So what does my family need for a house? I've been playing with this question for some time. As a child I loved to draw floor plans. When I babysat for other families, once the kids were in bed, I would pace out the house and try to figure out how the walls came together, as if each wall were a puzzle piece to fit in a puzzle, which I'd put together once I got home. This grew into designing better plans than the ones these families lived in - and when I was young, better usually meant bigger, with more bathrooms, more stairs, more fancy, expensive features like massive ensuites and indoor pools!
Over time, when I realized I'd actually have to clean those enormous bathrooms and endless staircase and with much influence form Sarah Susanka's "Not So Big House", I started to focus on better rooms, not more. Kitchens designed to work, not just look big. Quality over quantity in general became my mantra.
Tying into the idea of quality over quantity is sustainability. At very least, to me, this means orienting the building to take advantgage of passive solar heating, positioning windows to catch the breezes, using water and energy efficient appliances, planning space to hold recyclable items and insulating well. Ideally it would mean installing a grey water system, a solar panel, radiant heating, recycled and reclaimed items, renewable items, and more. I'm still researching this area but the options and opportunities are endless!
My husband is leaning strongly toward building a rammed earth building. He has a journeyman ticket in carpentry, and he has enough experience in building houses that I trust him implicitly with the actual building of the house. From what I understand, rammed earth buildings fit neatly into many of my ideals, especially one I have yet to write out here.
I admit, after many years living in an ugly, haphazard, poorly built house I want to demonstrate our unique sense of style and our ideas of what a good house actually is. It's not a giant garage with living quarters attached. It's not a big, bigger or biggest generic floor plan for every family out there. It's a home that's a delight to discover, takes up no more space than it needs, that says something about the people who live it, and above all, it's well planned to be helpful in keeping up with today's faster paced lifestyles.
So, that's my quest. I've somehow got to fold all of these qualities into a financially feasible and physically possible building that will last our family as long as a lifetime.
Of course, maybe, if I totally flunk out, we could build again ten years later!
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