A Bit of Privacy

We've been living in our new house for about a month now. We love the amount of windows and they way the house really takes advantage of daylight and cool breezes. So far, we only have shades on one set of windows in one room. No other windows have window treatment yet and although we love the simplicity of that, it does leave us feeling a bit exposed at times. We are only about 25' from the street and we do have quite a few people looking at our house these days. There are times when we look out the window to see someone looking in. Sometimes we just end up waving to each other. We really don't mind too much- but there are times we feel on display.

Time for window treatments.....

Our aupair is lucky enough to have this bedroom (although it's very small) with a balcony. The balcony space is really quite wonderful, in that it's like being in a tree house. This tree also provides a bit of privacy, but it will need to be trimmed and the leaves will be gone in a couple of months, leaving it much more exposed to the street. When Kerstin leaves in October, it will become a guest room/study room.

We just installed these roller shades from The Shade Store for this room. We went with the subtle white-on-white pattern.
Now, we're just debating on window treatments for the other windows that need it (mostly bedrooms). Although I like the solar shades and roller shades, we really count on the breezes we get at night. Given the need for breezes to pass thru, and the desire to control light entering, we are going to go with a 2 or 2.5" wood or faux wood blind in white. I just have to do a bit of research to find a louver with recycled content.

Down the Drain- the evils of Garbage Disposals

I grew up in the country without the luxury of a sink garbage disposal. When I bought my first house, it had a disposal, which I was quite proud of. I remember the first time my parents came to visit. They were enthralled with all the scraps that could just go into the sink rather than a smelly bucket under the sink. “Can this go down there?” they inquired about the corn cobs...... I guess there is something fascinating about a machine that will take in scraps, grind them to smithereens and makes them magically disappear.

Only problem is that they don’t just magically disappear. It takes a good deal of running water to wash the ground scraps away and it taxes the city sewer system. The city Raleigh NC recently banned the installation of new garbage disposals. It caused quite a raucous I understand, with people claiming it is their God-given right to throw scraps down the drain. Other communities are offering composting programs where, along with garbage and recycling pick-up, they will pick up food scraps.

Although we don’t have a compost program in St Paul, we are planning on having a compost bin in the yard and collect food scraps rather than sending them down the drain. We did not install a garbage disposal and won’t miss it at all because we didn’t have one in our last house either. So, I’m trying to find a bin that will look good (although it will sit under the sink) and contain smells. I’m leaning towards this model because it’s simple and clean in design. It doesn't have a filter, like the more elaborate and expensive models, but I'm thinking we won't have anything sitting in there too long before taking it to the compost bin outside.

This stainless steel compost pail costs 19.95 from Gardener’s Supply.

As far as a compost bin, I’m looking for input. There are models that tumble and ones that require turning with a shovel or pitchfork. I’m looking for easy. Any suggestions out there?

Don't they look like they are having fun tumbling their compost?

Getting Ready for the Move

Okay. We are about 8 days and counting until move-in. The contractors are going thru room by room finishing everything and doing their thorough cleaning. . The house is cleaning up very nicely!

This is the shared bath. The casework by Eastvold Custom turned out great. We used a douglas fir veneer and the hardware is by Mockett. The Toto sink and faucet is from Rakieten Sales. The recycled glass terrazzo countertop is from Natural Built Home Toilet and tub are also from Toto. I can't wait to soak in this one! The tile is from Kate-Lo Tile.

Here's a few shots of the Master Bath: Some more doug fir cabinets by Eastvold Custom with square recessed hardware by Mockett again. We used the Toto Aquia dual flush, along with Toto sink and Grohe faucets from Rakieten Sales.

The countertops are made of Skatelite. Skatelite is a recycled paper product like Richlite, but it is thinner (and less expensive). It's actually used for skate board parks- thus the name Skatelite. Matt Eastvold suggested the idea to use it with a substrate and some doug fir edge banding. We love how it turned out!

