Designed by Douglas Thayer, “Baseball” (as this bench is curiously called) is made of reclaimed Greenheart, reclaimed Ipe and concrete. Looks like it could stand up to a New England Nor’easter. It’s a work of art you can sit on. Have I mentioned lately how much I love concrete?…

Underneath, there are two metal crosspieces… maybe steel?

Clearly seen through the wood planks…

No prices on his website. Dare I email him and find out how much such a piece might cost? I’m afraid.

Around the corner from Baseball sits this beauty…

Couldn’t locate a name or description for this one, but it’s obviously another creation by Thayer. Similar minimal aesthetic and concrete + wood design. The spots are raindrops, btw.

Here’s a closer look at the detail between the planks and on the concrete supports…

There were lots of benches on display at Berkshire Botanical as part of their Garden Bench as Sculpture show, but those two were my favorites. Simple. Solid. Honest looking. According to their website, the show ends September 17:

About 4′ high. About 5′ across. And such a gorgeous silvery green shade. Definitely that big-time drama I was going for. Love it.

Last week while in the Berkshires, we spent a few hours at Berkshire Botanical Garden in Stockbridge, MA. A wondrous place replete with late-summer garden amazement. Anyway, as we were just about to finish our walkabout, I happened into a small garden area that, low and behold, featured this…

Hey, a cardoon! What the… what’s that crazy bit at the top there?

omg, it looks like a thistle — a 7′ tall thistle! Whoa. It was literally swarming with bees, who all somehow managed to flee the shot right as I took it.

Are you sure this is a cardoon? None of mine are flowering. The first ones I ever saw at Denver Botanic Garden weren’t blooming either. Hmm… that is most definitely a cardoon in full flower.

I had to look it up when I got back to my computer.

And yes, there it is in wikipedia: a cardoon in flower. Who knew? Yep, it’s related to a thistle. The artichoke lineage I knew about but the thistle I did not. Guess that’s because I didn’t know artichokes belong to the thistle family. God I love me some internets.

Of course cardoons flower, duh. Why didn’t that occur to me before? Even if mine never do, knowing they can makes my heart go pitty-pat for them just a little bit more.

Our house, before it was born. This is what the architect, Irving Haynes, envisioned before the house was built. Pretty cool to have the original rendering from 1970. Click to biggify for full vintagey glory.

It turned out pretty much as drawn. Except no sidewalk down to the street. Here’s a finished shot from ’72 — if you saw the construction photos from my second post ever, you’ve seen this one before…

Sweet ride in the driveway.

They obviously had to cheap out on the retaining wall along the driveway as the one in the drawing is much, much cooler. They went with railroad ties… which eventually rotted, go figure. The new wall designed by architect Markus Berger is more along the lines of what Haynes was picturing…

Want to see the lot before there was a house on it? Yeah, we got that. Here’s the same corner view…

Looking up from across the street from the house, here’s the backyard we’ve been reworking when it was completely untouched and there were plenty of trees to keep the slope from washing away…

My my, aren’t we looking natty, Mr. Architect.

Here’s the view looking back down to the street from the future yard…

And here’s the view of what will become our veggie garden at the end of our neighbor’s brick retaining wall…

Yeesh. A whole lotta trees died to build this house…

Okay, trip down memory lane is over. Get back to work!

THE BENCH, UNDONE

We left off with David taking a weekend welding class in July with the intention of creating a bench for our entryway. Here’s where it stands…

Still to come: the sanding down of the welds for a smooth leg…

Also to come: the powder-coated finish. the wooden bench seat. and the satisfaction of being able to sit down and take off your muck boots at the door.

THE RAILING, UNDONE

The railing for our retaining wall out back is still not a reality. We need to keep people from tumbling over that 7′ drop! Rhode Island Welding helped us with the galvanized steel raised veggie beds and stairs, so we talked to them about the railing….

