Building a solar home
Learning the nuts and bolts of home construction
During the last snow storm, we had a talk with our builder/contractor. Costs were out of control, so Mike decided to take over the contractor part of our job.
Now that the snow has finally stopped for a while, Mike is busy lining up an excavator for the septic system, someone to wire our house, and someone to do our stucco in the future. This involves lining up a few possibilities, showing them the job, and then taking bids.
Originally Mike wasn’t certain he was up to this job because of health concerns, but circumstances are now requiring special attention to all details.
Please note: New home construction is so much more expensive today than EVER! Be sure you have more money than you expect to spend before you even begin. The excellent price we received for our former home in suburban Fort Collins will not come close to covering the costs for constructing a smaller solar home here.
The advantage, of course, will be seen in much reduced utility costs from now on.
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Beautiful Snow and a New Garage Door too!
We had one of our biggest snows of the season this week, which revealed the true beauty of the foothills we’ll be living in soon! Isn’t it amazing how the snow flocks on the Pinon-Juniper woodland outside our new windows?
… And of course, the Spanish Peaks were looking lovely in their snowy white trim!
Not to be outdone, our brand new garage door was installed yesterday!
We are now ready for the delivery of our kitchen cabinets and miscellaneous other things this week.
Some have asked me, how do you build a home in the winter in Colorado? You just work around the weather and pray for the occasional 70 degree day!
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Our Valentine’s present this year: a new steel roof!
The pace is certainly starting to pick up on our new home in the foothills west of here. Today on our trip out there we found a handsome new steel roof, light-colored to keep it extra cool in the summer!
The garage door goes on Monday and the kitchen cabinets should arrive this week too!
We are also now ready for the plumbing. We had to make a run to Home Depot in Pueblo to purchase the tub, etc. before the plumber could come back. So right now we have a bath tub and shower pan in our van, and a bathroom sink in our living room… Now that’s a first for me!
We decided we would give each other a new house for Valentine’s Day this year!
Our new house is finally looking like a home!
So nice to go up to see our new home this morning and find all of our lovely red Hurd windows and sliding doors installed, and the interior of the house all clean and neat. This dream is finally becoming a reality!
Stay tuned for pics of our beautiful steel roof!!!
We plan to have the outside of our home stuccoed in an adobe earth-tone, something I call dusty rose. I love the names of the stucco tones we’ve chosen. So far it’s between ‘solitude’ ‘daiquiri’ and ‘nirvana.’ We’re leaning towards nirvana of course!
Lee Adams is our builder. Thanks Lee for working so hard to bring this all together for us! Next comes the plumbing and the electrical… time to go buy that tub!
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Adventures of the NEW??? Old Farts 