I must say, knowing a good Landscape Architect is certainly nice. Dustin Halverson from Village Green Landscapes is helping us to develop our plan and was gracious enough to allow us to provide some very early design thoughts, along with indulging some of our more unconventional ideas. Our landscape plan will include the use of several rain gardens and a great deal of native plants. We hope to contrast and complement the natural elements with strong geometric forms and rugged materials like concrete and steel. One of the bigger things that we are dealing with is the fact a concrete driveway provides a great deal of run off, dumping water (and whatever comes with it and as it goes) into the street. In order to off-set this effect we’ve done a couple of things to ensure we manage our run-off. The first is the that we pitched the driveway. We have an equal amount of sloe running both down the driveway a we do across. This will make sure that we traffic the rain water less towards the street and more towards the yard and ultimately the rain gardens. Yet there will still be a fair amount of rainwater running down the driveway towards the street, which triggered and idea in my head. What if we placed barriers in the drive way that would absorb some of that water before it made it to the street? As a result I asked Dustin if would be possible to place several large circles in the driveway that would be filled with grass. After some calculating he determined that if we made them roughly 36″ in size and planted them with rich potting soil with a good deep sand base we would most likey be able to grow grass in them. Additionally if the grass was unable to grow we could certainly place some loose stone in the holes and achieve a similar result.

A top down view of our landscape plan. The large circles in the driveway will be filled with grass to manage some of the run off from the driveway

Blame it on global warming, dramatic climate shift or whatever you may but for some reason this year, spring and summer are having a heck of a time getting here. As another day of snowy rain approaches tomorrow, I am longing to sit on my new deck with an ice cold beverage and enjoy the view of our new lot and the various creatures that inhabit it. Maybe that’s why both Stacy and I have spent the last couple of weeks thinking, and talking about outside projects and products to fit into our new spaces. Although, we have a nice collection of Michael Graves furniture (that Stacy bought at Target a few years back) that will be used on our lower patio, our upper deck is void of any sort of seating.

The elevated view from our upper deck has the feeling of a rooftop patio at some cool summer hot spot in any one of a number of cities across the country. In my head I imagine low, simple, yet comfortable furniture made for groups to gather and socialize. Small high-top style tables, surrounded by sleek but comfortable bar stools serve as a resting place for peoples favorite summertime drinks. The only problem, is generally the furniture I am picturing in my head comes from the pages of design magazines like Metropolis with price tags that come as shock to my system. So with that said I have to give great credit to Stacy for doing the due diligence and putting in the research to find some really nice, modern furniture options that work to meet our goal of a nice little summertime retreat without breaking the bank.

available at Costco.com

available at Costco.com  I think this is my favorite one. I think we might want to die the cushions on these to something that will hold up a little better to wear and tear (maybe a nice orange or an apple green).

available at walmart.com

available at outdoorgardenfurniture.net   this one was also available at overstock.com in a great orange color but was only there for “about 5 minutes” before it sold out right before our eyes.

available at overstock.com 

I’ve been trying to decide on what chair to buy for our downstairs living room desk. The cabinet style desk is mostly used to sit at when we’re sorting through paperwork or paying bills so the chair will likely be pushed off to the side rather directly at the desk most of the time. My hope was that we could find something that would work both as as comfortable and functional working chair but also to integrate nicely with the rest of our furniture without looking out of place in the living room.

After dozens of searches on the web and visits to several furniture stores I came to the conclusion that there was really only one chair that I felt worked — the Eames Management Chair by Herman Miller. I loved the look of the shiny aluminum frame and the sleek lines of the leather back. However I was less in love with the price, at around $1500. I set out to find to the chair at a more affordable price and with a little time on the web, I was able to stumble across a great looking replica called The Premier Leather Office chair from Zuo Modern at Exclusivelyhome.com. Although slightly different, it was certainly a well made tribute to the original Eames design. Plus, unlike many of the other replicas I saw, it not only featured an aluminum frame but had an Italian Leather seat as an added bonus. I am putting my order in on it tonight already waiting with great anticipation for its arrival.

The officially licensed Herman Miller Eames Group Management Chair.

The Replica version I found on Exclusivelyhome.com cost about 1/3 of the officially licensed one.

Having neglected our home office, beyond placing the computers in the room and a random table table we have owned for years, nothing had really been done. Stacy was doing her work with piles of paperwork on the floor next to her desk and digging through boxes still stored in the garage to get to things she needed whenever they were in high demand. So, After having experienced several months of this (honestly where does the time go) we decided to spruce up the workspace a little.

