Some of My Sketches

It was a cold and snowy weekend and I got to doodling.

My plan is to orient the long axis of the house east to west so we can pick up on as much passive solar in the winter as possible. Tasha's goal is to have much of the windows facing east towards the impressive view. The 'L' shaped house is drawn with those two goals in mind.



This next one is a roofline that I have found interesting for a while. It reminds me of some kind of space turtle meets the Sydney Opera House.

Meeting with the Architects

On the Sunday after Thanksgiving Jon and Kandy drove down to meet with us. We went over the lists of wants/needs that Tasha and I had put together last year when we started the search for our architect.

I was very happy with how things went. I can't wait to see what they come up with next.

Budget

So we really don't have a budget. After looking through many magazines I had an idea we like homes in the $200/sq ft range. That gives us a pretty pricey house! I think we'll have to scale back either the size of the house--I've been shooting for 1800, Tasha would like 2500--or our gilded grand foyer. We'll see.

To that end, Jon and Kandy are going to try to incorporate our wants/needs into an efficient little package.

Finding an Architect

In the spring of 2006 we started looking for an architect that shared our some of our goals and ideals in homebuilding. We were mainly looking for someone who embraced the design ideas popularized by Sarah Susanka in her Not so Big series and would be able to guide us through green/sustainable design and building decisions. We, largely Joe, had spent about 3 years learning, and educating me (Tasha), more about green building so we went into our search with about 6 pages of desires and questions.

After meeting with several area architects we were both left wanting. I think any of them would have worked out just fine, but they were either too busy to follow through with their proposal or we didn't quite have the rapport needed for a successful relationship.

We were stuck in a little lurch until my mother-in-law met our future architects, Crescendo Design, at The MREA's annual energy fair. They have some great looking houses and have done a lot of work in the green design area. We will be starting to work more closely with them come 2008.