We passed the LEED AP Exam!

It's been a little quiet here on the blog as we've been busy studying.

LEED for Homes was still in the pilot testing while we were building our house, however we did make a significant effort to make the best of site orientation and use green materials wherever we could.  To familiarize ourselves with more of the details of LEED, we decided to pursue accreditation.  Now we are officially accredited professionals! 

During the design process we relied on a few good internet resources for viable green products and systems.  One of the best is Building Green (the publishers of the excellent Environmental Building News).

3D Landscape Review

Since we have so much of our project already modeled in 3D, it was nice to build a few of Ransom’s landscape ideas into our model and test them out for scale and composition.  As we talked about earlier, it really comes down to vetting ideas as much as possible in 3D, building a real world mockup as often as possible, and only then setting the crews loose on a particular part of the project.

It’s a luxury that not every project can afford, but since it’s only time and energy for us, we want to make sure it is right from the start (then not complain or make revisions as it’s getting built).

Built-in Mockup

Nancy and I spent some time over the holiday weekend mocking up the built-in along our living and foyer walls.  Scale is so important - until you build a full size mockup, sometimes it’s so hard to get a true feeling of what something on the computer is going to be like in real life.

We made quite a few adjustments, and will now document this for the trim carpenter.

Landscape Design

 

Ransom of R-Design put together a great presentation for the landscape. His initial ideas seem to follow what we are looking for:  A simple modern plan that will be easy to maintain and incorporate playful areas for the kids. The outdoor spaces we are working with are so small that fitting everything in can be a challenge (while at the same time striving to keep it simple).  We have also  been checking out some of the species Ransom is recommending to get a better feel of how they would fit into the outdoor “rooms” within our site.

Landscape

We are happy to have found a local landscape architecture firm that has worked on many modern residential projects in the Denver/Boulder region. 

Ransom Beegles with R-Design is on board to help us nail down some good landscape ideas.  We’ve been so focused on the architecture, and now we’re excited to come up with a landscape plan that will tie into the house design and merge it more gracefully with the site.

Check out R-Design’s projects here:  http://rdesignstudios.com

Break Metal Work

Jerry’s crew from CO Metal Source has installed all of the parapet and the first two sections of the fascia on the lower roofs.  Some areas need tweaking, but on the whole, it’s coming out very nice!

This is really the last finishing touch on the exterior other than landscape.  The Galvalume is a wild finish.  It changes dramatically depending on the daylight - in can vary from a very light silver all the way to dark gray.  If you check out the close-up, it even has a “grain” to the finish which gives it further character.

Siding Samples

 

For many months we explored combining different materials on the exterior - mostly stucco and cedar.  However, we decided to simplify in order to achieve a subtle more understated look.  Ultimately we selected a simple tongue and groove western red cedar board with a very small exposure - similar to flooring in width.  We will place this horizontally around the entire house.  We purchased this clear smooth cedar from Haida.

The boards have been delivered to a local staining house, and we ended up selecting Sikkens “Natural Light” - the lower right-hand sample above.

Zoning Limitations

 
The City of Denver has some fairly complicated and restrictive zoning requirements, limiting lot coverage as well as designating the area where you can locate the house and garage. The open space requirement and location of the structure(s) on the lot creates obvious constraints for this small narrow lot (37’ x 132’). Initially, our goal was to build a 2400-2500 sf home, but once we designed the house we were at 2800 sf. We knew we were exceeding the open space requirements (62.5% of the lot is required to be open) with the initial first floor layout. After going over the zoning requirements once again, we realized that we needed to make serious adjustments, both in terms of square footage reductions, as well as adjusting the placement of the house on the lot. Reducing square footage at this point was a significant challenge for us. The City offers a lot coverage incentive if you detach the garage. In other words, we can have more house with a detached garage, so we detached it. Sacrificing the benefits of an attached garage was difficult -- but once we accepted that and made some further square footage cuts (specifically eliminating the guest room/kids playroom, we are now at 2500 SF! Depending on the pricing, we may rough in for a future guest suite in the basement. In any event, we will have more outdoor space for play and sun.

Exterior Finishes

Click on the image above for some sketches exploring exterior finishes.

Renderings for fun

As Nancy and I wade through massive amounts of products and options in preparation for the pricing set, I took a moment to crank out a couple of simple natural day light type renderings.

For more images, check out our renderings on Flickr