We started off by examining (and re-examining) the layout of the office to try and optimize the space to its fullest potential. We decided on using to long L-shaped desks and a center storage unit to divide them. We found a fairly well priced little storage unit (called the ASPVIK —that name just rolls off the tongue) at IKEA,with a roll top style door that would help to hide some of the clutter. Along with that Stacy picked up a few sets of legs that we decided to affix to a desk that I constructed out of some leftover plywood flooring. The desks took a little longer to build then I had hoped but once they were together and in place, they were well worth it. The old table we had been using was narrow and didn’t utilize the rooms depth. At the same time, it was so deep that it pushed us so far away from the windows (which were strategically placed to allow for a very private but peaceful view of our wooded side yards) that we could barely see out of them. Now we just need to straighten up a little, add some artwork and we can really start to enjoy the great light and energy that this space has.

The office was functional but completely unorganized, crowded and a poor use of space.

The simple storage unit from IKEA along with two well positioned desks, built from leftover plywood, made the space a lot more functional and organized.

When we moved into our house just after Christmas our bathrooms were in working order. There were of course a few details that had to be filled in as we went but for some reason (maybe the 10,000 other things we had going on) it seemed these space were not getting the needed attention to complete them. So this past week I took a little time and finished up a couple of really easy things that finally made these spaces complete. In the boys bathroom we had a left a large cut in the stair well roughly about 5 feet of the ground and about 4 feet wide. This was a clever idea our architect Michael Huber had used to introduce natural light into a room that was without an exterior window. The window was to be filled with a piece of Polygal (dual wall polycarbonate) to obscure views in while allowing the light to enter.

I’ve had the polycarbonate cut and ready to go for a good 3 months now but for some reason had not taken the time to cut down the aluminum channel and fit it into place. After taking an hour of my time to measure, measure again, then cut the aluminum channel and pre-drill holes to fasten it into place. I was very pleased with the result. It is certainly industrial but fits perfectly with the rubberized flooring and metal garage style door we used to hide away the boys mess. In our bathroom we had originally planned to use a wood front on the tub surround. However from the moment it went in both Stacy and I new it wasn’t the right material. The wood interrupted the flow of the concrete floors and really didn’t fit in with the wonderfully sophisticated look of the zebrawood cabinets. So with a couple of left over pieces of concrete board I replaced the wood front and brought the whole room back into harmony.

I was feeling so good about the bathroom, like it was finally complete. Then after taking a shower before work I pulled on the handle of the faucet of the shower fixture as I turned it off. Apparently, it hadn’t been tighten too well during the install or worked itself free a bit over time because the handle came off. The Toto fixtures are very heavy duty, high quality, fixtures so the handle had some serious weight to it. my first instinct was to try and break its fall with my foot but thought better of that just before impact and slid my foot out of the way. Fortunately or unfortunately for me the handle did not hit me but instead struck the floor. Putting the handle back on was easy and I was able to tighten it enough that it will not come off again unless needed. However the weight of the impact of the handle shattered one of the 1″ tiles at the floor of the tub. Just when I thought I had completed that room and could take it off my to-do list, I had one more little project to take on.

The boys bathroom has an industrial feel while still being whimsical with the marsh mellow sinks and apple green accents

The polycarbonate window finished the room and worked to allow natural daylight in.

Pardon the horrible picture but this was the best I could do to show how the polycarb. obscures the view of the room but still lets light travel through the space.

The beautiful materials of the master bathroom weren’t working with the tub surround.

By changing out the wood tub front to a cement one it integrated better into the entire look of the bathroom.

