Next comes the insulation and drywall!

April 6, 2015April 6, 2015 / Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

Although we already got the outside walls prepared for stucco when it warms up, most work now is on the inside. We just completed the electrical and media wiring and the plumbing. Next comes the interior spray insulation and then drywall.

To get some idea of the layout of our house, you enter from the door on the left and are immediately in the great room with a kitchen, dining room and living room. The kitchen cabinets will be along the back wall seen here. The curved island will hold the kitchen sink and dishwasher. What a phenomenal view from there! The east end of the house (seen here) will hold the master suite and office.

The west end holds two smaller bedrooms and a bath.

This picture gives you some sense of the view from the great room. It faces directly south and is all sliding doors and windows for maximum passive solar gain in the winter. There is a large overhang outside to keep out the sun in the warmer months. The roof of that overhang is the correct angle to hold photo voltaic panels, providing enough electricity to completely power our new home.

As you can see, we are high on a hill with only a few houses down below, and an unobstructed view of the Spanish Peaks, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and Mount Mestas. We own a couple acres below our house. No one can ever obstruct our view!

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Learning the nuts and bolts of home construction

March 5, 2015March 5, 2015 / Laura Lee Carter / Leave a comment

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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Our new house is finally looking like a home!

February 5, 2015February 14, 2015 / Laura Lee Carter / 3 Comments

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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Our home will be “dried-in” soon!

January 31, 2015February 1, 2015 / Laura Lee Carter / 1 Comment

OK, back to this week’s progress on our solar home…

This week our home became almost completely dried-in. This means the building shell is sufficiently completed to keep out the weather. As you can see, the roof is now completely covered with weather sealing, and the windows are going in.

The steel roof happens next week…

We love the HURD windows Mike chose for the house! He remembered seeing them in new construction while growing up in California, so he checked them out for quality and price when we started construction.

Mike found Hurd to be the best deal while looking for windows whose parts are pressure-treated with preservatives so they will not rot later. He’s had some bad experiences with some of the better-known national brands and refuses to use them ever again!

When the windows and doors are all in, we will begin on the electrical and plumbing. The insulation and interior dry walling come next.

Click on these cool cloud photos to enlarge! This one is looking up at our house…

The East Spanish Peak was peeking out of the clouds in a lovely, Taoist way…

Time to get to work ordering the kitchen cabinets.

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Why most don’t build their own home

January 30, 2015February 20, 2016 / Laura Lee Carter / 4 Comments

Courage is the power to let go of the familiar…

As we continue building our new solar home from scratch up in the foothills west of here, it often occurs to me why most don’t put themselves through this process ever in a lifetime.

And I discovered only recently, the reasons why others might not want to build their own home can be the same reasons why we wanted to.

The most obvious one is the constant decision-making! Since I’ve never done this before, I hadn’t thought so far as to realize we would need to chose every single detail of both the outside structure and the inside finishes.

How lucky am I to have a recent subscription to HGTV!

Many would not like this process, but that is also the best reason to build your own solar home. From choosing the exact angle the house faces and the thickness of your slab, to window choices, flooring and the type of supplemental heating, these are the factors that determine the comfort and future price of operating your home. If you don’t control these factors, passive solar will not work.

Then if you feel the need to raise the fire-resistant level of your home, even more factors arise. It sometimes boggles my mind! Luckily Mike has quite a bit of experience in building from scratch plus amazing research skills!

Still and all the expenses just keep going up and that can freak a person out at times. It is certainly much more expensive than your home in the suburbs, not to mention the inconvenience of moving into a rental for eight to ten months while the construction is going on…

What makes it all worthwhile? Views like these from every room in the house!

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Midlife Crisis Still in Progress!

January 22, 2015August 17, 2016 / Laura Lee Carter / Leave a comment

Since we’re waiting for some more progress on our new home after another snow storm, I thought you might enjoy reading my thoughts from last year at this time:

There’s nothing like a crisis to define who you are. Like the way my own midlife crisis showed me the way to a brand new life, one where I made better personal choices.

Now a new crisis is turning our lives upside down… but in a good way.

Mike’s disability has made it clear that he cannot work 40 hours a week any longer. So we have decided to move to the place where we would prefer to live, in the kind of setting where we always pictured ourselves.

This week we made our first major commitment to our new future by purchasing three acres at the top of the foothills. (See the view above from our new land.) We also began discussions with builders… our dream begins to come alive.

I’m starting to be able to imagine how awesome (a word I seldom use!) it will be to live in our new solar home down in southern Colorado, and the freedom this alternative lifestyle will offer us. It almost makes all of the hard work we will have to do between now and then worthwhile.

I have been thinking a lot lately about all of the reasons why some decide to stay in place at retirement, while others move someplace else. It strikes me that moving is not for the weak of body or spirit. You need to start early with a strong desire for an alternative lifestyle.

Mike and I have always wanted to get out of the suburbs. When I first met Mike nine years ago, he said he would not move again unless he could get a great view out of the deal. Well, I guess we will have that soon, plus a much more environmentally-friendly, relaxed rural lifestyle.

Every time we go south now, it becomes more difficult to return to our home up north. I guess that’s a positive sign!

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