Schmidt House finish pic

Custom Homes
Text Box: A simplistic design with beautiful craftsman features, the Schmidt house feels substantially as solid as the concrete that it is built from. In fact, everything in the house is concrete except for the roof. It is a “prairie” style home with many distinguishing features both inside and out. Such as: a wide and open front porch, exposed elongated eaves, cantilevered sleeping porch, and interior and exterior custom stucco finish, concrete walls, acid stained concrete floors, custom concrete countertops, reclaimed heart pine floors, custom window and door trim and glass tile bath vanity tops and shower surrounds. From design through construction and finishing, the Schmidt House is a true work of art. The Schmidt’s wanted a new house without the look of a new house. They wanted the look of something comfortable and lived in. So a lot of attention was given to the finishes and finishing details. The front porch was originally designed with a gable roof supported by wood posts sitting on concrete pilasters, however, when the eaves were elongated the design was changed to fit with the new feature. The final design is a shed roof with only wood posts (no pilasters). The large beam spanning the front porch adds to the prairie style look of the home. The slope of the shed roof was designed to compliment the main roof and incorporates the elongated overhang that the main roof has on the front of the house. The elongated eaves on the front of the house are a feature found on some more western houses from the early 1900’s. The cantilevered sleeping porch is a very prominent feature of the house when viewed from the rear or side of the house. Sleeping porches have all gone away since air conditioning became common, but none the less important to the Schmidt’s. It was in their original floor plan sketch, and as we were laying out room size for final design, we realized that the porch needed to be bigger to be functional. So as not to take away from the size of the bedroom or bathroom inside, we cantilevered the porch off the back of the house to get the size we needed. The porch has screened window openings, an acid stained concrete floor, and a ceiling fan to make the porch as comfortable as possible. The stucco finish on the outside of the house is unique in that it is not a synthetic stucco that is so commonly used now, but is a traditional field mix hard coat stucco. The variation of mix in field mix stucco is subtle when done correctly but the result is a more rich, and natural look than the uniform look of the synthetic stucco finish commonly used now. The texture of natural sand in the finish of the field mix stucco adds as well to the richness of the appearance and lending to the look that the Schmidt’s desired. The walls and ceilings inside the house have a stucco finish as well. Once again a field mix stucco was used with different colors of mix used for different rooms of the house. Because of the way the stucco was applied inside the house and the type of mixture that was used for the different colors, the variation in color is even more prominent inside the house than it is outside giving more of a look and feel of an older home, not a polished new home. The acid stained concrete floors in the Schmidt House are quite elegant. In the kitchen, minor cracks in the slab yielded these beautifully long descriptive lines that give the floor added character. The slab upstairs accepted the stain differently than the downstairs slab, so even though they were stained the same color, the two slabs have very different appearances. The depth of the finish on the concrete adds another dimension and subtle richness to the room. The Schmidt’s wanted as much concrete in the house as possible including the kitchen countertops. A light brownish-gold color was chosen for the countertops which compliments and blends with the buff color of the walls and the red brown color of the concrete floors. The concrete was polished, and all the voids from the original casting of the concrete were filled with slightly different colors to give the countertops a stone like appearance. The edges of the countertops were left square to match the simplicity and rectangular shape of the door and window trim throughout the house. In addition to the acid stained concrete, the Schmidt’s also wanted some of the floors in the house to be wood, and not just any wood but a reclaimed wood. After looking over samples, and different stains and finishes, they settled on heart pine that is reclaimed from the beams that were used in old mills and warehouses. Because the Schmidt’s did not want the floor to look shiny and new, and wanted the look of a reclaimed product they chose a grade of wood that had the most nail holes and distress marks from previous use as possible. All of these holes were filled with a black fill so they were not holes to collect dirt but still had the appearance of holes. The Schmidt’s decided not to stain the wood, only to use a tung oil finish. The tung oil left almost no shine on the surface, and left a slightly deeper but very rich color and lived on appearance. The wood floors blend well with all of the other wood trim in the house, especially the window and door trim. Because of the thickness of the concrete walls (11 in.), the window and door trim had to be customized. A pine was chosen for the trim to compliment the pine for the floors, and a red-brown stain with satin urethane finish. All of the window and door casings as well as the base trim were installed prior to the stucco installation so that the stucco could be finished against the trim. The window stools were all done with a 1 in. board with a simple rounded profile on the corners. The depth of the walls with the windows being set all the way to the outside left a generous seat in all the windows for cushions or display space. All of the doors and windows in the house are solid wood and finished on the inside with the same stain and urethane as the trim. The interior doors were custom made to replicate an older two panel style door that is not commercially available any more. All of the door and window hardware is oil rubbed bronze which is considered a live finish in that it will continue to change color and appearance with use. Each of the bathroom tub surrounds were tiled with 1 inch tiles, and the 2 upstairs bathrooms had vanity tops that were tiled with the same tile. The tiles provided a nice contrast to the rough texture of the stucco and the polished look of the concrete floors. In addition to the aesthetic features of the Schmidt House there are many interesting technical features. The house has a central low voltage wiring panel, a central satellite radio system with speakers and individual controllers throughout the house. The low voltage wiring panel ties together each room of the house with a modular outlet that provides a telephone connection, an Ethernet data port, and two coaxial connections. Through these expandable modular outlets, a wide number of computer networking, and audio and video networking combinations are possible. The low voltage panel houses a coaxial cable hub, an Ethernet data hub, a telephone interface hub, and an audio speaker amplifier/hub for the satellite radio system. The satellite radio system has a central receiver that feeds the different rooms of the house. Each selected room has its own controller/key pad for volume control and program selection. The ceiling mounted speakers are unobtrusive and do not occupy any floor or wall space while yielding excellent sound quality and coverage. The materials and construction methods used in building the Schmidt House follow green building practices and we made sure we reused resources to modify many materials used in the home to bring them up to a more eco-friendly standard, such as fly-ash in the concrete mix to reduce the amount of cement used which in turn provided us with a stronger product. We also used materials which have considerably longer life-spans than typical construction products, such as concrete, steel and metal roofing materials. In addition, hydronic radiant heat was installed in both floors slabs, and a specially designed HVAC system is used in the home to make the best use of the concrete walls capabilities to hold the ambient temperature longer, therefore reducing the amount of energy needed to heat and cool the home. We are proud to have had the opportunity to work with the Schmidt Family in creating this beautiful and creative home for them.
The Schmidt House

· Exterior Walls Consist of Polystyrene encapsulated between Structural concrete and Lightweight Concrete.

· Lightweight Concrete Interior Walls Throughout

· 1st and 2nd Floor Slabs With Hydronic Radiant Heat Floor Tubing

· Stucco Inside and Out

· Acid-Stained Concrete Floors

· Reclaimed Wood Flooring

· Custom Concrete Countertops

· Cantilevered Sleeping Porch

· Solar Tube Lighting

· Custom Nooks and Storage
Schmidt house sleeping porch extSchmidt house sleeping porchSchmidt house living roomSchmidt House pergolaSchmidt House stained floorSchmidt house kitchenSchmidt house 2nd fl hallSchmidt house custom trimSchmidt house tiled shower wallsSchmidt house bath tiled countertopSchmidt house low voltage panelSchmidt House front porch Schmidt house gable
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