I choked down a Cliff Shot and was thankful for some downhill. Most of the next section was made up of randomly strung together trails, roads, and connecting paths that wove their way between various vacation homes high up on the mountain. People gathered in small groups to watch the race--drinking coffee, wearing warm clothes, and not nursing hornet wounds. I was slightly jealous.

As the downhill continued and we came out onto Wintergreen Drive, I started to get into a groove. Hornets be damned, I was going to keep running. After a fairly steep uphill to Reeds Gap (where I finally caught up to a 3-month pregnant woman who had passed me on the downhill!), I buzzed through the second aid station at 9.8 miles feeling pretty good, especially after I dumped a dozen or so rocks out of my shoes. The pregnant woman went screaming by me again after briefly describing her desire to turn around and only do the 1/2 Marathon. Ultra runners are of a different breed...

The second 10-miles felt great. They were largely a rolling descent into Lake Sherando via the Blue Ridge Parkway and some nice single-track. I started catching people in the back of the 100k pack who had taken off 45 minutes earlier. I kept up the 10-minute per mile pace I wanted to hold through to the final climb. [For those uninitiated with mountain running, take your typical road pace and add 50% (at least!) to your time. In a long road race, my pace is generally around 7-minutes per mile; in the two 50k races I'd done previously, I hovered around 11-minutes per mile. Between rocky trails, steep mountains, and aggressive wildlife, the pace slows appreciably (at least, those are my excuses!)]. For this race, my hope was that in the three years since my last 50k, I had somehow learned how to pace myself rather than burn out early.

At 18 miles, I hit the second "lake" aid station and started what would be a long, rolling 9-mile ascent back up to Reeds Gap. My pace slowed but I still felt good. Around mile 20 I found the pregnant woman and bearded-shirtless guy down in a stream off the trail. Apparently her foot had swollen pretty badly and she had it sitting in the cold water. She had twisted it on a rock heading down and ran a few more miles before calling it quits. The bearded guy turned out to be her fiance. They both dropped. The race didn't really matter to him anyway; he was using it as training for the 100 Mile Grindstone in two weeks. Sheesh... Their child is going to be born with running shoes on...

By the time I got back onto the Parkway the mountains were completely socked in with fog. For the final 9 miles I didn't see another runner. It was somewhat lonely, but also relatively relaxing; as relaxing as a 9-mile run after you've already done 22 miles could be I suppose. I rolled through the aid station at mile 27 on pace and with only one mile of "running" left. The final 4 miles were 1 steep mile down, 3 steep miles up. My strategy was to run the downhill mile and powerwalk the final three. I'd been here before. The Mt Disappointment 50k ended with a brutal three-mile uphill. I only hoped that the Ibuprofen and salt tablets I'd choked down at mile 26 would help me not feel the searing pain in a portion of my lower-quads that I'd never known existed before I started "running" 50ks. Halfway up the hill I started running a bit. Strange... I actually felt good.

The final 1/2 mile or so was, generously, downhill. No one was cheering as I came in, in part because there are no crowds like there are at even the smallest marathon. And even if there was a crowd you could only see only a 100 feet or so anyway due to the fog. I think I only saw the timer when I finished. The one person who did see me within 10 seconds of finishing was my dad. He'd since changed into my spare hiking shorts after finishing his race. "Injured" though he was, he managed to win his age group in the 1/2 marathon! I hope I can hang like that when I'm in my late 50s! While writing this post, I received a text from him that said: "trouble walking BIG time today; feels good in a strange kind of way. hope you are ok."

Dad and I following the 50k.

Hobbling around this morning I feel similar to my dad: "trouble walking BIG time...but good in a strange kind of way.". For the first time ever, I had finished the 50k and felt good. I maybe even could have run a few more miles. I even had enough leg strength yesterday to stand on my feet for a few hours and paint some trim on the front porch. My 'go-out-slow' strategy seemed to work. I finished 12th out of 120 starters (apparently, 40 people dropped out, whether due to the bees or mountains or being pregnant, I don't know). And I took over 20 minutes off my 50k PR. Next up: the 50 miler in March? Maybe in 3 more years...

Rehydration strategy back at the house. Poured from a growler purchased at Devils Backbone.

Case Closed

2010-10-29T08:09:00.000-04:00

Whew! Yesterday marked the end of a remarkable chapter in the life of our home. We finally closed the refinance of our construction loan. Normally this type of thing wouldn't result in a blog entry; I'm bad enough as it is with posts lately. But our refinance is a tale of deception, a local version of the banking crisis, and extremely good fortune (Providence?).

The front of the house nearly one year after we started work

Nearly one year ago, when we were still relatively on schedule with our renovations, I put down a deposit at Stellar One bank to refinance out of our construction loan (redflag #1 - most refis don't require deposits). Towards the middle of November 2009 it became clear our contractor wasn't going to finish on schedule due to a window placement issue. No big deal (to some degree); we canceled our refi and the bank said they were going to hold the deposit until we initiated the refi process again (redflag #2); who was I to argue. Admittedly, I wasn't super excited about this 'requirement' for them to keep our deposit, but at that point I had not reason to think things wouldn't work out down the road.

