Bazett-Frank house repair; redwood plywood query

[SDR]

This thread contains the story of a recently-completed Usonian repair project, necessitated by a small roof fire that occurred in July of this year at the Bazett-Frank residence (Hillsborough, 1940). The story starts, for me, with the search for the right plywood . . .

We go back to the beginning---August 5, 2022 . . .

If anyone here (or there, or anywhere) knows of a source of rotary-cut redwood veneer, and/or 3/8" plywood faced with same, now would be the time to let me know. A little restoration project has cropped up, for which four or five sheets of that material are needed.

PM or email me, please.

SDR

[DRN]

It is very difficult to find. For the new work in our house, we used 3/4" fir plywood carefully selected for grain similarity to the original, or salvaged pieces from kitchen base cabinets too far gone to restore.

Polymaths that they are, I know Paul Penfield and the late Dan Chrzanowski had made their own vacuuform tables to apply redwood veneers to purchased sheets of finish plywood.

Might Stafford Norris have any insight on this?

[SDR]

He has been consulted. His furnishings for the Lamberson house are quite handsome; the veneers are straight-grained (flat-sawn or plain sliced). Fir or cedar, rotary cut to render clear whole-piece face (WPF) panels, are fall-back substitutes under review.

This is the material I'm trying to match:

[sjnorris]

As SDR knows he's looking for a unicorn , old growth redwood veneer is hard enough to find but rotary cut redwood veneer would be a miracle. But there is a good supply of rotary cut redwood burl

For those that want more info on veneer cuts and plywood this is a good source

https://mydigitalpublication.com/public ... &ver=html5

[SDR]

Thanks, for that, Stafford. I'm just now getting around to appreciating that Columbia Forest Products Grading Guide. I haven't seen a more useful new source of information on wood.

I have found quarter-cut redwood veneers at GL Veneer and at Certainly Wood. These veneers have no figure to speak of, so they are not my first choice. I have not found clear fir or cedar rotary-cut veneers, nor plywood faced with such veneer. I need several sheets at 24" x 96", and at least two at 28" x 96".

I think I can come closer to the sample, appearance-wise, by purchasing 2x8 or 4x8 aged redwood solid stock (from a vendor in Albany, CA,) with the long face close to parallel to the growth rings, resaw to render 1/4" or better veneers 7 1/2" wide, plane those to a flat surface, edge-joint, tape together, and apply the planed face to a sheet of 1/4" marine plywood with UF glue. The sheets will need to be backed for balance, so I'd use a paper-backed veneer, perhaps the Spanish Cedar that GL stocks.

The bonded sheets would then go to someone with a wide-belt multi-stage sander, to reduce to 3/8". The grain would alternate between wide and wavy and narrower and straight, the four leaves of veneer slip-matched to produce a pattern that minimizes the visibility of the seams and approximates the appearance of at least some of the panels needing replacement. Each sheet would use leaves from the same plank, for color match; slip matching would minimize or eliminate differences in sheen or chatoyance from one leaf to the next.

If the client thinks that the available quarter-cut veneers are acceptable, I would look for someone to make 3/8" exterior-grade panels faced with those veneers. The vacuum bag process would not, in my opinion, safely produce usable plywood faced with veneers that are not thick enough to sand.

S

[SDR]

Three months later . . .


The project for which I required 3/8" redwood plywood has been completed. Story to follow.

I now have in hand five sheets of custom-laid plywood, excess from the job. The material is as follows:

Five sheets, 48" x 96," of 9mm Hydrotek marine ply with quarter-sawn redwood veneer to face, backer of rotary (whole-piece face) mahogany or lauan. Total thickness c. 0.40 inches, or 3/8 + 1/64". Clear, very straight and uniform face veneer; backs virtually clear as well. See photo of typical face:



https://sfbay.craigslist.org/nby/mat/d/ ... 47307.html

S

[Tom]

Ha! Whaddaya know.
Columbia Forest Products is a NC headquartered company.
They have a mill about 20 minutes from where I live.

[SDR]

If they offer tours, check it out and let us know what you see. I haven't had the opportunity to observe plywood being made in production, though I've watched film and video.


I did manage to produce two panels, 30 x 96". Six flat-sawn ("plain-sliced") redwood 2x6s yielded 24 slabs of veneer, which were planed down to 3/16" and air dried for a week. They shrank in width from 5" to 4 15/16" in that time. They were then joined with blue tape and glued with PVA (white glue) to a sheet of three-ply lauan that measured 3/16" thick, between platens of 3/4" MDF using the time-tested clamps-and-cauls method. The sheets were taken to a shop with a 50" two-head widebelt sander, and taken down to 3/8" in thickness to match the existing material.

