Another clone in Glasgow, Scotland

Another teahouse has been built and what a corker it is!

To quote Joe:

I live in Glasgow, Scotland – in particular, in the Scotstoun Conservation area in the west end of the city.  Each house is a 3up/3down villa, approximately 6 metres wide.  Our villa faces west, and has a lean-to conservatory on the back.  There is a 3-metre deep deck adjacent to the conservatory, and then a 17m x 6m back garden backing onto a lane.  We have many Japanese plants in the southern border of the garden, and when I decided to build a new shed (I’m currently on sabbatical writing a book), it was natural to attempt a Japanese style.  Having previously lived in San Francisco, and visited the Japanese Gardens in Golden Gate Park, I had a pretty good idea of the look I desired.  A quick search on the web yielded your web site.  I have used the picture of your TH, and that of Jim Loomis in Richland, as my inspirations.  I looked at your plans, and requested information from Jim, but eventually did all of the designs drawings myself, with only the pictures of the desired final product to guide me.  I have attached reasonably high resolution pictures of the final result to this message.

 A pictorial history of the build can be found at http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~joe/JapaneseTeaHouse.

 Some details that distinguish mine from the others:

  • although I designed and even created templates for the curved porch support beams and the porch fence, my wife and I decided not to clutter up the view of the front; this can always be changed later if we change our minds
  • the glazing in the windows is 5mm perspex/plexiglass; the appearance of multiple panes of rice paper is provided by the lattice work that is joined into the windows and doors
  • I used treated fir for the beams, rafters and windows/doors; some joinery in the construction, but also used metal brackets; I know that this offends the joinery police, but I was in a hurry and was more interested in the look than in the verisimilitude of the construction
  • I used marine plywood for the walls, regular decking for the floor of the porch
  • western red cedar shingles used on the roof; note that I used a roof line more similar to Jim Loomis’s than yours
  • windows are hinged at the top, with casement stays on the bottoms to enable ventilation in hot and/or humid weather
  • I mounted it on a concrete pad, rather than on the vertical beams; I created faux concrete support pads for the look of support on the vertical beams.
  • entire area around the TH landscaped with solent gold stone to match the Bezier curve path leading from the deck to the TH (I constructed the path 2 years ago)
  •  stained all of the exposed structural members black, all of the marine plywood a golden colour; when one lives this far north in a rainy clime, artificial brightness is essential

I started construction in mid April of this year, finished everything by mid September. During those 5 months, I also worked my day job (professor of computing science at Glasgow University), spent 2 weeks in the US for my son’s wedding in LA, and spent 2 weeks in the Rhone valley on vacation.  I have never before built anything this large, and am pleasantly surprised at the outcome.  It is going to be written up in a local paper, and is the talk of the neighbourhood, my family, and my colleagues.

Prof Joe S Sventek

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