Diary of a Vermont Eco Builder

A major upgrade to our living room came with the addition of our media center and built-in sofa. Since we’re major film buffs and love watching movies on our HD projector, the decision of how to set up the viewing area seating was not one that came easily. We knew the old futon had to go, but multiple visits to the furniture stores left us despairing that we would ever find a couch we could both agree on, that fit the space and didn’t cost a fortune. The obvious solution? Make it ourselves!

The first step was to build the media cabinet - an area to hold our DVD player, game systems and other equipment, with a pull-out shelf for the receiver to make it possible to reach the back and plug in more cables as needed.

We used maple plywood for the box and scrap Marmoleum for the top. That wall above (cleverly hidden by a blue curtain) will be finished with cypress paneling, eventually, and make for a nice display nook.

The cabinet fronts make use of beautiful figured maple - too unruly to rout for traditional furniture-making, but the perfect accent here - and Ecoresin panels, as seen in our doggy door post. Soft-closing Huwilift Strato hinges allow the doors to lift straight up and down - rather expensive, but also totally cool. Got to hide all those electronics in style -  and keeping the doors closed also cuts down on the hum.

There was some skepticism at first of the built-in sofa idea, but our next-door neighbor recently had a nice one made, so we knew it could be done in a classy way. To make sure we got the angle and height right, we mocked up a test section with some borrowed cushions, and adjusted until it felt comfortable.

Side tables with Marmoleum tops and Valchromat fronts were added on each end; this one is cut out on the base to divert air flow from the forced-air vent below.

Slats on the base give the seat a little bit of spring.

Angled to match our test section:

We found the fabric for a steal, about $100 for enough to make all the cushions, plus an ottoman and two seats adjacent to the front door. A local acquaintance made the cushions in her upholstery shop, perfectly constructed in less time than we could have imagined. And we got a custom piece for much less than we would have spent on a regular retail sofa!

Since last fall we’ve done a wide range of projects around the house, and we’ve got a lot planned for this year. Here’s a quick round-up of some of the things we’ve been working on:

Fall Landscaping - we planted cedars, “Prairie Fire” crabapple trees and lots of grass. Hopefully the grass will help with the spring runoff issues, and the Cedar Waxwings seem to love the crabapple fruit. It’s important to keep the native birds happy!

Front Steps - multicolored slate for entryway (with four concrete tiles we are testing for use on the path)

Once there was too much snow to work outside, we headed indoors and did some updates to the office. Since we’re both there all day, we want it to be nice!

Blue Valchromat drawer fronts, with one black piece just for kicks

(Fun fact - the small drawer is exactly the right width for a box of tissues. It just worked out that way.)


We finished off the back wall of the office with cypress paneling and a display shelf for our toys:

Pantry doors in the kitchen - the off-center split lines up with the red strip of Marmoleum. We’re planning to add spice racks on the inside.

Entryway stools, using the same fabric as our sofa (post coming soon), and black Valchromat bases. The bases are hollow for extra storage.

By now the snow is pretty much gone here, so it’ll be time for more outside projects. Good thing, too, because it makes it hard to walk the dog!

Our biggest finishing touch for the kitchen yet - the drawer fronts! As a “cosmetic” detail, these had been holding on our to-do list for a long time. Winter is a good time to get in the shop and get some projects done, though, so over the past two weekends we finally got to mill these up and install them.

As mentioned in our previous post, we chose to use Valchromat, a recyclable material superior to typical MDF, made of waste wood fibers and low-formaldehyde binder. As the color goes all the way through, it is easy to work with and doesn’t need to be painted - two coats of clear penetrating oil is sufficient to darken the color and increase water resistance.

Kitchen drawers “before”:

Installers at work:

Edge detail - angled so that drawers can be opened from top or bottom, no pulls necessary:

Complete:

Finishing the tops of interior walls and windowsills with drywall gives them a clean, modern look, but is a difficult process that adds greatly to the cost of plastering. Our compromise was to have the builders leave the edges unfinished, and we would add wood caps ourselves. This let us vary the materials by location; the kitchen windowsill above uses Valchromat, eco-friendly colored MDF that will coordinate with the drawerfronts.