The purpose of this exercise was to arrive at plywood that would blend with the existing unfinished rotary-cut plywood on the ceiling of the space. The quarter-sawn VG veneers of the plywood produced by others was used on the exterior of the building, on the stepped soffits of Wright's Usonian construction. The existing ply there had weathered over the last 82 years to a dull brown; I had stain made that matched that color when applied to the new plywood, blending new with old quite effectively.


The existing ceiling panels---27 3/4" by 96," on a 28" width module (one side of the planning grid hexagon of this house), separated by a 1/4" square bead. Rotary cut (all redwood) three-ply panels.



Production of two plywood panels. Ripping 2x6 lumber into veneer slabs:




Planing slabs:


Drying veneer leaves:




Pressing panels:




Four faces of the two panels produced. Simple slip-matching of the four leaves from
a single board, with two more from another, produced the patterns visible here:

[SDR]

What necessitated this labor of love ?

On the afternoon of July 17 of this year, roofers nearing completion of a new torch-down asphalt re-roofing at the 1940 Bazett-Frank house in Hillsborough, on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California, left an ember alight, somewhere, before they left for the day. A small fire developed at the far end of the flat roof of the 1954 studio/playroom addition to the house. A neighbor saw smoke; the fire department was called, and by the time owner Laurence Frank returned from a visit nearby, they had put out the fire---but not before breaking into the studio via a small window containing one of a set of stained-glass panels added by the owners some years ago, not before chain-sawing most of the way through one of the 4 x 8 cantilever beams of the roof, not before punching a hole in the middle of the largest piece of soffit plywood outside the windows of the studio, not before tearing away one of the ceiling panels shown in the previous post, and part of another. And they took away all of the damaged loose material, leaving nothing usable for those who would conduct the necessary repairs.

Mr Frank contacted the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy. The Conservancy’s preservation programs manager John Waters referred Mr. Frank to long-time Taliesin and Aaron Green associate, Bay-Area architect William J Schwarz, AIA. Bill and I visited the site twelve days after the fire. An insurance adjuster, entirely ignorant of Wright and thus of the significance of the property, had already appeared and rendered a seat-of-the-pants estimate of damages, a figure ultimately multiplied by a factor of nearly three. A restoration construction firm, their ear ever vigilant to the movements of every fire department in the Bay Area, apparently, materialized out of the smoke, as it were, and offered their services, seducing the unwary victim with the attractive promise of dealing with the insurers. Before long it was concluded that their involvement would not be worth the trouble, and that a leaner and more efficient path could be found to restore what had been damaged.

The first challenge to the restorer, a job I willingly assumed, was to find the appropriate materials with which to effect the repairs. As it turned out---and as I have already reported---rotary-cut redwood veneers are not to be had, period, short of sending a bole to an Indiana mill for peeling, which would have resulted in more veneer than we or anyone else would know what to do with, and a bill to match. As no other specie was deemed fit for this restoration, It was ultimately decided that the available quarter-sawn veneers would suffice for the exterior work, where, as soffits, they would only be visible from a distance, and where they would likely (in my estimation) want to be stained to match the well-weathered original work. I also concluded that I would be able to make some veneered panels myself, of material that would come much closer to matching the two required ceiling panels, made originally of the same rotary-cut redwood ply which had, on the interior at least, never seen finish of any kind.

I found a source for the required five or six exterior panels, a wood-products maker and broker in Watsonville, CA, Jackel Enterprises. Steve Jackel accepted our order for the plywood described earlier in this post. Our carpenter, another lucky find, requested two extra panels to account for the unforeseen, and two more were purchased for use in the event that my efforts at fabrication of the ceiling panels might fail.

Builder Philip Sarris (Sarris Construction, San Francisco) expressed interest in the job when I mentioned it to him not long after l became involved. He was ultimately selected, from a very short list of possibilities, and turned out to be a fortuitous choice. He ands his excellent assistant made short work of repairing the framing, and then re-clad the affected area, using all of the undamaged redwood fascia and a bit of the original soffit ply, deftly fitting the old and new pieces after deciphering the original order of assembly. Their work was gratifyingly fastidious. Nail holes in the original facia boards were filled with new nails of the same type. The new redwood fascia pieces were milled from reclaimed old-growth lumber; the outermost fascia retains the weathered surface that was found on the timbers selected for the job.

