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The House
that Peter Built: The real Story
OK, so I did really build the house. With a lot of help from my brother Mac and
some help from my Father and Chris, who works with me (in computers.) The only
thing we didn't do was the concrete floor and a couple thousand dollars of
other stuff . And yes, I figured that trying to pour & smooth out 5000+
square feet of concrete was not a risk I could afford to take.
The reason? Well it's a little complicated. You see, I always wanted to build a
house. But I didn't have any skills whatsover.
But then the doctor told my wife essentially "If you keep going up and down
stairs , with the disease in your knees, you will eventually be in a
wheelchair"
So we needed a single level house for our family of 6.
Now, we lived in a fairly nice large house, and (being self centered I guess)
didn 't want to give that up. So we designed a house which, including shop,
storage and garage is 56' by 96'.
Now, this house would not fit on your typical Calgary 44'x76' lot. Go figure!
And we couldn't afford the double lots in town, and 4 acre lots were about
$100K.
So.... we bought 150 acres. About 1/2 mile by 1/2 mile. 0.8km by 0.8km. That is
enough room to build the house.
And we learned a huge amount of what it means to build a house from scratch.
It's been fun! Fortunately I, seriously, never used to go to bed before 2:00am.
And still, I am "too" often still up near 3:00 or 4:00am. This helped me find
time to build it.
The house is not architecturally the nicest house in the world, but with 12'
ceilings throughout, and a very nice drywalling and painting job (if I do say
so myself) and 150 acres for the kids to play. I think it is great.
Some of the interesting features:
Concrete Countertops
I'm building my own fridge. OK, lets be honest. I got the electronics working
and haven't had time to develop the carpentry skills to pull it off. But at
some point I'm going to take it the next stage and actually either build it
myself or pay someone to build it to my specifications. It will match the decor
of the kitchen and be about 2x's more energy efficient than most fridges. I
have lots of space so I can better insulate and have 6 separate doors so you
don't open the whole fridge every time .
I'm using a special seed from PicSeed www.pickseed.com, known as Envirograss.
This grass has a few rules after it is established:
1. never water it (Calgary is a "prairie desert") or more vigourous
grasses/weeds will grow
2. never fertilize it. It is designed to need low nutrients. If you fertilize,
it will encourage other grasses/weeds to grow.
3. cut it only once a year. It has the "eyelash gene" linked in to only grow to
4". And who wants to mow 4 acres of grass each week anyway?
12 foot ceilings throughout.
Energy efficient. Low-E plus windows, heavy insulation in walls & ceiling.
Straw bales all around outside to 36" for R150 insulation. This is very
efficient with ....
Radiant floor heating throughout.
Lots of room including 1 bedroom for each child, an office for my wife&
kids and a separate one for me. A huge pantry with built-in freezer. Coldroom ,
wine making room, wine cellar, large walkin closet.
The large entryway has the main door & the garage door. Never to wonder
which door you left your coat/boots at.
A great play center for the kids. Think about your average sized city lot, then
think an elaborate set of play centers using up that equivalent area, but
spread out over an acre or more.
And much more....
If you've got a high speed link, or you're a masochist and like to wait for
large useless images, go see my House
Photos
Food for thought: Amatuers built the Ark... Professionals built the Titanic
And where is it?
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