Elementalbuilding

A few weeks ago we bought a display model kitchen from Arclinea– the italian cabinet-maker that the Italian government chose (and they could have chosen any Italian cabinet-maker right?) to do the kitchen for the Italian Embassy in Washington DC.

Arclinea prides itself on being green by Reducing Consumption of Raw Materials, utilizing Low Emission adhesives and seals, using Recycled Materials, and practicing Green Manufacturing to make a Superior, Durable Product.

The only downside of the product is the energy cost of shipping from Italy.  And though the unit has been in Chicago for approximately 4 years, it’s not really re-used.  That said it fit the space so well that it was too nice to pass up.

Aaron, Susan, and Charles from Arclinea have been completely generous with their time and help with figuring out how to make all the pre-existing pieces fit in our new space, as well as providing general design advice.

The future 1610 Kitchen

Work progresses on the inside and outside stairs.  The inside stairs are cut and welded on site.  The outside stairs are also cut, welded and bolted on-site, but will then be completely dismantled, sent off to be galvanized, then brought back and put back together.

Interior stairs facing south

Exterior Stairs facing west

Gregg Dunn- Project Manager

 

The source of concern on the initial site inspection

Dunn and Simpkin (specialized field consultant) on site - note multiple microlam beam and joist hangers

Next month we’ll go south of the border to ElementalBuildings- Melaque for a look at what’s developing south of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

Under the concrete we first placed 2 ” of  Polyiso Foil Faced Foam Board from AtlasRoofing.  The product will provide an R-value of 6.5 per inch under the slab.  It was also a bit hard to find, but we were steered in that direction after the August 1st article from Environmental Building News described the numerous downsides of Polystyrene Insulation which is still the dominant market product in below-grade applications.

Polyiso avoids many of the Polystyrene problems and the foil facing will help reflect the radiant heat from the radiant coils which were embedded in the concrete.

Since the concrete is going to be the finished floor we added ‘limestone’ color to lighten the look.

Polyiso Insulation as viewed from above

'Limestone' concrete comes down the chute

Vladamir (foreground), and Woytek, roll it out

A happy man

the calm after the storm

Woytek fesses up!

The new alarm system is working as evidenced by two calls in the last 36 hours.  The first was Tuesday morning at 3 am, which resulted in Chicago’s finest responding within 5 minutes, where a real attempted break-in was discovered.  Together, we did a walk through of the house (after I had slinked up to the house afraid I was going to surprise the potential burglars in the act), and discovered the break-in point.  They held a light on the door while secured it with two more 2 x 4s.

This morning, Woytek decided to enter the garage without turning off the alarm- presumably to test the system, which it seems was mildly amusing to John.

Ok- maybe not tragedy, but disappointment.  Apparently local burglars aren’t buying into the green movement yet, as some person (persons) broke in and tore out the copper plumbing that was already in the walls.  Not only do we have to replace the copper, and also redo the labor of sweating the pipe and re-installing it, but they also damaged some of the walls in the process.   They might have gotten a couple hundred bucks for the brand new copper as scrap.  Such a waste.  If they had only asked, I might have just given them some money.  Still – not a big setback and their situation is probably way worse than mine to need survive in this type of fashion.

Also- for like the 1st time since the building has gone up, I left my tool bag with drills, measuring tape, utility knife, bits and CAMERA- and they got that too.  So no new pictures for a while- I’ll post some old ones soon and then new ones once I replace the camera.

120 year old rough cut lumber

the same board after its been run through the planer

The following few pictures show a nearly 100% recycled bed made from material on the site.  The old fence posts were cut down to 10″ and the paint was ground off and used to serve as the legs of the bed.  The lath board planks that have been made (see the earlier Dust to Diamonds post on this blog) became the decorative sides and shelves of the bed.  Even the mattress supports came from old maple hard wood floors that were salvaged from the house.  Some nuts, bolts and washers were purchased to hold the thing together but that is about all that was new.

Old fence post

old lumber center and side rails with flooring supports

The final product

To see more pieces fabricated from the old material at 1610, see the Furniture page on this web site.

  Unfortunately a lot of stuff simply could not be re-used- The building had layers upon layers of materials added over the years from all 3 faces of the building (walls, ceilings and floors). 

Old hard wood floors were covered first by sheets of linoleum, then square vinyl tiles, then carpeting.  The walls had plaster, wallpaper, then new sheets of drywall and wood paneling.  The ceiling had plaster ceilings covered by 8″ square ceiling tiles staple to the surface and then had a drop ceiling.  Even the front brick of the house had a faux brick covering:

Faux brick (including the 1610 address) over common brick

typical room treatment

What wasn’t saved was first offered to ‘the urban reclaim market’:

Now you see it

(moments later) now you don't

metal in the building

The metal in a pick-up truck and the guys who put it there

I looked into the possibility of recycling everything else- including 3’x5′ ceiling panels. Armstrong ceilings will take the stuff back and turn it back into new ceiling tiles- as long as its not wet or painted (much of mine was) and they only take it by the semi-truck load.  I found a place in the northern suburbs which acted as a consolidating point, but when I did the math -the carbon footprint of driving the few dozen panels I had up north outweighed the savings of recycling them.

The rest (again unfortunately) wound up in an RSI (Recycling Systems Incorporated) dumpster, where they continued to sort and salvage anything they could.

loaded dumpster

 The only good news about these extra materials added layer upon layer to the house- is that they did a reasonably good job of protecting the 100-year lumber, lath and floors- the subject of next week’s post.