Prior to measuring and drawing up what we wanted, there was much discussion about what kind of railing would work best here. David and I agree that we want something:

• minimal to complement the simple lines of the house
• you can see through, as we don’t want to block our view
• that isn’t the star but fades into the background
• that is obviously an accessory to the design of the house rather than something that looks like construction — meaning that if it’s solid wood, it begins to look like our wood siding and we don’t want to take away from the original envelope of the house
• that we can use on our indoor stairway as well — both railings are within viewing distance of each other and should be similar

So several options were up for consideration…

glass | aluminumrailing.com

Glass, my first choice. And ridiculously, prohibitively expensive. Damn. Definitely my top pick for indoors, as well. Not gonna happen.

cable | aluminumrailing.com

Cable railing. Second choice. Much cheaper than glass but still pricey. A very clean look. Zoning regs are very clear on height, necessity of a top rail, distance between cables, etc., so there’s no budging on that. We looked at a lot of cable railing systems in order to find ways to cut costs. Basically comes down to quality and endurance, which is why we ultimately decided to have RI Welding make it right for us.

Also considered…

mesh | adesignandbuild.co.uk via flickr www.flickr.com/photos/db-gardendesign/3811605850

Galvanized steel mesh railing. Would still require the posts and top rail to be built by Rhode Island Welding (unless we went with wood supports and top rail) but the mesh would save us some cash — cable systems are pricey and cable system installation obviously takes longer. In the end, we decided the mesh grid just wasn’t something we wanted to repeat inside the house.

Wood. After looking at the cable railing price, we opened ourselves up to the possibilities of wood again… maybe slender, horizontal slats wouldn’t be too bad?  or even vertical?…

from apartment therapy | www.apartmenttherapy.com/sf/look/look-modern-fence-050175

Something similar might be a good modern choice. But even a railing-height version would interrupt the view and force you to look at the fence. And it just wouldn’t work inside the house. So nix that. Cable railing it is!

Designs submitted to Rhode Island Welding. Fabrication in progress. Stay tuned.

THE STAIRS, UNDONE

So, the state of the stairs. The set in front, done except for the final addition of pea gravel…

Back stairs? *sigh* Don’t ask.

When it’s all said and done, they’re supposed to look kinda like this…

gravel and steel steps by D-Crain | d-crain.com

THE STORAGE AREA, UNDONE

The doors may be done but the insides of the storage closets aren’t yet outfitted for storing things. This is our current latching solution…

I seek closure. Before winter, please.

THE PATHS, UNDONE

The paths are all dug…

They pretty much look like that, with the dirt washing down the sides of the beds and into the paths every time it rains because none of the plants have grown in enough to hold the soil.

No point in adding pea gravel to the paths until I can solve the constant erosion issue that comes with having a slope. I’ll save the details for another post but suffice it to say that standard edging isn’t tall enough and gabions look like the right solution.

THE STRAIGHT-RUN EDING, UNDONE

Close to the house, we still need to turn this…

… into this — minus the concrete edging and fabulousness of an iconic modernist house, of course.:

beach pebble buffer at Johnson House, Piere Koenig | eichlernetwork.com

And make this…

… look a little more like this:

steel edging by Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture | acochran.com

The 2′ buffer around the house needs edging and topping off with beach pebbles. In the past, we’ve gotten them through Stoneyard in Massachusetts. Their Mexican Beach Pebbles are dark, flat and the classic choice. Their New England pebbles, more irregular and frequently egg-shaped. Blech. In Rhody, Watson Mulch has a nice, small, tumbled pea gravel but their pebbles, not so much.

Have spent an embarrassing amount of time researching edging. Plastic and rubber, yuck. Stone, too pricey, too cottagey. Metal is by far the most minimal. Aluminum looks cheap and insubstantial to me — like it’ll crimp if you breathe on it wrong. Yes, have looked at all the brands out there at various price points and don’t like any of them. Decided since we have steel in the rest of our hardscape, maybe that’s the best choice. I’ll save details for another entry but the best contender so far is Border Guard — it even comes in galvanized steel so it would tie in with the rest of our hardscape. Sold.

