A most unusual home
Those who know me locally here in Boca Raton know that the last house on the left on Reflection Lane is most unusual. It started in 1982 as a ranch-style house on nearly an acre of beautiful West Boca land with a Florida Everglades-fed lake; many improvements inside have been made throughout the years by former owners. I've added some unique features, calling on multiple talents gained throught my life, that is a good background in construction and a talent in working with materials, along with my electronics know-how, of course. This house features an entire second-floor 600 square-foot theatre (Lakeside Theatre, THX certified) with a fireplace and a redwood terrace overlooking the lake, a hand-built modern Victorian kitchen (built with authentic 125 year-old materials), an Oriental bamboo antique foyer, a stained glass Irish bar, and will eventually feature the tranformation of the "living room" into a study with a waterfall and a Koi pond with a Chinese bridge going from the Oriental foyer over the pond into the study. My Grandmother (94!) thinks I'm nuts in regards to the Koi pond, but loves everything else I've done so far. Please be patient on the showing of these features on my website as it all takes time to setup wide-angle lenses and lighting to photograph, and to design the site, and my work load with my local service customers and engineering clients takes about 18 hours a day... For now, I will just write about it and post photos when I can.

A High-Technology home
First of all, this is a smart house. Everything communicates with everything else. A wall-mounted touch-screen "House" computer controls lights, outdoor security video, music audio, video PVR and streaming capabilities throughout the house and has touch-screen monitors where the old intercom system speakers once were. The telephone system queries the Brinks alarm system and motion sensors in the house to decide whether to ring the home phones, or to transfer the calls via my LinEx/STU teletransfer system (inventions) to my cell phone. (This enables callers that respond to the phone systems prompts to reach me anywhere with only one phone number, while filtering out telemarketers.) Every room features sensors and systems to adjust lighting and ventilation as humans walk around (I love watching confused guests looking for light switches to turn off as they come out of the bathrooms!). Wireless EMS-911 (inventions)sensor modules throughout the house check for water leakage, temperature extremes and internal perimeter security, and report any problems through the whole-house audio system, and phones me if I'm mobile. Every room is wired with Cat5A cable and all five computers are networked to a wired router with two firewalls. Backup 12VDC lights and power receptacles are now in every room. The phone system, EMS-911, business computer/fax and even the Kitchen-Aid convection oven all communicate their actions over the whole-house audio system. It can be quite harrowing when the business computer calls out that a customer's order has arrived by email or fax, the oven says dinner is ready, the EMS-911 says the theater A/C is set too cold and the hot-water heater is leaking again, and the phone system calls out that a local customer is calling, all at once...

The Modern Victorian Kitchen
The kitchen was originally a basic formica-on-mdf stock old kitchen, and in the spring of 2002, I had only indended to repair the center island, which was in poor condition. After finding an electrical nightmare, a leaking drain system, chipped sink and rotting MDF everywhere, I took a sledgehammer to everything (really!) and leveled the kitchen down to the concrete and floor tiles. The design and building took me almost a full year, and I did everything: carpentry, electrical, concrete, tiles, plumbing, even the leaded Tiffany-style glass cabinet doors, mosaic tile above the stove, and the wine cellar, only subcontracting the immense Indian Yasi granite countertops to a professional. For the first three months I cooked outside in the patio kitchen and washed dishes in the laundry room, until I had at least the new center island done with a new sink. I hadn't originally planned the Victorian style, but as I worked from my dimensional drawings, routed the red oak and birch woods, used beadboard, carved wood details and crown moldings stained with red mahogany and assembled everything with red oak plugs, several friends told me I was building a Victorian kitchen. So I did some research and realized that I needed to keep the look Victorian by using leaded-glass doors for the cabinets instead of plain wood. Thus, a search for authentic 100-year old glass was in order. It took three months, but eventually an old mansion in New England was torn down and I got my glass. I did modernize it slightly by making the perimeter an irridized glass, but the old glass is amazing, you can see all the bubbles, waves and lines...ah, technology of the times.

I designed a three-counter kitchen with Preparation, Cooking, and center Island counters. The refrigerator is in the corner of the L-shaped room, a very difficult design to get dimensionally correct. This makes the "working triangle" the center of the room, with access to all three counter tops and the fridge by standing in the center and simply rotating your body. The preparation counter has a spice rack made from small bits of left-over granite and red oak, where it proudly hangs in defiance of modern production kitchens that hide the spices in a drawer. The center island features a built-in 36 bottle wine cellar with a custom-designed Peltier cooling system that pre-warms the hot water with heat removed from the cellar. The area usually wasted under the sink is used here, with a hidden paper towel dispenser and a garbage chute that can be left open while you do your veggies. The cabinets have glass shelves, glass bottoms and glass tops with mirrored walls. This allows light from the skylight to enter and go completely through the cabinets to illuminate the counter tops.

