Pictures

We finally got around to setting up a gallery for photos of our house. We've got just a few for now — some pictures of the land before construction starts.

Back in September when we purchased the land, much of it was a big pile of dirt from the excavation of the neighboring houses.

By February, the dirt had been mostly cleared away as the neighboring foundations were completed and backfilled. This picture shows the main area that our house will be built. It is taken from the east edge, roughly in the driveway. The black fence marks the start of the critical slope where we can't build; that will be near the edge of the usable section of our backyard; we actually own the land for about the same distance again down the hill.

This is the buildable area, shown from near the edge of the backyard (before the hill starts sloping and becomes wild). The pile of lumber is roughly where our driveway will be.

This picture gives an idea of how long our lot is, and how much it slopes. I'm taking this picture at the south-west corner of our property; Erika (one of the black blobs in the middle) is near where the previous picture was taken. All the area between us is part of our land, but will be left mostly wild. The dirt trail will eventually be cleaned up by the city; hopefully they'll add in some stairs.

This picture is near the south-east corner of our property, where the street connects. Erika is down near the north-west corner of our backyard (on the right by the tree).

There are a few more pictures of the site. You can view all the site pictures, or view all the galleries for our house, which will be updated as we add some more pictures.

Windows!

We have been working on a number of things in the past month, and we finally have something finalized to report on — windows. Window planning took several rounds of design and feedback, but was relatively easy from our perspective. The initial design was mostly good. We had a few comments, but most of the changes were suggested by Yuval and Markus to accommodate structural changes (a beam was added in the living room, which interfered with some of the windows) or to improve usability or decrease cost.

Our main point of concern was the stair tower. The initial design featured large windows over most of the west wall to take advantage of the views. These ended up being the most expensive windows, and we found the design kind of boring. In the spirit of Zen Views, we asked for less window and more interest.

Markus came up with a design which really delighted us. Wide windows punctuate the stair landings, where you can pause to take in a wider view. Vertical windows make for a dynamic view — descending from the top floor to the main floor, you see out from the highest point down towards the trees and water; ascending from the bottom floor to the main floor you see up towards the trees and sky. Going the other directions, you just have a small bit of horizontal window at the landing to focus on. From the outside it looks interesting but intentional (plus it reminds us of Tetris pieces, which is awesome).

The original design is on the left, the final design is on the right.

The rest of the windows were straight-forward. We have plenty of openable windows to get good air circulation throughout the house (look for the dotted Vs). The living room has lots of windows on the south and west to take advantage of the view and bring lots of light into the main floor. This is important since the dining room and kitchen do not have any exterior walls of their own to put windows in.

Now that the windows have been finalized, permitting should start shortly. We are working on kitchen design, and choosing appliances and plumbing fixtures (faucets, sinks, toilets, etc.). All the while, we are starting to analyze the budget and make sure our choices stay within it. We have been busy, but we'll post more as we finalize our choices.

Roof Form

As of a couple weeks ago, we still needed to decide on a roof form. After looking at different forms from different perspectives and in context of the other houses, we made a decision.

The two shed variants were eliminated fairly quickly — we weren't as fond of how those looked, either in isolation or with the other houses. The choice was between flat and butterfly. We liked the way the flat roof looked in isolation, but it didn't fit as well with the community (the rest of the homes have butterfly roofs). We decided to go with a butterfly roof. It matched the other houses and still looked good on ours. It also adds visual interest to the strong horizontal lines on our exterior.

Here's how the butterfly roof looks in the context of the neighborhood. In the top portion of this image, our house is the right-most one; in the bottom portion, it is the left-most.

We currently have lots of other things in process. Windows are being finalized, kitchen design has started, and plans for permitting are being worked on. It is keeping us busy, but there is nothing finished to report on quite yet.