How it all works, part 2: elevations

Elevation looking into the courtyard (above)
Elevation looking at the front entry porch (below)

How it all works, part. 1: Floor plan

House basics:

- The house is a post & beam structure, with straw bales fitted between and around the posts. Eventually the inside and outside face of the straw bales will be plastered. Dashed lines on the floor plan represent beams above.

- The house is a one story house with simple shed roofs, wrapping around an open courtyard. Most rooms have operable windows and / or doors on at least two sides. The house essentially has three 'wings'. The living room, dinning room and kitchen wing; the bedroom wing; and a connecting wing, which contains the utility rooms w/ domestic HW, the boiler, the laundry rm, the powder rm, the entry mud room and the covered entry porch.

- Pavilion style houses are great - but contain a LOT of hallways. Whenever possible, the hallway walls do double duty as built in book shelves. The hallways are also 5' wide to keep them as open feeling as possible. See sketch above showing bedroom hallway w/ built in shelves.

1st day of spring!

March 21st - the first day of spring. Still wrangling with concrete contractors, but we are optimistic that the monolithic slab can be poured sometime around the end of April. Not coincidently, we are guardedly optimistic that maybe we've endured our last chilly trailer winter (see pictures, taken last January).

March 21st is also the anniversary of our first day open for business! As of today, Shooting Star Nursery has been open for two brisk years.

Building permit

We received a telephone call yesterday morning to let us know our Permit set of drawings had been approved and were ready to pick up. Not that the eventual outcome was in doubt when we submitted the drawings in back in February, however no one was expecting the septic approval and building permit for a slightly complicated straw bale house to sail through the building department as quickly as it did. Yesterday was a mile stone celebrated with wine and french fries at a local bar.

kiva stove sketch

Quick sketch showing vaulted living room ceiling, 6x12 wood beams, and corner kiva stove.