In preparation for the move, we’ve been trying to finish all the closets and storage units so that we have places to put our stuff. It’s a good thing IKEA is so close to our new house, because we’ve been going there A LOT. We’ve become regulars there and Kevin even has developed his own “system” of IKEA shopping which involves shortcuts through the store and ignores the 1-way traffic. What a rebel he is! Even though IKEA products are relatively inexpensive, we’ve managed to spend a pretty penny there this month. I’ve been just waiting to get a call from our credit card company asking what the heck is going on. This is the Ikea Pax closet system we used for our master bedroom closet.

The exterior paint is done. We’re not thrilled about the blue we’d chosen (okay, okay, I chose). I changed the color at the last minute and I probably should have stayed with the original choice. The first blue paint being painted was definitely the wrong color. We gave the painter the right name, but we were one digit off on the number. (I guess that is the kind of thing that may happen when you get only 4 hours of sleep). Then the next blue being painted was still not the what we wanted and we think it’s because it was painted “satin” and not flat –which surprised us. At this point, we’re just too embarrassed to have him repaint it again. I think we’ll live with it for awhile and then see how important it is to us. It’s only paint and we can repaint if necessary.

Lights, Camera, Action!

This week, the lights went in at the house. Although we've been very impressed with how daylit the house is, the lights really make it feel like home. Now, we are actually able to work there at night (both a good and bad thing)! Kevin took advantage of this on Saturday and spent the afternoon into the evening working on laying the FLOR carpet tiles in the kids' bedrooms.

Mazzy designed the floor pattern for her bedroom and also helped lay the tile. We used 4 colors of FLOR Toy Poodle.

View looking towards her closet.

There is one wall with an accent color. Mazzy is finally out of the pink, purple and frilly stage. Her favorite color is blue.

Declan help with his bedroom installation also. In the boys bedroom, we used the Straight & Narrow line from FLOR. It's not nearly as soft as the Toy Poodle, but this is a case where they had the right colors.

There is an orange accent wall in the boys bedroom.

Cormac checks out the drawers in the newly lit kitchen. The glass shades at the island are on backorder, so we'll be looking at bare bulbs for awhile.

IKEA Bust

You can tell our age and priorities in life by the fact that the most exciting part of our Friday night plans was a trip to IKEA. Yep, that’s where we’re at these days.

Our plan is to lay for FLOR carpeting and install closet organizers in both kids bedrooms this weekend. I had spent several nights this week debating and determining the appropriate closet system for both kids’ bedrooms. IKEA has several options, including the Antonius system and Stolmen. We had settled on Antonius primarily based on cost. It’s a simple system compromised of metal wall standards, brackets, hanging rods, shelves and other various accessories. With help from the IKEA website and a pamphlet on the Antonius system parts, I had designed each closet and had a spreadsheet listing all the parts needed. Armed with my spreadsheet, we had a family IKEA outing. Much to my dismay, the wall standards were on backorder. Without these standards, you have nothing- they are the backbone for the system. When I inquired about how long it might be before they receive them, the answer was 8-10 weeks! Holy cow! I’m amazed that IKEA could not have the major component for their most popular shelving system. I guess when you can get a system like this for such a cheap price, you expect everything to always go your way. It’s the whole beggers-can’t-be-choosers thing.

We’re likely going to have to switch to the Stolmen system. This is a much more expensive system that is compromised of floor-to-ceiling poles that have attachments to add on shelving, cabinets, clothes rods and other accessories. To compare the cost to Antonius, the Antonius wall standards are $4 each. The Stolmen poles are $30. It may be a more sturdy system, which is good- but we’ll have to just do with less accessories and shelves for now.
We headed out of IKEA frustrated and empty-handed. It was raining and the sun was shining and we saw the most amazing rainbow we’d ever seen. It was a brilliant, full rainbow with a slight double rainbow that was ending in front of the Mall of America. The kids were enthusiastic about heading over to find the pot of gold. But with our luck, I’m sure someone else found it first

House #s, Stair Carpet and Roller Shades

It seems like every night, I’m researching and debating another choice for the house. It’s been fun, but also a lot of work. This week I made a few decisions on a variety of items.