I know just about everywhere else in the  country has made some charge into spring with warm weather and buds on trees. But here in St. Paul we’re still melting our way out from under the last 8″ of snow that fell on Monday of this past week. My sump pump has been putting  in over-time working to keep the basement dry as we have no ground cover to absorb the massive melting that has happened over the past few days as temps have soared into the 60’s, a 30 degree change in roughly 5 days time.On Friday I met with my good friend and landscape architect Dustin Halverson to take a look at some landscaping solutions for our yard. I have a lot of big ideas and some basic wants and needs for the yard and certainly need the expert of someone like Dustin to help me cultivate those ideas into something that will actually work for our yard. We spent a couple of hours walking around the lot accessing what the potential needs were and what alternative solutions we could implement in order to bring them to life for my modest budget.Unfortunately landscaping coming at the end of the project probably always suffers from both a diminished budget and sliding level of enthusiasim as most people have reached there end well before this stage of the process. For me the downtown over the winter months has left me with terrible case of spring fever and knowing that even when it does finally arrive I have nothing more than a mud pit surrounding my home has me itching to get the landscaping in. As I had mentioned before I wrote for a grant from the Ramsey Washington Country Watershed District and will need to implement the ideas I proposed in the plan along with a variety of new ideas that I came up with this winter. I’m also counting on Dustin to bring his skills and expertise to the table as he seems to really have a natural grasp on what types of plants, materials and forms will best work with the surrounding environment.  

Window covering are one of those things that are so often times an after thought in a room’s design but can make or break the over-all design. This is especially true in modern design where sophisticated, minimalism is the calling card of a good design. Do something to detailed and it can look out of place, do to little and the space looks unfinished and your neighbors get a new uncensored reality show. The challenge lies in striking a balance between the functional elements of a good window treatment while maintaining the design integrity of the space.   Certainly there are some beautiful fabrics on the market today that can lend themselves to the sleek and sophisticated feel of modern design.  In our case we wanted something that would block out most of the sunlight yet not totally impede our view of our surroundings. This meant that heavy curtains were out of the question, and light weight sheer materials were probably not all that practical. On top of that we didn’t want something that was visually detracting to the lines of our windows, after the extensive search we put in to find just the right windows to give us that floor to ceiling storefront look. Narrowing down our design wants and functional needs we decided that in our case commercial-style roller blinds were the best option for our main living spaces. They rolled up and out of the main sight lines of the widows, stowed away in a tightly compact cylinder at the top of the window frames. Additionally we were able to get a color match for the frames so they would draw even less attention to the covering. But maybe the best feature was the micro-weave which allowed us to still see out the windows while they blocked 80% of the sunlight and obscured almost completely anyone from seeing in.  Once we had agreed on what we wanted and needed, Stacy did the majority of research on where we could get quality roller blinds. Obviously there were some local big box retailers who carried custom options that would work but we ended up finding an online resource (selectblinds.com.) that offered a really high quality blind, at about 1/3 of the cost of the other retailers. We order some color swatch samples a few weeks back, made our selections and placed our order. The new blinds arrived today and although I haven’t put them up yet, it they certainly look like they’re well made with easy to install pieces. I was pleased that not only did the material match the color of our window frames but the additional hardware was painted to match the blinds, a nice little detail. 

Not being able to throw away any scrap piece of wood is a quality that both Stacy and my oldest son seem to share. It’s certainly an admirable quality when it comes to a reduce, reuse, recycle world but at times things start to accumulate and something has to be done to put them to use. So I have started a series of projects that involve utilizing the leftover pieces of birch plywood.I cut down the remaining and scrap 3/4″ stair treads into thin 2″ strips. I then cut a channel in each on the table saw, miter cut the corners and and then fasten them together with a little wood glue and some finished nails, to make some really nice looking pictures frames. I’m going to stop at my local hardware store and have them cut down some glass for me so I can frame a couple of cool art pieces that we have.With a few sheets of leftover 1/2 plywood flooring and some scrap 2×4 lumber I fashioned some box style shelves for our entertainment area in the living room and another set for storage in the laundry room, all these need is a little poly and they’re done.There’s something really pleasing to completing a project that turns out well but even more so when the materials you used were something that normally would have ended up in a dumpster or at best in someone’s fireplace.Now I just need a cord wrangler.I’ll sand the edges of the frame to make it smooth and to clean off a little of the excess wood glue before I finish them with a coat of poly.

This morning as I was getting out of the shower I heard my phone ring. I couldn’t get to it in time and didn’t recognized the number off the bat. Since I use my cel as my work phone I assumed it was an early morning client eager to open up a new project and figired they would call back shortly. Just 20 minutes later as I was enjoying my morning oatmeal it rang again. This time I was able to answer it before the caller hung up. The voice on the other end was the ever cheerful Curt Stendel of Panelworks Plus our SIPs supplier. He was at the national SIPA conference in New Orleans and just called to tell me our house had been honored with the Award of Excellence for homes Under 3000 sq ft. And on top of the that was the runner-up in the Open category taking second place to a much larger home (from Michigan I believe he said) that featured an extensive list of green features including solar panels — what a nice way to start the day. Congratulations to everyone involved Especially Panelworks Plus and Benedict and Associates for a job well done.

