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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Houses, tiny and solar collection
  • Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 09:32:12 -0700


(houses are too damn big to economically build and maintain, to say nothing of taxes---make tiny houses act and feel like big ones by opening up angles, vistas, getting rid of interior partitions and those cursed second stories,

Chris and I have never been happier than when living in the little shack at Heartwood, only 800 square feet downstairs. Two rooms totalling about 400 sq. ft. upstairs are used for storage and a guest room. But I will not be fulfilled until I design and build a home from scratch. Will build a new house to the east connected to the new enclosed front porch by a long greenhouse hall. Due to substantial east down-slope, the straight-across level will be an upstairs bedroom and library/writing studio/office. Might need to ramp up a few feet to create high ceilings downstairs, but no stairs from old to new house. There will be stairs from that bedroom level to the downstairs. The downstairs is a walk-out basement where one will walk out through a covered patio--bedroom balcony above--directly and immediately into the garden. Total square footage will be about 1,300. Only interior walls are for pantry shelves and bathroom. Bottom level will have tall, attached greenhouse on much of the south wall, opening to both kitchen and patio. Bottom level will include inglenook with two built-in couches that, if hips and knees later require, will be beds for our last years. The lower level will connect to the original with a basement hall under the upper greenhouse hall and will be used for food and wine storage and for cooling.

A free-standing heating stove wastes space in a small house; I prefer under-floor radiant heat. The existing house has inadequate crawl space for pipe and perimeter insulation installation. So I will remove the existing rotten, too-shallow front porch, dig straight across from the new lower level, create a new 12-foot-deep porch basement, turn and dig under the original house, connecting to the basement I built under the kitchen years ago, which is the back twelve feet. I'm hoping a track-mounted Bobcat can dig the basement across the fourteen feet between porch and kitchen basements.

After we move into the new house the original house will evolve, perhaps from woodworking shop to guest house and personal museum. It is part of the history of the place and we can't bring ourselves to tear it down even though it occupies the best house spot on the entire 130 acres.





  • Re: [Homestead] Houses, tiny and solar collection, Gene GeRue, 09/24/2004

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