VaST's LabHouse Article

DailyCamera

	Julie Maren and Derek van Westrum prepare for a picnic for van Westrum's birthday in their new house in Martin Acres.
Marty Caivano

Tearing down and building up
Couple settles in to new house in Martin Acres

By Cindy Sutter, Camera Staff Writer
August 16, 2006

Editor's note: This is the final installment in a series of stories tracking the building of a new house for Julie Maren and Derek van Westrum in Martin Acres in Boulder.

If you hear a whisper of a noise in Martin Acres, it might be Julie Maren and Derek van Westrum breathing a well-earned sigh of relief. Their house is done.

The couple moved in at the end of July, more than a month later than planned, and set about placing their old stuff, along with the new, in their spanking new home.

Their favorite room: a space upstairs they call a lounge. It's a cozy area of books encased in blond wood shelves made by van Westrum. A black leather couch anchors the space with its light and breezy overlook to the floor below and the neighborhood outside through windows on the tall outside wall.

"It's the one we finished first," van Westrum says of the area. "It's so nice."

The room represents a blend of old and new, with some familiar things from their previous house that have been in storage while their new house was built on the same site.

"I missed my books for the last year," Maren says.

The new house, a 1,700 square-foot contemporary space with concrete floors and white walls warmed up by light wood accents, features a 300-square-foot studio for Maren, an artist and an office for van Westrum, a physicist, who enjoys music and woodworking in his spare time. They already despair of putting a car in their single garage, full of bikes and woodworking equipment.

The modern space with sleek Ikea kitchen cabinets, a professional stove and an open floor plan replaces their 792-square-foot former home. While they initially considered adding space to the vintage-1954 house, a cracked foundation on expansive soil made a remodel too expensive.

The couple turned to architect Joseph Vigil of VaST High Performance Architecture & Green Design, who designed the new house, fitting the rectangle to the old lot to keep the trees and take advantage of views of the Flatirons from the master bedroom. The house is passive solar to keep the house cool in summer and warm in winter and includes solar panels that help heat water for the radiant heat under the floors. The walls, constructed of structural insulated panels, or SIPS, add heavy insulation.

The keep cool aspects and solar features got their first test as the couple moved in just in time for a string of torrid days with temperatures sometimes in the triple digits.

At its worst after several days of heat, the house was 81 degrees downstairs and 84 degrees upstairs. Quite warm, but still bearable under the breeze of a ceiling fan. On the bright side, the solar panels heated more than enough hot water, despite a glitch in the hot water boiler that still must be repaired.

"We did our first off-the-grid load of laundry," van Westrum says. "All the water was heated by the sun."

The building process was relatively smooth. The worst that could happen definitely didn't. They feared hitting water when they drilled down to bedrock and installed caissons to keep the house stable if the soil shifted underneath. No water in the holes. They didn't realize how lucky they were until they decided late in the process to dig down under the house to install the solar-fueled water heaters. The builders encountered water, which is now pumped out with a sump pump. Had the caissons been located a few feet over, the water would have been a problem.

Van Westrum estimates the house went over its original budget by about 3 percent, not including the extras they decided to add as the building process unfolded.

"In terms of surprises, there weren't too many," van Westrum says, adding that he has heard that a 20 percent cost overrun is not uncommon.

Vigil agrees that the project went smoothly.

"There are always little, tiny things that come up on every job," he says. "There was nothing major, and that was good."

He says he and his wife, Brandy LeMae, who served as project manager, worked closely with the contractor to keep the project close to budget.

"We like to work with the contractor up front, since they've got a better understanding of construction costs than we do."

James Nasty, who with his partner, Matt Louy, owns DoneWright Builders, says one reason the project went so well was that Maren and van Westrum were attentive, but didn't try to micromanage.

"I just think all around everybody worked really well together. Derek and Julie let us do our part. They didn't get too involved in the building of it."

The house was completed more than a month behind schedule, mostly because of a wait for metal work on the staircase, while the craftsman finished work at Seven Eurobar in downtown Boulder.

With the lease up in their rental, the couple spent more than a month living in the basement of Maren's parent's house in Erie, while they waited for their new home to be finished.

As Maren and van Westrum prepared last week for a house-warming party on Saturday, they were trying to figure out how to hang a large, 40-pound piece of art 15 feet up the wall. It was impossible for van Westrum to carry it up on an extension ladder by himself. While the two initially planned for some colored accent walls, they now have decided to keep the walls white.

"We're sort of enjoying the white walls because of the quality of the light," van Westrum says. Indeed, they can watch the sun move and cast its beams through different windows as the day progresses, giving the space a tranquil feel.

By the party the next day, they planned to have completed most of the finishing touches in their new home. They're happy to be back in their neighborhood, a quick walk to the Wild Oats on Baseline and close to public transit.

And van Westrum says with a laugh: "It's nice to have a house where the doors are square." In their previous home, the sinking foundation meant they couldn't get their front door closed for part of the year.

Are they glad they did it?

"We're completely happy the whole thing worked," van Westrum says.

But, he says, there's another question that should be asked.

Would you do it again?

"I have to say it was an adventure," he says. "All the things like demolishing the old house before the loan had gone through."

But they still think the move made sense. A bigger house in their price range would likely have been a 1970s house that needed a lot of work.

Their advice to any couple considering a similar course of action: Make sure you're both on board with the plan, because it's a lot work.

"It became a part-time job," Maren says.

Now, they've got a different kind of chore ahead of them.

"You might have noticed the landscaping or the lack of it," van Westrum says of their dirt- and gravel-covered yard.

Says Maren: "I feel sorry for the neighbors."