Green Home Tour Redux

Despite Chicago receiving a record-breaking rainfall last Saturday, we finally had our Green Home Tour. After weeks of preparation, it was great to finally take a step back and take in what we accomplished, and show off our home to the 60+ people that came through to learn a bit about green building.

Looking back at where we were a month ago, I'm amazed at how much work we were able to get done in preparation for the tour. We'll detail most of these projects in upcoming blog entries, but here's the quick hitlist: Exterior painting, stucco painting, replacing broken glass and re-puttying our porch windows, interior staining and sealing of our kitchen trimwork, wallpapering, major ceiling and wall repairs to the dining room (and adding a tubular skylight), installing an arts & crafts stair banister, and putting together a rough landscape in front of our home. Wow.

In particular, the exterior painting turned out to come down to the wire. We had finished painting on Thursday, but it started raining that night and didn't quit until the day after the tour. This made it quite difficult for the paint to dry. In fact, two hours before people were scheduled to show up, Kenny was helping us dry the paint of our front steps using Jen's hair dryer. We had tented off the steps to prevent them from getting wet for two days, but there was just too much humidity in the air. It's amazing what a hair dryer and a little patience can accomplish! As always, Kenny deserves a big shout out for all the help he gave us to prepare for the home tour.

And for all of you wondering how our colors on the house turned out, we managed to snap a photo during a brief break in the rain on Saturday. Here's before, and now our house looks like this:


I also wanted to summarize some of the things we pointed out about our green home. Thanks to Michelle at Seven Generations Ahead for organizing this list and producing a nice tour program for our home and the others on the tour. I'm sure it will be a great resource for the visitors and their future green remodeling. Here is Humphrey House's "green" resume:

Energy Efficiency

• Over 40 CFL's in the house
• Soy foam insulation in gutted walls
  
• Blown-in cellulose insulation in existing walls
• Daylighting tubular skylights
• Tankless water heater
• PowerZoning air recirculation
• Market-based electricity pricing
  

Water Conservation

• Rain barrel
  
• Low-flow plumbing fixtures
• Low water usage laundry machine

Healthy Air Quality

• Low VOC paints
• PhotoHydrolonization (PHI) cell air purifier
• Zodiaq recycled content / low VOC countertops
• Reclaimed flooring

Resource Efficiency

• Salvaged vintage doors
• Salvaged appliances
• Reclaimed windows

Rapidly Renewable Resource

• Soy foam insulation

Locally Sourced Items

• Soy-based paint stripper
• Oak trim from regional forests

So, that's the virtual Green Home Tour of Humphrey House in a nutshell. We don't have some of the fancy "green bling" such as solar panels (yet), but we like to point out things that show that living or remodeling green doesn't necessarily have to cost a lot of green.

true colors

A few posts back, we asked all of you out there on the super-inter-web-highway to give us your feedback on some color ideas we had for Humphrey House. The response, both on the blog and via email, was amazing! We were happy to have so many people sharing their thoughts with us - very cool.

Jason and I were both really struck and somewhat amused about the general consensus that a red door was a big bad no-no. It was funny, because both of us had always, always intended to have a red door on this house. But you'll all be glad to hear that, after mucho consideration, we've axed that idea (along with several others).

But another point that really hit home was about the siding. As Bret, our friend and fellow house-rehabber (although on a different scale than us, for sure!) put it, "I just can't get past the siding." He was right. Neither could we. And so, last week when we were supposed to be spending seven days fishing on Lake Bellevue and frolicking in the Chequamegon Forest, we decided to stay home and take the siding out of the equation. Well, at least in front. We looked at other houses on our block and were surprised to notice that several had a different facade on the front than on the rest of the house. Confident we could pull it off at least half as assuredly as these other houses could, thus began our outer remodeling.

Fearing what lie beneath, we decided to take the vinyl off the front only instead of the whole house. As you can see, my father Kenny came up to assist us in our endeavors, and ended up leading the charge (as always). The best thing about Dad is that he's not afraid to be ambitious about projects. Must be an engineer thing. He certainly put his skills to the test helping us solve the riddle of how to transition from the siding we would leave on the sides and rear of the house to the original wood siding on the front. The solution? Copper-topped cedar corners with edging and trim, that I have to say look pretty amazing. Pix to come ...

But we still had the pesky problem of choosing a color scheme. Jason went to the Sherwin-Williams store and got samples and I did some test painting, and I think we have one we finally both agree on.

Get Your Paint On

As Jason mentioned a few posts ago, our time has come to attack the exterior of our home. We've done quite a bit of landscaping planting lots of pretty things, but we've done nada to the actual exterior of the house (aside from maiming it with new openings and a particularly nasty repair job to one window that was removed). So with the Village lighting a fire under our feet, we've gotten bids from four companies to do the painting. Now we just have to choose colors.

Ah, color choices. Always so intimidating. But our scope got limited b/c, according tot the quotes we rec'd, looks like we can't afford to get the vinyl siding painted. Which really is too bad - the best color schemes we've been playing with involved a new color on the siding. So the white will have to stay. So we ordered the Bungalow Exterior book, and using a very very old exterior shot (and hence none of our pretty flowers to get in the way!) have been playing around using Sherwin Williams Historic Arts & Crafts Collection - they have a really nifty paint tool that even gives the RGB values to duplicate the colors (great for Photoshop-ing your house).

Anyways, at midnight last night we decided to stop playing and just do. Not so sure what these are looking like in the light of day, but with the help of Bungalow Colors: Exteriors, we've come up with the following color schemes:

(click any photo to view a larger image)

OPTION ONE	OPTION TWO
OPTION THREE	OPTION FOUR

Of course, there's also the option of keeping the stucco white, with a fresh coat on everything ... maybe adding green to the trim on the windows instead of just the brown ...


Inquiring minds want to know - which one do you like? Or do you abhor them all? We need second, third, twenty-seventh opinions. :)

Our Painting's Time has Come

Last week we received a letter we'd been dreading for awhile. Our village has a Property Standards department, and every few years they take a "neighborhood walk" and cite homes that are in violation of miscellaneous dangers such as missing downspouts, rotted wood, missing handrails, garages in need of repair, missing address numbers, and improper parking surfaces (e.g. your lawn).

Well, what did they find when they came around to Humphrey House? A Violation waiting to happen! Yes, our poor, hapless paint has seen much better days. While I don't have any closeup photos of our currently dire straits, there are many posts from the past with photos that give you an idea. We've known all along that painting was going to be inevitable - Jen even created some super neat color scheme ideas when we first moved in. But now its official:

"Scrape/paint the wood members on the home, fascia, soffit, trim, and front entrance. Reinspection: August"

Gulp. So now its back to the color drawing board. In fact we ordered a book specifically focused on bungalow exterior colors. This looks like an involved project with a quick timeline, and we may have to call in some professionals. Maybe we can even find some stucco-friendly and eco-friendly exterior paints for Humphrey House's facelift.