Fast forward 3 months. Towards the end of February, when the contractor finished the family room addition, I contacted Stellar One again to initiate the refinance. The original loan officer, who structured the construction loan and subsequent refinance was "no longer with the company" (we have heard through various channels: "fired"; redflag #3). A new loan officer had been assigned to the refi. And without going into all the bloody details over the subsequent six months we were strung with promise after promise to close the loan. Each time they didn't close it they refused to return our deposit because, so they said, they should be able to close it through some other loan process (redflag #4). By contract, we were required to refinance out of our construction loan one year after we started construction; i.e. by 9/1/10. However "new mortgage regulations", a lack of understanding of our file by subsequent loan officers (we had three new officers over 6 months), and, we later learned, some very incorrect dealings by the original loan officer resulted in us going nowhere by September.

The front of the house from another angle

Finally by mid-September I demanded (against the advice of my lawyer) that Stellar One return my original (and on their part bogus), several thousand dollar deposit so that I could pursue a refinance through another lender. Apparently the demand--directed to Stellar One's director of retail mortgage--was enough to cause them to finally return the deposit.

Throughout the course of the drama I nervously watched rates and prayed the local real estate market held firm long enough for our re-appraisal to stay high. If rates rose dramatically, especially as I expected after the end of the Fed's purchase of mortgage backed securities in March, we may not have been able to afford the new payments. If the local marked tanked, our appraisal may have came in with us showing less than 20% equity even though our original down payment and cash put into renovations put us well over that figure. Fortunately rates fell over those 6 months, netting us hundreds of dollars per month of interest savings. Had we refi'd back last fall, our rate would have been over a full point higher than where we are at today. And our final appraisal came in much higher than we expected, thanks to a slow but price-stable local market. Thus, the 'happy ending' yesterday at the lawyers office where Emili and I signed the paperwork for our permanent loan. Now if only we could get all the painting done...

Em and I out front of the homestead after trashing her wedding

dress. More fun photos at: http://tinyurl.com/2010trashdress

Watch out for that Tree!

2010-06-08T11:32:00.001-04:00

A few weeks ago during a bad windstorm, the Norwegian Maple in our front yard decided to let go of some branches. The results are below.

Ironically just a few weeks before this "free" cord of wood appeared in our yard, we had an arborist perform a survey of the trees on our property. The maple in question has given us concern due to its multiple dead and dying branches. And as expected, the arborist said that tree was past its typical lifespan of 50 years. He said we would continue to find dead limbs until in our yard and that in a few years (5-10?), it would have to be completely removed.

Interestingly, he also said that we shouldn't have any catastrophic branch failures and that he didn't see a problem with us parking beneath the tree. Well! Lucky for us, I had not yet used all of our mulch (see the first photo) and the remaining pile served to prop one of the branches up so as only to impose a minor dent on the hood of our car.

When another major storm blew in this past weekend (more on that later), I expected the entire tree to come down. Instead, just a few "minor" branches fell, even though damage within the 1/2 mile surrounding our house was extensive. My dad, who was here over the weekend, left me his pole saw so that I could remove more of the weaker limbs closer in to our house.

The entire episode has left us wondering what tree to replace the maple with. We love the privacy and shade it provides and would be loathe to cut it down until we have some replacement started. Currently we're considering one of the newer American Elm cultivars, known for both rapid growth and resistance to Dutch Elm Disease. Our plan (and hopefully our maple will go along with it), is to allow the Elm to grow up over a few years while we slowly take the maple down. Oh, and we're not planning to park under the tree any more either!

Progress: Mar & Apr 2010

2010-04-30T17:08:00.001-04:00

New modernist structure in the front yard or something else?

The last two months has seen some good progress at the house, notwithstanding the lack of posts to this blog. Much of late February / early March was spent cleaning up all the construction debris strewn around the yard as it appeared from under the freakish 70" of snow that covered the ground this winter. I'm still awaiting a bill for the haul away (which will tell me the tonnage we discarded), however I filled most of a 21 cubic yard container with demo material from our side room, cottage, and siding. It pained me to create so much rubbish; but we donated as many good doors, sinks, and windows as we could to the Habitat Store.

The other big area of improvement for April has been the front porch. Easter weekend, when the concrete slab in the side room wasn't quite ready to be painted, we decided to paint the brick at the front of the house. We had always intended to paint the brick, Emili just bumped it up on the list when we couldn't paint the side room (due to drying time of the concrete). Within a few hours, the house looked transformed (again); from two colors and two materials to a single color. Now we just have to paint the brick on the other three sides!

Newly painted brick at the front of the house.

The other major undertaking at the front porch area was painting the porch itself. The contractors finished the front porch area just before we received our first 24" storm of the season in December. After the storm, it didn't get out of 30 degrees for two months making painting impossible. When the weather finally warmed, some of the floor boards, especially at the perimeter of the porch, had "cupped" a bit. As part of the final punchlist (which was finished last week!), the contractor belt-sanded the front before we painted it.

View of the sanded deck, prior to painting,

from within the enclosed porch.

Another view of the porch with plastic around it,

intended to keep the pollen off it while we painted.

Once the sanding was done, we stapled plastic around the outside in order to keep pollen and leaves off the porch while we added 3 coats of paint. It was pretty fun to work inside of the plastic and we definitely saw a few people drive by slower than normal as if to ponder what the heck we were doing. This weekend brings good weather and goals of mulch, gardening, and possibly finishing the floor in the family room.

Finished floor on the porch.

Mulch pile. Hopefully I'll make some headway this weekend!

