Tag: interior

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Custom building a lighthouse kitchen stove

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With his high school engineering education and his own imagination, Wyatt designs the stove.

With his high school engineering education and his own imagination, Wyatt designs the stove for a small space with curved walls.

Without any flat interior walls, a lighthouse needs custom-made everything. Since kitchen space is the most precious, and the sea air corrosive of steel, conventional appliances just won’t work.

Wyatt's bronze stovetop, after it came back from the metal shop.

Wyatt’s bronze stovetop, fresh from the metal shop.

Luckily, Wyatt is studying engineering in high school. After drawing out the exact curve of the interior wall of the watch room, Wyatt whipped up a curved stovetop design on his computer.

We sent Wyatt’s design to a metal shop, which crafted a stovetop out of 1/2-inch thick bronze, using a water jet cutter.

The rest is up to us. We’re modifying propane barbecue burners to fit under the top and will design a curved faceplate for the knobs.

Can you smell a delicious chowder simmering this summer?

The stovetop design, from computer to metal shop.

The stovetop design: Wyatt measured the curve from the lighthouse radius, for fabrication from a sheet of half-inch-thick bronze.

 

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On-shore basement project: Building a lighthouse desk

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Winter is a great time for on-shore basement projects for the lighthouse.

We converted an old oak desk into a keeper’s desk. First, we crafted a new top to fit the curved inner walls of the tower. We secured it to the two base drawer units with brass fasteners (no rusty steel in the lighthouse environment) and stained it to match.

The desk is installed on the 4th level, which will be the master bedroom. Next, we’ll start building a space-saving Murphy bed, whose mattress can be stored vertically when not in use, and pulled down flat for the evening.

 

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Last work of the season: interior cleanup and glazing windows

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Pedro is up on the lamp deck, a hundred feet above the rocks, glazing the windows. Photo by Richard Green, who was passing by on the 'Freedom.'

Pedro is up on the lamp deck, a hundred feet above the rocks, glazing the windows. Also see the oak-and-brass casement windows, faithful reproductions of the originals, installed in the granite tower. Photo by Richard Green, who was passing by on the ‘Freedom.’

We wrapped up a busy first season of bringing Graves Light back to life, concluding with work that wasn’t as dramatic as much of what we’ve seen, but was every bit as important.

The crew from Partner Solutions General Contracting came in to do a major cleanup.

Their targets: the rust, tar, dirt and mystery goo from the glazed white interior bricks.

This was the first time the bricks had been cleaned in about 40 years.

We were thrilled with the job that Ricardo, Claudio and Leo did to make the inside of Graves Light shine once more.

On Columbus Day weekend, we went out one last time for the season, before the seas got too rough for our boats to approach the dangerous stone ledges.

Among other things, Pedro went all the way up to the top of the outside of the lighthouse, to the lamp deck, to glaze the huge curved window panes joined together by colossal brass frames.

Pedro stopped the water from leaking into the top of the lighthouse.

By happy coincidence, a friend and fan of Graves Light, photographer Richard Green, happened to be passing by on the flybridge of the Freedom, and took some dramatic pictures with his telephoto lens. Nobody realized it at the time, but Richard snapped some photos of Pedro working up on the lamp deck.

Richard shared the pictures with us on the Graves Light Facebook page.

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