Tranquil backyard homestudio is natural materials masterclass

We're in the Anacostia Historic District. It's considered Washington, D.C.'s first suburb. Right before the Civil War in the 1850s, it was originally called Union Town. This was essentially like a workers' community for the Navy Yard workers. And today it's anchored by the Frederick Douglass House, which is right behind you. He was easily this neighborhood's most famous resident. This is where he spent the final years of his life when he was both, I think, Ambassador to Haiti and also a U.S. Marshall in Washington, D.C. The house itself is this magnificent Victorian home from the 1850s. It was the residence of the developer of what at the time was Union Town. He went bankrupt and then Frederick Douglass bought it from the bank. At the time, it was a community with all kinds of race covenants that deterred, if not legally prevented, African-Americans from living here. So Frederick Douglass was definitely the most famous and probably the first resident who broke the color line. And that was, I think, right after the Civil War, like 1870s. It was a much more expansive site when he lived here, too. It was a kind of vast estate. Hey, Kevin. Hey, Jack. So then you decided to move to this area. You found a house that was affordable. What was your... We rented in the neighborhood for a year with an eye towards fixing up an old house in the neighborhood. And then this came on the market and it was a big renovation kind of project. What year is the house? It's from 1892. So it was constructed when Frederick Douglass actually lived across the street over here. So we imagine that he would have seen the house under construction from his porch when he lived there. So you can see the vestige of a curb cut here. So this corresponded to a driveway. Yeah, there used to be a long driveway that went all the way to the backyard. And one of the first things we did was remove the driveway and we reclaimed this place. It took advantage of a relatively recently adopted zoning reform that permitted accessory structures in residential neighborhoods. So before that zoning change in 2016, this kind of structure would have been prohibited. So I read it was the first bamboo house on the east coast. Correct. Code compliant structural bamboo house on the east coast. Do you call it a bamboo house? We call it the grass house, bamboo being kind of the largest of the grasses. You know, most people don't realize that, or I think most people don't realize that the bamboo isn't a tree. It's a grass and it behaves like grasses do. And it's largely why it's such a menace to a lot of people's backyards because it is such a ferocious plant in terms of its growth. But that growth makes it a really great solution for natural structural materials because it grows so quickly, you can harvest it so quickly. Bamboo grows exponentially faster than timber wood does. So this door doesn't feel like a door. Yeah, we designed it with our friend who's a carpenter and furniture maker. It's composed of these horizontal weather-lapped slats that are all charred. And the Shu-Shugi-Ban tradition did it with this lapping so that when water gets on it, it comes down and drains out. And so this jam is also cedar on the inside, but on the outside, it's this black locust, just like this kind of arbor here. Oh, the smell in here is great. Yeah. It smells like grasses, I guess, are drying. I mean, basically every surface in this space is a natural organic material, largely cellulose-based, like grass or trees, or everyone comments on that, that they like the way it smells when they come in. And it just more or less explains, you know, that most spaces don't smell like this. And the kind of background air that we breathe, water we swim in, you know, metaphorically is, you know, drywall and paint and a very industrialized atmosphere. And there's a lot of material that's exposed, like even the wall, what is that? Yeah, so what you're seeing is this structural bamboo plywood, and it's kind of confusing because this exterior surface is actually Douglas fir veneer, but the structural core is bamboo. So there are these four interlayers of crushed bamboo, but then on the outside face of it is veneer of Doug fir. When they first patented this wall system, this was the approach because Doug fir is relatively soft compared to bamboo, so you can self-tap screws into it and sand and finish it in a more straightforward way. What about this wall, which is just so different? Yeah, we bought a bunch of willow reed that is more traditionally used for basket weaving. My business partner, Andy, and his wife, Hannah, did the weaving of the willow. And this is, this in turn is supported by these vertical threaded rods of steel, these threaded rods that go up to the balustrade on the second floor, which is kind of hanging the stair below. And between these hang points are thread, the willow. So you can think of a textile as having a vertical main and then the woven fibers between them. And this is doing that with the horizontals as the willow and the verticals as these steel rods that are a structural purpose for the house. It's true that we forgot a lot of these techniques that made a lot of sense for rain, for sun. We never adapted them for housing. We did, but then we forgot how to do it. Yeah. I think now it's a poetic metaphor to think of your house and the architectural solution along the lines of a basket weaver or a hat maker, things like that. But I think historically, people