From the Archives: Ode to Los Angeles

2010-02-26T12:26:00.005-05:00

A year ago last week Emili and I ended our seven year sojourn in Los Angeles and moved back to our historical roots on the East Coast. As I sat in a coffee shop in West LA last February, between beating rush-hour traffic out of downtown and waiting to arrive at my last construction site visit, I wrote the following in my journal:

The last three months have been incredibly hectic. Since taking the Structural Engineering Exam in late October I finally decided to return one last time to academia, selected a school, found a new job, gave notice at another. Today is my last day at that job--Structural Focus. As this day has approached I've often wondered whether we are making the right move. I love my job, my co-workers, Los Angeles... Right now Charlottesville feels very provincial by comparison.

In many ways I've learned most of my engineering skills--career related ones anyway--while at Structural Focus. I'm extremely thankful to have worked there these last 2-1/2 years. I'll truly miss the friendships I've formed with my coworkers. And I'll probably never find a work environment with the same mix of professionalism and freedom--relaxed professionalism--ever again.

Beyond leaving my current job, moving out of Los Angeles is the end of an era. Shortly after getting married Emili and I moved to a city that was 2500 miles from our closest family members. We moved with many friends to a city that none of us knew. In our seven years here many of our friends have moved on, moved up, moved away, left the bonds of fellowship. Now is our time to move.

Last week while driving to Big Bear to go snowboarding with my coworkers we drove by the hotel where Emili and I spent our second anniversary, past two different campsites where we spent weekends with friends from kairos, past scores of burned acres from our first close up encounter with wildfires in 2003.

I definitely miss having a mountain like Big Bear so close to home.

Emili and I had dinner recently with Amy Murphy and Michael Maltzan, a fantastic couple who have shaped our story in so many ways... We also shared a few hours with Gary and Pam Hilliard, who took the daring step into homeownership in Southern California with us and who re-taught me the joy of trail running... We had a meal wtih Ben and Lauren Thompson--a couple we have grown up with individually and together for 12 years. And tomorrow we'll share our final meal on the West Coast with Kevin, Annie and their son Luke for his 2nd birthday. Our sons will say goodbye and probably never remember this best friendship they had for two years.

Photo from an annual Kings Canyon trek. This is at the 'summit' of Glen

Pass, 2008. Relatively close to Los Angeles, a bit further from Virginia.

So many times I've second guessed. Not completely, but deeply second guessed whether moving "home" is what will make us happy. Obviously no place will completely make us happy; our choice to move East is what we want for our family. We have wonderful friends who have already gone East before us and are hoping to reconnect with them. But its impossible to live somewhere this long and not put down roots. I assume we're going to feel uprooted and unstable for months to come...[] For now reality calls me back to my last site visit on this my last day of work--to look at the nearly completed construction of a house I started designing my first month at Structural Focus.

We've been in Virginia a year now. Roots are starting to grow. This second year will hopefully see the inauguration of annual traditions. And while Los Angeles and California now feel worlds away, on occasion there is a strong call to return and "Go West...", again.

Progress: Jan & Feb 2010

2010-02-22T08:33:00.001-05:00

For much of January and early February we attempted to put our kitchen back together. After removing the wall separating the kitchen and dining rooms (see this post for original kitchen / dining photos), we wired several new lights (the white pendants you see below), patched the floor, re-plumbed the sink and stove gas line, fixed a plumbing vent line, and plastered all the gaping holes back up. The other major effort was replacing the peeling countertops and re-orienting the fridge and adjacent cabinets to the side wall.

We still have a lot of "finish" work to do in the kitchen. We plan on replacing the track and chandelier lights, painting the cabinets and walls, and possibly white-washing the floors. This work will be done over the next few months, once we have finished the cottage and exterior painting.

The winter weather broke enough this weekend (we've now reached the all time record for snow; good year to do construction!) and allowed us to get some painting done, namely the front porch ceiling and primer on the back family room. In the photos of the family room you'll see that the contractors were able to add the new transoms between our most recent 10" and 18" snowstorms.

Using sky blue paint for the porch ceiling helps prevent

wasps and the like from building nests, or so we're told.

This week we're hoping to paint the walls and get a finish coat of sealer on the concrete floor in the family room so we can begin using it (3 months late!). Though we still have a bit to do things are starting feel more finished.

a lesson in patience

2010-01-08T14:16:00.002-05:00

Its probably too early to fully detail what our home renovations have taught us. However with the almost daily anxiety we're experiencing trying to finish everything up, we've learned many things already, as they say, "the hard way".

Luckily the new porch rafters were sized for snow loading! Three days after "substantial completion," Charlottesville enjoyed the largest single-drop snowfall in 40+ years. We ended up with 24" pushing down on the new rafters.

The major lesson looming in my mind recently has been how quickly we took on the renovations, how un-patient we were to get going. Conventional wisdom says to live in a house for a year (or more) before deciding what to do with it. For us, after two 30 minute walkthroughs--one open house and one deciding what needed to be renovated--we defined most of our current scope of work (a front porch, back family room, cottage renovations, central heat and AC, and new exterior siding) and plowed forward with the loan process. I mean, between the two of us we're an interior designer and a structural engineer. We can remove walls and re-arrange the guts of the house. Why wait?

The terms of the renovation loan we were offered also made doing the work up front rather than waiting very appealing. Added to the attractive loan terms was the need to have the design approved by the appraiser / underwriters before closing on our loan. And with future plans for me to begin working on another degree in the fall of 2010, we decided now was the time to go for it.

