Lighting Valence Supports and First Skylight

Threaded pipe to support the lighting valence.

An architectural theme of Dan Wheeler's original design for the house was a lighting valence that ran through every room in the downstairs of the house.  The bottom of the valence is at the same level as the soffits outside providing a continuity between inside and outside.   With ordinary residential wood/aluminum clad windows it is difficult to get the effect as strongly as it might be with custom built windows, but Dan designed the house to be affordable and specified Marvin windows.  For a couple of reasons, as constructed, we dropped the valence from the bedrooms but kept it in the great room.


The lighting valence is built from 2X4's and sticks out from the wall 2'.  There will be two rows of separately switched  fluorescent fixtures with temperature adjusted bulbs on each side of the room which will light the large ceiling.  One detail that got built today was the supports for the valence shown below.

Dean  did some pull-ups to show the strength.

The first skylight also went in today. It really lit up the loft bedroom which will have another on on the opposite side of the roof.