Their last step was fitting my hand-made ply into place on the ceiling of the studio. The 1/4" x 1/4" redwood bead that separates the ceiling panels along their length was intact and did not need to be replicated.

A final piece of good luck arrived in the form of the water-borne stain that was made to coat the new or newly-milled exterior material. I provided San Francisco Paint Source with a scrap of the original weathered soffit material, along with a piece of the new plywood, and they duly arrived at a greenish material which, applied to the pink redwood, produced the exact brown of the weathered material. I masked all surfaces adjacent to the new wood and rolled and brushed the stain onto the fresh solids and veneers, promptly wiping down to produce a uniform appearance. I intend to leave the interior plywood alone for a few months, to see how much it changes color in that time, before deciding whether or not to apply a tint that will bring it into conformity with the existing plywood.

The small smashed colored-glass panel, one of a set that decorates the vertical row of panes found beside the front door of the house and that of the studio, was repaired and re-installed, along with a pane of 1/4" low-iron plate glass matching the original material. All glass in the building was originally puttied into place, the putty of (Wright's and) Aaron Green's studio addition being colored dark red-brown. I matched this when installing the new glass.

Work ended on the last day of October. It was a pleasure to be able to return the house, in the space of three months, to the way it looked before the mishap. The roofers returned, after Phil had completed installing the outer fascia boards, and in less than three hours wrapped up their roofing job; that's how close they were to completion when their carelessness caused an extended delay in their schedule . . . and provided some of us with the opportunity to test our skills.

Bill Schwarz provided much-needed expert opinion throughout the process, and I am especially grateful for his guidance and encouragement. Laurence Frank, son of the long-time owners of the property who bought the house from the Bazetts five years after it was built, was the perfect host to our little group, endlessly expressing his gratitude for our help with the work that needed to be done. New friendships ensued, and a feeling of satisfaction seems to be the consensus.

SDR

[SDR]

Illustrations:





The new piece of 3/8" CDX in these photos was installed by the roofing company as replacement of deteriorated material, before the fire. Its presence, clearly erroneous, was one reason why, despite their eagerness to do the repairs themselves, they were never in serious contention for the job . . .








My assessment of the ceiling and soffit conditions as found. The geometry of the construction is most interesting: the hexagonal planning unit---one of the characteristics shared with this house's nearest Usonian neighbor, the Hanna residence---is 28" on a side, with a short diagonal of 48". Thus, one extrapolation of the form produces parallel lines 28" apart, while another produces lines 24" apart---very useful when dealing with 48" wide material. The ceiling paneling in the main space of the house is largely clad with plywood whose pattern is skewed 30º from the long axis of the room; this turns out to have saved a great deal of material, as the pieces are thus 24" wide. This is not the case at the studio ceiling. The exterior soffits, on the other hand, are cut from 12" and 24" wide pieces, also recognizing the dimensions of a sheet of plywood.


Diagram showing portions of the Bazett-Frank ceiling cladding. Above the living room and the carport, the plywood is 24" wide, while the studio ceiling and the lower parts of the living room overhead are 28" wide:

[SDR]

[lgfrank]

I have just joined Wright Chat to express my deepest gratitude to the three remarkable gentlemen who have restored my family home to original condition after a fire.

My refugee parents bought the redwood and brick Bazett House in 1945, five years after it was built, and raised three children. By the early 1950’s, we had outgrown the house, originally built for a couple, and they commissioned an addition, still called the New Room, designed by Aaron Green with input from Wright. I remember meeting Wright during the construction, when I was five. I couldn’t bear to sell the house after my mother died in 2009 and moved back here from Berkeley.

My parents’ nineteen descendants, plus spouses, met here for a five day family gathering at the end of June, immediately after which I had a new roof put on. As Steve has described, the roofers caused a fire at the cantilevered east end of the New Room a few hours before completing the job. I was at a loss for finding someone to restore the damaged roof and ceiling, especially after the insurance adjuster responded with a blank look when I told him that this is a Frank Lloyd Wright house. I got in touch with the FLW Conservancy for advice, and John Waters got back to me immediately, recommending Bill Schwarz, formerly with Aaron Green’s office, to advise. Bill visited the next day with Steve Ritchings (SDR) and they threw themselves into the restoration, as Steve has described here in detail.