This decision led to a hastily assembled set of plans and a relatively loose scope of work, particularly with the details. One benefit of not detailing everything out was that it allowed us to make game day decisions on many smaller issues--how the soffit would look, where exactly the porch columns should be located, etc. And lots of details needed to be decided during construction rather than beforehand because we didn't have access to the house while developing the final plans (the previous owner didn't want us frequenting the property during escrow to take measurements, decide on massing, ...). The downside to the quick design period has led to several change orders, lots of miscommunication with the contractor, and even questions like: "What do we really need this family room for anyway?" shortly after the foundations were excavated.

The back-yard facing family room is on the left. It is still unpainted due to the cold weather.

Many times over the last few months we have wished we'd lived in the house longer before plunging in; wished we made different decisions during construction; wished we had the help of another two dozen sets of eyes (maybe even an architect!). We've wondered what we could have done with money we spent on portions of the project we had already finished--especially with the family room. "You know, for the price of that room we could have traded our scratched floors for newly sanded ones, purchased replacement windows that don't leak volumes of cold air, and an expanded our kitchen design from the relatively simple one we're pursuing." And after living in the house three months all of these details--new floors and windows and a better kitchen--became "priorities" that the two 30 minute walkthroughs didn't reveal. On the flip side, we're fairly certain that we would not have worked out the massing of the front porch or the roof tie-in over the entry room unless we had the family room addition at the back. And this, from an exterior perspective changed the entire feel of the house in a way that we are very, very happy with.

In short the renovations are a mixed-bag of victories and losses. At present we're certainly happy with more of the decisions than we're disappointed with. But we'd have hoped that with all the money we've paid out and inconvenience we've lived with for 4 months, that everything about the design would fall under the positive category. I should know by now that no project is ever 100% what the owner wants. Still...

We've found it extremely difficult to be patient with our house. We want everything done up front so we can enjoy not renovating it once we're done (with our house in California we did many projects right before selling and we regretted not being able to enjoy them longer). Just this week we made another impatient decision: we rushed in an bought a sink online without checking local dealers. We saved money on the sink but not on shipping and we ended up ordering the wrong sink anyway (due in large part to a misleading photo on the web page). Now we can't return it. After calling around we learned we could have bought the same sink locally for less than the cost of the online sink plus shipping (and we wouldn't have had to deal with the extremely unhelpful "customer service" people at efaucets.com). I suppose soon enough we'll be finished with construction and can practice patience watching our bank account recover from the past 6 months!

So would more time up front have led to fewer regrets? Probably. Would it have eliminated all problems? Surely no. Were we able to do it over again I would have tried to pass a preliminary design by the appraiser and then modify it after 3 months of living there--before bringing in the earth moving equipment. Though on that that schedule the excavators would have been breaking ground right when the 24" of snow dropped. Unfortunately renovating a home is so infrequent an occurrance that it is difficult to learn and apply the lessons from one project to the next. This is where conventional wisdom could have helped us. If only we had listened better.

Week 13-14 (Dec 21 through Dec 28)

2009-12-31T15:43:00.000-05:00

When we started designing the renovations back in June we decided we would spruce up the kitchen by painting the cabinets. We liked what we saw in our two walkthroughs (as well as the photos we looked at again and again during escrow) and therefore set aside only a minimal amount of money for kitchen improvements. Our final renovation decisions included a new Family Room, Front Porch, Air Conditioning, Siding, and improvements to a detached "cottage". Below is the floor plan showing the porch and sunroom additions as well as a key plan of the kitchen showing original photos.

Photo 1: Back of the kitchen

Photo 2: Side of the kitchen

Photo 3: Kitchen wall adjoining dining room

Photo 4: Dining room wall adjoining kitchen

After a few months of living at the house we found that we rarely used our dining room. We set a small table in the kitchen and ate almost all of a our meals in there. With two small children almost half of our dinner time is spent getting up and down for things we forgot and cleaning up spills! The exception to the kitchen "nook" dining has been two birthday parties we hosted because we needed more space.This became comical when we ate Thanksgiving dinner in the dining room and our three-year old son requested that we sing happy birthday because all former meals there were birthdays. We'd thus come to realize that our kitchen and dining rooms were too detached--both from one another and from the rest of the house--and that some modification was needed.

Unfortunately this realization came after we had burned through most of our contingency and reserve funds, so modifications had to be relatively inexpensive. We couldn't do new cabinets but the countertops cried out to be replaced; the laminate had de-laminated in several spots and was cracked and severely stained in others. Our "ultimate" kitchen design would have included taking over the small bathroom adjacent to the kitchen and making it a breakfast nook. In addition the wall between the kitchen and dining rooms would be removed.

We explored this option for several weeks. Around the same time however, a construction mishap (for lack of a better term) at the sunroom sapped most of our remaining reserve fund. Thus, our kitchen re-do would have to be shoestring. We opted to remove only the non-bearing wall between the kitchen and dining rooms and add an island coutnertop between them. The fridge and adjacent cabinets would be moved to the interior wall and we would paint the cabinets (as originally planned) to freshen them up.

The photos below show only a few days of work in this area, basically the removal of the wall. The impact already is amazing! We anticipate a couple more weeks to get things functional again, though it will likely be a month or more until we have things buttoned back up. Until then, we're eating breakfast in our hallway and dinner at my inlaws.

Photo in the same direction as "4" above.