The burnt poplar we installed on the office walls matches the floor grid:

as well as the stair railing (nail gun holes can be filled with a wax crayon):

In the bedrooms and bathrooms on the upper floor, cypress caps top an interior wall that completely covers the foundation. This creates a foam-insulated barrier around the cold concrete (as well as a handy shelf).

Long time, no update! And no excuses – we haven’t been hibernating, just busy working on the house. Over the next few weeks we’ll be posting updates on our winter projects. First up: treads for the stairs adjacent to the office, made from scrap wood.

Inspired by the idea of a butcher block, but not wanting to deal with hundreds of little end-grain pieces, we selected 4-foot-long strips of wood leftover from other projects. These include white oak, red oak, douglas fir, birch, beech, cherry, maple, walnut (now I’m hungry). Cut to size and glued overnight, these were trimmed and sanded, and finished with two coats of clear penetrating oil to deepen the color.

After a week, the oil was followed by three coats of polyurethane, to prevent it rubbing off on anything, and the treads were ready to install. And we were more than ready for them – that construction wood has been here since the beginning!

Finished and installed:

Made a small cherry and ecoresin door for the office that will allow us to wrangle the dog when we’re away from the house.

The deck design will be based on a house + deck that Dad built in the very early 80’s in California. The house itself was constructed on a single concrete pedestal, as was the deck, and though the original structure was wood, it was replaced with metal a decade ago. We actually like this better, and so we’ll be using similar square tubing, welded onsite.

Eric’s ‘Pedestal House’ 1981 - main house (Photo from 2004)

Eric’s ‘Pedestal House’ 1981 - deck (Photo from 2004)

We start with the foundation, and another change from Dad’s original is shifting from a 6′ x 6′ concrete-walled pedestal, to four sono tube-based corners that the metal structure will sit on. This helps us reduce labor and concrete. In the center of the tubes is a collection of rebar to add strength, plus a j-bolt to attached the metal to.

Finished grade with retaining walls

Due to the huge amount of rainfall we experienced this spring and summer, a large section of the land at the front of the house eroded away, leaving only canyons for us to look at. Water pouring down the nearby mountain, across neighboring land, would run over our temporary gravel driveway and then follow the contours of the sloping site until it reached the very bottom, some 150-200′ away.

Land no more

Neighbors were already up in arms about this problem (and had been for years we learned), so we decided to tackle this ourselves, doing what we could with our land and ingenuity.

Leveling the parking area seemed like a good start, so we worked out a retaining wall design that would allow us to bring in more gravel, but also fit with the step gardens we’d built at the sides of the house a year earlier.

The wood is local hemlock, 6″ x 6″ x 12′ cut logs. It’s held together with 2′ rebar to pin it to the ground in specific places, as well as 10″ nail spikes.

First load of 2″ gravel:

Second load of 3/4″ gravel:

Master Bedroom Finished Soffit

While I’ve been tackling the landscaping (slow-going on account of all the rain, plus an unfortunate stormwater runoff problem we need to manage), my husband and father-in-law have been working on the built-in lighting soffits for the entryway and both bedrooms. Inspired by a design from the book “The Not-So-Big House,” these wooden structures provide a feeling of coziness by lowering the ceiling height in those areas, while also camouflaging efficient fluorescent tubes for a gentle, indirect light. They also help us toward our minimum number of built-in fluorescent lights needed to earn the house’s Energy Star rating through Efficiency Vermont.

Installation:

Propping it up

Suspended soffit

Top view

Tubes wired in

 The lighting turned out to be a little intense with both tubes - we’ve rewired it with only a single T12 40-watt bulb in the center now.

Edge detail

From below

Result!

Guest room soffit:

Eventually, a similar system will be used in the main living space above the kitchen, office and home theater areas. Through the magic of Photoshop, we can see how that might look:

Office Lighting Soffit Mockup - Photoshopped

For now, we’ve had some fun with a collection of inexpensive paper lanterns from IKEA piled up above the pantry:

Spore type paper lanterns

Paper lantern experiment

With the cabinet making/desk surfacing now complete, it’s time to install.

Old desk out, new desk in. Center support in place.

Side supports

Wire hide and foot kick

Surface in place

Built-in cabinet placement

Rewiring of network jacks and electrical sockets

Working cubby and drawers

Installed top surface

Everything back to normal