What a difference a skylight makes....

What a difference a skylight makes...

January 25 - 27 -- Construction is really a matter of fits and starts.  Sometimes it seems like forever until something gets done and other times the work moves at the speed of light.  These days I am so ready for this project to be done and to reclaim my house (and my bed!) that I feel as if I have lost of my sense of time.  When I begin to lose my patience and slip out of the uber-Zen mode, something really cool happens at the house.

Originally, I wanted a whole-house or attic fan installed in the house on the upper-level to exhaust the hot summer air and to help me repress the memories of the 26 years worth of summer nights when the temperature literally rose to about 85 degrees.  When the contractor determined that there was no room in the attic crawl space to install that type of fan, the architect came up with another plan.  He suggested installing a skylight in the stairwell that leads up to the upper-level with the thought that during the summer, I would be able to open the skylight to create a convection effect that would permit for air circulation and hopefully for a way for the hotter air on the upper level to escape and pull the cooler air from the main level.

The idea sounded good to me, although I was disappointed that I could not have my first choice.  Little did I know that there would also be a major added bonus in that the skylight brings amazing natural light into the stairwell.  It was literally one of those moments when I stopped dead in my tracks and stared at the wonder of natural light!  I told my contractor how much I loved the skylight and wished I would have installed one 26 years ago.  He laughed and told me that if I had done that it would have been one of those lame "bubble" skylights that would have leaked, so it was good that I had not done that.  OK.

So, behold the beauty of natural light....looking down the stairs from the upper level.

 I just keep thinking how much I will miss the finish carpenters when their work is done and they leave my house.  They are such amazing craftsmen and so nice to have around, even when one sings along to country and western music at the top of his lungs -- it is really pretty adorable.

The singing carpenter has been making great progress with the built-ins in the mudroom.  Here is the bench with cubbies and a cleat board for coat hooks.

Here you can see the framing for the coat closet, which will have sliding doors, and in front of it there will be another cleat board for coat hooks with a shelf on top of it.

Here is a photo of the platinum-colored slate tile that has been installed around the fireplace in the gathering room.  With the Super Bowl this Sunday, this is the week to buy a flat panel TV that will go above the fireplace mantel.

The "butterscotch-colored" slate tile for the fireplace in the master bedroom really looks great, and way exceeded my expectations based on the small sample tile I saw when I picked this out -- geez, sometimes you just get lucky.

The granite counter top for the double vanity in the master bathroom really looks great, along with the matching bench and step in the master shower (minus the orange trash bucket -- Go Broncos!).

The black granite ledges on the front and the back of the soaker tub turned out really nice, too.  The black and white theme of the bathrooms that fit the architectural period of the house seems like it is really coming together.

How come I often find myself asking, "Why are things so complicated?"  January is the month when the sun is at its average, sustained lowest point in the sky.  As they begin to frame in the greenhouse, I started wondering about just how much sunlight will be available to heat up the greenhouse.  So, with way too much time on my hands, I decided to try to take photos of the sun pattern on Sunday.  For the most part, it was a sunny day although at times there was a thin layer of clouds that would come and go.  

So, this next sequence of scintillating photos shows the time of day and where the sun hits, and this isn't perfect, but it will give me some idea of the future functionality of the greenhouse, staring the day with good eastern exposure, the southern exposure is a bit problematic during the middle of the day as the winter sun just peeks above the neighboring house's roof line, and then in the afternoon, with whether the western setting sunlight will be able to sneak around the back of the mudroom.

8:30am

9:15am

9:40am

10:20am

11:00am

11:40am

12:30pm

1:10pm

2:00pm

2:30pm

3:00pm

I stopped at 3:00pm, because let's face it, this was getting just a bit too obsessive-compulsive ridiculous -- even for me, and besides, I needed to get to the grocery store.

Why am I wondering why things are so complicated?  Well, who would have thought of all the various details that go into me wanting to have a little greenhouse that will be about 5 x 7 in size when everything is said and done?  Here are some of the considerations that have now turned this into a complicated big deal:

• Will there be enough sunlight,especially in January, to heat the greenhouse during the day?
• Will the methods I am considering (e.g., water feature; insulation; the house as a tombe wall) work to hold the day's heat so that the interior greenhouse temperature does not dip below freezing at night in the winter?  After all, the goal is to have a passive solar greenhouse without having to resort to some type of heating system.
• In the summer, will the proposed design elements (two skylights that can be manually opened on the slanted roof and a fan that is controlled by a thermostat) be sufficient to make sure the interior temps don't "bake" whatever is in the greenhouse, but also circulates enough fresh air for CO2 exchange?  
• At the same time, will the fan also be sufficiently weather-tight (along with the rest of the greenhouse) to make sure that the cold, winter air doesn't invade and the warm air doesn't escape?

Yesterday I met with both the architect and the contractor to go over these "essential" details as the contractor is letting building materials (e.g., skylights in the roof, etc) and the architect is letting aesthetics (e.g., will the skylights line up with the southern wall window) drive the design of the greenhouse.  I had to keep interjecting that I am concerned more about function over form, which no architect really likes to hear.

So, just before midnight last night, the architect sent me a very thoughtful and kind e-mail message about how the greenhouse might be a trial and error thing as we puzzle through trying to integrate and balance my functional concerns with the contractor's material concerns, and the architect's aesthetic concerns.  Who thought that my hope to have a little greenhouse so that I can start vegetable plants from seed, maybe grow hops for my growing interest in home brewing, and start perennial and annuals for the yard would ever become so complicated?