Cohousing-L Mailing List: Uncommon House progress at RoseWind

[Lynn Nadeau (welcome]

In keeping with our reputation for do-it-yourself and eclecticism, in 
Port Townsend, Washington, RoseWind's (Un)common House is progressing 
steadily. We're starting electrical and plumbing finish work. Nearly all 
of the design and budget work has been done by community volunteers, as 
well as a lot of construction participation. We started construction a 
year ago, and will be finished in a few more months.

(This, in our eleventh year, as we sold our last lots and thus got the 
money. We have 24 member households, and 16 houses occupied on the site, 
and others under construction.)

Visitors comment both on the sensible basic layout, and the pleasantly 
"odd" touches!

Our sensible layout is basically three 30x30 squares arranged in an L 
shape, with the entry foyer at the junction of the two wings. One wing 
has bathrooms, rec room, and youth room, and the other has the 
kitchen-pantry, dining-living spaces, with the foyer area providing for 
bulletin boards, coats, cubbies, etc, and connection between all the 
areas. 

The Rastra-block walls are stuccoed on the exterior (it was rather like 
frosting the world's largest cake) and plastered with Structolite on the 
interior (more goop). Both finishes allow for sculptural effects, with 
rounded edges, archways, and interesting inclusions of gargoyles, pretty 
pieces of stone, and some tiny handprints.

The thick Rastra walls have colored bottles inlaid through them in 
places, creating glowing disks of colored glass. (Half bottles with 
bottoms at each end, wrapped in silver paper to increase light transfer.)

A 14x14 ft. coffered (raised) area in the dining room ceiling sports a 
beautiful wooden "quilt" of geometrically arranged strips of colored 
wood. The wooden floor beneath it will have a border-and-center pattern 
inlaid in the floor wood. 

A small pass-through from the foyer to the kitchen has a pull-down 
window, with the custom addition of a lovely stained-glass panel.

We laughed recently to hear that another coho group still had white CH 
walls, years later, because they couldn't agree on colors. Not a risk 
here! For better or worse, RoseWinders have plunged in with color. We 
have folks who love bold colors, others who prefer pastels, some who love 
modern, others traditional. Instead of trying to agree (a process which 
ended us up with a  bland beige exterior) we've given different people 
license to Go Ahead in different areas. The foyer is bright, the dining 
room calm; the rec room modern, the youth room traditional; the kitchen 
is bright, with more traditional cabinetry on balance; the bathrooms each 
different. Overall, yellows and reds predominate, giving it a very warm 
sunny feel. We figured paint is relatively cheap, and will need redoing 
in some years no matter what we do. 

A colorful mural design for the porch was chosen from among 14 sketches 
by members. 

Our original plan for a "home like" interior became confusing once we saw 
how diverse members' homes were! So we decided the CH should be more like 
a favorite restaurant or other public place that had a welcoming decor, 
but might be very different from our own home. So "uncommon" it became!

In the big picture, we trimmed a lot from our dream plans of years ago. A 
compact two-story plan with wheelchair elevator gave way to a more 
sprawling, but affordable, single story. The office room is now a 
glorified closet; the guest facility a futon in the rec room. But we have 
a built-in vacuum system, Marmoleum floors in the kitchen and youth 
rooms, "SmartWood" flooring in the dining room, skylights, sound system 
wiring throughout, a sink in the youth room, and an underground propane 
tank.  

Did we guess right on our heating system? A propane heat stove (looks 
like a wood stove) in the lounge end of the dining room, supplemented by 
electric ceramic radiant panels mounted at the top of walls in the other 
rooms. Many separate thermostats. Time will tell.

On we go: oil-waxing doors and boards for baseboards, grouting stone tile 
in the halls, installing acoustic tile, planning cabinetry, trying to 
agree on whether to put postal mail in the foyer, working out the ADA 
entry approaches. It's a period of very visible progress.

We dream of greeting the New Year with an Occupancy Permit. That would be 
Un-commonly Satisfying!

Lynn Nadeau
(If you want to join the fun, there are some resales- a big house, a tiny 
house, and a you-build lot. See www.olypen.com/sstowell/rosewind.)
Members include 40 adults, 12 children. Several renters are also active 
participants. 
31 people live on the 10-acre site now.