Month: October 2017

The weeping willow and sourwood, gifts for our wedding, died early on. The Austrian pine marking the birth of our grandson, Sean, (replacing the original Japanese paperbark pine accidentally mowed down) seems to be succumbing to some kind of tip die-back 16 years later, and ever since I heard about the depredations of the ambrosia beetle, I’ve been worried about our iconic garden beech, which sports a suspicious early-browning swath through its canopy.

Then there’s the couple who nurse a sickly hybrid bestowed in memory of a beloved relative and the lady who can’t stand the mature habit of the vigorous trident maple she planted for a long-ago wedding anniversary. Symbolism and sentiment stay our hands. In the face of such pitfalls, why plant a memorial tree at all?

Because sometimes we just can’t help it. Dedicating a tree to a special person or event is an age-old human rite. Trees have futures and meanings fraught with peril. Just like us, they are blessed and cursed. They grow old majestically or die too soon from accident or disease, sometimes murder. They suffer misfortune, witness history, receive accolades, nurture life and cause unintended harm. Planting a tree is always an act of hope.

Most memorial trees are in our yards, some in cemeteries, others in public spaces. Decisions can be very personal, for weddings, births and deaths, or out of our hands altogether in the case of happenstance. Some trees are selected as specimens for neighborhood associations or parks to commemorate a public event or benefactor. If you’re tasked with selecting or caring for a such a tree, what should you keep in mind?

Ultimate size, width as well as height, is often the most surprising aspect of trees and the biggest threat to their longevity. Make sure a newly planted tree is muddied in and gets an inch of water every week the ground is not frozen for at least the first couple of years; pay extra attention during hot dry spells. In the country, protection from deer rubbing is crucial.

Dig the planting hole two to three times wider than the root ball and place it at soil level or a bit higher, exposing the natural flare of the trunk. If it looks like a telephone pole, it’s too deep. Healthy tree roots will quickly outgrow the original hole, so don’t amend so much that you radically change the texture and drainage from the surrounding soil. A few shovelfuls of good compost is usually sufficient.

Mulch with organic shredded hardwood, pine bark, leaf compost, pine tags or the like, no more than three inches and don’t build a volcano! Often this structure is intended to hold water, but as it deepens with repeated mindless mulching, it ends up shedding water and starving the soil of oxygen. Keep mulch flat and a few inches away from the base of the trunk. Staking is usually not necessary unless you have an unusually top-heavy tree, and can cause harm when not removed within a year by keeping the tree too stiff to develop natural wind resistance and cutting into its bark.

Please don’t just throw down a ceremonial shovel and walk away from a photo op if you’re involved in planting a public tree. Make sure there is specific responsibility (and funding!) for care. Track down the department and individual at the relevant agency (parks and recreation, campus landscaping, etc.) and confirm that the new tree is on a care schedule. Walk by occasionally and keep an eye on it. Have another visible dedication in addition to the tree. A bench with a plaque is ideal, perhaps an engraved stone in the turf. Let aftercomers know the meaning of the tree.

Our marriage has survived the demise of our wedding trees and seen the planting of many more. Perhaps we’ll make a bonfire of Sean’s pine for his senior prom. In the meantime, my birthday beech in the east meadow is coming on 18 years now and I’m beginning to think about what we’ll plant for Sean’s graduation.

Memorial tree suggestions

American holly, red and yellow berried (40-50′ x 18-40′)*

Beech: European (50-60′ x 35-40′); Pendula (weeping); Copper beech, Native American beech*

Dogwood, white and pink (20-30′ x 20-30′)*

Japanese maple, Acer palmatum, dwarf weeping (10-15′), standard (15-20′), green or burgundy

Southern magnolia (60-80′ x 30-50′) or
Little Gem (20′)*

Star magnolia, M. stellata (15-20′ x 10-15′)

White oak (50-80′)*

*Natives

Fall check list

• Get a soil test and best management practices from the Virginia Healthy Lawns program through Piedmont Master Gardeners (albemarle vcehelpdesk@gmail.com).
• Water woody plants two years and younger well into winter.
• Put up wire cages around small caliper trees to protect from deer.
• Sow fall greens to follow summer veggies.
• Plant cover crops like rye or clover in empty vegetable beds.
• Plant bulbs (brentandbeckysbulbs.com, vanengelen.com, local garden centers).

Skylights get a bad rap, according to Charlottesville Glass & Mirror owner Dwight Corle. That’s because years ago, they were poorly constructed, and that blinded a lot of folks to their benefits.

“Like with everything, the technology has boosted the quality,” Corle says. “Most of the new skylights are tempered glass, and they look great.”

If you’re one of the few folks still taking a shine to skylights—they’ve declined in popularity in the last decade, Corle says—you could be in for a treat. Just remember a few key installation considerations, and your crystal-clear overhead pane will be providing your home with natural lighting for years to come.

The location

People might be shying away from skylights, but those who are open to them are getting more and more creative. From kitchens to sunrooms, skylights can up the wow factor in any interior space that’s lacking natural light, according to Corle.

