I wanted an outdoor fireplace for the deck because few things are better than being outside than being outside with fire, especially at night. I knew some of the old Sea House building bricks would be involved, but did not have a clear vision of the overall design.
from the October 2019 CB2.com catalog
Until I got a catalog from CB2.com, and saw this. And I knew.
Attempting to translate one reality into another
It took more than a few sketches and extended staring into inner space to work out how I could extract the essence of the CB2 fireplace for the approximately 8.5 inches of width I had on the Leadlights side deck. As is typical, I figured out far more once I had the actual materials at hand.
Dimensions determined and mat boards cut. This is the top, outer semicircle.
I used “corner” bricks to edge the semicircles, slightly sanded to fit the curve. Regular brick make up the middle layer.
Inner and middle layers in processTest fitting the the topmost layerGluing the layers and structural reinforcements togetherGrouted and the first of many coats of eggshell white acrylic paintThe back wall of the firebox, to be painted lamp blackNot highly visible, but the arched firebox is glued in, ready to sandwich with the back wall layer.In-progress fireplace roughed in
Here is the final fireplace in situ with split birch logs laid, the spark arrester chimney, comfy chairs and a good red wine ready to pour. The exquisite carved wood sandpiper sculpture is a gift from Keli, keeper of Charlene’s Estate.
Of course the firelight flickers and glows.Sea House Leadlights front exterior, for context
I intend to start writing more here, again. I miss you. I dove deep on this project, and found I could either devote myself to the process of building or to writing, but not both. (I chronicled photo highlights on Instagram; if you’re on there I’m @nancy_k_enge. There’s also lots of pics of Scarlett :)
Practically like Stonehenge — I imagine — establishing where the deck posts might go.
After the interesting maths of determining (and re-determining) the height of the stair stringers, I cut the posts for the deck surround.
Surprisingly more complicated and variable.I tipped over a pot of yucca before the glue was set.
Best of all, I received an email from a woman who’d purchased a couple of yucca tree kits from my Etsy shop. She posted a lovely video of her results and I could not be more impressed or surprised. Do check it out.
I wanted to raise the Sea House Leadlights building up from the project board, to anchor it to the site with a solid foundation and to allow more space for landscaping. For the other buildings in the Sea House compound I have used air-dry clay, as well as our much beloved egg carton and packaging material to simulate boulders and bedrock.
And then.
Eff me, not styrofoam. Wait, yes, styrofoam cut into conveniently sized blocks.
I came across this product, in an ultra-convenient, innocently beguiling craft form. Yes. Styrofoam, one of the evilest manufactured substances on our beleaguered planet.
In anguished indecision, I stood in the aisle of the crap craft store pondering the consequences of my choices and actions. And then, because I had a 40% off coupon, I bought it.
I built a two-tiered foundation on the project board, anchored with glue and toothpicks.
After a couple of base coats of warm and medium gray-green acrylics, I set the build atop the foundation to meld. I’ll add additional highlight details once all of the foundation stones are set.
I added a sill plate? between the structure and the foundation.
On to visualizing the deck surround Visualizing with measuring and math.Carrying on.
And so. I am conflicted about the inescapable implications and consequences of my materials choices. And yet, I carry on with this build.
I noticed this book in the “New” section of the library, mostly because the design aesthetic is so similar to my own. Star Power, A simple guide to astrology for the modern mystic by Vanessa Montgomery, was designed and illustrated by Giulia Garbin.
This figure in particular captured my imagination, and I decided to redraw it as a pattern, and see if I could get it into repeat.
Geometry is elegant and perplexing.
It was tricksy, but I persisted.
I added a six-pointed star to the hexagram center of the pattern to make it even more swirly.
The blue is near impossible to photograph true.
Inspired by a ceiling mosaic I once saw in Ravenna, Italy, I mixed up a nice deep blue, and painted the smooth side of cold press watercolor paper.
Metallic gold spatter is universally understood.
After printing out the pattern with 3 point-wide ground lines, I cut the individual tiles with my desktop cutter and pasted them up.
This was a fun pattern to build!The finished floor.
I sealed, grouted, cleaned and finished the floor with a few coats of satin varnish. It is so pretty! But unfortunately, not at all in the scale or perceived style of its intended build.
Diamond squares. With dots.
So back to the drawing board. I eventually arrived at this design, and also with a new idea for finishing it.
The new floor base, with Bombas socks.
