Tag: Repurpose

  • Upcycling Decking Debris

    Upcycling Decking Debris

    Adaptive reuse has become an increasingly important principle for me in recent years. And one of the most ambitious (yet most critical) objectives for the icehouse rehabilitation project is repurposing surplus building materials and existing architectural salvage from previous projects; upcycling decking debris and other deconstruction byproducts from sixteen years of remodels and rehabs; and miscellaneous…

  • Installing Garapa Decking 2022

    Installing Garapa Decking 2022

    Last Friday, I teased a recap of our recent deck rebuild — or more specifically an overview of installing garapa decking on the newly rebuilt deck — but then I proceeded to dive headlong into a 2008-9 decking-with-garapa flashback. Sometimes it’s helpful to discover the backstory before plunging into the present. Here was my swaggering introduction (before…

  • Garapa Decking 2008-2009

    Garapa Decking 2008-2009

    I left you wondering, patiently waiting for a couple of weeks after the “Deck Rebuild” update. I promised a post specifically focusing on the garapa decking, but days turned into weeks, and no garapa gallery. Sorry. Rest assured it was an act of omission, my friends, not an act of commission. (Maybe “fall” earned its…

  • Clearing Out Historic Icehouse

    Clearing Out Historic Icehouse

    Sixteen years after plunging into renovating Rosslyn we are… finally tackling the looong postponed icehouse rehabilitation. Sweet sixteen. (Source: Redacting Rosslyn v2.0 – Rosslyn Redux) In the image above you can see a notable improvement from previous images of the interior of Rosslyn’s historic icehouse. This underutilized outbuilding had become a storage space in the…

  • Teeter-Tottering

    Teeter-Tottering

    To borrow a turn of phrase from Shaye Elliott, “I’m teeter tottering between” being fully present in Essex and departing for Santa Fe, betwixt summer’s curtain call and autumn’s debut, between and betwixt scores of less-than-precisely delineated transitions.

  • Melancholy Boathouse

    Melancholy Boathouse

    Melancholy much? Yesterday I posted this achingly evocative image on the Rosslyn Redux Instagram feed with thanks to our neighbor, Emma, who gifted the vintage photograph postcard to us. It was a gift to her from Michael Peden who, in turn credited his father, Douglas Peden, as the photographer. Here’s an excerpt from my caption.…

  • Transitions

    Transitions

    Transitions. Flux. Liminality. Interstices. Inflection. Evolving. To remain nimble amidst unpredictability and unforeseen challenges, optimistic astride setbacks and failures, innovative and creative under duress. And to navigate gratefully and passionately at all times. From carpentry fiasco (boathouse gangway) to carpentry triumph (house deck), from summer to autumn (bittersweet seasonality), from hale and hardy to COVID…

  • Preservation by Neglect: Icehouse On Ice

    Preservation by Neglect: Icehouse On Ice

    Icehouse on ice. Yes, this tidy clutch of words and ideas appeals immensely to my poetic perspective on living, but there’s more to it than that. Like so many of the posts I’m revisiting lately, the earliest iteration of this originally somewhat melancholic reflection is nearly a decade old. Like many blog drafts it became an…

  • Icehouse v2.0

    Icehouse v2.0

    At long last it’s time to move forward with Rosslyn’s icehouse v2.0 which I’ve been alluding to for a couple of months (including in the July 2 Instagram photo of icehouse interior above.) If this is your first sneak peek inside the icehouse, rest assured that the project is still percolating. When the sweet siren songs…

  • Rosslyn’s Game Room

    Rosslyn’s Game Room

    Icehouse and future “game room” in autumn 2006 (Source: Geo Davis) Game Room v1.0 When we bought Rosslyn in 2006, the icehouse was on its last legs. The inspector advised us to abandon it (or rebuild it from scratch). Although the actual written document he submitted once the inspection was complete offered a less terminal…

  • Horse Stall Haiku

    Horse Stall Haiku

    Horse Stall Haiku Carriage house stall door,pockmarked, patinated, but hale,relates tenants past. — Geo Davis Wabi-sabi Horse Stall Patina. Rust. Wear-and-tear. The horse stall door in the photograph above abounds in visible reminders of imperfection and impermanence. And yet beauty brims. The image, indeed the horse stall and the horse stall door themselves, exude warmth and…

  • Icehouse Haiku

    Icehouse Haiku

    Recent months have been busy with rebuilding and advancing plans for further rebuilding. Soon I’ll share an update on our summer 2022 deck rebuild, and I promise that it’ll be worth the wait. Until then, I’ll tease out another potential rebuild on the horizon. But first, by way of introduction, I offer you an icehouse…