Army chic

Sorry for the lack of posts. Now that we're actually doing a lot of work on the house I find that I'm doing less writing about it. Most of the work at this point is of the grunt-variety...lots of painting and staining. I've had white streaks in my hair (from the paint, not stress...although maybe there is a mixture of both at this point) for the past four weeks. It's sort of becoming my new look, I guess. But we're making progress. Accomplishments of this past week include: finishing priming the basement including the drum studio, the largest room in the house (go figure), transforming one wall of our dining room into a large chalkboard with chalkboard paint (love it!), painting almost all of our interior doors, and putting a final coat of stain on the stair treads. Our builders are hard at work laying down the maple floors, installing the kitchen cabinets, and tiling the bathrooms. Our electrician also began putting in fixtures. I will take pictures soon.

Another small triumph of the week was my discovery of our local Army/Navy surplus store in Barre, Vermont. I have been coveting a nice wool army blanket for our new bed for months now. Army chic is definitely on the rise. (Photo credits, in order of apperance: Ace Hotel, House Beautiful, Plastolux, and Apartment Therapy).





I particularly liked the reproduction Swiss army blanket with the red stripe and little white cross. Turns out you can buy one from the dreamy Sundance Catalog...if you want to part with $300. Yes, $300 for a wool blanket.



Lucky for me that the Barre Army/Navy Store sells them for the slightly less shocking price of $19.95. The folks at the store looked at me like I was crazy when I told them how much people were willing to spend for this item. I actually don't think they believed me. But you might want to put your order in for one now as they could raise their prices soon! As of yesterday afternoon, I am a proud owner of one of these beauties. I think it will look stunning on our new iron bed with all white sheets and pillows.

ERV or HRV?

We debated this question for months. Efficiency Vermont advised us to go with an ERV (energy recovery ventilator) but many homes in this region use an HRV (heat recovery ventilator). We did a lot of reading to make up our mind and spoke with a variety of folks including our electrician, Larry Wyckoff, who installed the system for us. Eventually we, in consultation with Larry, decided to go with an HRV.

What is an HRV? A heat recovery ventilator (or any sort of air exchanger) is critical for a house like ours that is super insulated. Because of the tightness of our walls, windows, and doors, our house will not "breathe" on its own. An HRV provides mechanical lungs for the house by constantly exchanging indoor air with air from outside. This helps maintain a high quality indoor air environment. A "heat" recovery ventilator also ensures that the fresh air coming in from outside is warmed up before entry. Here is a summary of how an HRV works from Popular Mechanics:

A heat-recovery ventilator (HRV) is similar to a balanced ventilation system, except it uses the heat in the outgoing stale air to warm up the fresh air. A typical unit features two fans-one to take out household air and the other to bring in fresh air. What makes an HRV unique is the heat-exchange core. The core transfers heat from the outgoing stream to the incoming stream in the same way that the radiator in your car transfers heat from the engine's coolant to the outside air. It's composed of a series of narrow alternating passages through which incoming and outgoing airstreams flow. As the streams move through, heat is transferred from the warm side of each passage to the cold, while the airstreams never mix.

What is the difference between an HRV and an ERV? According to the experts, HRVs make sense in climates that do more heating than cooling (e.g. northern Vermont). Again, Popular Mechanics:

Although an HRV can be effective in the summer months, when it will take heat from incoming fresh air and transfer it to stale air-conditioned exhaust air, it's most popular in colder climates during the winter. HRVs are ideal for tight, moisture-prone homes because they replace the humid air with dry, fresh air. In climates with excessive outdoor humidity, an energy-recovery ventilator is more suitable. This device is similar to an HRV, but dehumidifies the incoming fresh airstream.

You can read the article from Popular Mechanics here. Another good resource is this article from Eco Home Magazine.

For those of you building super-insulated homes, are you going with an ERV or HRV?

