beausoleil architects

New Beausoleil designed home in Los Altos now on the market

Check out this YouTube video of our most recently completed project, a two story custom home, designed to suit the needs of the today's families.  Our client is a wonderful private developer in Los Altos, who goes to great lengths to build a quality home with sustainable features.

  

"This exquisite New England style new home combines classic East Coast exterior with an easy flowing floor plan that includes fabulous modern living amenities. Just minutes away from the village, its covered porch that wraps around the front and side, along with the beautifully landscaped yard and patio invite you to enjoy the California indoor-outdoor living. "The home features almost 3700 square feet of living area including four bedroom suites with bay windows and vaulted ceilings, a home office, family and living rooms, a formal dining room with a servery, and a hidden wine cellar nestled under the stair.

For more information, including open house dates, please contact Mansour Moussavian at Alain Pinel Realtors.

 

 

4 year Solar Anniversary!

What shall we do to celebrate our solar PV system's 4th birthday? While cake is always appropriate (usually chocolate in our family), we thought a blog to give you more details of it's performance would be even better.  We'd like to see solar arrays multiplying on everyone's roof after all!

According to Solar City, the company that installed our system and provides a very informative computerized monitoring, after four years, we have officially offset 21,593 pounds of CO2, the equivalent of planting 10.3 mature trees.  That's quite a forest on our little lot in San Francisco!

Here are some intersting graphs from Solar City:

The first shows a typical year, month by month starting in January. In all four years, May has been our best month, generating between 472 and 503 kWh. July and August take a little dip as we do live on the foggy side of town, but as you can see, there is still plenty of electricity being generated during those months as well.

The next graph, shows a beautiful curve of the path of the sun, this particular day being June 30, 2010, which has so far been our record day with 20.41 kWh generated.

Did we mention that we only paid $29 upfront for our system on a lease basis and that we've saved money from Day 1? Well, we did, but it's been a while.  You can see the details of our solar lease on our early blog post from 2008. Boles Solar Lease info

Our monthy cost for the lease is now a whopping $32 (and will rise to $36 over the 15 year term), and our net savings are about $60 per month, not counting the rise in PG&E rates over the past four years. GO SOLAR! Prices of panels have come down considerably in the past few years and there are great deals out there to save you money and save the planet some unnecesary CO2.

Incroyable! Tres Grande Vitesse…

The French Chateau style house which we designed towards the end of 2010 for Quinta Properties (see “New French chateau in the Bay Area” below) was recently completed by builder George Adair (finishwithstyle@sbcglobal.net) after less than a year of construction – very rapid progress for an almost seven thousand square foot house on three levels. After completing the landscaping and other sitework, the house was staged and introduced to the market with a broker’s tour last week. 

The house reportedly remained on the market for quite some time before a buyer was found: a whole two hours! Perhaps the new owners will have to name the house Tres Grande Vitesse,  TGV for short, like the high speed trains of France. 

A French name would be appropriate, after all, as the house is a fairly authentic example of a ‘Chartreuse’, a traditional type of house found in the countryside of Gascony. A chartreuse can be large or small, formal or quaint, but it typically has one story, though often with attic rooms.  This example sits quite compact on its lot, so even with a half acre lot full of mature trees the grounds seem quite spacious. The house also has very high ceilings, and the combination of tall floor to floor heights, steep roofs and gabled walls, chimneys and finials, and a compact plan makes for a very vertical profile.  It’s a very distinct look from the more usual horizontal style seen in the U.S., and this distinctness might have added to its sales appeal

The front yard is also European -- the front door opens directly onto a motor court, with a detached garage flanking the house. The structure of the house, and its amenities, are entirely modern, of course. Truss framed roofs and engineered lumber helped speed the erection. George Adair is a master finish carpenter though, and the quality of the woodwork is evident. We wish the owners many happy years of enjoyment.

Free Energy Upgrades - our date is set, what about yours?

It has taken a few months to iron out the details and schedule the contractor, but in a few weeks Building Efficiency will be starting the energy upgrades to our 1922 home in San Francisco as part of the Energy Upgrade California Program.  We will be getting insulation added to the exterior walls, air sealing at all the doors, windows and fireplace, and a brand new high efficiency gas heater, all for free!

It's not too late to apply to the program as the $4000 from the state program will be available until the end of the year, but for San Francisco residents to qualify for all the funding (an additional $2000-$5000), the construction work needs to be complete by June 30, 2012.  For more information on the program, including a list of qualified contractors, take a look at the wonderful website the San Francisco Department of the Environment has set up.  You can even take a quick survey  online to see if your home is a good candidate before officially embarking on the process.

