Our Green Dream Home
(Page 2 of 5)
December 2004/January 2005
By Catherine Wanek
Through a landscaped front yard, a path curves to an inviting arched entry. Just inside the door, custom shelving, cleverly integrated under a stairway to the second floor, displays the Van Cleves’ collection of Native American arts and crafts. To the left of the main entry, the kitchen, dining and living rooms are integrated into a spacious great room with a cathedral ceiling and views to the south and west. To the right of the entry are the master bedroom and guest suite, both designed with 36-inch-wide “zero-step” doorways.
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“We want to grow old in this house, so the ground floor is pretty much wheelchair accessible,” David says. “And we created a separate suite that’s also accessible in case Margie’s mother needs to live with us.”
Through the more frequently used door on the south side of the house is one of the home’s more unique rooms, the multipurpose mudroom. Given central Washington’s dry climate, Phelan designed the mudroom to be a central collection point for dirt and dust. The mudroom also contains a clothes washer and dryer, pantry and recycling center inspired by the book The Not So Big House. In a space the width of a large closet, Ken Schiffelbein of Artistic Cabinets built a base cabinet that houses three deep drawers, each with three 10-gallon trash cans. The trash cans hold recyclables and store bulk cat food. The Van Cleves also open their mail here and readily send junk mail to the recycling bins.
The mudroom has another handy feature for the four Van Cleve cats: Buzzy, Little Bit, Monster and Patches. Margie and David wanted to keep their upright freezer in the mudroom so it would be near the kitchen. To create space for both freezer and the cats’ litter box, Schiffelbein built an 18-inch-high wheeled platform, which raises the freezer for easier access and leaves plenty of room underneath for the litter box. This innovation accommodates humans, felines and appliance.
Upstairs is Margie’s home office, where she telecommutes via a high-speed Internet connection. Her spacious office has a lovely view to the east, toward Yakima Canyon, and is open to the great room below. The upstairs loft also could be enclosed to create a third bedroom should the need arise, and it is already plumbed for another bathroom. As an avid amateur photographer, David had the attic space fitted with a built-in storage system for his slides and photographs. “We like our floor plan a lot — the only change I would make is to make the sliding patio door larger, so it would open wider,” Margie says.
Sweat Equity
When the time came to build the straw bale walls, Phelan led a volunteer work party of the Van Cleves’ friends and neighbors. This was the first straw bale building for all involved.
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