Photo in the same direction as "3" above.

Weeks 10-12 (11/30 through 12/14)

2009-12-30T16:37:00.000-05:00

These few weeks saw the substantial completion of the contractor's work, including--with much excitement on my part--the siding. Since Week 2 way back in October we have had Tyvek or plastic on substantial portions of our 2nd floor. I've been somewhat skeptical regarding the purported water-proofness of the Tyvek system (and less so of the plastic sheeting), especially after the entry room ceiling showed signs of leaking (after the new roof was added. The entry room is the one story portion on the right of the house; see below).

Siding completed on the front | Tyvek still on the side

Apparently water was getting in behind the roof flashing because the flashing was installed over the Tyvek. The new siding, installed on top of the flashing, has corrected the issue. Anyway, waterproofness caused only part of my anxiety over the last several months. Our house sits on top of a ridge. Being as such, we have pretty decent winds on a regular basis. And when wind gets behind Tyvek, especially if its not nailed super well, it produces an incredibly loud whipping sound. It's loud enough to have caused many sleep-deprived nights for Emili and I as well as our children (which in turn, makes for more sleepless nights for us!)

Siding mostly complete on the back | We still need to paint the addition siding!

Needless to say, we are incredibly happy to have the siding complete. Everyone is sleeping better. There appears to be no more leaking. And the visual impact of the new siding is striking (the old siding was a cracking and mold-stained wavy asbestos).

"Finished" front elevation with a (relatively) clean front yard

At this point the contractor has only very minor things to complete, including, as I'll detail in a later post, a fairly substantial construction mishap. Other than that, we're still awaiting the concrete floor in the entry room as well as a carpet / vinyl in the rental. We also have lots of painting to do and the weather in Charlottesville has been less than cooperative lately. Finally, last week we also decided to demo one interior wall in the house--the one between our kitchen and dining rooms. The initial impact has been amazing (more in a later post). Its currently causing a bit of a challenge in terms of eating at our house, but in the long run will be totally worth it.

Week 9 (11/23/09)

2009-12-21T16:00:00.001-05:00

Being that this was Thanksgiving the contractor had a short week and worked mostly on punchlist items (cleanup type stuff related to the original scope of work). My parents came into town for the holiday and as soon as my dad arrived I put a paintbrush in his hand!

The four days off provided spectacular albiet chilly weather and my dad and I endured the difficult task of painting every nook and cranny between the exposed rafter tails. I love the look of open rafters but partway through painting them wondered about the sanity of their detailing. My neighbor had warned me they would be a painting nightmare and all told we spent a combined 20+ "holiday" hours on them. We did sneak in a few good runs (6 and 10 miles) and were able to catch the entire VT / UVA football game. So all in all it was a great few days.

As I'm writing this post a few weeks late, I can't believe how fortunate we actually were. Since Thanksgiving, Virginia has rarely had two consecutive days above 50 degrees; I've tried to paint the rest of the exterior as well as the porch columns, to no avail. The cold weather culminated in 24" of snow this past weekend! This change in the weather took a bit of adjusting for me...after living 7 years in Southern California I'd become accustomed to having 70 degrees and sun after a day or two of rain. I forgot that when winter comes on the East Coast, it usually doesn't leave for months. So to have a few extra able bodies around the house both to help paint as well as watch the kids (thanks mom!) was priceless. All of the "critical" painting got done and the exposed wood was sealed for the winter.

Week 8 (11/16/09)

2009-11-25T13:43:00.001-05:00

As we're closing in on the original completion deadline (Nov 30) I'm realizing that we're not going to finish on schedule. To those who have done renovations on old houses this will come as no surprise! Even the general contractor who has stayed relatively close to his schedule will not hit the target date. The schedule has caused me a lot of headache over the past few weeks due to our loan committment deadline. However this week I was able to negotiate out of it (which is doubly good as rates have come down even more) and will re-lock our permanent loan after Thanksgiving. This means our construction loan will close early next year.

Loan locks and deadlines notwithstanding work moved steadily along this past week. The contractor shingled the entire roof, installed skylights in the sunroom, finished interior trim, and finished the porch floor. On our end we cleaned the cottage in order to finish and wax the floor--we decided to have a finished concrete floor rather than the less durable laminate floor option--and we also began painting the .

Weeks 6 and 7 (11/2/09 and 11/9/09)

2009-11-13T10:27:00.000-05:00

Trim and finish-type work continued this week in earnest. The sunroom / family room (we still haven't decided what to call it) received batton strips and window trim on the exterior; the interior was drywalled. On the front porch the roof plywood and ice shield were added.

Since the roof was added to the front porch we've been really happy about the amount of light still reaching the current dining and living rooms. We were initially a bit worried (particularly about the living room) being dark, especially now that the days are really short. However the porch ended up being set up high enough so as not to block too much winter daylight. Next week two skylights will be cut into the roof of the sunroom directly in front of the living room windows which will add more light back into the living room.

So overall the contractor is making good progress and is, for the most part, on schedule. On the other end of the spectrum, the tasks that we have taken on--the cottage upgrades and entry / bathroom--are dragging! I'm not sure if this is because we're running the show (as compared with the contractor) or because we encountered several unforseen conditions; lots of sill rot in the cottage and the large hole in the entry room. Whatever the case may be, the cottage is finally nearing the 'trim out' stage where I can get moving on the kitchen and where we can paint the walls.