Free money for Energy Upgrades for San Francisco Homes!

We just found out about a terrific program through SFEnvironment for energy upgrades to single family homes.  They have cobbled together grants from a federal stimulus bill, PG&E and other rebate sources to help put contractors to work and help homeowners improve their home’s performance. The catch is that the money has to be spent before June of 2012, and they are behind in getting the word out about the program.

The basic process is as follows:  You have your home audited for energy use by one of their approved contractors.  They will look at things such as your insulation, furnace, water heater, etc., do a blower door test to measure your air flow changes per hour as is (to see how leaky your house is now) and give you a list of suggested improvements.  The fees for this audit are partially paid by the program – you should be out of pocket no more than $100-200.   You then decide on the upgrades you want to do based on expected performance improvement as a percentage.  The contractor coordinates the paperwork with the city and based on the amount of energy use reduced, you can earn from $5500 for 15% reduction, up to $8000 for 40% reduction (typical in San Francisco is about 35%).  If you earn less than 120% of San Francisco’s median income, ($121,900 for a family of 4) then you can qualify for an additional $3000.  In the end many families who have participated have only been out of pocket a few hundred dollars.  They not only reduce their gas and electric bills, but also greatly improve the comfort of their homes.

Here is the website with more information. www.sfenvironment.org/SFHIP

We will embark on the process for our own home with David and Scott of Building Efficiency  performing our audit this Friday and we would be happy to share our experience as the project progresses.  Keep an eye on our blog for more information!

Architectural Magic II

   

 

The video that was attached to Beausoleil Architects latest blog, titled Architectural Magic, recently received the attention of over two and a half million viewers on YouTube. The ‘inside’ story can be seen in their new video, Architectural Magic II, which shows the garage doors from the inside.

Working off of the concept design from Robert Boles of Beausoleil, Rick Dentoni, of Automatic Gate Installations designed and fabricated the steel structural space frame which supports the original wood framed bay window facade and allows it to operate as a door.  He also designed and installed the control and safety systems that operate the door safely.  Rick’s controls coordinate the timing of the two sides of the door, which have to operate in succession in order to clear each other.

Since the door’s completion earlier this year, the owner, Corey McMills of McMills Construction reports a number of curious and, in some cases angry, passersby.  A few people have been upset about not being able to park in front of what looks like a bay window, and ask why there is a curb cut and a no parking sign. Quite a few slack jawed individuals have been noticed as the facade opens up and cars exit onto the road. Since the video went viral, there have even been a few tourists who stop on busy Oak Street to take their own photos in front of the famous façade!

Thank you for all the attention and great feedback! We hope it leads leads to more opportunities for creative architectural solutions that maintain the historical fabric and resources, while allowing buildings to be modernized to the needs of the present.

Architectural Magic

How do you turn a bay window into gold?  Simple, just make it disappear.

 

Corey and Ben McMills of McMills Construction had a problem.  Their investment property on Oak Street, near Ashbury and facing the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park, needed to have a garage built to enhance his tenant’s use of the building and maximize their rent.  Parking, as is true in much of San Francisco, is hard to find in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood and is almost more valuable than living space.  They turned to Beausoleil Architects for help.

The bottom floor of the building, a historic Victorian apartment house, had a hodgepodge of storage rooms, utility spaces and an ancient studio apartment shoehorned between a dozen wood posts.  The original brick foundations were underfoot.  The project structural engineer, Don David of Double D Engineering determined that as part of upgrading the seismic strength of the structure they could get rid of the columns and the partitions, build new concrete footings, and create a clean open garage space.  The problem, as Corey found out when he asked the planning department to review the project, was how to get a car in.

The front wall of the ground floor had a three sided bay window, with windows on each face, matching the bays on the levels above, and the city planning department had recently started enforcing its mandate to limit changes to the character of historic building’s front facades – including conversion of bay windows into garage doors. Their design guidelines require that fronts of buildings, front yards, fencing, and similar relics of historic design be left largely intact, and that changes must be made in accordance with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation of Historic Buildings. Replacement of the bay window with a garage door, a common practice for many years, was no longer an option.

Corey, a mechanical engineer by education and a problem solver by nature, conceived the idea of converting the walls of the bay window into door panels that would fold into the garage space to allow cars to enter, and then fold back into place, keeping the historic appearance intact.  The planning department agreed that this concept was provisionally acceptable.  To help him realize this concept, Corey hired fellow problem solver Robert Boles of Beausoleil Architects to devise the details and keep the project in-line with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards.  One of the goals of the standards is to keep not only the historical appearance, but to keep the ‘historic fabric’ – the original wood and glass building materials – intact wherever possible.