THE PATIOS, UNDONE

I won’t waste your time repeating my patio wishes. Let’s just leave it at “it ain’t done yet.” We did, however, manage to meet with Tom Zilion of Madstone Concrete to discuss what all this vision might cost. He’s all about the nuances of finish and color…

Any color, including black. And yet we find ourselves drawn to the straight-forward grey…

God, we’re boring. But it just makes the most sense when you want the house to be the hero, not the patio. Black would look amazing, but it gets hot in the sun. Not ideal for bare kiddie feet. We’re still discussing possibilities with Tom. He does beautiful work, so expect to hear more about it.

See what you missed while I was out? Nothing. Just project after project, and all of them Undone.

Sorry to have taken a completely unannounced and unexpected, nearly-month-long sabbatical. Was crushed out of this dimension and into some otherworldly place by the weight of real-world deadlines and had no time for my nonsensical blog. Not that anyone actually reads it… but I can pretend I was missed. Right?

Schedule appears to be more manageable now. Which means my pretend readers can expect a return to consistency in posting. No, really.

Semigood Rian RTA Bench | semigoods.com

David’s taking the welding class at The Steel Yard this weekend. Thinking a bench similar to this minimal Rian RTA Bench by Semigood would be perfect just inside our door as a place to sit down and kick off your muddy shoes before you come up the stairs. Semigood makes a gorgeous wood version but I don’t think the woven seat makes sense with wet coats and boots.

RTA Cantilever Bench | semigoods.com

Semigood’s lovely Cantilever Stool above? Not to be riffed on. Investment quality. Definitely one of those pieces you could pass down through the generations. In my dreams…

That brown stream? That’s our yard going down the storm drain!

Still not enough plants holding our new soil to the slope, apparently. The front slope with all the Curlex is holding just fine. And the beds that have mulch are holding fairly well. But the water runs down the paths I’ve been digging out that have yet to receive pea gravel and then pours out into the street. We need the gravel to slow down water. Yeesh, always a plan and just never enough time to make it all happen!

Hoping we can get a few truckloads of pea gravel delivered soon before our entire yard washes away. Sadface.

David got it on this weekend and bolted in the last of the hot dip galvanized steel risers for the stairs that lead up to the veggie garden…

YES!! Still the stairs of death and completely impassable until we backfill them with pea gravel, but that should happen soon. Our wicked slope makes it look like the steps are crooked. Don’t worry, they’re squared up and it will all make sense when it’s done.

Easier to see how it starts to come together if you step back a little. See how the steps match the galvanized veggie beds?

Now picture it with the patchy grass filled in and a lovely espaliered asian pear across that long, empty concrete retaining wall surface. Perty.

Why not show it off for the true beauty it is? Surely you can hire someone who takes better shots than I did. Here it is in all its increasingly rusticated glory…

A slender 25″ W x 20″ D x 74″ H and 220 lbs. Does not come with cup holders, thank gawd, although it does come with Stay Cool stainless steel grill rack handles…

The angle on the walls is very similar to the angle on the house…

And the lines echo our vertical wood siding…

A closeup on the detail on the lip of the chimney…

The grill rack is made of stainless steel 5mm rods. Slits in the curved steel wall allow you to adjust the grill rack height….

The bar across the back locks the grill pan in place…

Pull out the bar and you can remove the pan…

Like so…

Ooh, and here’s a bonus not mentioned on the Wittus website: also functions as a cat cave!

Why we’ve been ogling this grill/firepit for the last few years:

• The strong angles echo the modern architecture of the house
• Multi-functional and multi-seasonal… works as both a charcoal grill and a wood-fired pit
• The tall chimney is supposed to funnel smoke up and away… we’ll test this out and confirm
• When not in use, it looks like art… and if something is going to take up valuable space in your smallish entertaining space, shouldn’t it be something you want to look at?
• Brushed Corten steel, an awesome thing to touch… we share an undying love for it

Thanks Joe and David for lugging that sexy thing home. My, my, what the neighbors must think of us now!

wittus phoenix grill | wittus.com

I see s’mores in our future. Yum. Photos to come.