Since moving to Montrose June a year ago, we've finally gotten all the planning and preliminaries behind us, and have started our "Hacienda Grande", high our the hilltop of our estancia south of Montrose.

Actual planning started in January 2004, when we decided it was time to build an age friendly house more suited to our lifestyle. We both were drawn to the Santa Fe southwest style home, so Lil Annee went to the web and found a design we liked. Taking that , I started drafting a scale drawing. Once that was done, we started checking each room size and revising the drawings accordingly.

By May we had decided to move to Montrose and ended up buying a portion of the farm owned by Sherril & Don and Salt Lake friends Dennis & Bunni Chinn. Plans continued to revise as we got a road cut into the high hilltop site with a magnificent view of the Telluride mountains just south of us. Once access to the site was completed, we began site work for the house site.

By fall we had found a designer who took our plans for construction drawings. In the meantime, we had found a builder who specialized in southwest construction. Phil Bailey of Balanced Construction turned out to be a jewel. His forte is energy efficient homes and we made a great connection with him.

By April this year we had finalized plans, made a deal with Phil for construction, gotten utilities in to the site, and set a budget. One site problem that had to be solved was a cut into the hillside that was 14' high at one point. A planned concrete retaining wall proved much too expensive, so our site man resolved that with a boulder retaining wall that is now planted with over 100 creeping rock garden perennials.

Actual house work began May 16 with Annee and me helping Phil stake out the house with a southern orientation and a magnificent mountain view. The day after, excavation began. Pretty quiklike the foundations were laid out and poured and the stem walls were started. We had looked at many types of building materials, but settled on Nudura block for all the walls. Each styrofoam block is 8' long x 18" high with a 6" gap for concrete poured into the block. The walls interconnect like Legos and the end result is a minimum R-55 insulation factor.

After the stem walls were poured and cured, the framers hit the site to install floor trusses and the sub-floor. Then the walls grew higher day by day, with window bucks and door frames going in. The first big pour took to walls to 10'+. Since then, the walls have risen to their final height for roof trusses and the final pour was completed on July 22.

After this things will move quikly. Framers are scheduled to begin interior framing and pretty quiklike the roof will be going on. We'll keep you posted on this site. Below is a series of pictures to date from excavation to the latest progress.