Beausoleil carefully measured the elements of the existing façade and drew them up, then determined how the bay window sides could be split apart from the rest of the building with almost invisible seams.  They envisioned a steel framework that would be secured to the back of the walls before they were cut away from the structure – allowing the fabric of the building to remain virtually intact, studs, siding, windows all moving in concert. The front yard, which had a possibly original wrought iron fence, also had to be redesigned to incorporate a driveway and a percentage of planting areas in accordance with the zoning code. Beausoleil prepared a supplementary set of construction drawings to complement the structural set previously approved.

To make the doors work mechanically, there are two floor mounted hydraulic activators, which rotate the doors on pivot hinges. Further details, including control and security hardware, were worked out in the field by the installer, Rick Dentoni of Automatic Gate Installations.

The new garage will provide four parking spaces, while eliminating only ten feet of parking space on the street.  While not entirely pleasing to the city planners, who consider cars to be the spawn of the devil, the new parking will no doubt be very useful to the tenants, at least until we can devise our next trick – teleportation!

The project still needs a little finish carpentry and painting, but you can get the idea in the photos and video below.

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Garage door closed                                             Garage door open

 

 

Demolition - the sad alternative to deconstruction

In stark contrast to the house deconstruction photos and blog posted earlier this month, this photo shows two nearby homes being demolished. 

Granted the materials will need to be recycled per the laws of the local municipality, but it seems so sad to see all that wonderful framing lumber shredded, when it could have been reused by artisans creating handmade furniture or people building new homes for the needy.  Was the price difference really analyzed, or was this route chosen just because it is the "normal" and expedient way to take down a house?  We don't know, but we encourage you to take the extra step to give John Morrow of the ReUse People a call to see if you too can't actually save money as well as reduce energy consumption through reuse by selecting deconstruction instead of demolition.

Sustainable Solutions: don’t demolish, deconstruct!

Construction has begun on a Beausoleil Architects designed residential remodel with a new second story in Los Altos, California.  The project will feature sustainable design in many aspects of the construction, but what is most interesting so far at this stage has been the deconstruction.

While most remodeling projects include materials to be taken out of a home; old cabinets, sinks, flooring, wood framing, etc. , and generally a portion of these items are recycled  (Los Altos is a prime example of an ecologically conscious municipality requiring 50% of materials to be recycled), many items still end up in landfill.  Deconstruction, on the other hand, involves the literal reversal of the construction process by carefully pulling the house into its’ component parts: fixtures, lumber, masonry, etc. for direct reuse.  It is not only ecological, but economical.

In this particular case, the existing house, built in 1953 was due for some major upgrades.  The plumbing, electrical and heating systems needed replacing; there were single pane windows and little or no insulation in the walls and roof.  The floor plan was cut up with a lot of small rooms, and did not suit the needs of a modern family with children.  A few years ago, the home would have been simply demolished to its’ foundations and over 35 tons of material would have been added to the landfill.  The owner opted to look into deconstruction as an alternative and found that it made sense from a financial perspective as well.

Working with the General Contractor, Gerry Jensen of Millenium Enterprises., we obtained quotes for both options, demolition and deconstruction. The deconstruction process obviously takes longer as materials need to be carefully removed, sorted and documented.  The beauty of deconstruction though is that instead of simply paying to have unwanted materials removed, the owner obtains a tax credit for donating them for charitable purposes.  Working with the Reuse People in Oakland, who are incredibly experienced with the process, the first step involves a preliminary inventory and dollar value provided by an independent appraiser. The cost of this appraisal is borne by the Owner upfront, but their fee is also tax deductible.  In the case of this project, the cost for demolition was bid at $12,000; the cost of deconstruction at $17,000 with the additional cost of the appraisal at $3,000.  The final appraised value of the goods donated was $83,678.  Assuming a tax bracket of 30%, this will leave the owner with a donation credit of $25,103!  According to John Morrow of the ReUse People, this amount can be carried over for up to four years, which in most cases ensures a full deduction.  Deconstruction does indeed pay off!

So what does the deconstruction process look like?  Once the appraisal is done and the contract signed, the deconstruction contractor, Marcan Enterprise in our case, came to take away all the cabinetry, appliances, interior doors, plumbing and lighting fixtures.  I was really impressed with how neatly they had all the material sorted and organized on site.

   

The contractor then had to come in and do some abatement of hazardous materials that were found in old tile and sheetrock, for example.  Once the potentially hazardous materials were removed, it took approximately 1-1/2 weeks for Marcan to take apart the home, brick by brick, stud by stud.  Over 5800 lineal feet of wood framing alone was salvaged!

