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October 25, 2007
Oh. No. It's time to buy a new house.
This is when personal and professional collide - when the green building advocates (aka. me and my husband) move across the country and buy a new house. Or build. What to do?
Sometime toward the end of next year, we'll be packing up the whole fam damily and moving to Missoula, Mt. It's not the first move we've moved cross country. I've moved to and from Seattle, Wash. twice, and Andrew's moved that move, in addition to several in and out of Alaska and California. Never with a young child (which is fodder for another blog in another place at another time), and never with the prerequisite that the home we buy be exactly what we want it to be - healthy, safe, durable, comfortable, efficient and with as little negative environmental impact as it can have.
And the rubber hits the road, I suppose.
In the next three weeks, we're meeting with builders and real estate agents in the area and trying to wrap our heads around how much it's going to cost to find a place that works for us - new or existing. On top of the green attributes of the home, we've got some tall orders to fill. We both work from home and need significant home office space, and we grow our own produce as much as we can during the season (and I, admittedly, have a native plant and flower obsession), so land is important to us. And as much as we'd like to "walk the walk" and stay in town to reduce sprawl, we've both spent enough time in cities to know that we don't want our neighbors to be able to see in our bathroom windows while they're eating dinner.
Stay tuned for a great adventure, and holler if you have any suggestions for us!
Posted by Stacy Hunt at October 25, 2007 12:58 PM
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Comments
Been there, done that; and it's time for us to do it again also; though we're moving from central Florida to north Florida, and we have a lot to build on and a builder. (We couldn't find a house.) We work from home also and need lots of office space, but we're downsizing outside, though we--again like you--still have our native plant and flower obsession. And we're sorry to leave our crape myrtle collection behind.
Posted by: Joy V. Smith at November 1, 2007 1:55 PM
Since you want to live in Montana, I welcome your move here. While you are considering being GREEN, please consider that the wildlife exists
tentatively here. So often folks become intolerable of our native animals. It is standard here to fence the wild animals out if you don't want them eating your plants, or disturbing your pets. This approach is better than just trying to shoot everything wild, please.
*** - Thanks, Alaina. We have no plans to arbitrarily shoot wildlife in my husband's native Montana, nor to fence our property to keep out the beasties. Green building is as much about maintaining a healthy ecosystem (critters included) as it is maintaining a healthy indoor and outdoor environment and economy. ;) - Stacy
Posted by: Alaina at November 3, 2007 10:26 PM
2009 WE'LL BE BUILDING OUR HOUSE; HOPEFULLY WE CAN GO GREEN. I NEED ALL THE HELP I CAN GET
Posted by: MARY at November 4, 2007 1:52 AM
I know that siting a home is important, and we were fortunate with our current home. Big front and back porches shade the east and west sides; but on our new lot, that won't work. Waaah!! Any suggestions? The front of the house has to face the road.
Posted by: Joy V. Smith at November 7, 2007 10:46 PM
