Not being able to throw away any scrap piece of wood is a quality that both Stacy and my oldest son seem to share. It’s certainly an admirable quality when it comes to a reduce, reuse, recycle world but at times things start to accumulate and something has to be done to put them to use. So I have started a series of projects that involve utilizing the leftover pieces of birch plywood.I cut down the remaining and scrap 3/4″ stair treads into thin 2″ strips. I then cut a channel in each on the table saw, miter cut the corners and and then fasten them together with a little wood glue and some finished nails, to make some really nice looking pictures frames. I’m going to stop at my local hardware store and have them cut down some glass for me so I can frame a couple of cool art pieces that we have.With a few sheets of leftover 1/2 plywood flooring and some scrap 2×4 lumber I fashioned some box style shelves for our entertainment area in the living room and another set for storage in the laundry room, all these need is a little poly and they’re done.There’s something really pleasing to completing a project that turns out well but even more so when the materials you used were something that normally would have ended up in a dumpster or at best in someone’s fireplace.Now I just need a cord wrangler.I’ll sand the edges of the frame to make it smooth and to clean off a little of the excess wood glue before I finish them with a coat of poly.

This morning as I was getting out of the shower I heard my phone ring. I couldn’t get to it in time and didn’t recognized the number off the bat. Since I use my cel as my work phone I assumed it was an early morning client eager to open up a new project and figired they would call back shortly. Just 20 minutes later as I was enjoying my morning oatmeal it rang again. This time I was able to answer it before the caller hung up. The voice on the other end was the ever cheerful Curt Stendel of Panelworks Plus our SIPs supplier. He was at the national SIPA conference in New Orleans and just called to tell me our house had been honored with the Award of Excellence for homes Under 3000 sq ft. And on top of the that was the runner-up in the Open category taking second place to a much larger home (from Michigan I believe he said) that featured an extensive list of green features including solar panels — what a nice way to start the day. Congratulations to everyone involved Especially Panelworks Plus and Benedict and Associates for a job well done.

Whenever I retrospect of my life I am almost always amazed to see how unpredictable the journey has been, this house proved to be no exception to that rule. We knew from the moment we decided that we were going to build that the design of our home was not going to be similar to that of almost anything else. Mordern homes seem to be few and far between outside the pages of magazines like Dwell and Metropolitan Home and many of those seemed to be done on what appeared to be the budget of a small nation, by people living in the Hamptons or over-looking some idealistic view in Malibu. We however did not fall into this camp, our budget was modest as was the size of the home we wanted. We wanted to be conscious of cost but at the same time we wanted to build something that would be done with consideration for the environment — it sounded simple but could it be done?

Artists are supposed to be spontaneous when it comes to their ideas however it is my experience that the most brilliant creative minds I have ever met are actually brilliant strategist and planners who are just very open to the various ideas that present themselves. With that in mind we began a methodical and elongated process of researching everything and anything that would or could go into our house. The following are the 10 big things that we learned about building a modern contemporary, green friendly home:

1. “Green” and “Green Friendly” there’s a difference.
What most of us refer to as “green” weather your building a home or buying a car are not truly “Green” but rather “Green Friendly”. “Green Friendly” means some effort has been put forth to minimize the impact on the environment (i.e. You use recycled materials to build your home). To do something truly “green” you really need to be leaving the environment better than you found it (i.e. plant a tree).

2. Modern doesn’t mean Expensive
Although most of the homes the public sees of this style seem to be for people in a different tax bracket that doesn’t have to be the case. If you’re willing to open your mind to the possibilities, and look for deals online there are ways to get a super cool modern home on what I call a “modest modern” budget.

3. Architects are people too
Contrary to popular belief architects are not all ego driven, self serving maniacs, with only their own self interest in mind. Do a little research and find the right architect for you it can be a rewarding a collaborative relationship that delivers some amazing results.

4. Stuff’s gonna go Wrong
I don’t care who you are, how well you plan, how smart your architect is or how good your builder is — stuff will go wrong. The important thing is how do the people involve react? Do they point fingers, or do they respond quickly to make it right? In our case we enjoyed the later experience almost all the time and although it doesn’t make the stress go away it certainly makes it a lot easier to swallow.

5. Building a house is a lot of Stress
Yeah that’s right I said it, it’s stressful. Your entire world is turned upside down as you make decisions at light-speed and spend money like a kid on MTV’s my super sweet 16.