The only materials not salvaged were old asphalt roofing shingles, lumber under 6 feet in length (recycled instead), a small amount old rigid insulation, and single pane aluminum windows (no longer allowed for energy reasons).  Single pane wood casement and double hung windows are salvaged.

So what is done with all these donated materials?  Well, in Oakland at the ReUse People’s retail outlet at 9235 San Leandro Boulevard, anyone from the public is welcome to come by and purchase materials at an incredibly discounted price. (Check their website for additional operations and retail locations in southern California, Denver, Kansas City, Sacramento, and New Britain Connecticut.)  Who are their typical customers?  According to John Morrow, there are several categories:

• People who cannot afford to buy new
• People with income properties
• People looking to be especially environmentally conscious and reduce their carbon footprint
• People looking for authentic period pieces for their remodels
• Artists, including furniture makers, whose purchase of old lumber accounts for 25% of The ReUse People’s sales

 

When my husband and I remodeled our own 1920’s bungalow in the Westwood Park neighborhood of San Francisco some years ago, we purchased salvaged interior paneled doors, scrap marble slabs. A single pane wood window for our garage, and period glass doorknobs.  We saved a lot of money, but we also purchased items that were in keeping with the original design and craftsmanship of the home, so that the addition felt as though it had always belonged.

 

We encourage you to consider deconstruction for your remodeling project.  It is suitable for any scale project, from a small kitchen or bathroom remodel, to a large addition or tear down.  It is the right thing to do, both for the planet, and for your pocketbook!

 

A Beach House Restoration – did the Victorians drink margaritas?

Construction has started on a Beausoleil Architects designed project to rehabilitate an historic ocean side bungalow in Capitola. The property, newly purchased by a Los Altos family for weekend getaways, overlooks picturesque downtown Capitola and Monterey Bay from the bluff known as Depot Hill. The existing house, a Victorian built in the 1890’s, has long been a local landmark but had fallen on hard times, including a major fire which caused the roof to be rebuilt.

 

The purchasers’ recognized the property’s worth, including the fact that its situation will never allow its view of the ocean and the town to be blocked, and it’s large yard, crying out for landscaping, a hammock and a pitcher of margaritas. As it turns out, the family’s business is commercial landscaping, so the owner envisions a happy few years doing as a hobby what his firm does professionally. The house’s generous living spaces, three bedrooms and two bathrooms, plus the option of adding a loft in the attic, would accommodate their family as well as numerous friends for summer parties.

The house’s exterior has suffered a bit over the years but is generally very close to its original form.  As such, and as part of the Depot Hill Historic District, significant changes to its exterior have to be done in accordance with the Secretary of the Interiors Standards for Historic Renovation, a set of Federal guidelines that govern work on historic properties.  Beausoleil Architects carefully documented the existing construction, and then worked closely with the local planning department to assess the owner’s plans for a new deck, rehabilitation of the windows and restoration of the original front steps.  With the help of the Capitola Historical Museum the owner was able to track down historic photos of the house, including one showing the local gang of kids sitting on the front steps, circa 1925. As it turned out, the proposed changes were considered appropriate and minor and the project sailed through the review process.

 

The interior of the house was a different problem.  The kitchen, as was typical in Victorian times, was cut off from the living spaces and arranged with a maximum of doors and a minimum of counter space. The owners wanted a more informal, free flowing space, so Beausoleil suggested taking out the wall between the kitchen and dining room, including a large non-functioning chimney. Besides opening up the spaces, the seismic hazard that the un-reinforced chimney represented was eliminated.  Beausoleil’s design also moved one of the doors – into a bedroom of all things – which freed up one wall for a large bank of storage cabinets. 

A rear extension of the house, including a bedroom and bathroom, was apparently remodeled at some point in the distant past, probably by enclosing what had been an outdoor laundry porch. The bathroom space in particular was substandard, and the new design created extra usable space by eliminating a rear stair and hallway.  A larger bathroom with a stacking laundry was the result – no more tramping down to the basement to do laundry.

The interior design is now being worked out by the owner and Anne Munemitsu Interior Design. The owner’s intention is to keep the basic Victorian detailing while updating the finishes and colors. The kitchen and baths will get all new fixtures and finishes.  Besides this eye candy, the underlying structure and systems are also be updated.  The crawlspace is being ‘voluntarily’ upgraded for seismic strength, and a new central forced air heating system and new wiring is being installed.

The result, when construction is completed in a few months, will be a beautiful ‘old’ Victorian, complete with all the modern conveniences, ready for its next hundred years of lounging at the beach.