My house was designed by me and the interior was done by Karen. We had lived in Condo that a had a view like being in an Aeroplane. It was cantilevered off a mountain here in Tiburon. I took Karen for a trip to Asia with me in Sept / October 1999 and Alexis was left with a French governess. karen and I were in the Taipei Hilton when at 4 am a 7.6 earthquake hit. We scambled out out of the hotel in the dark only to see collapsed buildings and a total mess. We had lived through the Loma Prieta quake here in San Fran in 1989 but the Taiwan Quake was massive. When we got home I got a structural engineer to check the Condo building and he said the foundations were inadequate. The schmucks on the board of the condo disagreed and would not redo the foundations as their place were on a flat palin and mine was the only cantilevered one. We sold that place in December 1999 and we searched for another place.
We found a red barn on a hillside with an acre of land. The place was dark and dingy. The owner was an aging gay doctor who had lost his partner. The owner just lit up when he saw Alexis and Jason and he became our friend after he sold the house to us. The house (barn) was built in 1962 by Bethlehem Steel as a prototype house with steel I beams as it?s main support. Together with the structural engineer I designed a method to remove every interior wall and exterior wall and rebuild the house. One entire side of the house that faces the bay toward Sausalito is now glass and from the outside the glass looks like a sail. The house only has two bedrooms but each is large and and full of windows. I designed a heating and air conditioning system that did not have large ducts. The ducts are flexible insulated plastic hoses that fun within the steel I beams. There are many outlets in the floor walls and ceilings that are kind of like the outlets on a jet in the overhead so you can get air to blow on you. I designed a super efficient HVAC system that includes a clean room HEPA system. Karen supervised a team of faux painters and the interior is amazing. The kitchen is to die for. Unfortunately it is now simply the very wrong home for us. Three stories and after Karen?s two full knee replacement surgeries it makes no sense. We are trying to sell it but the kak economy has wiped out our equity. I am sure that in a year or two it will be a far better market. Terry if you want to google earth it the address is 202 trestle glen terrace tiburon Ca 94920.
Terry and Uncle Loskie would have been great friends. As a kid when I visited the farm old Loskie would roll his own cigarettes. When I asked what type of tobacco he preferred he said he liked the stuff the bushman Koos sold him. Yeah he had a bushman friend who would come over and play the Banjo. I had just graduated with my degree in Chem Eng when I went to see Loskie for the last time. It was Decmber 1973. Old Koos was also on the stoep. Loskie turned to me and Koos and said that Koos was much smarter than me. I asked old Loskie why and he said that Koos could survive in the Kalahari without my degree and while I knew the chemistry of water I did not know how to find water. The next discussion was that he was safe on a farm in Banghoek Stellenbosch becuase the Russians would never nuke the place. We then shared one of his ?cigarettes? Wow the soviets are gone, Loskie and Koos are long gone and I still do not know how to find water in the Kalahari. It also turns out that I do not really know the chemistry of water as snow is just about the most complex chemical on the planet. Ash please paint some snow flakes.
I am off to starbucks to get them to heat the water extract the coffee flavor use some water vapor to heat soy milk and bring Karen a venti soy latte with no foam but with one splenda. I will have lemon tea with the left over kitka
Karen and Lev?s house is now on the market What a shame!
The following link shows their beautiful home Take the Virtual Tour www.202trestleglenterr.com