On multiple sheets of card stock a few shades lighter than the grout color, I printed out and taped together the pattern base.
Dots. And cut-corner squares. Or diamonds.
The individual tiles were cut.
And glued to the printed base with my signature glue pattern :)
All in all, it went much faster than I thought it would. And by printing the grout lines on an in-between background color to disguise any minor off-placements, I was able to skip the whole monstrous grouting process, and just finish the floor with a few coats of sealer and varnish.
I’m more than satisfied with the results, and feel like this is a new and simpler technique for future floor fabrication. There’s a satisfying dimensionality to the card stock tiles that is wholly appropriate to 1:12 scale, and all without the mess and dulling of a traditional grouting process.
I hope to use the blue-and-gold floor some where, some time, maybe as a patio?
Sea House Conservatory, in progress, February 2019
The Sea House Conservatory removable plexiglass and faux iron beam roof is assembled. It is supported by iron pillars and wood siding painted N-C16 Midnight Stroll by Clark+Kensington. I made new finials from wooden beads and toothpicks.
Brackets join and support the faux iron roof beams
Where the two corner beams met the center beam and roof ridge there was an inelegant gap, so I cut iron brackets and bolts from two layers of black card stock, to reinforce both the roof structure and the illusion :)
Wheelie at the fireplace end of the Conservatory
The fireplace and hearth underwent yet another color change. I wanted something more working/utilitarian looking, less living-roomy. Picture the chaise draped in reference books and aprons and a seaweed drying rack hanging from the rafters.
Sea House Conservatory leaded window design, 3 of 11
Turning my attention now back to the many windows, cutting the original kit grid mullions out of the frames with a Dremel. Tedious. Then sanding, painting, and fitting the cut leaded designs into the frames, front and back. Oh, and finishing (but not mitering) the outsides with 1/16-inch square trim. Ugh.
Pacifica sunset, between storm fronts, 15 February, 2019
We’ve been getting breaks between rain storms, glimpses of the sun, and some beauty clouds.
Ruby at 20 months, shopping in her sister’s vest for her mama’s birthday present
Spent a long weekend in Santa Cruz with my daughter and younger granddaughter Ruby, while her papa and older sister Maddie were in Lake Tahoe getting Xtremely snowed on. Ruby’s choice of outerwear was her sister’s vest. Ruby on the runway.
I like me. Print this out and hang on your refrigerator, lest you forget
Maddie, who turns six next month, is loving Kindergarten. Her mother shared some pages of the journals the children keep. The first remarkable is that upper and lowercase writing is still being taught — yay! So for Maddie, already proficient in capital letters, this manifesto represents challenge, learning, practice. And then the everything else: the sentiment, and the exuberantly joyful self-portrait. Perfect expression, I’d say.
I can’t compete with polar vortexes or 37 feet of snow — nor do I wish to — but it’s a bit chilly, so I made a fire. Wheelie came out to approve the primal nature of warmth and goodness, and flex her wings in the glow.
These are my <3 colors
There’s a storm blowing in.
Yes, the ocean loves me
Bolstered by a double cappuccino, I chanced a walk on the beach. Observe my chilly, stubborn fingers.
Of course I got rained on and walked super briskly back to my car. Driving home, I blasted the heater and the seat warmer.
Work on the Sea House Conservatory continues also briskly, yet slowly, thoughtfully. That’s a thing, right? This photo was mid-January, when I had just completed Kris Compas’s chaise lounge kit, in a fine cotton canvas trimmed in black and cream cording. And yes, that’s the Cynthia Howe Victorian birdcage and table, finished in multitudinous coats of flat black spray paint to round out the brusque laser cut edges. Almost everything has changed since then, and I could not be happier.
Sea House Conservatory leaded glass front doors, 2018
2019?! This is beginning to require a lot of mathematics. For this I am very glad, because consider the options? Above are the new Sea House Conservatory leaded glass front doors. The conservatory has more of a celestial, sun and planets design, whereas the Sea House Sea Rise Pavilion, below, is all about surf froth.
Sea House Sea Rise Pavilion greenhouse addition and remodel, 2017
I cannae help that I’m the same designer, and that all my structures are connected in long time, in location, history and circumstance. And that they’ve all been built (and rebuilt) using salvaged parts of the now venerated Sea House Pleasure Pier and Estate. Oh, what a time and place to be actually alive and doing something than whenever that was!