Week 5 (10/26/09)

2009-10-31T15:37:00.001-04:00

It felt like lots of work got done this week. Monday after work I tore off part of the front siding in anticipation of the porch framing going up. Much of the back siding also came off in order to repair rotted trim around three large double windows.

While the massing of the porch was changing the feel of the front of the house, the contractor began working on many of the details at the back sunroom. Radiant tubing was placed in the floor before pouring the concrete; wood beadboard was added between the exposed rafter tails; and 4x10 sheets of Hardi-board siding were installed (eventually they will add batton strips for a board-and-batten look).

Weeks 3 and 4 (10/12/09 and 10/19/09)

2009-10-25T15:07:00.001-04:00

After the foundations and block walls were placed last week week 3 saw the walls framed and the roof rafters and roof sheathing installed. This gave us the first sense of the enclosed space we had designed.

The joy didn't last long. On Wednesday the contractor discovered that they had set the roof height using a small bathroom window at the back of the house. As they continued to frame the roof around the side and to the front of the house, the top of the new roof (where it connected to our existing walls) would have covered over the lower windows at the front of the house.

After considering a few options during the rainy days at the end of the week (Thursday and Friday) the contractor started Week 4 by tearing off the roof framing and starting over. This week was kind of a drag all around--for the contractor because he was doing re-work and for us because I got a week-long flu bug (likely H1N1). In hindsight, removing and replacing the roof was definitely the best option we considered. By the end the week the contractor had not only re-framed with roof all the way around the side but had also installed the windows. It was starting to feel like a room!

Progress: Week 2

2009-10-14T08:50:00.045-04:00

In the flurry of activity that is our house, I have been negligent in posting updates. Week 2 of our project was actually last week (Oct 5-9), and I'm just now getting around to posting photos from then. I hope to do this week's update later today or tomorrow, mostly because the rain predicted for the next few days will likely bring the work to a halt until next week.

Week 2 was part demolition / part construction. We got rid of about 1/3 of our asbestos siding, tore up what will be the entry / play room (and found our first "surprise" there), and finished gutting the cottage. On the construction side of things the contractor started the floor and wall framing for the sunroom / family room and the cottage received new plumbing and a new closet / bathroom configuration.

Trench for family room footings

Oliver loves having "bulldozers" in his yard

Waste concrete from the back patio

Concrete for the family room footings

Concrete for the front porch pier footings

Side and part of back without asbestos siding

Tyvek-ing the side

Side "storage room" before demo. We're not sure what

this room was used for but it definitely felt like a hunting lodge.

Side room part way through demo.

Surprise, its not slab-on-grade!

When the plumbers were trenching through the concrete to lay the plumbing and waste line (above), they discovered that the slab at the side entry room was actually suspended over a small but inacessable crawl space--not poured on grade as we originally thought (well, 1/3 of it was on grade; its the part furthest from where the photo was taken). This turned out to be good fortune as we can now provide heat and air conditioning through the underfloor space where we had previously struggled to figure out a way to condition it. After the plumbing and ductwork are installed we'll backfill the crawl space with gravel and finish the floor with radiant heated concrete.

Let the Demo Begin!

2009-09-29T15:09:00.002-04:00

Normally, a backhoe parked in your front yard would be cause for concern. Today however there was (metaphorical) cheering in our house. After three+ weeks of waiting we finally got our building permit! This means that the contractor can finally begin on the foundations--something he did today. Over the last couple of weekends we have spent time demolishing various portions of the house that are first up on the renovation list, including:

Removing boxwoods at front of house to make way for front porch
Demolishing the kitchen in the guest cottage
Demolishing the tile flooring in the entry area
Removing the (leaking) abandoned underground fuel tank and contaminated soil
Demolishing the back steps for the new sunroom

preparing to remove the underground tank

(note the large boxwoods covering the windows)

hole left by the tank and contaminated soil

750 gallons of liquid warmth

demolished back steps

front of the house minus boxwoods

what's left of the kitchen in the cottage

The rest of the contractor's schedule this week includes placing concrete for the footings (Thursday) and laying of the block walls for the sunroom crawlspace (Friday). Framing begins next week. Emili and I are hoping to start building the kitchen cabinets and begin removing the asbestos siding from the back (West) and North sides of the house.

Rootedness

2009-09-04T10:24:00.001-04:00

To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul. It is also one of the hardest to define. - Simone Weil, Europe 1943

When I first read Simone Weil's The Need for Roots in 2005 I knew I had stumbled upon one of those rare gems of human wisdom. Three years earlier I had moved to Los Angeles after spending five years in Blacksburg Virginia and growing up in Herkimer New York. The combined populations of these two rural counties totals 150,000; Los Angeles's population is close to 10,000,000. In addition to the dramatic difference in numbers of people there were cultural, philosophical, and environmental distinctions between LA and my two former East Coast habitats. These differences frequently led to a sense of rootlessness during my early years there.

Tree roots common in Southern California.
Photo courtesy of Carla Kimball, 2009

Complicating my absorption into the Los Angeles soil was my own sense of a less than full commitment to California. On one hand, as our years living in LA grew in number, my wife and I felt increasingly at home. At the same time there was always a gnawing sense that we were not and would never feel completely at home there. This sense was particularly strong because of the close ties we enjoy to both our families. And our two final years in LA living with small children ultimately compelled us to fulfill our need for roots back on the East Coast.

