Landscaping starts in a big way

The dining room viewed from the stairs.

The soaking tub in the master bath.

The master bedroom looking toward the privacy wall in the great room.

Looking at the great room from the dining room.

The great room looking from the fireplace.

One of three artists who were on site during the Parade of Homes.

A view looking west off the east end of the courtyard.

The courtyard portal off of the Garage shop.

There are many grasses in the landscaping that sway in the breeze.

The Garage shop portal. Hard to get projects done when there is a place like this to idle away the day.

The iron work in the wall notches look like candelabras. The notches were added to allow our dog Raider to look out at the world.

We were amazed at how much the flowers grew in just one season.

We had an incredible number of hummingbirds throughout the summer. We planted specifically for them.

Grasses, Penstemen, Sunflowers and more. We are thrilled with what we created.

Parade of Homes
In April we decided to collaborate with 4Core (Four Corners Office for Resource Efficiency) to enter our house in the Durango Home Builders Parade of Homes as a demonstration house for sustainable building and energy use. The Energy Tour was a great success but we felt we were preaching to the choir in that tour. The Parade of Homes would allow us to reach folks who may never given energy conservation a second thought. The Parade of Homes was scheduled for two weekends in early October. We still had a lot of detailing to complete over the summer so when the snow melted, we went to work. We planted our fruit tree orchard and then went to work on filling out the landscaping in he courtyard.

I completed welding the iron work in the courtyard wall and installed the sections in place. The Courtyard wall was now officially finished. We added two solar hot water panels in August. (I will add a post about the mechanical system later that will explain the decision to add solar hot water.) John Ford came back to finish out the Master closet while we scrambled to complete other details and to finish prepping the house for winter. By September the landscaping was amazing. We were as ready as we were ever going to be.

The Parade of Homes was a huge success. We had four volunteers on site at all times to answer questions. 600 people toured the house.  Jenny had created printed bullet points about energy features throughout. We were happy that the vast majority of folks who were on the tour took the time to read all of the bullet points and most wanted to engage in conversation about what they were seeing. 4Core told us they'd never had an event that was so well attended. It was a huge success for them as well. We were told over and over again that it was by far the best home on the tour. The judges raved about what a fabulous house it was. After the votes were counted for the award presentation we were disqualified from the competition because we were not members of the Home Builders Association. I guess they didn't want a first time home builder/owner to sweep the awards. We were at peace with this and had actually thought, early on, that this might happen. Our award was all the wonderful praise we received over the four day event. It was a nice way to bring the project to a close.

Courtyard adobe wall goes up

Our sons Forrest (foreground) and Cameron help pour the concrete bond beam that caps the adobe wall.

Cameron and I leveling the concrete

Filling in the forms with concrete up over the entry. Lyle (not visible in this photo hoisted over 5,000 lbs of dry concrete mix over the course of the day. He wasn't tired until I shared this info with him.

Me, the entry gates and a lot of snow.

Entry gates looking from the outside of the courtyard.

The Courtyard wall
In late June we began work on the courtyard wall. We had enough 7" blocks from the house build to complete this project. Lyle stayed on to construct the wall and to help with the bond beam. Our sons came for a visit in July and we put them to work on the bond beam as well. The wall was complete (less iron work and entry gate) by mid August. Jenny went straight to work planting the courtyard to get things started before the cold weather arrived.

The Energy Tour
In September, we volunteered to put the house on a tour of homes that demonstrated low carbon footprint energy use.  The geothermal heat pump, adobe thermal storage, passive solar design, CFL lighting, and energy star appliances throughout were the story for our presentation. It was a fun event...but exhausting!

The entry gates
I designed and built the entry gates through the winter and installed them in February. With just a vague initial idea of what they should look like, they took on a life of their own. We were pleased with the results.

The earth plaster color coat goes on.

Thomas mixes finish coat plaster

Jody and Jen detailing one of the Nichos

The final plaster crew: Jen, Corey, Jody, Kevin, Thomas, and Griffin

The light fixture in the office. What a great place to work!

Curt Nelson lending a hand in getting the wiring completed

The Master bedroom fireplace is finished.

The Saltillo tile and decorative tile on the stairs are finished.

A glimpse into the powder room.

 
Color coat interior plaster
The color coat was applied over a one month period. Griffin worked some days on his own tackling small places like closets. Some days there would be one or two of the crew available and when we got to big rooms like the great room we had five on the plaster team. It was an amazing transition. The brown coat reflected little light so as a result the rooms seemed dark. When the color coat was applied the rooms were full of light. All the agonizing over colors vanished as the team moved from room to room. All the colors were beautiful.

Moving in...early
Our lease on the house we were renting expired on the last day of May so we moved our belongings into the garage of the new house and set up a bedroom in one of the upstairs bedrooms that was complete. We had water but no electricity. We completed the wiring in the upstairs and kitchen over the following week.

Lighting goes in
We gave each room a week to dry before I completed the installation of lights and switches. Master electrician Curt Nelson stopped by to give a hand when he was free. His help was greatly appreciated.

Certificate of Occupancy
We called for our final inspection and on June 20th we received our "Certificate of Occupancy". It was a great moment and Jenny, being Jenny, made it a wonderful celebration with flowers, champagne and a framed certificate. We still had much work to do to truly complete the house but the bulk of the work was done and it felt like home. The master bath tile was delayed from Mexico and would not be installed until October. The guest bath and the powder room were complete so the delay was only a minor annoyance.

Returning to the blog

I have been bad about adding entries to this blog. Seems that life after building has kept me very busy. There is much to share about the rest of the house project including pictures of the finished project. So here are the rest of the entries.