Technology

J. Marion used state of the art technology in his home. We hope that continues to bode well as we start to peel away the layers of materials to get down to the structural elements. A couple of our favorite elements are his stereo, which had built in speakers in the sideboard in the dining room:

Those who know Reed and remember his speaker system in our old house will understand that this made total sense to us. I will post pictures of the stereo, which is a big box with the turntable inside. It came with construction drawings which I found in the living room storage along with a series of articles about building bomb shelters.

There are two giant dimmers like this one:

 

They feel wonderful to operate. You can sense the scale by comparing them to the lowly standard wall switches just to the left. This is a serious piece of lighting equipment.

This OSB composition board has caught the eyes of the architects. I love it. They have said that is a pretty early application of this material. It is the wall material in the kids bedrooms.

On Saturday the Illinois Historic Preservation architect comes out to talk to us about what we would need to replace/restore/retain if we were to apply for Landmark status and benefits (a ten year property tax freeze!) We are looking forward to meeting him. We will be holding our breath about the replacement of the blown aluminum windows (the 40 feet of them on the front facade in particular) which is a big ticket item already and could get much bigger if we are required to keep everything quite close to the original. We'll see...