Sunday, April 26, 2009

Earth, Fire, Ice and Sweat

While winter afforded me the opportunity to install shelving in the kitchen, install webcams, and finally get the utility bath faucet running correctly (No thanks to Harvey Plumbing), spring offers the opportunity to more ambitious projects. A few items on the list:

I lean towards landscaping as it softens the view on the house, the landscape contractor does great work and is a nice person, and I don't have any baggage associated with it. Here are some of the sketches he has produced for the back of the house.
A fireplace would make a lot of sense in this corner due to its' proximity to the door:
I could break down and install Air-Conditioning. The house is very efficient and does not vary more than 10 degrees 92% of the time, the 8% of the time it does get to hot makes me want A/C.

And lastly, this blog, this story has been ongoing for almost 5 years. When I started this blog I could not have fathomed the journey I embarked on. I did not know how much blood, sweat and tears it would take get to this point. Oddly enough the my life has been influenced more by people totally unrelated to this project and for that I am thankful.

Here's to another 5 years of blogging, living, and learning.

1 comment:

JR in West Virginia said...

Hi Leslie:

I'm helping a friend with her straw building project and ran across your 2 blogs... I fully understand your bitterness when things started going wrong with your dream home, and was glad to see it drain away as you fought to resolve things and set them right.

I built a dream home with my wife 1991-94 and we've been really happy with it in general, with some sub-contractor clowns like you experienced. The worst story was that of a co-worker who discovered that their builder hadn't paid for any of the materials, so they had a 5 figure mechanics lien on their dream home.

More recently I built a multi-purpose building near our home in West Virginia, 24x48 insulated concrete garage downstairs, shop upstairs. And now we own 10 acres in SE Arizona where (I hope, I'm in WV) my contractor is building a flat place with a road to it and installing the septic system.

Next winter we're going to build an out building bunk house and start on a high desert winter hide out. Our building site will be at about 5480 feet in the foothills above a valley floor of 4400 feet, with views like yours.

Congrats on your house, I vote for the fireplace, we love ours. AC is nice too, but nothing beats the human warmth of a fire to sit by in the night. Its something primeval. The Owl pic was great, they're so shy and wild I've never had a shot at one (with a camera, of course), although we have lots of them in the forest here in WV

Best of luck in your beautiful house, I'm so glad you have a happy ending!

JR in WV