What Have We Learned?

This renovation has, in effect, been a 3+ year process, from planning to completion. (And, in fact, is it ever truly complete? Seems like there is still a running list of things we'd like to finish & do. Please, assure us that this is the case at your home too.)

We were already conservation-minded when we came to this project, and had spent several years already deeply involved in sustainable community projects. But the green building process taught us a lot about sustainable innovations; energy use and efficiencies; insulation, insulation, insulation; LEED documentation; working with a team of great green professionals (our green rater/3rd party verifier, energy auditor/modeler), and practicing thinking as they do about the "whole-house" balancing of energy & water conservation with human health optimization.

The construction process taught us much about PATIENCE (how to live in disarray for 7-12 months), and also about the coordination and logistics of a large project like this -- working with a project team and seeing from the point of view of an architect, or a builder, or an HVAC service provider, or a landscape designer.

At the end of the day (perhaps it is because our minds and hearts are already rooted in sustainable living?) our biggest learnings had to do with taking the long view when it came to decision-making and weighing the benefits and drawbacks of certain solutions or approaches. Perhaps what kept us going through the complexities, the processing of difficult technical concepts, the surprises (all projects of this size have surprises!) -- was our macro-focus throughout the project on the way we want to live. The prize we tried to keep our eye on was that this project was just an expression of our belief in and attempt to carve out a new/better/lighter/smarter way to live physically with and in support of our environment, with respect to our resources, with an ethic of conservation, and in order to improve (or at least be "less bad?" with regards to) the health and well-being of our home and our planet. We found that when we thought this way, though it was often difficult (there is plenty of consuming work and decision-making in a project like this), it helped some of the more challenging pieces feel simpler, and some of the "stickier" pieces seem worth working through.