Monthly Archives: January 2010

Yearly trek to the home show

I went to the home show this weekend.  I love the home show.  Last year when we went, we found our architect, Bouril Design Studio.  This year, we were on a mission to find and research insulation options and windows.  But, wandering around the maze of vendors, I found myself chatting with the radiant heat guys, the geothermal guys, and… (more…)

Now for some fancy financing…

$258,000.00 This is the preliminary estimate for our addition.  It includes everything.  It is more than our home cost us to begin with.  It is also about $100K more than I had hoped to pay.  So, now what?  The way I see it, I have a few choices. Option A:  Scrap my plans and live comfortably in my cute little… (more…)

Green, Efficiency, Carbon Footprint, & Health…

Wow, how’s that for a title.  Let Google crawl all over that one. I consider myself to be relatively green, concerned with efficiency, pretty well informed & educated, and often indecisive.  It turns out, this is a dangerous combination.  Let me ‘splain. Being ‘green‘ means taking care of the environment – reduce, reuse, recycle – taking steps to reduce your… (more…)

Let your kids orbit.

I have grown to appreciate how the living room opens into the kitchen, the kitchen opens into the dining room, and the dining room opens into the living room.  This allows my kids to ‘orbit’ the house – which is particularly important on cold winter days.  Funny though, they always seem to orbit counter-clockwise. I’ve learned to enjoy this –… (more…)