I finished gluing the painted paper tiles to the pattern for the Sea House Conservatory main floor.
Stoic Albie helped keep them flat, as Stoics do.
I then spent a lot of time considering how best to make the floor fit the base and carry over to outside the walls in a way that pleased me.
If I was a cat, this is how I might look pondering the options. “Why yes, that might actually work …”
As part of the solution, from quarter-inch birch ply I built a two-inch riser for the base and painted it medium grout gray. And — not because I want to relive the 1980s and feature wall faux finishes — I sea-sponged on a lighter warm gray. Mostly because I didn’t want to stare at a flat gray box. (My building process involves a lot of staring.)
Eventually, the weather/temperature/humidity cooperated and I was able to spray two good coats of matte sealer on the floor tile assemblies, prior to their grouting.
Also got a few more coats of satin antique white on the fireplace. (Built from this Houseworks Deco fireplace.) Here it is curing in the late afternoon sun, admiring its reflection in a glazed ceramic vase.
Gluing down the sealed tiles to the base. It will might make more sense in a few days when you see the whole idea. Are you really, really weary of seeing pictures of these tiles?
Then here’s a pic of Scarlett sitting next to me on the front deck yesterday, watching the sun go down (and grooming). (Her, not me. I was sipping a glass of delicious Double Brut IPA.)
This is my current design inspiration for conservatory decor. It is a Cycladic terra cotta vessel from 2000 BC — ! — found on Naxos. I’m smitten with everything about it: the spiral waters, fish, the sun, or maybe a full moon? (From Art of Crete, Mycenae and Greece by German Hafner, 1968, public library.)
A last peek at the conservatory in the night studio, with the standing walls. For now.
In real life, I’m working on a landscaping project on the side of our hillside house under the sunroom add-on. The soil is compacted and full of rubble, and I’m putting down flattened cardboard to suppress what weeds do grow, and adding top soil, compost and worm castings. There’s next to no direct sun, so I’m transplanting hardier succulent cuttings to see what will survive. They get a little leggy reaching for the light, but they’re doing all right. In September I noticed what looked like a young tomato plant growing at the back of the area, evidently self-started from the compost. When it put out flowers I was charmed; what hope and vigor this plant has! And then the other day I noticed it had made a tomato! A single, multi-lobed heirloom. In December! It’s like a miracle :)
And finally, here’s one for your reference files. Look at the beautiful rust pattern and colors on this cast iron plancha, sadly left out in the rain next to the BBQ. (Left behind when our neighbors moved, it was already warped, but was still serviceable for outdoor cooking.) We’ll see if I can bear to scour it clean, or if it joins the Things That Are Rusting collection.
I added more pattern sections to the tile floor template.
To facilitate a smooth transition between tile colors, when I began to run low on the first set I glued them randomly further out on the template to integrate with the as-yet-to-be-painted new batch of tiles.
Using the same paints as before, I splattered up a new sheet to cut into tiles.
Meanwhile, I’ve got a working idea for the back fireplace wall, so I can alternate experimenting on that with setting floor tiles.
I painted a couple of sheets of 11 by 15-inch 140 lb. cold press watercolor paper with washes and splats of neutral gray, tan and yellow oxide acrylics, then pressed them flat between two drawing boards weighted with books.
The tile pattern and grout lines were refined through several test cuts and pasteups. I added a 3-point corner radius to the tiles to suggest age and wear.
After a few more test cuts, I loaded the painted watercolor paper and began cutting tiles. Because this paper requires three passes of the deep cut blade for each tile, I used masking tape on the edges to hold the thick paper to the cut mat to ensure adhesion. (Lessons learned through bitter informative experience.)
I’m gluing the individual tiles to prints of the pattern layout showing the grout lines. The process is far less tedious than I anticipated, a pleasant surprise. It *may be* that I won’t have to actually add grout after they’re all assembled and adhered to the subfloor. I plan to add one final light gray wash and some delicate speckling to the whole floor to unite the separate assemblies. And with pressing and a coat or two of matte varnish… we shall see.
The final tile floor won’t be put in place for some time — so much painting to do! — and the ideas for its total design still floating need not be finalized at this point. Which is good, because I’m still kind of all over the place, design-influence-wise. Right now I’m trending from Art Deco back to Bauhaus, and how that might all fit in with the larger Sea House story, sea level rise, and a crow named Clary.
