I thought I'd post a little info and a few pictures for those of you who haven't been able to come see our house in person. It is a fantastic and strange design, that's for sure. I don't have the whole story, but what I do know is that it was commissioned by John's parents sometime in the early 80s. It is, as far as I know, one of a kind. They poured the foundation in 1985, according to the date beneath John and Lucy's handprints on the edge of the porch.
The design is definitely unique. It's a single story earth contact that takes advantage of passive solar design aspects. For instance, it faces south and features a row of what we call "clear story" windows along the top central wall in the house to let in lots of light. Nearly every room in the house is well-lit for most of the day. Another remarkable aspect is the curve. Take a block of clay, and pull the two ends of it toward one side, into a rainbow shape, and you'll start to get the idea for our house. In fact, here's a picture of our house from space, courtesy of Google Maps. I outlined our property (as best as I can figure without going to the effort of hiring a surveyor) in red. North is up, etc.
It's not very clear about the details, but you can definitely see the curve the house is defined by. The front (southern) face of the house is mostly windows, and is shaped in profile in a style that always remind me of chicken coops for some reason. Here's a view from the west, facing east. The rat's nest of weeds on the right is my tomato garden. Click on the link, cuz this file is huge.
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If you'll notice the roof is sectioned into sort of upside-down checkmarks. Behind the "foot" of each checkmark (on the wall beneath the overhang) is a horizontal row of windows. Those are the clear story windows I was talking about earlier, and they run darn near the entire length of the house. It's 2am, and I can't find all of the pictures Mom and I took a while back, so you'll have to bear with me until the sun comes up again and I can get outside with my camera. The nearest checkmarked roof section is the master bedroom, and the tallest section of checkmarked roof covers the hallway that runs the length of the house. There's a door that opens from the master bedroom onto the porch, which, with the retaining wall that keeps the tomato garden from eating my porch, makes for a cozy little nook.
One more before I go, here's a picture of the sunroom from the outside. It's the small gray rectangle on the south side of the house in the first picture. (The large gray square on the northeast side of the house that looks almost like a--very large--afterthought is the garage.) One of the clear story windows can be seen in the far upper left corner of the picture. Place another 14 or 15 in a straight line to the left, and you'll get a fair idea of what they look like.
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for the big image file.
Oh, and if you want to leave a comment (which will always be welcome--I love to hear from you!), there's a nice little link to click right below that says "# Comments." Come on, try it, you'll like it. Everyone's doing it. It's cool. First one's free!
Well, some of you know we recently suffered a leak in our roof. I woke up one morning to find water pouring down an interior window between the kitchen and the sunroom, both sides of course, where it wasn't possible to apply the time honored leaky roof solution: an old cooking pot. After many amusing antics and some odd but sound advice from friends, we called a roofer, who came out a couple of days later to give us an estimate. While we were waiting for them to mail us said estimate, we found another leak, this one in the garage. Thankfully, it was nowhere near a window, or even anything that could possibly mold later, and we were able to use the time honored solution.
Time passed, as it is wont to do, and we woke yesterday morning to the unpleasant-but-necessary sound of elephants on the roof. Figuring they had done the job (yet wondering why they had been walking over the master bedroom--on the opposite end of the house from the two leaks), I called them this morning to finalize the bill only to be greeted with unpleasant news: the whole roof was shot. The culprit was hail damage, probably from one of the big storms that blew through this past fall. Considering that, it's rather lucky we didn't have problems sooner.
As a homeowner challenge, I think this won't be as big a deal as the hot water heater was a few months ago. (Cold showers are a big checkmark in the "NO" column for me, anyway.) Barring any blizzards or monsoons in the next month or so--you never know, it is Missouri, after all--we should be able to get the roof replaced without too much fuss, if the very confident gentleman at the roofing business is to be believed.
However, there is still the matter of the kitchen floor, which is a laminated wood flooring, and not looking so good after stewing in roof juice. Sara's husband Cliff is wrapping up a floor tile/painting/trimming project in their own kitchen--or he will be if Sara ever stops adding things to the project--so we'll probably appropriate him for our slave skilled labor. He did a fantastic job on his very first tile job: our main bathroom, and with all the practice he's gotten in their kitchen, well, I think all we need to do is settle on some tile.
As soon as we're ready to start work, I'll post some pictures.
Wish us luck!
