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We had an intense 2.5 hour session going over the first series of construction drawings. I’ve had them a couple of weeks, penciling in questions and changes and selections. I’ve been trying to get the list in shape to post here, but it’s slow going because I keep getting sidetracked.

The discussion ranged from bathroom layouts (I think we’ve finally got it) to where to put the lights to the zeppelin weathervane. What didn’t I tell you about the zeppelin? That will have to be custom made, because while there are plenty of cars, boats, cats and wine bottle weathervanes, there are no zeppelins.

Rather than go through everything that was on the list I had (especially since we did it face-to-face — imagine that!), I just want to address a couple of points that came up during our meeting.

First: The underlayment for Marmoleum. From Scott at G&K: it’s 1/4″ nominal (5.2-6mm) exterior grade solid core plywood, smooth one side. If we want it to butt up to hardwood with minimal transition (and we would), would need more underlayment (say 3/8-1/2″).

Second: Belvedere windows. Casements to the south, awnings to the north. Nothing like compromise

Third: Kitchen fireplace. Still working on it.

Fourth: Retractible Awnings. I really don’t like this idea. I have very bad experiences with them from my youth. Would an exterior window shade be effective? Related to that — do we want some sort of shade over the M’s bedroom window, or will the roof overhang be enough?

Fifth: Yard Hydrant. Much like these.

Sixth: Exterior window trim. I made this little movie from a pdf I painted in Photoshop (using the James Hardie Countrylane Red). I think I’d like to have the trim, and Bill does too, except for the vertical windows at the library. The white bit between them may want to be red.

That’s it for the moment. More to come!

Spent a half hour this morning at G&K Floor Covering, looking at all of their Marmoleum samples and chatting with Scott. I got their name from Forbo when I requested samples. It was instructive — I really think we can use the lino effectively in the “converted barn” part of the house, as well as in other places. For budgetary purposes, we’re talking about $10/ft installed, possibly less if there aren’t too many price increases between now and when we’re ready to build.

In fact, we’re considering putting lino instead of hardwood in the kitchen/dining/family area. Lino is more appropriate for a chem lab, anyway.

Today Bill and I drove out to Jackson to visit The Grate Haus and educate ourselves on fireplaces. It was a very good experience, since we could see many of the fireplaces in operation (the gas ones, not the wood ones), and get a feel for each one’s style and capacity. Mike was very helpful as he explained the differences between the various fireplaces and where each might be appropriate to use.

On the trip over, Bill and I spent a good deal of time discussing all of our various design options. Decorating an existing house is pretty easy, because someone has already made the choice of flooring, mouldings, cabinet styles, etc. Of course, if you do a whole remodel, you get to choose everything, but most of the time we work with what’s already there. So, while I’m perfectly comfortable picking the floor, toilet and sink for our current bathroom, I’m finding it really difficult to expand my purview to the whole house. I can do one room at a time, but at the same moment I want to be sure everything hangs together and doesn’t just look like a Designers’ Show House (you know, where each room has a different designer and folks walk through looking for ideas…)

Anyway, we like modern and we like steel and we like industrial, but our furniture is traditional, wood, Victorian (and neo-Vic), and cushy. We also like Arts & Crafts and Art Deco and Art Comfy. So I suppose you could say we’re eclectic, but that term is overused. In any case, I can’t see us living in any particular style of decor as much as I can see us living in all of them.

So we’ve just about hit on a strategy for making all of these design decisions. We’ll attack each space individually, but make up a story as we go along about how that room got attached to the house. This narrative will help us to narrow down the choices (do you know there are a near-infinite variety of lavatory sinks?) to the ones that make sense for the space. It will also help us continue the fiction that the house was added on to over the years, and that it started life as a converted barn.

Here are some of the stories we have so far:

0) The original house was “modern converted barn” so it will have industrial underpinnings (such as the steel-supported staircase) with echoes of barniness. In general, rather than use barn hardware (wrought iron, etc.) use barn-inspired hardware. If I can figure out where to put a Dutch door…

1) The kitchen will evoke a feeling of being in a chemistry lab (as many “modern” homes do). Where better to experiment than in the kitchen? Natural maple cabinets with slab doors and flat black countertop. (Possibly stainless counter on the back wall.) Undermount (if we can, otherwise self-rimming) single-bowl stainless sink with a high-arched faucet. Range vent looks kinda like a fume hood. Upper cabinets might have some glass. If I can find a suitable transition point, the floor will be lino, otherwise it will be the same wood as elsewhere. I’m still working on the sitting area fireplace, but it won’t be very big.