House Numbers
A small, but important item is house numbers. It's part of that whole first impression thing. We saw a couple of nice options on sale on the Design Within Reach website, including the orange numbers above. For $9.99, these options seemed like a great idea. However,we need a number 2 and it must be the most popular number, as there were no more 2s for any of the sale options. The Neutra letters shown below are great, but at 75 bucks a pop, they are not as within our reach as we’d like.

I then went back to my original idea of ordering them thru WestOn Letters. They have a great number of options of fonts, sizes and finishes. I decided to go with 5” aluminum letters in the Roffe font. I love the clean simple lines- no serifs, no fuss. The price for 4 letters- $136.

Stair Carpet.
If we were designing this house from scratch, we would have likely had an open stair, or made the stair a design element. Unfortunately, the existing stair has bearing walls on either side, so we were left with few options to change it. We added a light, but beyond that, I was a little worried about the blandness of this stair. The existing stair runner needs to be replaced, so I went in search of a great runner- something that could add some life to the stair. What I found is not really a carpet runner, but individual stair rugs for each tread. Liza Phillips Design carries these Alto Step designs that have some great colors and modern designs. They are high quality rugs- either hand-knotted in Nepal, or a tufted option from New Zealand wool. There were a few unique sets on sale and I wanted this one called “Spring Bubbles”. The only issue I was concerned about was the existing treads on our house might be a bit to narrow. When I called Liza, she was great to work with, she measured the rugs for me and was willing to put together some other options on how to make them work. I was really excited to find this option and placed my order.

Window Treatments
Architects hate to think about window treatments. We lived in our current house for years before we bit the bullet and decided we needed a bit more privacy at times. We used 2” wood blinds and have been fairly happy with them. For the new house, we’ll likely go thru the same deliberations and delays. However, for Kerstin’s room the large window wall on the south side will have to be addressed sooner rather than later. During the summer, the maple tree in the front of the house will provide some privacy, but we’ll be cutting this back, as it seems to be taking over the front corner of the house.

The shades in this room will need to look good from not only the inside, but the outside of the house. I first got a tip from my friend, Fiona from Scotland on these new type of panels. They work like a vertical blind, but are in larger panels. I love the look of these, but was concerned about the stacking space blocking the window. I wanted to be able to have the window treatment disappear and be able to be totally open.

Because the windows are wall to wall, the only way to have a wide-open window would be to have shade mounted on top. I found these great patterned roller shades from The Shade Store. They come in a variety of patterns, from bold to subtle. I am still debating the pattern- whether it should be bold like this:

Which looks like this when putting multiple shades together:

or more subtle like this:

First Impressions

As the old saying goes, “you never have a second chance to make a first impression”. Up until now, we have been concentrating on the big picture- what the house looks like from the street, how it fits into the neighborhood, scale and proportion. But the small details can be equally as important on one’s first impression and deserve some attention as well. We’ve made a couple of choices on some of these smaller details including solar step lights, a mailbox and doorbell,

Solar Accent Lights
This Smart Solar product has a solar module in the center that charges the batteries. At dusk, the LED lights automatically come on and turn off at dawn, as long as the batteries are fully charged. I found these solar step lights at Amazon.com. They are about $25 each. I was impressed with the quality of the housing, which is stainless steel ring with glass top. The unit can be inserted into concrete, a wood deck or just placed at the edges of a sidewalk in mulch. I ordered 4 to start with, but I may order more now that I can see they are of good quality. We just have to decide if they will be mounted into our wood front entry deck, or will be alongside the sidewalk.

Mailbox
We have a partial height wall at the side of our front door that will serve as an edge to our entry stairs and as a place for the mailbox. This prominent location calls for something more than the $12.95 mailbox at the local hardware store. We also get quite a bit of mail because Kevin’s business mail is delivered to our home. We need to have an oversized box that looks good.

