More Side Porch Stuff

It's official - my favorite room it the West side porch off the master bedroom. Operable 6ft casement windows and a sliding glass door gives any king/caveman a means of fresh air or escape. Porch dimensions are about 13ft long x 8ft wide...now conditioned space with interior LED can lights...whoa, baby! That adds about 100sf to the total square footage of the main house.


The sliding glass door has a lock at the bottom, top and middle...Pella isn't fooling around with security and door strength.

Master Shower, Hall Bath - Check

We needed to install these two items before Mike with M&S plumbing could check us out for the final plubming inspection. We went with a Sterling shower and bath. Thanks to Heatwave Plumbing supply for delivering it as soon as it came off the truck.

Next, we'll pop in the high pressure, low volume shower heads.

As seen standing in the master bedroom, through the soon-to-be pocket door.

I thought this funky gray cement-like base for the shower and bathtub was interesting.

Motha, Should I Build The Wall?

So my main man Jim Belden says, "yeah, I think I can do your stone work too."

Pretty clean, eh? I think over time the weathering will blend it all together.

Below are my stone masons, Isaac (9) and Nate (6), showing off their traps and deltoids.

Jim even emulated the original stone mason's grout cuts/scratches.

Jim, you're an animal.

A little dash of this, some more of that...

Wide shot of the new Pella FSC-certified high efficiency wood windows on the east porch. Could I have added a few more adjectives to those windows? The porch casement windows really tie in the other windows on the front, don't you think?
The last Solatube went in on the garage apartment. Thanks David! David Perkins has really shown extreme patience, working around a string of rainy weather. This one will have a dimmer switch on it so you can turn the sun off whenever you want. Some hungover TU student will thank me for that stroke of genius one day. And that TU student better not be one of my kids.
A little bit closer on the new window. This sucker weighed 255 pounds! The next one is a single 10ft casement window that weighs over 500 pounds! we're gonna get a posse together to tip-toe that one into place.
Colburn Electric trenched a 36" deep line from the power pole to the home and another one from the home to the garage apartment. Burying these lines will eliminate the low-hangine eyesores and really open up the space for some future relaxation and back yard fun! The Colburn guys are animals.

Hey John, watch out for the sewer pipes dude! :)

Repurposing Stones from Fireplace

You might be thinking, what the heck are they doing to that beautiful fireplace? And I concur, it strikes an emotional chord to deconstruct something that had a real purpose for so many years.
Jim Belden is putting his pneumatic chisel to work on this old smoke stack. The point is, we needed matching stone to fill some wall space so instead of spending time and money locating stone that probably wouldn't match the space we're filling on the opposite side of the house for a fireplace we definitely were never ever going to use, we said, "Hey, why don't we just use this stuff here?" Truth be told, it was Lorrie Hoefling, our green building guru, who suggested it. Great idea Lorrie!

Here you can see the stone pile and the holes we're filling. We're moving the side door to the back, giving the home owner direct access to the backyard space...wait until you get a load of what we're doing back there...

And here she blows...we're going to build some bookshelves, so that this beautiful glassed in space will function as a wonder place to get away and do some reading in natural light. We also ran a ventilation duct out here. We'll score the concrete and seal it. Throw a rug down and viola! We're in business. These Pella windows are going to knock your socks off.

A Look At America’s Growing “Small Living” Movement

Thought this article touched on a variety of important points that fall into the theme of our current green retrofit. Exerpt from Enviromental News Network:

"In a super-sized obsessed age, we’ve now fallen into the gap where we believe our home should also reflect a shift toward the grandiose. Yet this obsession with gigantism has completely dwarfed our sense of self. Whereas even meals used to be an art form, the rising trend on bigger (and ultimately considerably ridiculous creations) is aimed at promoting a consumer culture that ironically strips us of culture.

Some would even argue that in addition to relinquishing culture, we rescinded our identity as we grow increasingly lost amidst a rising expanse of materialism. With consumer culture, it’s no longer about what we have, but about how much we can stuff into ourselves, pile on ourselves, and collect around ourselves. An inflationary ideology that compromises quality for quantity, the idea that more is better and less is miserly can be traced back to Hollywood and celebrity, two groups that promote a culture of excess that majority of star gazers flock to emulate.
Yet an undercurrent movement referred to as “small living” is creating waves as a chic counter culture against wasteful consumption. An increasing number of global citizens are realizing that bigger is not better, that more is not necessarily feasible, and that a continued practice of parasitism is not in our mutual interest....

...Small living is simply much cheaper. It’s cheaper to furnish your place, utility costs are lower, and smaller spaces are generally much more affordable to rent or purchase. It was Leonardo da Vinci who first said, “small rooms discipline the mind and large ones distract it,” – and perhaps he was right. Surprisingly, there are a number of other benefits that go with smaller spaces, which anyone who’s walked the walk will quickly recognize."

To read more, please see: http://blog.enn.com/

Out Riding Fences, for So Long Now

ONCE AGAIN.....BEFORE>>>>

AFTER!!!!!




Holy smokes - what a turnaround. Wait until we drop some VOC-free dark brown stain on it from Anchor Paint, a Tulsa-based paint/coatings manufacturer...Mama Mia!
You may be thinking....yeah, but what's up with that driveway? Oh, don't you worry. We're cooking up something and we'll report back.

Oh Yeah....Pella is in da House!

Looky, looky...Sookie, sookie! The windows arrived onsite yesterday and the first wood window was installed in the south east bedroom today. Oh, they're gonna be smokin'.

http://web.pella.com/aboutus/Pages/GreenCommitment.aspx