My last post was number one hundred. I've been doing this blog now for just over six months, and I'm pleased with myself for keeping with it. I'm even more pleased that it seems at least a few people are enjoying Future House Now. But most importantly, I've made some new friends through my site, which I guess I didn't really expect. Web 2.0 is something really neat, and I'm having a ton of fun with my tiny little corner of it.
So it seems a good time to reflect a little, and to share some of my plans for Future House Now. As I've said several times, my wife and I would really like to build a green, modern home for our own family. Building a home, any kind of home, is quite a task as well as a huge financial challenge. We're not quite ready yet, partially because I live near Detroit, where the real estate market has literally collapsed. Even if we were ready to build or buy we very likely couldn't sell our current home without great difficulty. But that's okay, because I'm still in the phase of learning and daydreaming. In a couple of years I'll have a lot better idea what I really want for our next home.
I hope it doesn't surprise anyone when I say that I am not currently living in a hip, eco-modern pad. The Commoners live in the burbs, in a stick frame colonial, 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath, yawner. Inside, it's pretty Pottery Barn cataloguesque. Actually, it's a pretty nice house and we live in a really nice neighborhood. A lot of people would love to live in my house.
But tastes change. In my case, tastes change a lot. In the last couple of years my personal world view has shifted drastically, for the better I think, and I'm sort of rediscovering the world from a new angle. I've always been interested in green homes, and the new wave of interest in green modern has hit me and my changing views like a lightning bolt. Hence this blog.
So, one thing I've been wanting to do is to start laying out what I want my future home to be. I think by now you get an idea of my tastes. Next I'd like to outline the design principles for my next home. It would be something I could hand to an architect and say, "here, like this." That's always kind of been the goal of my blog.
But before I do that I want to critically deconstruct the home I live in now. I've owned it for nine years, and I have an idea what's wrong with it, and where, as a good example of a typical suburban home, it falls short. By addressing the bad design of my current house I think I can all the more effectively illustrate how good design really can make a huge difference. I think of Scott and Helen Nearing's Living the Good Life books. Before they explained how they hand-built their beautiful stone houses (first in Vermont, then later another in Maine) they told cautionary tales of the homes they bought. I remember their words ... "Ours was a typical rundown farm," and "remodeling old wooden houses - don't!" My house isn't rundown, but it is sure a typical suburban house, and I think there are good lessons to be learned from examining its flaws. So look for those posts to start soon, and hopefully we'll have some fun with them.
I'll also keep posting the normal sort of material I do, and I have some other things in the works. I want to continue to improve the quality of presentation on Future House Now too. At the moment, I've sort of done all I can without really learning some HTML or CSS, or enlisting the help of others. Still, I hope that by the end of 2007 the site will look significantly better than it does today.
Of course, I would be thrilled to hear any feedback or suggestions anyone might offer me, either in regards to material or the look and function of the blog. Thank you to all of the new friends I've made, for your generous encouragement. And thanks to anyone who visits Future House Now, and comes back again, or passes on a link to a friend.
Cheers!
