Getting Started

In January 2009, we found the perfect piece of land about 20 minutes outside of Burlington. It’s 10.5 acres, mostly wooded, and the building envelope sits in the portion of land facing a meadow. It’s situated off a 400-foot private road/driveway which is off a dirt road just about 10 minutes from the interstate—like we said, perfect! After some negotiation, we closed on the land in May and the design process began.

After we first looked at the land, we asked Rolf Kielman, a close family friend, architect, and senior partner at TruexCullins, to give us his opinion of the site. He validated our thoughts and is now designing the house. He also suggested that we call Keith Wagner at H. Keith Wagner Partnership, a talented landscape architect and artist, to help with the siting and in developing a comprehensive landscape plan that would fit our modern/minimal/low maintenance approach.

Throughout the this summer and fall Rolf has been working on floor plans based on our initial desire for a U-shaped house that would create a courtyard. In the initial phase it looked like our square footage needs and building budget meant we would have a “stubby-U”—not too attractive! But we held on to the courtyard concept—could see ourselves sitting at a small table outside in the evening with a glass of wine, surrounded by the house and enjoying the outdoors. (Can you tell we would love to be in a campo in Italy?) An added incentive is our small meadow, surrounded on 3 sides with woodland—it seemed the perfect container for our U-shaped structure.

During the summer, Keith invited us, along with Rolf, to visit his house which is modern/minimal and incorporates elements we’re interested in using. There are several structures on his property and that maybe inspired Rolf to create a floor plan that arranges the main house, garage and Tina’s studio into the “U” shape and gives us the courtyard we wanted. We’ll share the site plan and some of the floor plans as they are finalized.

Since we will be breaking ground in May, it dawned on us this fall that we needed to line-up a contractor. Rolf suggested several for us to consider and we meet with a few. Jeremy O’Neill of O’Neill Builders was among those. We met him in November and immediately felt he was “our guy.” He’s young, enthusiastic, pro-active, and has extensive experience in the green building arena—and we think we’re going to have fun working with him.

We’re looking forward to sharing the process as it unfolds.

Michael + Tina

P.S. There was a bit of a kerfuffle at the outset of the design process about a shed or monopitch roof, but Tina will cover that in another. And Michael will share his minimalist wall outlets and his obsession for floor pedals instead of faucets in 1/2 bath downstairs. . .stay tuned!