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Cool House Tour 2007
Jun. 24th, 2007 09:26 pmThis morning I went for a tiring little jog. This afternoon we went on the Cool House Tour, created to educate people about "the benefits of green building and sustainability technologies."
I saw a few things this year I've never seen before or perhaps never noticed. For example, one idea is to save resources by reducing trim. Well, the thing about using trim is it means you don't have to have perfect connections because they're going to be covered with trim. One of the places with very little trim didn't do such a great job, but another place had much better workmanship.
I learned that if you pull down a ladder to access the attic and it looks like there's no attic, you may be looking at a "Magnetically-attached styrofoam attic hatch cover."
I learned that there's such a thing as "infill" housing, where you build an extra house between existing houses. Who knew that could be legal? But it's supposed to help reduce sprawling and make things more walkable.
I learned that having a detached garage is a safety measure (as opposed to having an attached garage). This made no sense to me, so I asked about it. It's because gas and other nasty poisonous chemicals you store in your garage can't waft into the house as easily. Mostly this guy did it so he could share the driveway with his neighbor, and then have the driveway fork to a detached garage behind his house. That's cool, too.
And one person has this gardening goal (though the backyard was not yet complete): "all plants in back yard [are] food-producing for humans or animals; urban wildlife habitat; all plants are native or highly adapted and low-water; no turf grass." That's pretty cool.
I also learned a few things that have nothing necessarily to do with safe, viable building. First of all, just about every house had 2000 square feet. That's twice the size of my house. And what did they do with this extra space? Generally you add another living room or three and another dining room. Definitely another bathroom or three. Bigger closets. Still only two or three bedrooms, though. And not a single one had a laundry room that you could keep an ironing board up in at all times. At least one was big enough, but was full of cabinets instead. I was wondering why you want cabinets in a laundry room. R. says you can store all your cleaning supplies in there. That makes sense. But really, how many cleaning supplies do you need?
I did find a very nice almost ordinary design for a walk-in closet. Just make it long and narrow. On one side, you have a high bar with a shelf on top and some shoe shelves across the bottom. On the other side, have a high bar and a low bar. At the end, have shelves. And this isn't so important for me, but for someone who wears make-up or fusses with their hair, have a dressing room at the entrance of the closet. On one side, you have a sink and mirror, thus freeing the bathroom for doing bathroom-related tasks. On the other side there was jewelry and stuff. Check out these totally cool jewelry racks:
Just attach some chicken wire to a nice frame. Then hook your french hook earrings right over the chicken wire. Add some cute S-hooks for your necklaces. And I don't quite understand how the studs go on there. I'd loop a ribbon over it at some point and poke those earrings through the ribbon.
And I also learned that no matter how narrow and enclosed your backyard seems, there's always room for a little decoration:
One house impressed us quite a lot with the good workmanship and good design. For example, the back porch had an awesome view and caught breezes so well that it was quite comfortable out there. And most of the extra thousand square feet seemed very usable and nice.
And how much does this sort of thing cost to build? I heard the figure "$200 per square foot" at two of the places, including my favorite. That's quite a few bucks, but not millions.
So it's good that I upped my flood insurance to $150,000; it looks like even $200,000 wouldn't be insane, though I suppose they only cover rebuilding to the quality level your house was before the flood plus any improvements required to meet code. I should look into that.
I saw a few things this year I've never seen before or perhaps never noticed. For example, one idea is to save resources by reducing trim. Well, the thing about using trim is it means you don't have to have perfect connections because they're going to be covered with trim. One of the places with very little trim didn't do such a great job, but another place had much better workmanship.
I learned that if you pull down a ladder to access the attic and it looks like there's no attic, you may be looking at a "Magnetically-attached styrofoam attic hatch cover."
I learned that there's such a thing as "infill" housing, where you build an extra house between existing houses. Who knew that could be legal? But it's supposed to help reduce sprawling and make things more walkable.
I learned that having a detached garage is a safety measure (as opposed to having an attached garage). This made no sense to me, so I asked about it. It's because gas and other nasty poisonous chemicals you store in your garage can't waft into the house as easily. Mostly this guy did it so he could share the driveway with his neighbor, and then have the driveway fork to a detached garage behind his house. That's cool, too.
And one person has this gardening goal (though the backyard was not yet complete): "all plants in back yard [are] food-producing for humans or animals; urban wildlife habitat; all plants are native or highly adapted and low-water; no turf grass." That's pretty cool.
I also learned a few things that have nothing necessarily to do with safe, viable building. First of all, just about every house had 2000 square feet. That's twice the size of my house. And what did they do with this extra space? Generally you add another living room or three and another dining room. Definitely another bathroom or three. Bigger closets. Still only two or three bedrooms, though. And not a single one had a laundry room that you could keep an ironing board up in at all times. At least one was big enough, but was full of cabinets instead. I was wondering why you want cabinets in a laundry room. R. says you can store all your cleaning supplies in there. That makes sense. But really, how many cleaning supplies do you need?
I did find a very nice almost ordinary design for a walk-in closet. Just make it long and narrow. On one side, you have a high bar with a shelf on top and some shoe shelves across the bottom. On the other side, have a high bar and a low bar. At the end, have shelves. And this isn't so important for me, but for someone who wears make-up or fusses with their hair, have a dressing room at the entrance of the closet. On one side, you have a sink and mirror, thus freeing the bathroom for doing bathroom-related tasks. On the other side there was jewelry and stuff. Check out these totally cool jewelry racks:
Just attach some chicken wire to a nice frame. Then hook your french hook earrings right over the chicken wire. Add some cute S-hooks for your necklaces. And I don't quite understand how the studs go on there. I'd loop a ribbon over it at some point and poke those earrings through the ribbon.
And I also learned that no matter how narrow and enclosed your backyard seems, there's always room for a little decoration:
One house impressed us quite a lot with the good workmanship and good design. For example, the back porch had an awesome view and caught breezes so well that it was quite comfortable out there. And most of the extra thousand square feet seemed very usable and nice.
And how much does this sort of thing cost to build? I heard the figure "$200 per square foot" at two of the places, including my favorite. That's quite a few bucks, but not millions.
So it's good that I upped my flood insurance to $150,000; it looks like even $200,000 wouldn't be insane, though I suppose they only cover rebuilding to the quality level your house was before the flood plus any improvements required to meet code. I should look into that.