More wallpaper

So I posted awhile back about how much I adore Cole and Sons "Woods" wallpaper. It's just stunning. But when I was perusing the Door Sixteen blog this morning, I fell in love with another design, "Berry Black," from Danish company Ferm Living.


Check out Anna's gorgeous dressing room decked out in the stuff. The company's website has some other great finds. They're all just so rich and intricate. I really don't think of myself as a wallpaper person and I definitely don't have plans to use a lot of it in the house (not a fan of each room having its own texture and color scheme...am going for coherence and simplicity). But browsing is fun.




And how cute are these kids' rooms?

Homestead General

So I have lots to post from my weeked jaunt to my hometown of Fairhope, Alabama. Sometimes it takes a bit of time away from a place to make you realize how beautiful and special it is. Fairhope is literally awash in blooms. The city has its own nursery and greenhouses and it plants gorgeous flowers on every street corner downtown. There are even flowers planted on the top of trash cans--no lie! In addition to the physical beauty of the town, I am happy to say that they are catching on to the green building movement (post to follow on my tour of the Fairhope Green Home) and to the localvore movement. They host a farmers market downtown every Thursday and several restaurants are serving locally raised grass-fed beef. It all makes me very happy...and very proud of the town I called home as a kid.

But one of the most exciting discoveries of the trip was a new store on Fairhope Ave. called Homestead General. My parents and I drove past it Saturday evening and I fell in love as soon as I saw the window diplay--a large set of wire baskets with weathered picture frames on top. Ahh, industrial rustic. Love it. So with less than 30 minutes until I had to leave for the airport on Sunday afternoon, my mom indulged me and we dashed downtown for a quick look. The window display was only a teaser. The entire store was filled with gems--rustic tables and vintage signs, metal wire baskets and tubs, organic canvas bedding, iron beds, rustic/modern furniture. It actually had a vibe similar to the White Flower Farmhouse. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I spent more money per minute than I ever have in my life (although the pieces were very reasonably priced). Below are some shots of my purchases. This woman blogged about her trip to Homestead General and took some great interior shots of the shop. (I'm kicking myself for not bringing my camera!)






The last one has an interesting story. A woman in the area collected wood scraps after Hurricane Katrina and turned them into unique decoration pieces. I think I'm going to hang this in the master bathroom to hold wet towels.

More gray kitchens...

So I'm sort of into this gray kitchen thing.

This remodel from Urban Grace Interiors is gorgeous.




Not thrilled about drawing inspiration from good ol' Martha Stewart but apparently she outfitted her new kitchen in gray. Come to think of it, there is a pretty good chance the kitchen in the prison was a nice steely gray...but there were no pictures of that in her mag.




Here's one from blogger Cote de Texas.

Amherst St. in Montreal

Sara and I had a wonderful day in Montreal on Friday. I forget how close it is to Burlington. It's less than an hour to the border and then about another hour and change to downtown Montreal. Border crossing was super easy. The immigration agent made fun of Sara for coming up to Vermont to go to IKEA and pointed out that there was one in Philly...how he knew that, I have no idea.

Sara, having spent a semester in Paris, speaks French and seemed to really enjoy correcting my attempts to translate the billboards along the way. The subjunctive tense gets me every time. Most of the actual road/directional signage is provided in English which helped immensely. Our favorite translation was an electronic sign above one of the major highways in downtown Montreal. In French it read, "Covoiturage est économique certaine." (Or something like that...remember, Sara is the one who speaks French.) It was basically reminding commuters that carpooling makes economic sense. We commented on how nice it was that the Canadian government encourages practices that are environmentally (as well as wallet) friendly. Then the English translation popped up--we had time to read all of this because we were stuck in traffic...apparently folks in Montreal are not reading these announcements because there were many, many cars on the road--and it said, "Carpooling: an interesting choice!" We thought this was hilariously funny. I don't know how "certain" became "interesting" but I liked how the English version sort of gently nudged while the French version was like, "Carpool, damnit. It makes sense."

