More Progress on the House(s)

 

 

lawrence2It’s been about a week and a half since I’ve done an update.

Sorry about that, but I’ve been really busy at work and things visually hadn’t changed much.

We have all of the walls now framed and are close to getting trusses delivered. My mason is installing the porch posts and cheek walls for the three porches so we can get the posts in to support the beams to support the trusses. We should be seeing some more visible progress by the end of next week.

You’ll also notice the excavator in the middle of the picture; we’re backfilling around the house and getting some of the gravel down for the patios and garages.

The small pile of wood in the foreground is about half of the waste so far. I took a 300# load to EcoSort about a week ago and about 95% of that was recyclable. If you’re not familiar with EcoSort, I encourage you to look at their website via the link; they are a local service that sorts construction waste and recycles what can be recycled. Our first load was largely small pieces of wood, cardboard and similar material. The next load will be similar.

We’ve also enjoyed meeting a lot of our neighbors. It seems like every time we are on site, we meet a new neighbor. I think we’ve now met every one of the immediate neighbors; they seem very friendly and we think we’re going to really enjoy living in the neighborhood.

The only downside we can see so far (if it is a downside), is Cornucopia is just three blocks away.

And that could prove VERY dangerous…

 

Cottage Progress

 

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The Cottage is coming along well. Walls up, plywood on. Trusses are coming soon and the walls on the Main House will be starting tomorrow. We are doing the exterior walls as two, separate 2×4 walls with a 1″ gap between. This gives us an 8″ wall and about an R-37 insulation level.

R-values (“resistance”) are something that measures how well the house retains heat or cool inside. The higher the value, the better. Code is R-21, so we are about 60% better. This will give our tenants much lower utility costs. Our attic will have close to two feet of insulation. The floors will also have a foot of insulation.

And we are doing the same construction on the Main House.

Both houses will have a mini-split heat pump unit that will heat and cool at an incredibly high efficiency level. So combined with the added insulation, electric bills for both houses should be very low.

Well, it’s getting late. More later.

 

Apartment Life | The First Week

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I actually thought I’d do one post on the apartment, then move back to the house. But it’s been amazing to my wife and I how many people are raising and eyebrow, asking, questioning, skeptical that we could go from a 2,750 sq ft home to a 950 sq ft apartment with little adjustment. So as I sit on my leather sectional sofa, blogging on my laptop via wi-fi and sip my mocha made with my own espresso machine, let’s take a little perspective-check.

We loved our home. It worked well for us as the kids grew up and served us well. The yard was awesome. But since the kids moved out, we really were only living on the main floor, which was about 1,800 sq ft. So the transition to the apartment was easier.

What seems interesting to me is the underlying, pervasive idea that more or bigger is necessarily better. As Americans, we seem to think that bigger cars are better (look how much larger a 2014 Honda is than a 1985 Honda), bigger houses are better (the AVERAGE new home size in the U.S. is now 2,500 sq ft), etc.

To which I say: “How much is enough?”

That phrase became apparent to us in recent weeks and maybe I’ll blog on that someday. But really, we are so blessed to be living in a 950 sq ft, 2-bedroom apartment that a good share of our furniture fits and is a standard of living that is STILL better than probably 90% of the world (i.e. running/clean/hot water, dishwasher, microwave, heat and electricity).

I can honestly say after this first week, we are enjoying this part of our adventure. The house construction is coming along well (more on that later) and we’re totally stoked about this part of our journey. So don’t think we’re covering anything up when we say we are enjoying our life in our “little” apartment. The average HOME in the U.S. just 60-70 years ago was smaller than this.