There are a number of places on the web that have links to well-designed, modern mailboxes. Apartment Therapy has their Top Ten Mailbox list with some great options. Chaisso http://www.chiasso.com/ has a number of inexpensive models and a search of mailboxes on Live Modern http://livemodern.com/ turns up a number of good options and resources.
We ended up selecting this Blomus model and ordering it from Amazon.com. It has a small window so that you can see when the mail has come and a matching newspaper slot can be added on the bottom. It costs a bit more than some of the other models we were looking at- but I think the quality will be very good and it’s a bit oversized to accommodate the extra mail. Blomus is a German company that specializes in stainless steel products that have a simple, modern design. A German mailbox for EcoDEEP haus makes perfect sense!

Door Bell
There are a number of well-designed modern options at Lumens.com http://www.lumens.com/lumens I picked the De-light Doorbell Button by Spore. This model has a LED light (I picked blue) and a couple of options for the surround (I picked polished aluminum). I was a bit disappointed when I received the doorbells, as the polished aluminum finish made the unit seem a bit cheap. In hindsight, I should have selected the matte finish. For the door bell chime, I went with this Cage Door Chime by Modern Doorbells also from Lumens.com. It has a 2-chime ring for the front door and 1-chime ring for the backdoor. Genius!

Down the Drain

In Minnesota, the land of 10,000 lakes, we don’t often talk about limited water supply, but other regions aren’t so lucky. When I was in Atlanta in November, everyone was talking about the drought and there was an actual count down in number of days until the water supply ran out. Other desert cities such as Las Vegas and Phoenix are facing a major water crisis as their population grows and they scramble to find water. It can't all come from the Colorado River forever. The fight over water rights is predicted to be as big or bigger than current fights over oil in the future, as we continue to build cities in deserts. The problem is that the people with most oil and economic power will likely win the war over water. Stay Tuned.

Even though water is relatively inexpensive and plentiful now, it is still our goal to reduce our water use in our new home. There are several resources we are using that provide water reduction strategies. The MN GreenStar program http://www.mngreenstar.org/ lists a number of water reduction strategies that we are following and the EPA’s WaterSense program has created a label for water efficient fixtures.
http://www.epa.gov/watersense/

In my experience researching plumbing fixtures the last couple of months, it seems to be relatively easy to find water efficient toilets these days, but much more difficult to find faucets that are low-flow - at least for residential applications. There are plenty commercial fixtrues available that meet the requirements. I spent hours researching and trying to find low flow fixtures that would meet our esthetic goals with little or no luck. Although there are products available, I was trying to select compatible or matching faucets, shower heads and control valves for two different bathrooms. I had almost given up on the low-flow aspect until Kevin drew his line in the sand and demanded that we do better. I decided to stay with the fixtures we had selected for esthetic reasons and research switching the aerators. I finally e-mailed the technical support for both Grohe and Toto to request low-flow aerators. In both the case of Toto and Grohe, they were able to supply a 1.5 GPM low flow aerator for the faucet, no problem. (Most standard fixtures meet a 2.2 GPM flow rate). Neither Toto or Grohe advertised or had information on their websites about their low flow aerator options, which surprised me. My guess is that there is currently not the demand for this option, but this will be changing in the future. We will likely purchase and use the 1.5 gpm aerators for the kitchen sink, but will inevitably change out the aerators to a .5 gpm aerator in the bathroom lavatories. We'll leave the tub alone, as lwering th flow rate simply increases the length of time it will take to fill the tub for a bath.

Grohe Concetto faucet and Toto Nexus faucet

The biggest water hog and last fixture to get a water efficiency makeover is the showerhead. In fact, the current trend is new-fangled features that actually increase water use. Performance showering” is a tempting trend, which includes multiple shower heads, rain-shower heads, pulsating and variable sprays- but the downside is the isignificantly increased water use (including longer time spent in the shower, I’m sure!) Since Kevin believes in the 2 minute shower, this is not the direction we will pursue.

Finding low-flow shower heads is even more difficult than the faucets. The WaterSense program does not have shower heads labeled yet, but is intending to develop a specification for one. So expect some changes in this are in the next couple of years. Until then, we are going to add the low-flow aerator by Delta to our new showerheads. We're able to purchase these low flow aerators at Natural Built Home in Minneapolis for the price of a couple of pizzas. http://www.naturalbuilthome.com/products/water_saving_fixtures_139/