Speaking of lighting, there are six lighting systems in this kitchen. Mood lighting using quartz halogens lights the cabinets at night. There is also a separate task lighting system using adjustable flourescent lighting underneath all of the cabinets, all controlled by a motion sensor in the cooking area that reduces lighting to a cool glow when you leave the kitchen, and brightens as you walk back in. For balance and effect, there are also three stained-glass Dragonfly lamps in custom-made copper fixtures above the sit-down section of the island. For serious work, three tracts of 15 high-intensity flourescent floods (not visable in the photos) are individually aimed so there are absolutely no shadows anywhere (Sunglasses recommended for people with sensitive eyes!). The pantry has its own flourescent light, and features slide-out shelves, another microwave oven, and plenty of storage. The Victorian oil lamp over the table is the real McCoy, not a reproduction. It has wicks and lamp oil, and although I would never ruin it by modernizing it, I have hung a modern electric lamp above the chimney so I can light it either way. Came in handy for the four hurricanes of 2004 and 2005, before purchase of the emergency generator.

I replaced the 22-year old range in the cooking area with two Kitchen-Aid pieces, a glasstop stove with touch controls (wild!) and a convection oven in stainless-steel. The original black microwave oven was painted with $150-per-pint auto polyurethane acrylic enamel epoxy silver paint over a scratched finish to simulate the brushed stainless-steel of the oven and sink. I also reversed the vent fans to push air outside through the wall to an outside roof vent. I dressed up the existing fridge and dishwasher with the same beadboard that I used to make the counter doors, to make them look built-in. The louvered doors for the pantry were stripped of their brown stain, and the top louvers were cut out. I made leaded-glass windows to replace the top louvers and restained the wood with the same red mahogany to match the rest of the new construction.

Yes, I DO cook (quite well, thank you) although mostly outdoors in the patio kitchen.

The Lakeside Theatre
The Tudor theater was the first major project, finished in early 2001, and its financing was part of the mortgage. You walk up an oak spiral staircase, the Italian crystal chandlier automatically illuminating your way as you ascend. You arrive upstairs to a Tudor-style theatre, designed to take you back to the 1930's, with mahogany pillars and exotic antique Italian crystal sconce mood lights, illuminating red satin curtains and mahogany casings and chair rails. The ceiling is coffered and house lighting is custom made with reverse-reflector bulbs to illuminate the gold overlay of the ceiling joists. Lazy-Boy theater seats and antique Queen Ann coffee tables along with a smattering of directors chairs sit upon a three-inch thick carpet. All of the walls are soundproofed with special-ordered black carpet with red details, on top of two layers of cloth matting. A ten-foot screen (eight foot showing) is illuminated by a Seleco HD-250 DLP projector ($15,000!) and is very cinematic (meaning it doesn't look like you're watching a video). Scan conversion from cable programs to HDTV is done internally. Audio is provided by a rack of very old, and personally pooged American SAE amps, fed by a Canadian Sonic Frontiers Anthem AVM 20 control center/Dolby Digital/THX DSP decoder. First-generation Magneplanar MG-3 planar speakers are hidden behind the black cloth along the sides of the screen, joined by a matching Magnepan planar center speaker. Sub-Woofers are a matched pair of my own helical transmission line design with ten-inch Titanic II drivers. Rear speakers are custom-made with MM lows and ribbon tweeters (left over old stock from my Delta Base car stereo stores from the 1970s!). DVD and CD playback is provided by the Pioneer Elite DV-38A, and an S-VHS JVC VCR is used mostly for receiving cable programs, but makes a near-DVD quality recording as well. Everything is powered by a 1500 watt Uninterruptable Power Supply to eliminate those famous FPL quickie blackouts, and audio/video power is provided by a specially-run 10 gauge power wire with its own breaker. This is so the house lights don't modulate with the enormous 1200 watts from the power amps.

This was probably one of the first computer multi-media theaters ever built, and I built a first-generation multimedia computer that does everything all of the individual components do, plus provides Internet access, video conferencing and streaming audio and video via the DSL network. (I've since moved the old media computer downstairs and it now runs the entire house). Security is very high, with the equipment room and projector box both monitored by Brinks, as well as my EMS-911 wireless system of course! A modified X10 system with a CM-11 macro controller is merged with the Anthem universal remote to allow the starting of a movie to control the closing of the curtains, the dimming (one system at a time) of the five independent lighting systems and the setting up of the audio system and DLP projector. (Yeah, there is a phone upstairs but don't bother calling when I'm watching a movie...just leave a message!)

