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03-23-2011, 08:38 PM
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 Smartest Retard Poster Rank:188 Female Join Date: Feb 2010 Posts: 8,011 Mentioned: 1 Post(s) Quoted: 34 Post(s)
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Steampunked House.
Bruce's home is a Craftsman style Victorian built in 1901. It has a great deal of history associated with it and Bruce has filled it with unusual Craftsman era antiques. But we're interested in steampunk here rather than the merely historical so I'm going to gloss over almost all of that and get to the mods and the steampunk art!  We'll start the tour in Bruce's kitchen with a lovely Victorian heater restored by David Erickson, a local craftsman and restorer of antique stoves who's workshop is just down the street from my own. David did a fabulous job restoring this wonderful old stove, repainting the iron and cleaning and re-plating the nickel brightwork.  Here the cast iron base from a second antique water heater has been fittied with a copper bowl for the doggies refreshment and the hot water tank has been modified with a water filtration and purification system to fill the copper dish for the pups.  The stove itself is another restoration form Erickson Stoves and has been fitted with a hi-end electric Miele halogen cooktop so there's no longer a need to stoke it with firewood. Two electric ovens have been fit into the body of the stove as well.  Another small feature that caught my eye was this antique timed set-back theromstat! Bruce tells me that it's fully functional and his heating technician had little trouble integrating it into his modern steam heating system.  In Bruce's living room I found this mantle piece with a plasma TV installed in place of the mirror. The mantel was acquired from an architectural salvage company and then modified by adding a few inches to the mirror frame to accomodate the TV. Bruce's carpenter did a marvelous job seamlessly stretching the frame. See if you can figure out where the additions were made.  Below, a late 1800s fireplace insert from a coal fired train station heater in Kansas has been installed to contain the electronics and sub woofer for the surround sound installation. The insert has been restored – but Bruce was able to save the original faux marble paint that was part of the original design.  The mantle piece and stove front both swing out to allow access to the electonics and the system's wiring.  Bruce works from his home and the pièce de résistance of this steampunk house is the office in what were formerly the servant's quarters on the third floor. This is the view from the doorway as you enter the room. The wainscoting is galvanized tin (not wood) and was likely salvaged from a restaurant or government building. Bruce’s craftsman had to cut the wainscoting down about 10” inches the fit, and painted it with Benjamin Moore Bronze Metallic paint. He also used leftover outside porch balusters to make the separators between the panels.  A ships binnacle guards the view from the window, the binnacle I'm told will eventually contain the household file and media server.  Moving to the other side of the office we find the door to the file room and a display shelf for some of the steampunk artwork Bruce has collected.  There is something about this door, every time I looked at it I heard the theme from MYST in my head and imagined that it lead down a long coridor to a machine room of some sort rather than to a file storage closet. The lock wheel is functional and the signal light over the door illuminates along with the interior lights when the door is opened.  To the right of the door is a World War II battleship telephone that he found at Old Chicago Telephone, a fully functional one too.  And below the phone this exquisite model Bruce found on eBay of the contraption from the movie adaption of the classic H.G. Wells novel The Time Machine.  A vintage optician's instrument is cleverly positioned to give you a closer, and fully adjustable look! The project that I travelled out to Bruce's house to see is not yet complete, so I have not included any photos of it in this article. It will be a truly magnificent mod, judging by the portions that have been completed to date and I'll give you a hint as to what it is by showing you this keyboard which Bruce acquired from the maker Brian Arieno to serve with--well you can guess what. But believe me when I tell you, the reality of it is going to blow you away! Stay tuned we'll have a full set of pictures here for you when it is complete!  · |