Anyway, we found Amherst St. in downtown Montreal with no problem, save for the traffic. It was everything I had hoped it would be and more. We spent the first part of the afternoon ducking in and out of all the little shops, giggling like children over all the MCM finds. It truly was incredible. We stopped at a cute corner cafe for lunch and devoured the most fantastic paninis and salads. Shopping makes one hungry. We ate and talked for more than an hour and a half. I am so used to grabbing lunch on the go but when in Rome...

We then did some more walking and oohing and ahhing. Here are a couple of pics. from the stores we visited. I was tempted to buy a few things but they would have constituted major purchases and as I said in a previous post, Ry-guy likes input. So we just decided we'd have to go back...










So funniest story of the whole trip? Remember, I didn't want to make any major purchases because Ryan wasn't there to weigh in. But at this one shop, I noticed an adorable old-fashioned sign that said "Ouvert" (open, in French). It had a great patina on it and I loved its charm. Not really MCM at all but I thought it would be cute to put in the kitchen or something...just a little, random detail. Anyway, Sara liked it, too, so I asked her to hold it while we finished exploring the store. As we're approaching the counter to make our purchase, the owner, in a deliciously French accent and with a quizzical look on his face asks Sara, "Are you walking around with my sign?" Turns out that it was actually the sign he uses to announce that the store is open. If I had been by myself, I would have died of embarrassment. But since Sara and I had been laughing all day (we still hadn't gotten over carpooling being "interesting"), we both just cracked up. I don't think he thought it was particularly funny. In fact, he marched right over to the front of the store and plopped the sign in the front window as if to confirm its actual function. Ahh, making a fool of oneself in a foreign country. It's bound to happen, right?

Next up: our IKEA booty...

Change of plans (literally)

So this is the new information I referenced in my last post. Did you like the tease? And no, mom, I'm not pregnant. Sorry :)

So after a lot of thought and deliberation, Ryan and I have made the radical decision to ditch our original house plans. It was hard because we spent the better part of last year developing them (with the incredibly talented Lori Buxton, a local draftsperson). Lori did a great job and produced exactly what we requested. But we've come to realize that the house is too big and too expensive.

We originally developed the plans when the economy wasn't in the toilet and when we were living large. (Well, not really. We've never lived large. But we certainly had more job security.) In addition, over the past few months, we have spent an unfortunate amount of money on trying to meet the requirments of the DRB including hiring a civil engineer, a hydrogeologist, and an attorney. Let's just say that the process has not been cheap. And the bids we received for materials like siding, roofing, windows, etc. were higher than we could really afford. It became clear that the best thing to do was reduce the size of the house.

The more we thought about the prospect, the more excited we got. We are all about going green and yet we missed the most obvious strategy of all...reduce the building's footprint. In addition to cutting the materials needed for construction and thus saving resources, a smaller house means lower energy usage. It also means disrupting a smaller part of the site.

So we are excited to share our new house plans. We think they retain the farmhouse aesthetic we like but in a smaller package (1568 sq. feet). This represents a 27 percent reduction from our original house plans (2160 sq. feet)and is 40 percent smaller than the average house size in the Northeast (2601 sq. feet). Not bad, eh?

And the plans still meet our primary design objective: open, communal living/dining/kitchen area with smaller private spaces. The addition of the wraparound front porch is lovely. It will be like a second living room in the summer months. As for exterior colors, they will remain the same: white Hardieplank siding with a silver standing seam metal roof.

And the best part about these new plans? By dropping our window count from 30 to 20, we think we will be able to afford the Marvin Integrity fiberglass windows we so desperately wanted.

Let us know what you think...

Cole & Son woods wallpaper

So I think you all have sufficiently talked me out of corrugated metal for the great room ceiling. I'm still enamored of it but see the drawbacks. I'm not giving up on using it somewhere in the house, though. I love it too much. Any good ideas for placement? Maybe as wainscoting in the guest bathroom?

