R.W. James & Associates offices, Escondido, Calif.

November 5, 2002

One luxury-car manufacturers uses its current ad campaign to tell potential customers to expect the unexpected … and it’s the kind of advice architect Rob James certainly took to heart.
When the path he anticipated to take to a new building didn’t materialize, he broke out of the box by reclaiming an old automotive center in the heart of Escondido, Calif., saving some historical ceramic-tile murals, and bringing stone into the mix.
The principal of R.W. James & Associates is somewhat used to thinking differently. While the company offers traditional architectural services, it specializes in analysis and diagnosis of problems encountered in building construction.
Still, when his firm needed more space, he did what just about anyone else would do: He began looking for offices to lease.
“There was almost nothing available at the time, so then I started looking for pieces of property I could purchase,” he says. “I started thinking I would probably buy a blank piece and build a new building on it.”
Then, his real estate agent did the unexpected by showing him an already-developed piece of land across from Escondido’s main park and adjacent to the block with the city’s municipal buildings.
“It used to be a tire store,” James says. “When I first looked at it, it was a pretty ugly building, but I could also see all this wide-open space that architects love. I thought about how it could be light and airy, and I decided it would be just perfect.”
During the time James was selling his partners on the idea, closing the purchase of the building and coming up with a design to make his vision work, a different type of redevelopment project was in the works for another existing building in Escondido. Home Depot had purchased what had begun life as a Sears store and later been converted to other uses, with the idea of tearing it down and erecting one of its stores in its place.
James became concerned about the fate of the four 30’ X 22’ ceramic-tile murals that graced the entrances of the old store, and decided that if they could be salvaged, at least one could find a new home on the large blank wall of his remodeling project.
Everyone from Escondido city officials to Home Depot executives to the original artist were receptive to the idea, and so James was referred to a local tile and stone company to work out the nuts-and-bolts of the project.
“I was directed to talk with Harry Wichert of Wichert Tile Inc., who helped me work out the details of how we’d salvage and clean up the tiles and mark them and number them so they could be reconstructed,” he says.
After taking dozens of digital photos of each mural, laborers removed the ceramic tiles and put them in storage while James continued finalizing the design for his building.
With the mural serving as a key design element for the remodeled structure, James began looking at various finishes for his new space. Among his decisions was to incorporate stone into the main entrance and lobby.
“Originally I had thought in terms of slate,” he says. “I felt a greenish slate would serve as a contrasting color to the murals, which tend to be predominantly a reddish tan.”
However, on a visit to Modern Builders Supply in nearby San Marcos, Calif., James encountered what he felt was a better solution: 16” squares of quartzite.
“It runs in the tan and red color ranges, and it has a rougher texture than the slate,” he says. “I chose it because of its color and durability and because it has a really rich texture.”
And, somewhat unexpectedly, James learned that Wichert and his crew had constructed the sample panels displaying the quartzite in the Modern Builders Supply showroom, and were more than happy to be involved in that part of his project as well.
Ultimately, James included almost 1,000 ft² of the quartzite on the interior of his building, including in the reception area and in his own private office.
James describes the reception area as a steel-and-glass space that contrasts nicely with the stone floor. However, the floor isn’t the only place in the reception area where the stone is used; it also faces the reception desk.
“There’s also a glass wall that separates a conference room and my office from the main reception area,” James adds. “The stone surface extends through the wall into each room about 2’. Then, in my office area, is one stone-faced wall with cantilevered glass shelves.”
As with the reception area, James says he’s particularly pleased with the effect produced by the mixture of stone and glass.
Wichert says that wall wasn’t especially difficult to do, either.
“We put steel channel in before we did anything else,” he explains. “We had our increments correct, we worked up to the channels and they were just buried in the wall. Then, all they had to do was take the glass and silicone it in there. It looks like it’s just protruding out of the stone.”
To make that part of the job easier and provide more visual interest to the entire project, some of the tiles were cut into 8” X 16” and 8” X 8” segments and installed in a random fashion.
Wichert says his crew spent approximately a week doing interior work on the building, including an initial segment where the firm installed the building’s rest rooms, which he described as being more-generic. The company also spent up to 10 days installing the salvaged mural on the outside of the building.
Both Wichert and James attribute the comparatively easy job of reinstalling the mural to Wichert’s decision to lay out the project on the garage floor of the building and then build control lines over it both there and at the exterior site.
“That way I could put it out on the floor to the dimensions we were going on the building,” Wichert says. “After that, we just used a regular thin-set mortar with an acrylic additive. We also used a little mortar base to take up the unevenness in some of the pieces; they all were ground down to get the slag off them.”
Wichert says his company also ended up manufacturing a few pieces of the mural that were stolen or broken, “but luckily they weren’t a big part of the mural.”
The two men are thrilled with the overall project. Wichert compares the remodeled building to older commercial space in cities such as New York that are converted into unique residential properties.
“It’s just phenomenal,” he says. “When we walked in there when he first bought it, I thought, ‘Man, this place is ugly; what can you do with this?’ He really came up with some neat stuff with the lighting and the stone and the mural. It turned out absolutely gorgeous.”
The company moved into its new home in December of last year, and James says he’s extremely pleased with the results.
“We’ve just been ecstatic,” he says. “It’s such a pleasant place to work in. I don’t know that I’d do anything different with it.”
Others who’ve seen the structure agree. In June the project was one of 18 Western winners of a Chrysalis Award for Remodeling Excellence by Design/Build Business Magazine, Andersen Windows, Viking Range Corp., and DuPont Tyvek® Housewrap.
There is one small problem with the project, though: “I just need more space,” James says.
However, this time he’s not going to start looking for a new site.
“We’re going to do an addition next year that will incorporate two more of the murals,” he concludes. (The fourth has been donated to the city for use in a neighborhood improvement project.) “And, it will definitely incorporate the quartzite into the entry areas – if nothing else.”

Client/Designer: R.W. James & Associates, Escondido, Calif.
Stone Supplier: Modern Builders Supply Inc., San Marcos, Calif.
Masonry Installer: Wichert Tile Inc., Escondido, Calif.