Whenever I retrospect of my life I am almost always amazed to see how unpredictable the journey has been, this house proved to be no exception to that rule. We knew from the moment we decided that we were going to build that the design of our home was not going to be similar to that of almost anything else. Mordern homes seem to be few and far between outside the pages of magazines like Dwell and Metropolitan Home and many of those seemed to be done on what appeared to be the budget of a small nation, by people living in the Hamptons or over-looking some idealistic view in Malibu. We however did not fall into this camp, our budget was modest as was the size of the home we wanted. We wanted to be conscious of cost but at the same time we wanted to build something that would be done with consideration for the environment — it sounded simple but could it be done?

Artists are supposed to be spontaneous when it comes to their ideas however it is my experience that the most brilliant creative minds I have ever met are actually brilliant strategist and planners who are just very open to the various ideas that present themselves. With that in mind we began a methodical and elongated process of researching everything and anything that would or could go into our house. The following are the 10 big things that we learned about building a modern contemporary, green friendly home:

1. “Green” and “Green Friendly” there’s a difference.
What most of us refer to as “green” weather your building a home or buying a car are not truly “Green” but rather “Green Friendly”. “Green Friendly” means some effort has been put forth to minimize the impact on the environment (i.e. You use recycled materials to build your home). To do something truly “green” you really need to be leaving the environment better than you found it (i.e. plant a tree).

2. Modern doesn’t mean Expensive
Although most of the homes the public sees of this style seem to be for people in a different tax bracket that doesn’t have to be the case. If you’re willing to open your mind to the possibilities, and look for deals online there are ways to get a super cool modern home on what I call a “modest modern” budget.

3. Architects are people too
Contrary to popular belief architects are not all ego driven, self serving maniacs, with only their own self interest in mind. Do a little research and find the right architect for you it can be a rewarding a collaborative relationship that delivers some amazing results.

4. Stuff’s gonna go Wrong
I don’t care who you are, how well you plan, how smart your architect is or how good your builder is — stuff will go wrong. The important thing is how do the people involve react? Do they point fingers, or do they respond quickly to make it right? In our case we enjoyed the later experience almost all the time and although it doesn’t make the stress go away it certainly makes it a lot easier to swallow.

5. Building a house is a lot of Stress
Yeah that’s right I said it, it’s stressful. Your entire world is turned upside down as you make decisions at light-speed and spend money like a kid on MTV’s my super sweet 16.

6. Modern is on the move
With a growing trend of people building smaller homes and as a generation of 20 and 30 somethings preparing to enter the home buying market, don’t be surprised if you see something along the lines of our house going up in your neighborhood. In the future there may even be whole new developments that only allow modern styled homes as a part of their covenants (wouldn’t that be ironic).

7. Everything cost about $1000.
you quickly learn that any and every change you make cost you thousands not hundreds of dollars. Try and think through everything in the planning stage, as it’s lot less expensive to change it on the blueprint than it is to change it on the job site.

8. Green can be unseen
The “green friendly” products that get the most attention like solar panels and geothermal heating are great solutions but maybe not the first and or best place to spend your money. These big ticket items seem too get the majority of the media hype but the truth is the first thing you should do is make your house as energy efficient as possible. Invest in great windows with a low U-value, or increase the R-value of your walls by using SIPs as well as optimizing the design of the house to benefit from simple things (that cost nothing) like passive solar design.

9. It’s good to be home
There is a moment when the workers stop coming by on a daily basis and you start to move your things out of boxes and into the spaces when you realize that this is your house. You’ve put so some much time, energy and effort into completing the vision and suddenly you realize the vision is now a reality. For all the stress and trouble it is an incredibly rewarding feeling to have built something so unique.

10. NO house is ever really done.
Homes are really living structures. We as the occupants, caretakers and designers are constantly updating evolving and changing our homes. Weather it’s painting the interior, re-working the landscaping or putting new tile on the backsplash, it’s all part of the homes evolution.

With all these lessons learned I don’t know that I’m quite ready to jump into another house project just yet. However, I have found that I love sharing with other people what I’ve learned along the way and can’t wait to start a new adventure where I can do just that what it is we’ll just have to wait and see.

Here is a link to the photo and quick video tour of our house and article that appeared in the Star Tribune.