Sunday, May 20, 2012

Green Building Is the Life For Me . . .

So I am all about Green Building.  I am super excited about some products out there.  One is Thermocore Structural Insuated Panels for walls.  This product is cool - you send them the CAD drawings, and they build your walls at their factory - OSB with closed cell insulation, already sprayed in with the windows and doors computer cut (meaning absolutely square!) and conduit run and electrical boxes placed.  This stuff makes a very solid house, and a very tight house.  They come in and assemble your home in a couple of days!

This is what it looks like:

Another product is Superior Walls, which is a similar idea, but using precast concrete forms.  Again, all computer designed.  You can watch a cool time-lapse video here.

This stuff is not that new - but not that common in the midwest.  Norm Abrams of This Old House said he would ONLY build a new home with SIPs like Thermocore, and Superior Walls has been used on the show too.


I also really like cork flooring.  Not only is it green (cork flooring is made from the bark of cork trees, which is harvested without the trees being harmed.  The flooring is often made from the scraps from making wine corks) but it is very soft underfoot yet resiliant.  As someone whose ankles are often really sore from RA, this really appeals to me.

Plus, you can do really neat things with it.  Here's just one example:


So all this green stuff is great and I'm really excited about it.



Unfortunately, no one else involved in this build is.  Steve and his dad poo-poo the Thermocore and Superior Walls as radical newfangled nonsense.  My builder isn't sold on it either.

And Steve decided that he doesn't "like" the cork.  So ankles be damned.

Sigh.

Saturday, May 19, 2012

The Plans

So here are the plans as they stand.  Slight tweaks will be happening, but this gives you the overall idea.



Monday, May 7, 2012

Welcome

Welcome to my home building blog, where you can keep track of our build.  Or our sanity level.


A little background - we live in a nice house that I like a lot and never imagined moving from.  And yet we are building a new home a mere 3 blocks away.  I'll get into the reasons (or excuses) later.


The title of the blog is a play on "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House", a 1946 novel written by written by Eric Hodgins and illustrated by William Steig and the movie of the same name made in 1948 starring Cary Grant and Myrna Loy.  I highly recommend both especially if you, too, are contemplating building a house.  


We are currently owners of the lot, and have preliminary floor plans done.  The real work is yet to begin.


Read on!