made their dwellings in a very similar way. Literally the same techniques were brought to bear on the enclosure of a house and the enclosure of a head with a hat, you know, like they weren't terribly different. So this stair that gets to the basement is constructed of bam core components. So this structural bamboo plywood, because it comes pre-cut, we decided to get, in addition to the wall panels cut, these stair components. So we designed the stair almost like a Lego set because it comes pre-cut at a very high level of precision. We decided to design the stair as essentially a kit of parts, of bam core parts. So you have these riser beams and you have these big treads and you have these little treads and all of it basically gets stitched together. And this is a one-off, but it's, we think pretty straightforward. It's supported by these fins. These are double laminations of bam core. That's why they're super thick. But these create these storage opportunities for us. And the storage that we wanted was only two feet deep, which is typical for closets. But the stair, of course, needs to be three feet wide. So that margin of a foot is what you'd call a cantilever. And the cantilever extends out a foot, but then most of these outriggers, these beams are supported by these threaded rods that weave their way up to the second floor railing and then provide this stiff vertical structure for this willow weave. And you can see the willow down here we experimented with another kind of pattern that uses a little less willow. And we thought that that porosity made a lot of sense in a basement with limited light. So, you know, the very scarce light that does come from this window well can move through the space. Right. You can see it much thicker Upstairs, it's more like a physical object. And here it's more like a textile. There's even more materials that you can see. Yeah, this is a woven bamboo plywood that we used for all the subfloor. So because we exposed the joists, we thought instead of just a standard sheeting product, like a plywood or OSB, this kind of woven herringbone bamboo would look much nicer than that. So that's what we use for all the exposed subfloors and the extra sheets we had. We made these tables and the corners. These are from an invasive mulberry tree that we had to cut down in the neighborhood that we used for these legs and also the handrails that you were grasping as you walked up the stairs. And the shelves are just... Those are the offcuts of the black locust for the the roof eaves and the benches and the like. And this was just going to get mulched. But when we picked up the black locust in upstate New York, where it was from, they said that we could take as much as we could fit in the truck. So we thought we'd find some way to use all these huge bark-covered black locust offcuts. Those are scraps, so easy to forget about them. Waste is great. These lights, for instance, they're made of mycelium that has essentially colonized agricultural waste. So all of the little wood chips that you see in here is cellulose waste from various agricultural activity that then gets essentially inoculated with a fungal strain that then colonizes this matrix of cellulose pulp. And then once it's fully saturated with the mycelium of the fungus, it gets baked and then it turns into kind of a ceramic, but very, very lightweight. The actual mycelium is chitin, which is what crab shells and exoskeletons are made out of. It's the same chemical. And because chitin is entirely enveloping this matrix of cellulose waste, it's entirely non-combustible. So we've taken the same torch that we charred our wood with upstairs. We tried testing it on the same material and it won't ignite, even though it's 90% or so by volume wood pulp, which is inherently flammable. But it's entirely coated in this chitinous network. Isn't that a possible fire retardant material? I'd imagine. And it's why the mycological networks in a forest floor survive forest fires. It's surely built into the logic of the fungal network. What's the floor? This is bamboo. And then you're using materials that are probably very affordable. And instead of just hiding them, you sort of celebrate them in a sense, right? Yeah, the humble masonry unit, you know, like instead of hiding it behind drywall and other finishes. And it's also just being practical about maximizing the amount of floor area here. Instead of encroaching on the space further with a furring wall or a bump-out wall, we elected to expose it. But part of the reason we could expose it is because if you look at these, there's a typical concrete masonry unit. And this is what's called an omni-block. There's a space for continuous insulation. So the other advantage, most basements you go down and the basement wall kind of projects out and the stair has to negotiate this subterranean descent around a wall. But here, because we're not bringing it out with insulation, we can have this really simple transition and have this very simple stair design that goes straight up. And all the little cubbies that are created by this kit-of-parts stair host all these essentially dioramas of all the architectural objects and models that we've collected over the years. So this is something like a kitchen. It's more like a kitchenette. And there's a concealed refrigerator and freezer in the corner here that kind of blends into the rest. With the same wood? Yeah, this was leftover from the flooring. This was leftover black locust. The flooring? This is