The ceiling and the mortgage broker

The title of this post may seem a bit odd (like the Walrus and the Carpenter), but there is a real connection.

The original design for the ceiling was quite elaborate. Henry Kawa has a particular fondness for complicated ceilings, which he creates by putting pieces of mahogany through his variou wood working tools. The complex structure of dark wood is hard to describe, but we can show a picture here from another of David Jameson's projects that Henry worked on. You can see that it gives the ceiling a very rich texture and color.


It wasn't possible for us to get access to the house above, so David suggested that we go see a house under construction that was getting the same ceiling treatment. As it turns out, the owner of this house was none other than the mortgage broker that we had a little run in with in 1998. What a small world! Back when we were first buying our house, we were referred to this broker, let's just call him "Bob" (note, this is not his real name). Well, this was during the Asian financial crises, and mortgage rates had dropped a great deal. At this point we already had been approved for a mortgage through "Bob", and we just needed to lock in at these really neat low rates. Well, when I called "Bob" to lock in, the incredible response was: Sorry, none of the banks are locking in today! And on top of that he made us wait another week, during which time the markets had recovered, and the 30 year rates had risen a percentage point. Needless to say we were furious, and when we asked a few people who know about these things, and none of them had heard of such a thing. So we went back to "Bob's" company and demand that he either give us a lower rate, or transfer the appraisal to a new bank, where we could get a new rate. He chose to lower the rate, but complained that he "didn't make any money on this loan." In any event, this brings us back to "Bob's" ceiling. We went to his house to have a look, and of course met him there. He looked embarrassed, and we pretended the whole thing had been no big deal. But we decided we didn't like the ceiling for the tea house, since it is a much smaller space. We were also afraid we would loose the sharp lines of the diamond shaped ceiling. We ultimately decided on a maple veneer, stained to go with the fir "end piece" floor.
The final decision on interior finishing is shown below. The fir flooring is at left, maple ceiling
on the upper right and the mahogany trim is the small piece on the lower right.