In any case, Kit and I are now the happy owners of almost 1/2 an acre of a mountain in Park City, Utah! We affectionately call it our little "rock pit" or "the quarry"; when I post images, this will make perfect sense. It was a foreclosed property, previously owned by a gentleman who had done extensive excavation on the site and had already begun pouring the footings before money apparently ran out. Our plan is to continue with his house footprint and modify most everything else. At this point we're starting with a house that I've designed that is three-stories tall, about 3,000sf finished, has 4 bedrooms, and 2 1/2 baths with a totally open living/dining area...and the main structural components are going to be shipping containers! I'm so excited about that last bit!
We are striving for four things with the house:
1. an open, loft-like layout with some more traditional seperations for bedrooms, and as little wasted space as possible (Kit and Kate coming together)
2. to make as little impact on the environment as possible
3. to focus on design with affordability in mind - both in construction and in energy costs moving forward
4. to be moved in before the snow flies (everybody cross your fingers on this one!)
We want to use recycled and recylable materials as much as possible, and we don't want to add finishes to things that can be beautiful (to us at least) in their raw form. The containers are just the begining of that story. Think exposed concrete floors (with radiant heating), exposed structural steel beams (instead of everything clad with gyp.). This means no wall to wall carpet to one day clog up a landfill and minimal waste materials from the construction as the plan is that things are mostly built off-site in a factory and trucked in in a modular fashion. We are also trying to find cabinets that are in good enough shape to reuse (loving the metal ones from the 50-60's) and possibly used appliances, as long as they are also Energy Star rated.
Prior to buying this piece of property, we had hoped to utilize solar for power, but we are doubtful that this will be beneficial as we are pretty much in the middle (literally surrounded) of very dense, really tall pines trees. So our window of capturing useful light is minimal. We also had dreams of using thermal...did I mention that we are building on and into bedrock and that we are in Park City. Basically digging in to the ground might cost a small fortune and as we don't really have a hot summer, we could only generate good power in the winter. If anyone has more info on how we might still be able to utilize some green energy, we would welcome it!
Here are the floor plans...
The basement is basically just the entry, garage and storage.
The main floor is all of the living/entertaining space and the master bedroom - single level living, for the most part.
The upper level is for guests and someday children. We intend to use the loft space as a TV/play area.
Here is an elevation of the front...LOTS of windows on the front, as the other three sides are pretty much in the mountain.
And the sides...
These plans/elevations are still really preliminary because the structural engineer needs to make sure it all works. But this is what we're shooting for. We're still trying to get a construction loan. The bank we tried first decided the lot was too steep to lend on...I got that news as I was typing this...I about cried. Anybody out there want to lend us a few hundred thousand? We're super-nice and we're good for it.
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