Without Steve, Bill, and builder Phil Sarris, I would have been at the mercy of any local contractor using Home Depot lumber and a crew of day laborers hired off a street corner each morning. They did an exquisite job; after three months of loving work, the restoration is 100% faithful to the original. Steve’s craftsmanship and attention to detail is extraordinary; his handmade old growth plywood is indistinguishable from that milled from whole logs 85 years ago [edit: please see Steve's correction below; the lumber he used was not in fact old growth. But to my eye, it looks virtually identical].

This home has been the soul of our family for over three quarters of a century. On behalf of the entire Frank clan, I want to express our bottomless gratitude to Steve, Bill, and Phil for making us whole again.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Laurence Frank

[SDR]

Thanks, Laurence. Just a slight correction: the plywood I made used recently-cut redwood---from 2x6s purchased at Beronio Lumber, a local supplier of building materials---not old growth (reclaimed) timber, which often contains irregularities like nail or bolt holes.

It seems clear that some tinting will have to be done, sooner or later, to the new ceiling panels, if they are to appear as they should; natural toning, which occurs from exposure to atmosphere and (especially) from UV radiation, can take a very long time to develop. I don't expect the new material to "catch up" for a long time, if ever, given the time differential and differences in the sources of the two different materials---even though both are redwood. "No two trees are alike" is the clichéd watchword in the world of wood.

Further: a future restoration of the studio may well include removal of the non-original (if handsome and functional) ceiling light fixture. As we speak this is preventing a portion of the larger replacement panel to age and darken. It would probably be a useless exercise to remove it temporarily when I stain the new panels, as the shadowing would prevent the natural darkening process to continue (as it will, stain or no) after the fixture is remounted. Future restoration may well call for replacement of the new panels (this time with stain applied prior to installation, perhaps).

S

[juankbedoya]

I have just joined Wright Chat to express my deepest gratitude to the three remarkable gentlemen who have restored my family home to original condition after a fire.

My refugee parents bought the redwood and brick Bazett House in 1945, five years after it was built, and raised three children. By the early 1950’s, we had outgrown the house, originally built for a couple, and they commissioned an addition, still called the New Room, designed by Aaron Green with input from Wright. I remember meeting Wright during the construction, when I was five. I couldn’t bear to sell the house after my mother died in 2009 and moved back here from Berkeley.

My parents’ nineteen descendants, plus spouses, met here for a five day family gathering at the end of June, immediately after which I had a new roof put on. As Steve has described, the roofers caused a fire at the cantilevered east end of the New Room a few hours before completing the job. I was at a loss for finding someone to restore the damaged roof and ceiling, especially after the insurance adjuster responded with a blank look when I told him that this is a Frank Lloyd Wright house. I got in touch with the FLW Conservancy for advice, and John Waters got back to me immediately, recommending Bill Schwarz, formerly with Aaron Green’s office, to advise. Bill visited the next day with Steve Ritchings (SDR) and they threw themselves into the restoration, as Steve has described here in detail.

Without Steve, Bill, and builder Phil Sarris, I would have been at the mercy of any local contractor using Home Depot lumber and a crew of day laborers hired off a street corner each morning. They did an exquisite job; after three months of loving work, the restoration is 100% faithful to the original. Steve’s craftsmanship and attention to detail is extraordinary; his handmade old growth plywood is indistinguishable from that milled from whole logs 85 years ago [edit: please see Steve's correction below; the lumber he used was not in fact old growth. But to my eye, it looks virtually identical].

This home has been the soul of our family for over three quarters of a century. On behalf of the entire Frank clan, I want to express our bottomless gratitude to Steve, Bill, and Phil for making us whole again.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Laurence Frank

It's wonderful to know about its restoration (I didn't know about it). Bazzet is one of those houses I'm always searching because there is not many information, no pictures interior or exterior. It's one of those hidden gems. Now, that this restoration has been done I would like to know if it will possible new registration with photos, videos maybe? It would be amazing

[SDR]

It's true that the Bazett-Frank house is one of the less-often photographed ones. There are these two photos taken during construction; I do not presently know where they were published.

In this photo a steel beam spans the living room at the level of the dropped ceiling element. It appears to have lumber bolted to it, for attachment of rafters---a typical detail.





There are a three taken early in the house's history by Esther Born, a local Bay Area photographer.

In this photo the guest quarters is at left; it was to this element that the 1954 studio/playroom was added.

In the next photo, that guest quarters is at right, with the carport at center. The slope in the foreground has not yet been terraced . . .


The third Born photo shows the living room. The upholstery fabric is a red and white herringbone; remnants of this material remain with the house. Front door is at right; bedrooms left. Note the carpeting, since removed.