While we await my completion of the fold up bed design/fabrication project, it was clear we needed something to serve as a reading light over the temporary bed location. I had made several variations on this simple paper shade - an homage to the design work of Ingo Maurer. It utilizes a fire resistant paper used in electric motor windings that happens to have both a nice texture and color.

It also happens to work well with the color splash produced by my favorite MR16 dichroic glass pattern. One of the small things I regret about the gradual switch to OED sources is the loss of this particular feature of halogen sources.

The electrical journey begins here for the design we have come to refer to as Matterhorn. It is another low voltage cable design that uses a variant on a fixture head design originally deployed in a pendant design and then a conventional taught cable design before being modified for use in this design.

The lamp head in the Matterhorn design is designed to slide along the cable pair. It is made from aluminum and has a bi-pin socket for an MR11 lamp.

The cables pass through this device on their way down to the counterweight. There is a teflon liner running through each tube that serves to supply just the right amount of friction to make the cable passage smooth while allowing the lamp head and counterweight to stay in a given set position. There is also a mechanical isolation between the two halves of the circuit that would prevent a short-circuit in the event that the cable were to wear through the liner. A final level of security is provided by the fact that the curved tubes are anodized - effectively rendering them non-conductive.

The final piece of the Matterhorn system is the counterweight - a hollow, roto-cast form designed to use a measured amount of sand to fine tune its effectiveness in maintaining the position of the lamp head. All of these parts were hand-made in my shop through strictly analog means. The pattern for this form was hand carved in wood before being finished as a plug for the mold making process. The final part was then cast using a shop-built roto-casting machine

I pinch myself each morning  . . . I'm actually living inside a house!

The Prowler - a 5th wheel trailer, which the three of us - Lisa, Zane and I - nested in while I tore our house apart and gradually put it back together, no longer obstructs the better part of our driveway or our sanity. In its place we can now park both cars and still have plenty of room to make our way into our new dwelling. Well, it's not exactly new but perhaps 25 percent of the old house remains. We long ago took to calling the project Bungaloft.

The shape of our Bungaloft is clarified with each additional completed project - a kitchen tile backsplash is underway at the moment. The Bungaloft (I think "Where Modernism meets Bungalism") is our attempt to infuse a bit of Modern style into this modest bungalow. My formal and informal history as a student of Modern design and Lisa's fondness for the phenomenon that is Dwell Magazine delivers the drive for a crisp clarity in each choice we make. The welcoming diversity of Portland's neighborhoods filled with an endless collection of traditional architectural styles provides the counterbalancing love for the coziness of intimate scale cottages. It is not done but we now enjoy the progress from within its walls.

We are far enough along that we find ourselves settling into the task of making the modern - cozy. As we search through the collection of photos and other artworks we have collected, a bit of the lived-in look builds with each additional nail and hook pounded into the wall. Because of my long-standing work designing and building cameras I  have a pretty decent collection of photographic work by artists who may or may not own one of my cameras. Each image has its own point-of-entry, its own collection of stories which necessarily includes the one about how we came to posses it. So when the beautiful image above slipped into my consciousness I quickly recalled that although not made with one of my cameras, it was in fact made by an artist who does own an example of the current camera - the P.90. Although I am quick to express the preference that my cameras live a productive life as a useful tool, I have the impression that Jean-Claude Mougin purchased his camera more as a work of art. Much as I would love to see P.90 images made by Jean-Claude, I'll readily accept as a substitute the gift he made of a beautiful print of this image with no further incentive than my compliment on its haunting beauty. Some images possess an emotional power extending well beyond the simple total of their visual content. For me, this image is a rich and compelling story engaging my imagination every time I look at it.

Having nearly met its demise at the beak of a certain African Grey parrot who will go unnamed, the print is now destined for matting and framing in preparation for its prominent role in elevating the level of enchantment we experience each day we share the privilege of living in this little jewel we call Bungaloft.

Last Saturday we participated in the 2011 Build it Green Home Tour and had a lot of interest in the small scale of our Bungaloft project. It seems that a number of people share our interest in living with a small footprint. Although we have quite a ways before the project is complete, we received a lot of useful feedback and encouragement from those who stopped by.

I tend to feel that attempting to live a more responsible lifestyle must certainly entail minimizing the volume of resources required to put a roof over your head. But as closet Modernists living in a tiny Bungalow, Lisa and I have the additional interest in designing a functionally efficient living space that effectively integrates the original bungalow details with our interest in modern design.

The house as we found it. 150 feet of personal park for a back yard sold us.