2) M’s room was added on just for her, so it will have a more traditional feel to it — the bulk of the decor is her stuff. The bathroom is straight out of Better Homes and Gardens with a “beach cottage” look in white beadboard wainscot and sand-colored lino.

3) The library was added to the house during our most Euro period. The bookcases (as described by Bob) are light maple plywood — there’s lots of square going on. The fireplace reflects that, mounted as it is to echo the square windows. The door should have a window pattern to reflect this also, perhaps just a large square window and the rest wood? The benefit for using this style fireplace is that it is quite shallow and doesn’t take up much floor space. We could put another bookcase under it

4) The basement will have a larger wood fireplace (I don’t have this one detailed yet, either) with a raised hearth, possibly surrounded with the same stone as we use on the exterior (story: we got it from the original structure). This is probably going to feel like a traditional basement family room, with the exception of the stained concrete (and humongous windows) rather than carpeted floor.

Those are all the stories I have at the moment. Right now, it looks like we’ll use hardwood (in whatever reddish character grade we can get) everywhere except for the basement, bathrooms and entries, and probably painted trim. The story for that is we’re trying to get all these spaces to tie together somehow…

That’s how I feel today, tomorrow may be a bit different.

Bob sent along a .dxf file of the house, and I’ve been “walking” (careening, actually) about the place using SketchUp and imagining sight lines, etc. As I go I snap a 2D picture every so often. Yesterday while the power was out (hooray for batteries in the laptop) I relearned just how woeful my Photoshop skills are and did this:

If I get better at wondering around, I might be able to find more gems like this (recolored using Preview):

Making these snapshots can only help with my “homework” to fill out the spreadsheet Bob also sent that details the floors, walls and ceilings of all of the spaces in the house. I’m hoping I’ll be able to get good enough at painting them in Photoshop to get a feeling for what the space will look like. It’s much easier for me to pick colors if there are some already there, and if I have an idea of what the shadows in the room are like. It’s much more difficult imagining it in thin air with a background of meadow. I’m willing to try, though. I see now why beige is such a popular color

Bill and I went through a few of the HBAWC Showcase homes this weekend. This year the show combined with the Livingston County builders’ show. We saw very few homes — timing is an issue, as well as goals. We wanted to see homes that touted their “green” or EnergyStar ratings. We wanted to look at finishes that might be possible for our house. And finally, we wanted to look at homes that are ridiculously weird.

And I must say, we met all three goals. I’m not going to go into all of the details, but let’s just say that there are people in Washtenaw County whose taste is absolutely not similar to mine. No way. A couple of the houses seemed nice enough, in a bland, decorating-trends magazine sort of way. Mostly I think that I’ve been focused on my own house for so long that I wasn’t seeing these places as coherent homes but as individual snippets of ideas to use (or not) in our place.

I don’t have many names, locations, or pictures — just some random thoughts about what I liked. Mostly everything is jumbled together anyway (with the exception of the house by Meadowlark, with whom we’ve spoken before, and the really not-us house I don’t care to name.)

At one house I saw a sliding door using barn-style hardware. I’d seen pictures, and it was just as interesting in person. I think this particular style certainly fits with the barn theme, but I’d be as happy with stainless.

Nearly all of the houses we visited had mud room cubbies. Typically (painted) white, with a row of cabinets above a series of open “lockers” with hanging hooks and a bench. Depending on the room size, there were either 3, 4 or 5 stations for family junk.

The other unifying item (with the exception of a surfeit of granite and televisions) was glass enclosed showers. I think I saw maybe two tub/shower combos and these were only ever in the obvious children’s baths. Even the guest rooms had fancy glass showers. One provider that I noted was Diamond Glass & Feiner’s (not a very good website). I’m sure there are others.

There were a couple of things about the Meadowlark house that we liked. First, the deeeeeep windowsills afforded by to-the-roof ICF construction. (In fact, Bill remarked every time he saw a deep windowsill how much he liked it.) Second, it was nice to see Marmoleum being used. Most everywhere else had tile entries (which I don’t really want), and I wanted to see what it looked like in situ. In general it was a nice house.

Other random thoughts: Builders seem more willing to learn about super-insulated house technologies than they were a few years ago. I don’t know whether it’s a marketing thing, an energy thing or an “I need a job” thing. Whatever, it’s nice to seem them getting on the bandwagon. I must admit I’m tired of hearing “I looked into that years ago and I doubt it’s gotten better, but I’m willing to learn” from people who are willing to learn on my dime.

Things we don’t want: a television in every room, a LCD panel A/V system in every room, ceilings raised for no apparent reason, balconies that can’t be accessed from any room.

All in all, it was a useful $20 spent (plus the gas). We’ve identified a couple more builders to call, and have identified many more not to call.