Character-change

The new bow-window in the living-room. (Photo by the so-called “old guy” with the dreaded and utterly reprehensible Nikon D100.)

It’s amazing to realize we’ve been in this house, our dream home, the house we intended to finish our lives in, almost 19 years.
And it hasn’t collapsed, or exploded, or been turned over to wild-haired Ty Pennington and his merry blue-helmeted makers of mayhem. (Do they ever NOT destroy and remove the old house?)
This is despite our not including the self-declared construction expert — or perhaps because we didn’t.
Our house is a special design: super-insulated, with foot-thick exterior walls and 23 inches of blown insulation atop the ceiling.
My blowhard macho brother-in-Boston noisily asserts I designed it, which is WRONG-OOO, WRONG-OOO, WRONG-OOO, WRONG-OOO, WRONG-OOOO.
Our input was only the floorplan, and my suggestion as to the general appearance of the house.
We hired an architect, which was required by state law.
In fact, we requested suggestions as to how he might improve our floorplan, as we wanted the laundry on the first floor (not the cellar or the garage), but not necessarily where we had it.
But he used our floorplan, making no changes.
So now the laundry is between the master bedroom and the recreation room.
And the main bathroom (not master) lacks windows. It’s not on an exterior wall — and too far from the roof for a skylight.
The architect specified a treated-wood foundation that turned off many bidders. We wanted a treated-wood foundation too, because it could be better insulated. The architect also specified special “ground-contact” treated wood, plus “Bituthene” layered water-proofing film, not the usual sprayed-on asphalt gunk.
He also specified a complete foundation drainage-system with drain-pipe both inside and outside the foundation.
All of this turned away the super-insulated housing contractor we tried, who wanted to put in a treated-wood foundation of regular treated-wood, without the extensive water-proofing and drainage we specified.
I sometimes think we shoulda used one-inch plywood for the subfloor, instead of the 3/4-inch specified.
And the floor-joists are only 2x10; didn’t have to be 2x12, due to the width of our house.
The typical house is a little over 24 feet wide. That’s because a 2x12 can span 12 feet at 24 inches on-center (may be 18; the roof-trusses are 24 inches on-center) — two 2x12s and a center-beam.
But our house is 38 feet wide, requiring two center-beams.
The exaggerated width of the house was determined by the garage, and the kitchen turned 90 degrees from the house-length.
The garage was designed to swallow our HUGE E250 Ford van (plus a second car). It’s 24 feet deep by 28 feet wide; wider than most houses.
A lot of forethought went into our kitchen: mainly to lay it out so we didn’t hafta hike all over.
We tried various designs, but finally ended up flip-flopping our kitchen on Winton Road, although we added a dishwasher and moved all the appliances to one side (except the refrigerator, and freezer — which ain’t in the cellar).
That’s because our kitchen at Winton Road worked fairly well.
But turning it 90 degrees relative to house-length increased house-width.
The other factor that increased house-width was door-size. All doors were to be wheelchair clearance; 36 inches wide.
My mistake was to include 36-inch closet-doors. One bedroom has a 72-inch opening, and the other bedroom has two closets, each with a 36-inch opening.
That increases bedroom depth, which increases house-width.
But I don’t worry about it much. Our house is oversize, but if it were narrower, it would be overwhelmed by that garage — which I couldn’t decrease in size without throwing the E250 outdoors.
We also were trying to minimize window space, since no matter how well they seal, a window is a hole in the wall.
All our windows are casement, since double-hung end up not sealing as well.
But our living-room wanted a BIG window, so at first it was four-panel 96-inch total width.
But now it’s a five-panel bow window (see picture).
The character of our house is slowly changing.
First it was the garage-door which was changed to windowless.
The original garage-door windows ended up with failed sealing, and then fogged up between panes.
The panes had failed due to thermal instability of the door, which was exposed directly to the sun.
And now the original flat living-room window has been replaced with a bow window.
It’s the onliest window in the house that ain’t flat, so sticks out like a sore thumb.
We coulda replaced it with a similar flat window, but the individual panes opening at full size, were so heavy they sagged.
Our option woulda been small opening awning windows, with large solid panes in the remaining space.
But I always liked that bow window at Oak Lane Manor, so I decided to install a bow window.
But unfortunately our window ain’t what was at Oak Lane Manor, which was three individual panes stacked vertically in each panel.
Our window is a single pane for each panel; and only the end-windows open.
All the panels opened in our old window, but we hardly ever opened them. They had sagged so much we had to close them from outside. —Plus we always used the air-conditioning. Plus opening the windows allowed road dirt in the house.
The character of our humble abode has changed, but it’s okay with me.
The unmowed part has reforested, and blocked us from everything. —I remember when -a) we could see our neighbor’s house next door, and -b) an all-night sodium-vapor light over the Legion parking-lot way up the street illuminated our bedroom from the kitchen.
We also now have a garden-shed with an off-center roof. Disconcerting to an artistical perfectionist.
Too bad the almighty Bluster-King wasn’t around to design everything.
But perhaps I’m glad he wasn’t. We’d be heating the outdoors with a 100,000 btu furnace. (Our current furnace is only 40,000 btu heating over 1,900 square feet. Not much heat-load.)

RE: “‘Old guy’ with the dreaded and utterly reprehensible Nikon D100.......” —My macho, blowhard brother-from-Boston, who is 13 years younger than me, calls me “the old guy” as a put-down (I also am the oldest). I also am loudly excoriated by all my siblings for preferring a professional camera (like the Nikon D100) instead of a point-and-shoot. This is because I long ago sold photos to nationally published magazines.

“The self-declared construction expert” (the “almighty Bluster-King”), is my all-knowing, blowhard brother-in-Boston, the macho ad-hominem king, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say. He claims my house is unsatisfactory and inadequate because I designed it. —He’s a construction supervisor.

We previously lived on “Winton Road” in Rochester.

“Casement” windows close like a flap; “double-hung” (bottom pane slides up beside the top pane; or vice versa) are what you usually see.

“Oak Lane Manor;” a suburban development north of Wilmington, Del., is where our family lived when I was a teenager. (Before that was Erlton, N.J.)

The West Bloomfield American Legion is in an old schoolhouse up the street from where we live.

RE: “Garden-shed with an off-center roof......” —Our shed was designed to face 90° from where we have it, so facing it the roof is off-center.

“Heat-load” is the amount of heat required to heat the house. We heat with a natural-gas furnace, but it could be small.