So we went to work . . .

. . . and found some strong colors . . .

. . . some interesting buried treasure . . .

. . . and the will to keep going when things got awkward.

We are comfortably ensconced (albeit in somewhat primitive form) inside the Bungaloft and looking forward to a winter without the 5th wheel.

We'll provide some stories and images in the coming days as we grow accustomed to living in a real house once again and continue to fill in the many remaining gaps in the Bugaloft project.

More adventures of the amateur builder

When I first realized that plumbing was to become part of my future work on the Bungaloft project I naturally sought to drown myself in information (perhaps to avoid the first actual testing of the waters?). But it really didn't take long to find one particular path taking precedence over the competition.

It was clear long before the houses' other onion layers had begun falling away that the mongrel collection of cast iron, galvanized steel and PVC pipe was a treacherous beast laying in wait. (In some cases, small leaks from this arrangement can be the reason for a damp basement) It was also apparent that our construction-phase-living-arrangement in a fifth wheel trailer parked in the driveway would benefit from maintaining at least some of the plumbing in the house as long as possible. (We took to calling our visqueen concealed toilet as the "black room".)

So consider for a moment the standard options:

• Galvanized steel pipe - A lot of old houses have it. It works. It can become so corrosion restricted on the pipe I.D. that flow rates can go south. It does require assembly of countless threaded connections in a logical order that avoids the frequent resort to unions to escape an unforeseen dead-end. And it's not so easy to alter a route once complete.
• PVC - Only good for cold water applications but often ubiquitous in amateur plumbing repair jobs due perhaps to its apparent user friendliness. (Don't get my started on the Vinyl family history with respect to the environment. We all have to pick our battles and I chose this one. Penguin Windows please leave me alone!) It's possible to reroute it endlessly to the extent of your collection of fittings and pipe but doesn't take to serious curves - at least in the standard product.
• Copper - Given no budget constraints, many people just go with this. It's been around a while and looks really cool when assembled. But it is expensive and not so easy to reroute. And there is the pinhole leaks issue . . .
• PEX - Maybe I'm a closet Europhile but it sure seems to me that a lot of sensible solutions (Frost protected shallow foundations for example) to all manner of challenges have been available in Europe for years before our litigious society finally adopts them for use here in the States . Sure there are bogus products and some "new" technologies can fail dramatically with improper handling (SIPS in a certain Alaskan city for example). So PEX pipe had a certain appeal that includes addressing my apparent fixation with being reroutable. Because I knew I would have a toilet (and for a while a kitchen sink) in a temporary location, it was clearly appealing that PEX - in combination with push-to-connect (aka "Sharkbite") fittings - is really easy to move from one location to another. Most plumbers tend to use crimp type fittings that yield a rather permanent connection and require special tooling to install which in my situation was not preferable for the both the permanency and special tool reasons. The Sharkbite fittings can seem a bit pricey but on the small scale of our project their convenience more than out weighs the potential saving of using the crimp style fittings.

So PEX won out as the clear winner for moving water around the Bungaloft. I'll elaborate on an accessory for PEX systems that makes things even more interesting in another post.

For now, here are but a few of the resources I encountered in info-overload mode.

Happy plumbing!

ToolBase PEX Design Guide

ToolBase PEX water supply piping

How Safe is it?  GBA article

Last week was spent on the road. Part of the trip included a visit with Steven Holloway, an artist in Oakland who is now the proud owner of two of my cameras. His new P.90 left with him the following day for a birthday adventure to Yosemite. Steven teaches at the Kala Art Institute housed in the historic (and very cool) Heinz building. I was able to view the building from the outside and am anxious to visit next time I get to the Bay Area.

We also went with my sister and Bay Area resident Dana out to Sausalito to visit the Heath Ceramics outlet where we found a wonderful colored trim tile for the Bungaloft shower. The eternal project moves forward a notch . . .

The ShowPDX event preview party is tomorrow. The event runs through October. Check the ShowPDX site for details. It's in a big warehouse space this year and the FIX team has done a great job getting it set up. I have a luminaire in the show and there are several other designers from the 28th Ave studio building (aka - "the hole") exhibiting in the show as well.

I decided to change the base of the "Palomar" to a concrete form and the change is definitely for the better. The piece was just never comfortable with a wooden base. In wrapping up the reassembly I visited one of my favorite resources in Portland - Sunlan lighting. In all the time I was off on a lighting design tangent I would have loved to have Sunlan available for a local resource. Alas, I was in Santa Fe at the time . . .