Walk Through-video

Here's a video that I made using two new softwares, Revit and Windows Movie Maker. The perspectives are a little skewed at times but it's still pretty amazing. I uploaded it to YouTube just click below.

Watch the video and take a walk through our house!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvVJp9QeMb0

Interiors

I'm learning a new program called Revit. There are a lot of cool things about the program. One of them being that you can quickly draw perspectives. I printed a couple out and colored them to document the dream I had the other night. Let me know what you think!

The kitchen and all the first floor will have grey walls and yellow trim.

The guest room/reading room's west wall and ceiling will be clad in reclaimed wood. The wood will come out to make part of the railing to the office. The blue will hopefully be translucent panels if we can find ones that will give us the insulation and heat gain protection we need.

Roof: Part 1

The roof was delivered on Friday! Jonathan from Central Texas Metal Roofing Supply dropped it off and was very helpful. We've had a good experience with their company and he topped it off.

Jesse spent the weekend preparing the roof for the metal panels. He laid down the new underlayment and fixed a couple sheathing boards that had been misnailed.

Today Jesse and Chris C. started putting up the rake trim. So far so good! They're doing a real professional job. This is really good because metal roofs look fantastic when they're done right but are unforgiving when it comes to mistakes. I'll try to stay on top of the bloggin so you can really see the progress.

Jesse showing off his fantastic detailing skills

Spring has Sprung!

YIKES! It's been a really long time since we've update our blog. Hope we haven't lost our audience(assuming we have one). So as Jesse mentioned in the last blog he's been taking a break so he can work on other paying gigs. It's been really good. He's enjoying the other work and getting more and more excited about coming back to this project. In the meantime I've been looking into solar electric panels, roofing, plumbing, and solar hot water.

We designed the house for solar panels to be installed but had intended to leave the installation and purchasing til the far future. Upon pricing them with the current rebates available it didn't make sense to wait. The rebates are available as a tax credit from the federal government and a chunk of money from the Austin Energy program. All in all with both incentives we'll save about 2/3 of the cost of the system. The Austin Program is a first come first serve so we decided to hop on it and are waiting for their approval. If we aren't approved solar electricity will move once again to the back burner.

We're still undecided on the solar water heater. We have to look more into the cost savings over an at source gas water heater. Although it would be nice to not be dependent on gas we're still leaning toward a gas stove which would mean we'd be running gas to the house regardless. Although there are incentives form the City for the solar there are ones for the gas too. So we'll see how the numbers work out.

We did a lot of looking around for the proper roofing for our budget and design intentions. We had already decided we wanted a metal roof for it's durability and dashing good looks but that's just the tip of the iceburg in roof decisions. In the end we went with a 24gauge galvanized metal roof with Kynlar Energy Star coating. The Energy Star rating is relative to it being recyclable and its reflectivity, which helps mitigate solar heat gain. We narrowed it down to Shasta White, an off white almost a light beige and Zinc Gray. On the day of the final decision we took the color samples outside to get a clear idea of what they might look like on our roof. Since I couldn't look at the Shasta White without my eyes watering we decided to go with the Zinc Gray. I think all our neighbors and passerbys will be happy we didn't go with the glaring, accident causing white, even though I think the white would've looked awesome. We ordered custom trim for the eaves and rakes to match the roof which ended up not costing a lot more then if we had used their standards but allows us to have the profiles we want. The low eaves will have gutters. The high eaves & the rakes will have metal flashing along the whole edge. We had originally laid tar paper on all the roof but have decided to add a layer of blue plastic which is recommended as the underlayment for the metal roof. It's slightly more expensive but will hold up better over time and the roof is one of those places where we'd rather spend a little more money and do it right. We can cut corners in other places. The roof and all it's pieces get dropped off tomorrow morning. I'm really excited!

Jesse did manage to install most of the windows on that Saturday with the help of Richard. So I'm putting some picts below of that. Stay tuned for roofing delivery pictures!! and a play by play of the window installing by Jesse. Please ask questions and post comments.

PS- I had trouble sleeping last night and in a half sleep half wake state that my dad refers to as Dream Time I decorated the entire interior of the house. It was pretty amazing. To be totally honest I've been most nervous about the finish out. The house is so beautiful in it's unfinished state and the forms are exactly as I had envisioned. But too often you see a building miss it's mark in the final stages and you think, Wow that could've been a real home run if they hadn't wrecked the end. I've also been plauged with a tendency towards the tacky all my life and was afraid my Punky Brewster past would come out in my decor. Last night was a home run! Muted colors but not pastels, greys and whites with accent colors in certain rooms, furniture that compliments without overcrowding, tile work and wood accents. I'm still going to call my more interior minded friends for some backup when the time comes but I'm no longer scared of the Decorating Demons of my past!