The home uses 5,500 square feet of 24-gauge exterior panels from Metal Sales Manufacturing Corp. Carlson Sheet Metal Works also created a fireplace surround from 14-gauge hot-rolled bare steel.
Most of the work done by Carlson Sheet Metal Works is industrial, but that doesn’t mean the 78-year-old, Spokane, Washington-based company doesn’t have a large portfolio of architectural projects. Carlson is a metals multitasker, working on commercial, industrial and architectural work using specialty metals such as stainless steel, copper, aluminum, brass and carbon steel.
According to company President Brian Fair, a reputation for high-quality work and longstanding relationships with general contractors around eastern Washington state and northern Idaho has allowed it to work on historic and custom homes in the region while also maintaining a focus on industries such as farming, forestry and food processing.
That includes a multimillion-dollar custom home recently built on Liberty Lake in a wooded area near Spokane. Fair says his company has an almost 30-year relationship with the general contractor who supervised the project. It involved installing steel interior and exterior metal panels. The interior work called for Carlson to create a fireplace surround using 14-gauge hot-rolled bare steel. The exterior used 2,500 square feet of TL-17, a flush-face panel made of 24-gauge steel from Metal Sales Manufacturing Corp. painted in the company’s Mistique Plus color. It also used 3,000 square feet of TL-20, a standing-seam metal panel, also 24 gauge, in Metal Sales’ Dark Bronze color.
Keeping the water out
According to Fair, the biggest challenge in this project involved sealing the home’s many windows to ensure rain didn’t get in during the region’s famously rainy weather. He estimated the house has about 50 windows.
“This project was different,” he says. “They used commercial window frames because of the size of the windows. The vinyl window manufacturers could not build the windows with these tall, linear components.” The frames were commercial grade and made of extruded aluminum. They rest inside the wood frame.
“Our challenge was to figure out how to weatherproof and build a building envelope around a window that could not be sealed to the wood framing,” Fair adds. “And the challenge of that is the flush panel projects from the surface of the wood are about an inch and a half, but the standing theme panel is flush with the wood.”
“So we actually had two different elevations and had to figure out how to build an envelope around that aluminum frame so that any water that hits the side of the building would not make its way through the panel and the building envelope,” he says.
The solution?
“It really was in the flashing,” Fair says. “And how we actually counter-flashed the windows. We built a custom flashing receiver pocket that would enclose the metal panel, but allowed us to create a hidden joint around the aluminum extrusion.” Carlson workers created a model in the shop to ensure it would work. “We built our window package around that sample. And we tested it a couple of times.”
The fix satisfied the homeowner, architect and general contractor. “They just say, ‘Hey just make it so it doesn’t leak. I don’t care how you do it.’ That wasn't really in their wheelhouse, figuring that part out, but it was a really big deal.”
While it’s not the type of project Carlson works on every day, Fair says he enjoys the chance to demonstrate his company’s architectural skills. “It is satisfying,” he says. “When they do come by, it’s based on building our relationship with the general contractor. If he’s got it in his scope of work and says that he can afford our costs and burdens, then we never turn them down.”