6. Modern is on the move
With a growing trend of people building smaller homes and as a generation of 20 and 30 somethings preparing to enter the home buying market, don’t be surprised if you see something along the lines of our house going up in your neighborhood. In the future there may even be whole new developments that only allow modern styled homes as a part of their covenants (wouldn’t that be ironic).

7. Everything cost about $1000.
you quickly learn that any and every change you make cost you thousands not hundreds of dollars. Try and think through everything in the planning stage, as it’s lot less expensive to change it on the blueprint than it is to change it on the job site.

8. Green can be unseen
The “green friendly” products that get the most attention like solar panels and geothermal heating are great solutions but maybe not the first and or best place to spend your money. These big ticket items seem too get the majority of the media hype but the truth is the first thing you should do is make your house as energy efficient as possible. Invest in great windows with a low U-value, or increase the R-value of your walls by using SIPs as well as optimizing the design of the house to benefit from simple things (that cost nothing) like passive solar design.

9. It’s good to be home
There is a moment when the workers stop coming by on a daily basis and you start to move your things out of boxes and into the spaces when you realize that this is your house. You’ve put so some much time, energy and effort into completing the vision and suddenly you realize the vision is now a reality. For all the stress and trouble it is an incredibly rewarding feeling to have built something so unique.

10. NO house is ever really done.
Homes are really living structures. We as the occupants, caretakers and designers are constantly updating evolving and changing our homes. Weather it’s painting the interior, re-working the landscaping or putting new tile on the backsplash, it’s all part of the homes evolution.

With all these lessons learned I don’t know that I’m quite ready to jump into another house project just yet. However, I have found that I love sharing with other people what I’ve learned along the way and can’t wait to start a new adventure where I can do just that what it is we’ll just have to wait and see.

Here is a link to the photo and quick video tour of our house and article that appeared in the Star Tribune.

When we started this project it was our goal to try and do some simple and smart things to ensure that we minimized our impact on the environment both in the short term (during the construction) but as well in the long term (sustainability). As we ventured forth, there certainly was a steep learning curve as it related to what constituted truly “green friendly”. On top of that we had to make some tough decisions on what products would give us the greatest impact for our dollar in order to stay true to our “modest modern” budget. Often times this meant that we had to do a great deal of research and take into consideration a lot of factors that we hadn’t anticipated.

As the popularity of living and building green grows, so many companies are trying to find and or put a green twist on their product, making it challenging to discern the truly green friendly from the so so. At the same time there are a great deal of green items on the market, that truly have a strong green friendly offering to them and garner a great deal of media attention. Among these are products like green rooftops, geothermal heating, solar panels and SIPs. Often times these items with the greatest green “sex appeal” are some of the bigger ticket items. However as we discovered the greenest things are often times common sense things involving reducing your homes over-all energy consumption. This often means increasing the insulation values of your walls  and windows and minimizing your daily energy consumption through the use of EnergyStar appliances and high efficiency heating and cooling methods. With this knowledge under our belt there was one big question looming over the completion of our project — How did we do?

A few weeks back as we were just starting to settle into our house, Jimmie Sparks from the Neighborhood Energy Connection (a nonprofit that helps people save money and the environment through energy efficient living) stopped buy to do some testing on our house. The house was scored for it’s over-all energy consumption on what is called a HERS test which gages your homes energy consumption as a whole, along with your carbon footprint.

The results were very satisfying to hear. Our home received an overall score of 44 and was rated 5+ stars on a 5+ star rating system. Almost 2x as efficient as needed to qualify as an EnergyStar home. As well, we were able to exceed the reduction of our carbon output vs the IECC (International Energy Conservation Code) standard set in 2006 by 31%.

Although all of this feels good I found myself wanting to have done more. Maybe in the near future advancements in technology will make both solar energy and wind energy options cost effective and viable for the average home owner to implement as retro-fit items. If that is the case I will certainly consider trying to improve my HERS score and lowering my carbon footprint even more.

Jimmie sets up the blower test through our garage door entry.

Using in infrared camera he’s able to see where we are losing heat in the house. In a traditionally framed home every 16 inches where a stud appears is usually a place of heat loss but not the case with SIPS and Thermomass wall systems we used.

Jimmie and Corey take a photo of our windows and are amazed by how well they retain the heat. They were actually able to see their reflections in the infrared picture where as they usually appear pure black.

Jimmie shares some of his finding with Curt Stendel from Panel Works plus (our SIPS panel provider) and Corey Benedict from Benedict and Associates (our General Contractor) some of his findings, while my youngest takes a little nap in his nice, cozy, new home.

