Call Me a Dreamer

During the last week, my husband Karl, his eldest son, and I met with a straw bale building consultant to discuss our ideas for the first home we plan to build, for Karl's three sons. Although Karl had previously met with him, liked him, and felt that he was a good match for us, we found that as we discussed our ideas, the fit wasn't as good as we'd hoped. The house for the boys has to meet several criteria. First and foremost, of course, it needs to provide separate bedrooms for each of the boys, so that as they mature they each have private space. The building itself is to be of load-bearing straw bale construction. In addition, the boys want a courtyard entrance, opening into a great hall which combines living and kitchen space (based very loosely on the idea of a Viking hall. Ideally, the hall will have high ceilings, with a loft, or mezzanine, above the kitchen and overlooking the living area, which they would like to use as a dining area (probably with a dumb waiter to transport food more easily); both the kitchen and the loft should have a view of the courtyard and the castle on the hill to the north. The bedrooms would be in two wings, to either side of the courtyard. Unfortunately, the aesthetics of the site and of the boy's ideas, lead to a house that lies N-S, an orientation not ideally suited to the passive solar design that we also hoped to achieve.

We discovered that the consultant was not as well versed in load-bearing straw as we had hoped, preferring post-and-beam, instead, and that he seemed less familiar with the Pima County building codes than we had expected. Also, he was rather taken aback by the Viking hall idea. Although we all liked him as a person, we came to the conclusion that we needed to find another consultant.

Back in late October or early November, Karl and I had spoken with at some length with an architect following a workshop on innovative and "green" home-building techniques. I had liked this man and his ideas, and hoped to consult for the home Karl and I (and the boys) will be building for ourselves. I suggested that Karl get in touch with him. Karl called yesterday and the architect is so excited by our projects that he agreed to meet with us today, even though it is a weekend and only two days before Christmas. I have my fingers crossed, here, as I very much hope that this is the beginning of a fruitful and rewarding collaboration.

I'll do my best to check back in soon, to report how the meeting went.