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.