If you have not been to the fine cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul than you are missing out on what are the jewels of the Upper-Midwest. Divided by the mighty Mississippi these two cities sport some of the nationals most extensive offerings of cultural entertainment, from theaters, to parks to museums of all kinds the Twin Cities are over-flowing with options. Many of these cultural centers offer with them some incredible architecture — the Frank Gehry designed Weisman Museum on the University of Minnesota Campus the newly constructed Guthrie Theatre or my personal favorite the Walker Art Center. Recently the Walker received a renovation with it’s most notable update being a shiny series of exterior panels that look almost like crumpled pieces of paper. This unique use of material has garnered the attention of architects around the world and served as inspiration for the design teams working on museums in New York, Tampa and more.

While scouting locations for a video shoot for a client this past summer we landed at the Walker. During our tour I asked our guide about the exterior panels and she was able to give me a little information about them. From there I did some digging of my own and to my amazement discovered that the maker of the panels (M.G. McGrath) was located only 3 miles from my new house.With featured projects like the Walker Art Center, the Denver Museum of Art and many more, M.G. McGrath is the pioneer in the architectural sheet metal industry but sits relatively unknown to the non architectural community in the quite east side of St. Paul.
After contacting M.G. McGrath I was very pleased to find out that they had a few left-over pieces from the Walker Art center project, that I could buy. I quickly purchased the last remaining pieces with the plan of using them on the interior of my house to wrap the fireplace, now months later my vision was about to come to life. I made arrangements for M.G. McGrath to fabricate the remaining pieces to fit around the fireplace wall. Because I had known the size and depth of the panels well before framing was completed on the fireplace, I was able to adjust the walls to accommodate the panel thickness for a perfect fit. Then yesterday morning M.G. McGrath’s installers came and assembled the panels and attached them to the surround. I was away during the day at work and not able to see the installation however I asked Stacy to take pictures which she did.I was anxious to see some of the progress and asked her to send some of the shots to me at work however she thought it best if I saw it completed in person and I must say it was worth the wait. The crumple pattern of the extruded aluminum panels catches the light and accent every curve, corner and angle leaving me a bit breathless.

Of all the features of the house there is no other area that is more striking than the fireplace surround. I am sure that it will be a conversation piece for years and best of all a little piece of modern art/architectural history, right in my own living room.

We painted the surround a charcoal gray to avoid any contrasting lines with the edge of the fireplace box since the panels are mesh style metal.

The first few pieces are fitting in place.

There is a little thinking that goes into installing these as you can imagine.

Like a giant game of Tetris the pieces go together.

The perforated aluminum catches the light in some incredible ways both in the daytime and night.

The fireplace will certainly be the focal point of the living room.

Polycarbonates are a material that is relatively familiar to anyone who has ever been inside a green house. this super strong light weight material has been used in green houses for years but has become popular recently with architects as a substrate. The growing popularity of the material has resulted in a variety of companies offering designer version of the material in different patterns and colors.

I had expressed a great deal of interest in the material to our architect (Michael Huber) during our initial meetings and he delivered some opportunities where we could use it in our house. Although there is certainly a design detail to the product there is also a really great benefit as well. Because the materials comes in varying degrees of opacity it can be used as a room divider while still allowing natural light from other areas of the house to enter the room. Since both the boys bathroom and bedrooms in our house were located on the north side of the house and the majority of our windows gather sunlight on the south side there seemed to be an opportunity to use some of the polycarbonate to bring daylight into those rooms, diminishing our need to turn on extra lights during the day. Michael’s plan called for creating two openings in the stairwell one in a bedroom and one in the bathroom along with sheeting one entire wall with polycarbonate. This allowed light that naturally filled some of the larger southern facing spaces to spill over into the northern facing portions of the house.

We found dozens of reps from various manufacturers of the material, but our biggest challenge proved to be finding a vendor who stocked the item or had a sheet of it available on site. Because most of the distributors didn’t stock it that meant they would require a crating fee that would easily exceed the cost of the material. Finally Stacy tracked down a sheet of Ploygal available in St. Paul at Cope Plastics where they were able to cut it down to size for use. Then using some readily available pieces of aluminum channel we found at the local home improvement store we installed the first piece in the wall that divides the entry to the boys room. To the boys delight not only did the polycarbonate allow the light to enter the room but at night the LED night lights we purchased for their rooms, provided a beautiful light show as the light transmitted through the wall and into the living room outside of their bedrooms. It’s just one of the small details in our house that has made our house a truly unique and cool place to live.

The polycarbonate that works as a wall divider between our boys room. has been both a functional piece as well as a aesthetic portion of our homes design.