Speaking of interior materials, I wanted to share another recent obsession of mine...Cole & Son's woods wallpaper. This stuff is popping up all over the place (design mags, blogs, etc.) but I never seem to get sick of seeing it. It is so serene and hauntingly beautiful. I feel calmer every time I look at it. I think I want to put this on the north wall of our master bedroom, behind our bed. The window centered on that wall will look across the field to the woods so it seems like an appropriate spot for it. I'll probably buy it from the Anthropolgie website.

Corrugated metal ceiling?

I have been trying to visualize our great room for awhile now. Most nights before I fall asleep, I pretend that I'm walking into the house. I normally make it through the mudroom into the dining area before conking out. Sad, I know. Therefore, the ceiling in the great room has never revealed itself to me. What do you see when you look up? Is it a great expanse of drywall? (The good: reflects light nicely, quite modern and minimalist; The bad: could be a LOT of white, very bland) Well, luckily for our new house, I wasn't all that tired last night when I climbed into bed and managed to actually make it through the snooze-inducing entrance and into the great room. Whew. And when I looked up, I was surprised to see corrugated metal! It's probably due to my near obsession with Blake Dollahite's house.

So here are some inspiration shots. You tell me. Am I nuts or should our great room ceiling be corrugated metal?

Blake Dollahite House


Dorval-Hall House (Keith Moskow, architect)




Lami Design Colorado Plat House

SIPs it is

The purpose of this post is to correct a huge oversight on my part and I want to thank poster "Mario in VT" for bringing it to our attention....we never shared our decision re: SIPs vs. ICFs! Oops. It's a minor decision, really. It's only our entire wall system (!) So sorry for that omission. Apparently I've been much more worried about critical issues like whether to purchase a refrigerator with a top or bottom freezer.

Anyway, we have decided to go with SIPs. We actually really wanted a full ICF house. There has been some debate about whether ICFs truly offer a tighter envelope over SIPs. I think what attracted us to ICFs is that in addition to the (potentially slight) advantage in terms of insulating power over SIPs, we also liked the idea of not using any wood. Over time, that wood will begin to decay and concrete is here to stay. It also seemed like a good way to avoid using any more natural resources. Then again, producing concrete is very taxing to the environment. So we explored using a large percentage of fly ash, a waste product that is harmful when released into the atmosphere. Using fly ash also decreases the amount of damaging-to-produce concrete. Anyway, we were leaning towards ICFs although it certainly wasn't an emotionally wrenching decision to choose SIPs instead. We basically want the tightest building envelope that our budget will buy. And once we received the bids back (two from ICF companies and two from SIP companies), it became obvious that SIPs were more budget friendly. I will say that there wasn't a huge difference. But the difference was big enough that we couldn't justify choosing ICFs over SIPs. However, we will be using ICFs from Vermont ICF for our basement.

We are buying our SIPs from Panel Pros out of Keene, New Hampshire. These will be 6.5" Insulspan panels, R-26. So far, Panel Pros has been great to work with. Our total panel package came to around $27,000 without installation. This price includes structural design and delivery. With Al's help, we are going to install them ourselves. Panel Pros also quoted us on a SIP roof but because of cost constraints, we are going to go with a traditional truss roof and blown-in insulation.

Here is a link to Insulspan's website that has some great, basic information on SIPs. Fine Homebuilding has a nice overview article, too. This is the most basic diagram I could find of a SIP. Also, check out this ridiculous YouTube video (the music is classic) of the guys at Insulspan putting up a SIP building. Okay, and this one is just weird. It's called: Insulspan SIPs & ICFs used to build "The Moon." I don't get it. And yet I watched it. I really have too much time on my hands.

Revised house plans

We've made a few updates to the plans in the last couple of weeks so I wanted to post the most current version. We upped the pitch on the mudroom roof from 8:12 to 10:12. We also changed the configuration of the windows on the south elevation. I think the new design looks a bit more modern. We also eliminated two awning windows on the north face (in the kitchen and master bedroom) in favor of more affordable 3'x3' casements.