bamboo flooring as well. It's similar to the floor above us where, you know, there's a structural subfloor that spans all of these joists and then on top of that you have your floor finish. You seem to have one solution open to the eye that is just quite simple. Yeah, that was like the initial concept because the zoning code was reformed to permit these kind of accessory structures, placed a height limitation that was rather constraining. It's 20 feet maximum from the outside grade all the way up to the top of the roof. So it doesn't really yield the opportunity for tall ceilings. So we thought exposing the joists in the subfloor would make what are pretty short ceilings feel a little bit more generous. But as a consequence, you have to be a little more intentional about how your structure interacts with electrical and plumbing. So we use this kind of cloth-bound wire and some copper wire as well to braid them together. And yeah, we had some false starts with our electrician at the beginning of the project where they were drilling holes through all these joists wherever they saw fit because it's an extremely rare thing to want to expose the framing of the house like we've done here. So what's behind this frame here? Yeah, so this is the BAMCOR wall system and the main virtue of it in terms of its energy performance is that there's no studs in the wall that would interrupt your insulation. So we use sheep's wool insulation and stuffed it in ourselves. And this runs continuously behind all of the BAMCOR surface in the project. So there's basically a sweater of sheep's wool that's between this panel and the exterior BAMCOR panel. And if you fish far enough in there, you can feel the back panel on the outside. I'm scratching it right now. It's about six inches behind this face. So it's about six inches of thick sheep's wool insulation. And we just kind of kept this exposed as almost a children's book where you can scratch and sniff, you know. And it's also like most people's house insulation, you wouldn't want to touch without gloves on. So it's dramatizing that, you know, it's safe to touch. It's safe to smell. You're not going to get a reaction. Or cancer. There's a second floor. I'm walking on a stair now that was constructed out of a fallen black walnut tree in the neighborhood. And this handrail again is that harvested invasive mulberry tree. Makes a great handrail. And the stair, all the treads are from the black walnut. And the largest branch of the black walnut we used to create the balustrade that then restrains all of those threaded rods that go down to the basement stair. So this is this, all of these threaded rods that are pinned at the top. These threaded rods, they go up about 25 feet. You know, they become the structure for all of the willow in the project. So there's a lot of handshakes going on between these materials. And this floor? This is cork. And then I think there's a bamboo sub base. Yeah, up here you can tell every space has a very different atmospheric quality. And this was more about brightness and airiness. And you know, the white of the mushroom lamps, and the white of the floor, and the white of the ceiling. This is that same weave core for the sub floor. And you can see the herringbone relief through the paint. I think it's a nice detail. You just didn't go all the way to the roof. Yeah, it's something similar to these trims creating these reveals. And you know, you never have perfection with the way materials meet each other. So if you can anticipate the inevitable lack of precision with things like reveals like this, we did that with the doors too, where the jam of the door, you know, we don't let this finish come to the finish of the casing. So to create a little bit of a reveal there hides some of the imperfections that naturally abound on a construction site. So this desk looks continuous to the wall. Is it all the same material? Yeah, so this is also BAMCOR. Wherever we thought BAMCOR could be adapted to, we used it. So the countertops, these little fins, those are double laminated BAMCOR pieces. The door to the bathroom is also from all of the scraps of BAMCOR. These are whatever odds and ends that existed that were cut away from making some things like tables and stuff out of it. These were just whatever final little scraps we had we could cobble together to make the door. That's why it's kind of idiosyncratic looking. Yeah, so the stair of Black Walnut, these were some of the last scraps of the Black Walnut that we made this kind of butcher block counter with. And this was a sink that I salvaged from my grandparents' house that was torn down in Maryland. And this light fixture was too, actually, and it has a bamboo motif. It had glass that I think broke and we used mica instead. And then behind there is... Yeah, you'll have to go in without me, but all the birds, all the birds and bees and wasps that have taken up residence on the site, when they've abandoned their little nests and houses, we've claimed them. They may have something to learn in there, right? Yeah, we definitely have something to learn. And that's like the ultimately unselfconscious way of building is the way a bird makes its nest or a bee makes its hive. And there's something very beautiful about that. We can't help but be self-conscious with our buildings, but if only we were birds, we'd be better off on this planet. Wow. So you see the structure. Did you take anything apart or did you...? Yeah, I would classify our work here as a gut renovation. So