“They’re perfect if you want more light in a room,” he says. “It depends on the home, but I’ve seen them in living rooms, sunrooms and bathrooms—then you even see them in the kitchen.

Ben Davis, VP of sales at Craig Builders, said he’s seeing more and more people using skylights together with porches. “In some instances, porch roofs can limit natural light,” he says. “In that case, homeowners will typically add a skylight or two into the screened area’s roof to bring in more light to the home.”

The materials

Tempered glass is now the gold standard for overhead windows, but acrylic skylights have come a long way, as well. The older versions tended to crack and become hazy in a matter of years, but “they’ve perfected them in the last decade,” Corle says.

Modern, heat-treated, tempered glass skylights are essentially leak-free, laminated for safety and often feature warm edge technology, which means they pass less hot and cold air into your home.

The critical thing when you’re shopping for a skylight pane is to go with low emissivity glass and maybe even a coating to block more UV rays. “You have the sun beating down through these things, so you want to cut out as much UV light and direct heat as you can,” Corle says.

The project

Top-notch skylight installation requires two pros—a contractor to cut holes in your ceiling/roof and a window provider to bring the pane. Once you have your team in place, the job should take about a week, Corle says.

“It shouldn’t take more than one day to install a 2-foot-by-4-foot skylight,” he says, pointing to the most common size. What does take time is the Sheetrock finishing on the skylight shaft. Plywood finishing can cut down on your lead time, but it’s more prone to leaking. Sheetrock, which the contractor will have to go over several times, ensures a tight seal and polished finish.

“That being said, you do get these roofs that are 30 feet in the air and have greater pitch, and that takes longer,” Corle says.

As for skylight pricing, it’s no surprise that cost can vary from house to house and application to application. But the fixture itself should be between $200 and $400, and materials and labor should land on the order of $1,200 to $1,500.

If $1,800 sounds pricey for a quality skylight, Corle suggests one other route for the super handy. Relatively new tube skylights (Corle recommends the line from Velux) have everything a DIYer needs in one convenient package. “There’s no shaft; it’s just a flexible pipe up to the roof,” Corle says. “It has a lens that covers the ceiling end, and it looks like a light fixture.”

Let there be skylight

Inspiration from the little mountain: Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello has 13 skylights throughout the house—including the oculus in the Dome Room—located in the dining room and Jefferson’s bedchamber, in three third-floor bedrooms, over stairwells and privy shafts.

Traditionalists beware: This style is not for you. (We’re looking at you, too, shabby chic-lovers and those after French country.) But if you have eclectic taste and aren’t afraid to experiment, local designer Alexandra Bracey of Bracey Designs says brutalist design might be right up your décor alley.

But, what is it? Brutalism derives from the French word for raw, brut. In architecture, it translates to large, fortress-like structures with exposed concrete exteriors. In interior design, brutal pieces have hard edges, jagged shapes and embrace the imperfections in materials, usually metal, wood or, of course, concrete. The style originated post-World War II, but gained popularity in the late ’60s and early ’70s.

Consequently, says Bracey, the trend pairs well with contemporary and mid-century furniture.

“The incorporation of global and eclectic design elements is very popular right now and the unpolished elements of the brutalist trend fits in perfectly with this movement,” Bracey says. “It is also a great way to add some interest to a neutral room or to tie in the popular brass trend in a less conventional way.”

If you’re feeling shy about adopting brutalist design in your home, as with any bold trend, start small. For a recent project, Bracey incorporated a brutalist light fixture in a client’s entryway. It adds drama without going overboard.

“A great light fixture or two, an end table or even one big furniture piece like a sideboard paired with other pieces with simple lines makes a great statement,” Bracey says. “A little brutalism goes a long way.”

In August of 2016, Three Notch’d Brewing Company turned three years old. At the time, it had already established three taprooms, including its original 10,000-barrel brewing facility on Grady Avenue, plus locations in Richmond and Harrisonburg. It was around then that Three Notch’d announced plans to build a fourth restaurant and brew pub at the IX Art Park in downtown Charlottesville.

But the owners weren’t seeking to build just another taproom. “We wanted to create a flagship location that would be a tourist destination and serve as an anchor for our brand,” says Three Notch’d president and founder Scott Roth.

Looking to industry titans like Founders and Stone for inspiration, Roth and company sought to do two things: offer high-end food in a cool, German brew pub atmosphere and expand its brewing operations.

Facing a one-year deadline, the team had to quickly find a building that could accommodate both ends. “We were looking for something big enough to house a 30,000-barrel-a-year brewing and bottling operation, that would allow for 18-wheelers to come in and out with minimal disruption, have tremendous aesthetic potential and be centrally located,” says Roth, “which was a lot to ask.”

After considering more than 50 buildings, the company narrowed the list to three before settling on the IX location and beginning a 15,000-square-foot buildout with the help of local architecture firms Design Build Office and Formwork.

The first major hurdle was deciding how to modify the floor to handle the weight of the brewing equipment. “There was a 2-inch concrete slab, and it didn’t take a lot of brain power to realize that wasn’t going to cut it,” says Roth, whose degree happens to be in engineering. “The operative questions were, how much steel do we need and how are we going to get it in there?”