After living six months back in Virginia we just recently moved into a 'permanent' home (more on that as we renovate it in the coming weeks). It is the first time we have owned a house in over three years and the first time in our married life of seven years that we feel truly committed to a place. I am excited to see what the next few years feel like as we participate in the community in Central Virginia. At the same time I also have occasional reservations (uneasiness?) about my role in creating a sense of home, rootedness, and place for my own rapidly growing children. Perhaps this is due to the the difficulty Weil says we have with defining rootedness; perhaps it is because my own long term sense of root-less-ness leaves me without a clear sense of how to help someone else feel rooted.

A human being has roots by virtue of his or her real, active, and natural participation in the life of a community which preserves in living shape certain particular treasures of the past and certain particular expectations for the future. - Simone Weil

Home is where?

2009-08-18T20:34:00.011-04:00

Growing up we had a needlepoint hanging on the wall that read: "Home is Where Your Heart Is". My grandmother had a similar one at her house:

No Matter What
No Matter Where
Its Always Home
If Your Heart Is There

I recently returned from a family reunion in Cape Cod. It was the first time in 6 years we didn't have to fly from California to attend a reunion; we instead drove up from our new home in Virginia. Before heading out to the Cape we spent a day in my hometown, Herkimer NY. While sitting in my parents living room I realized that I hadn't been "home" during the summer season since 2002. It was a strange realization and one that brought back questions I have turned over in my mind for the last 5 years, in brief: What and where is home?

In his book Home: A Short History of an Idea Witold Rybczynski traces the history of the concept of "home" back to 14th century townhomes in Europe. Bourgeouis townhomes provided one of the first senses of domestic comfort and differed dramatically from the contemporaneous castle of the aristrocrat, monastery of the cleric, and hovel of the serf. However medieval homes also stand in stark contrast to 21st century concepts of the idea: people rarely (though increasingly) live where they work; few in our rootless society remain in one place for their entire lives; and our complex food distribution systems leave us disconnected to the location where crops are produced. If the "home" in the 14th century was a permanent residence where people engaged in their trade, slept, and prepared meals from crops that surrounded their town, what is the meaning of "home" today? Definitions abound.

As this is an ongoing question and one on which I've spilled a lot of ink over years (including several research papers while at Fuller and a course proposal to USC), I'll probably devote several future posts to new questions I'm encountering regarding "home". Looking back: In what ways did Los Angeles feel like home during our seven years there? At present: How long will we live in Virginia until it feels like home? Looking forward: How do we create a sense of home for our children, even if we relocate houses or towns down the road? Perhaps home is simply where your heart is, but knowing the location of one's heart is equally perplexing!

Locust ReLocation

2009-07-30T11:42:00.014-04:00

Thirty days from today we will be homeowners again. It has been a long escrow; nearly 3 months in all. We're itching to leave our two bedroom rental for the spacious two-story, four-bedroom house down our street; Locust Ave. In just 6 months we will have transitioned from an 800 square foot apartment in LA (with two kids and no yard) to a house nearly 3 times as big with nearly 1/2 an acre. And it can't come sooner. Every morning our 2-1/2 year old begs to go outside and we look forward to having lots of place for him to run around. [More "before" photos can be found on our flickr.com page]

The house was built in 1940. Most houses surrounding it on the street date from the early 20th century, towards the end of what Frank Shirley calls the "golden era of American residential architecture" (1740 through 1940). Emili and I have typically gravitated toward older houses over the last 7 years; in LA we rented a 1930s apartment in Hollywood and bought an early 1920's Spanish style house in a historic district in Pasadena. There we renovated the kitchen, replaced some windows and doors, added a patio, and built a fence. Almost all the work was cosmetic.

However after we sold our house in Pasadena we rented a mid-century modern apartment dating from the late 1950s. It came complete with Japanese screens around the covered porch and tons of windows in every room. We also collected several modernist pieces of furniture during our last 2.5 years in California as our aesthetic shifted away from traditional "cottage" furnishings.

In moving to our new house we again are planning to do some renovations though they're shaping up to be much more extensive than the last go around. The work includes:

A porch across the entire front
A grade-level sunroom off the back
A rear screened in porch off the kitchen
Air conditioning
Updating the kitchen, bathroom, and layout of the 500 square foot detached cottage
Removal of asbestos shingles and residing of the 2nd floor

One question we dealt with early on was: What style should characterize the additions? The house is a traditional Mid-Atlantic colonial. How would we incorporate modernist aesthetics in the traditional house? As disparate styles are difficult to execute on the exterior without looking shoddy we opted to maintain the traditional feel but push it to a more farmhouse (and thus less colonial) look. The new 2nd floor siding will be vertical; 1st floor brick will be whitewashed to match the new siding color, all new roofs would be hipped rather than flat or gabled. A book that has heavily influenced our design decisions is aptly titled: The Farmhouse: New Inspiration for the Classic American Home.

We have plans for the interior as well. This is where the 'modern' concepts of openness, honesty, and light will really come into play. All of the individual rooms are currently divided by walls. There is little connectivity between rooms, even on the first floor where you might expect fewer divisions of space. Thus, once the exterior renovations and additions are complete, we'll be turning our attention to removing most of the 1st floor interior walls (one benefit of being a structural engineer!) This will allow us to "connect" most of the first floor together and bring more light into the darker portions of the 1st floor. It will also give us the opportunity to tweak some of the spaces we feel are a bit awkward. In the coming months I will post progress photos on the blog, so if you're interested, subscribe to the RSS feed for updates.