The Family Room Entertainment Wall unit
After seeing the massive, custom-made expensive wall units many of my Boca clients are building in their multi-million-dollar country club homes, in 2003 I decided to replace my 14 year-old Sony TV with a new HDTV and build a wall unit to humble all wall units everywhere. I have ten feet of width and 12 feet of height, so I knew I could build a multi-function piece with lots of detail, character, and uses. First of all, I've always wanted a nice bar. I've always liked the quiet and intricate Irish-style bar look with it's rich woods and stained glass, so I did some internet research on Irish stained-glass pubs. Would you believe, there is actually an Irish company that still makes them for assembly in the USA, so I downloaded pictures for inspiration. My plan was to have an Irish stained-glass pub on the left, an entertainment center with a new LCD HDTV and (finally!) storage for my vast collection of CDs, and a display cabinet for my antique crystal and chachkas. Of course, I would also design bleeding-edge planar speakers, left, center and right. Naturally, I followed the theme from the kitchen project and used red oak and birch beadboard stained mahogany and the same Yasi granite as on the kitchen countertops. I had so much granite left from the kitchen, I tried using up as much as I could. The grand hutch uses triangle-shaped pieces to form my trademark three-sided arch. These little pieces were cut from the kitchen center island and I was just looking for somewhere to use them. I also made the end table and the huge coffee table (not visable in the photo) from the same slab of left-over granite, built on red oak to match the wall unit.

The Master "Brass" Bathroom
The multiple hurricanes Francis and Jean in 2004 made a mess of the west walls, taking out the master bedroom and bathroom shower interior walls through leaks in the sliding glass door upstairs for the Lakeside Theater balcony. First I replaced the sliding door in the theater with a watertight hurricane-ready aluminum French door with sidelights. Since I had to replace the interior walls in both downstairs rooms, I took the opportunity to make showpieces of both. The new bathroom blends Victorian Tiffany-style windows and light fixtures with brass fittings and a dead-drop gorgeous polished brass "tin" ceiling that has to be viewed in person (the internet photos are horrible, sorry). I had to remove and lovingly refurbish every single piece of tile from the moldy, waterlogged walls, saving and prepping them for reinstallation after the sheetrock was replaced. I replaced all of the plumbing fixtures with brass fixtures, and added a brass clock, antique brass hooks, towel rods and antique brass mirror. The wall treatments are faux distressed travertine that alone took over 85 hours and eight treatments to complete. I made a fresco relief of a mermaid Meranda, washing her hair, on the shower wall, using metallic paints, from a stencil. The vanity and linen cabinets are my own design, as usual with red oak and birch beadboard highlights (matching the kitchen). The top of the vanity is the original man-made solid-surface with integral sink, while the linen cabinet has a polished sandstone top, with fossils of marine shellfish. I added lots of brass hardware, all of it antique pieces from an auction brasslot. The two little brass boudoir lamps on the vanity are custom built using the brass pieces from the auction lot. The small art mirror was made into a medicine cabinet by making a red oak frame and hollowing out the wall. I built a utility cabinet on top of the linen cabinet and fitted it with leaded glass doors. The sliding-glass outside door in the Roman tub/shower was replaced with a huge hurricane-proof picture window. An equally-huge 1885 Victorian stained-glass panel in poor condition was found on the internet, and I restored it and added sidelights and a new red oak frame to fit inside the picture window. I bought a small Chinese-made stained-glass window and installed it into the outside cubana door to the patio. The main light fixture was also custom made with stained glass arranged in the ten colors of the rainbow, with red oak framing. Overall, the bathroom took exactly one year to rebuild because of the extreme details and processes that unfortunately photos cannot capture.

The Master "Starscape" Bedroom
The bedroom, also damaged by Francis, was totally gutted to the concrete blocks. After securing a sinking foundation with six helicoils outside and iron bracing inside to the concrete blocks and footer, I installed non-absorbing styrofoam insulation and all new sheetrock. I domed the ceiling with 32 custom-designed dimmable fluorescent fixtures hidden inside the crown molding, and painted a starscape on the ceiling with UV-activated paint from the movie industry. As stunning as the picture seems in the day, at night, with a small filtered UV light, the effect is that the entire ceiling is a huge skylight, viewing the deep blues and violets of the cosmos, with white stars, red Mars, two comets, several white dwarfs and dying red stars, with thousands of hand-painted stars. It took three weeks of my best skills to do this faux, and blending non-UV paints with the UV-sensitive blues and violets was crucial to keep the background cosmos somewhat muted against the bright stars. Fan blades were fabricated from clear acrylic to reduce their negative impact. The surround of the dome starscape is a coved and rounded Russian-inspired gold-painted affair, the lighted crown molding is stained to match the Santos Mahogany Belawood floor. The wainscoting is African Mahogany and is also stained to match the floor. Work on the bedroom had stopped after Hurricane Wilma in 2005, which caused major damage to the roof and patio/screen/outdoor kitchen. I have recently finished the bedroom after finishing the outdoor kitchen and patio and the flagstone deck. The finished bedroom is now my refuge late at night.

To be continued...