Initially, the company considered cutting out the floor and creating a subterranean facility. However, with daily grain deliveries and product shipments, the design would have required elaborate ramps and elevators. Instead, they chose to add a new building, which was cost effective and carried the benefit of providing additional restaurant space.

“Before, we were going to have a small, 100-foot restaurant with a 50-foot event space, but the addition enabled us to almost double that,” says Roth. “Overall, we wound up with a 17,400-square-foot facility, with 5,000 of that being allotted to restaurant space.”

Following a principle of communality and integration, the design team opted for an open interior featuring a lot of glass and natural light, and sought to affect a seamless transition from inside to out. Positioned around the brewery, the restaurant features a huge glass window through which patrons can see its copper vats, tubes and innerworkings. “More than a sense of transparency, we wanted visitors to feel like they’ve become a part of the operation, like they’re sitting right there, feeling its heartbeat,” says Roth.

With 23-foot ceilings, an open kitchen, 20 raw-pine columns, tons of wood accents, long bench-style seating and huge windows and doors opening onto the IX park, the dining room feels like a modernized take on an old-world beer hall. “We didn’t want to fill it up with booths and four-tops,” says Roth. “The idea was to create a sense of openness and community. We put in the big tables and kept things open to try to minimize isolation. We want people to come in and mingle. We want them to get together and feel like they’re part of a larger group.”

Helping to solidify the communal identity are murals painted by local artist Christy Baker, depicting Revolutionary War hero Jack Jouett’s legendary ride along the moonlit Three Notch’d path to warn then-governor Thomas Jefferson of advancing British cavalry. “Charlottesville is a historical town, and, in our own small way, we want to honor that history while seeking to make our own mark on it,” says Roth. “This is where our brand got started, this is our home.”

Ray Gaines has been involved with sustainable architecture since the energy crisis of the 1970s—long before “sustainability” was a term du jour. So when an old friend approached him about building a house with passive solar functionality and other green attributes, he was more than ready to accommodate.

“We talked in generalities,” he says, as the client searched for the right piece of land. “I talked about how it would be good if the land slopes off to the south; that would allow us to design the house for some passive solar response, which is a fairly easy and common sense thing to do. When she found this piece of land, it slopes due south. It could not be more perfect for a house that has southern glass exposure.”

Gaines (founder of the Gaines Group) was able to make the attributes of the site work in tandem with the project’s environmental and aesthetic goals, designing a modestly sized dwelling that pays homage to Frank Lloyd Wright and the prairie-style homes that Gaines and his client have both long admired. “At least in certain ways, [Wright] was one of the early green architects,” says Gaines.

The lot is in northern Albemarle and, on its south side, it opens not only to the sun but to a great view. Connecting to that mountain vista went hand-in-hand with capturing solar energy. Extra-large overhangs on the south, says Gaines, “keep the sun off those large windows in the summer at the peak of the day, but let the winter sun into that great room.”

Gaines also employed a natural “chimney” effect to keep his client’s energy bills down, specifying high clerestory windows near the 14-foot-high ceiling of the great room. When open (they can be operated with electric controls) they provide a type of natural air conditioning. “The sun is basically driving a breeze through the house,” explains Gaines. “The air is warming up so it rises and goes out through the upper windows, and lets air in through lower windows.” In winter, reversible ceiling fans push warm air back down toward the living space, cutting down on heating costs.

The client cites those clerestory windows as not just an energy boon but a simple pleasure of living here. “The clerestory floods the house with light,” she says.

Building small—the house is 1,200 square feet on the main level and has just two bedrooms—was another way to keep the house’s impact lower. The client calls its scale “a happy medium between a tiny house and one that was more than I needed.”

“The house is designed on a 4×4 grid,” Gaines says. “The reason for that module is it’s very economical to construct. Four feet is three cinderblocks, six bricks, three joist spaces or half a sheet of plywood. You’re able to maximize the use of materials without a lot of waste.”

Gaines says he kept functionality at the front of his mind. “It’s particularly important to put my desires in the background when designing for a friend,” he says. “I’m not building a monument to myself.”

Luckily, he and his client agreed on the prairie style aesthetically, and as an embodiment of certain values. “Simplicity, endurance and character constitute beauty to me,” says the client. “These values also reflect my commitment to live within my means, not just financially, but environmentally.”

The house’s hipped roof, side-by-side assemblies of vertical windows and broad eaves are all hallmarks of the prairie style. A strong gold palette on the HardiePlank exterior got a twist at the entryway, where the gold gives way to blue. “That was something that we recommended to draw attention to the entry since the door faces west and the approach is from the northeast,” says Gaines. Builder Kenny Williams installed the siding at a 45-degree angle.

The client especially loves the outdoor rooms —a screened porch and a rear balcony—and the way livestock wire fence panels, a common and unassuming material, became their railings.

“This was probably one of the easiest houses for me to do because of the fact that we were on the same page philosophically,” says Gaines. “It was easy just to sit down and put this on paper. [As built], it’s close to the first sketch.”