Born to Run?

2009-07-21T10:43:00.009-04:00

On a trip to Los Angeles last month I read Chris McDougall's Born to Run. The book is an amazing piece of narrative-meets-investigative-journalism that tales why the knees, ankles, and feet of technologically advanced runners (i.e. those wearing expensive running shoes) are injured more frequently than runners wearing little or no supportive footwear. Throw in an incredible story of a race in the Copper Canyon of Mexico between the Tarahumara Indians and some of the best (and quirkiest) ultrarunners in the United States as well as a little evolutionary biology claiming that humans were born to run and you have a fun summer read. It definitely made me want to hit the trails each time I put the book down.

Considering my current bout with running injury one of the most helpful concepts from the book was McDougall's description of the foot's arch:

"Your foot's centrepiece is the arch, the greatest weight-bearing design ever created. The beauty of any arch is the way it gets stronger under stress; the harder you push down, the tighter its parts mesh. Push up from underneath and you weaken the whole structure."

The analogy of a Roman Arch is helpful. If we were to add a column directly under the keystone of a Roman Arch--hoping to provide it with some support in its old age--it wouldn't be long before the compressive action of the arch was destroyed and the entire structure crumbled. McDougall similarly claims that expensive running shoes eventually destroy the natural arching action of the foot.

The take home for me is my need to strengthen the muscles in my feet. McDougall's argument was the specific impetus for my current experiment in barefoot running. Over the last three weeks I have increased from 100 meter stride outs to 3 mile grass runs completely barefoot. The experience has been exhilarating, especially in the early morning when the grass is still wet and the air is cool. This past weekend I got up to 5 miles in a pair of Vibram Five Fingers (KSO model). As of yet I have no discernibly stronger feet but its been a fun experiment. My ultimate goal is to be able to hang with this guy:

Confessions of a Heel Striker

2009-07-15T15:33:00.008-04:00

I've been running for about 15 years. Over that time I've enjoyed only a few isolated injuries: a busted knee after my first marathon (putting me on the DL for nearly a year) and many a turned ankle with their associated weeks of down-time. Until recently all of the injuries could be traced to fairly simple causes, running with super old shoes or tripping over pine cones (yeah, one magnolia cone in Pasadena knocked me out for two months!)

Enter plantar fasciitis. This little pain-in-the-heel has caused me grief to no end since moving to Virginia earlier this year. To date I have absolutely no probable explanation for it. I've been running relatively low mileage compared to the previous 12 months; the trail terrain I've been on is markedly softer than the road / mountain combination I was running in So Cal. I recently took about four weeks off which pretty much ended the pain. At that point I visited my local running store for advice. Luckily one of the owners has dealt with plantar fasciitis and had some good advice:

calf raises throughout the day,
stretch more regularly,
pick up small items with my toes, and, interestingly,
incorporate barefoot stride outs into my weekly running routine.

The last item should help strengthen my foot over time and potentially reduce the underlying cause of the injury. After a few weeks I was having little to no pain by incorporating most of the exercises (except barefoot running) into my daily routine. Then, about a month ago, the heel pain started creeping back in.

In researching things more I've come to realize that I'm a full-fledged, hard core heel striker (see photo from the 12/08 Death Valley Marathon). In the early stages of a run (or whenever I'm feeling particularly spry) I tend to run with a forefoot/midfoot strike. But as the weekly mileage piles up and/or in the later stages of a long run I tend to drop my heel. This practice can potentially lead to a host of knee and foot related problems. Whether my heel strike is partially responsible for my plantar fasciitis or not, I have yet to determine.

In response I've taken steps to correct my foot strike in response to the mounting evidence I've recently read about the benefits of midfoot/forefoot striking (more on that in a later post). And later this summer I'm scheduled for "gait analysis" at the University of Virginia's Center for Endurance Sport. The director of the SPEED clinic there recently spoke at the local running store and encouraged me to really work on my running form (possibly at the expense of speed training or high mileage) this summer. I've also begun to incorporate barefoot running into my workouts and have attempted to carry the barefoot form over to my runs with shoes. To say the least, its an interesting exercise. I'll post more on barefeet later...until then, go run!

About

2009-06-30T11:14:00.004-04:00

construct(ure)s is a blog about various characteristics of constructs and structures. By definition constructs are usually conceptual in nature while structures, whether natural or manmade, are typically physical. As a designer of the built environment, avid trail runner, armchair theologian, and historian of the built environment, I am interested in each of these disciplines in their own right but am most intrigued when exploring connections between them. During the later part of 2009 through early 2010 this blog will also record the renovations and remodeling we are undertaking on our 1940s home.

deconstructing the etymology of construct(ure)s

constructure (n) –

that which is constructed or formed; an edifice; a fabric

construct (n) –

something constructed by the mind: as a: a theoretical entity b: a working hypothesis or concept
a product of ideology, history, or social circumstances

structure (n) –

something made up of a number of parts that are held or put together in a particular way
the way in which parts are arranged or put together to form a whole; makeup
the interrelation or arrangement of parts in a complex entity
something constructed, such as a building.
biology a: the arrangement or formation of the tissues, organs, or other parts of an organism b: an organ or other part of an organism

construct (v) –

to make or form by combining or arranging parts or elements
to draw (a geometrical figure) with suitable instruments and under specified conditions
to set in logical order