there was a significant amount of water and termite damage that was structural in nature. So we really had to strip it to the bones to do structural repairs. And we elected to keep some of the structure exposed that was in really good condition. And we thought it gave a nice personality to this kind of part of the house. So the stud framing that used to be a closet under the stair and the joist framing above us, both showing the old markings of where the plaster had come through the lathing on the ceiling, we just thought it was a nice texture and a cool way to reveal on the interior of the building some of the original pieces of the building from the 1890s. So if you can, you can even see that. Is that the lath? Yeah. So while you're seeing the absence of lath, this is wooden lath. This is the substrate for plastering. Historically, this was superseded by metal lath. So later homes like the 19-teens, this was replaced with metal. Obviously after that, after World War II, it became almost entirely replaced with wallboard, gypsum wallboard. But yeah, that explains the kind of horizontal striping where the plaster would have gone past the lath. And so when you remove the lath, you still see the markings of the old plaster. And these dark... Those are just where the little brad nails that would have secured the lath. Even the shelves behind you, I mean, they're really basic. There's not a lot of extra... What's the material? It's three-quarter inch birch veneer plywood and Ikea brackets. So probably $50 of material. And we are adept enough to put it together ourselves and the tables as well. You can see that the construction of these tables are basically wall construction on their side. There's studs that separate one panel from the other panel. And so it has a lot of structural strength and can span a great distance. And the cavity between them that in a wall section would have insulation is just kind of storage space for tools and stuff in the house that we often need. And these posts were salvaged from the columns of the porch before we had to rebuild the porch. They're not like the most ornate or elegant posts. They're just six by sixes. And this part of the house was where our office used to be before we built the grass house. So this is where our activities, our business activities took place. But we're obviously commingled with a more domestic lifestyle down here to this garden. This is also something that absorbs all the runoff from the roof of the grass house. All of the masonry debris from the construction of the foundation we used to make a dry creek that can become saturated with all the runoff. And it takes advantage of the slope and irrigates all of the plantings and shrubs and trees. So this was, was this a driveway? A cement? Correct. Yeah. It was, none of this was planted. I mean, but you had to take out cement? We had to take out a concrete slab. Yeah. Wow. What a better use of space. Yeah. We're walking under a willow arch right now and we got willow from the place that we used on the inside and we planted it and you can use it in really fun ways. And one of them is braiding them together to create living walls, living arches, things like that. And so we had to make this kind of freestanding planter and all of these timbers were saved from another renovation project of the current embassy of Hungary actually. I took these out of a dumpster after construction hours and the condensate for the air conditioning of this house irrigates these willows. So you see that little hose there. So in the thick of the summertime, this is sending a lot of irrigation to these willows and the willows love to be wet. Yeah. This is the cistern that captures all of the roof drainage. So at a heavy rain event, this thing will fill up with some 300 gallons of water. And there's kind of a hidden little valve here that that will turn on when it's been dry for a while. Releases into the dry creek we were just looking at. So I mean this exterior is really beautiful. It's amazing. Is it, are you doing a sort of shishigibana? Yeah, this side that's the western exposure is charred cypress and then the other facades that aren't getting quite as much of a beating from you know the western exposure are charred cedar. We're happy with how it's weathered. We knew that it would have a little bit of change over time and we think it has some really nice texture and personality. Yeah, one thing that's kind of cool at the corner, you can see those little overhanging furring strips and those are used to hold the siding off of the weather barrier about an inch to create a ventilation gap so that this can dry out when it gets wet. And we oriented them at a 45 degree so that they could facilitate the drainage of water. Outsides can see the nailing pattern of these exposed copper fasteners follows this chevron pattern. And over time we expect as the copper patinates and drips kind of its deposits on the facade it'll even more highlight the chevron pattern. We're hopeful at least. So you're using a lot of materials even when you are using metals that are probably like more timeless. Yeah, it's more workable so it's been used for a lot longer and we think it's a nice thing when its age is apparent in the way it looks over time and the way it behaves to the elements over time. So when you finish a house that's not the end of the house, right? Exactly, it's the beginning of the house. That's our highest goal is to have homes that improve in quality as they get older. Just like people.