Our primary design principles for this project were to remove the ranch character of the home, open the south-facing back of the home to the amazing yard and views, incorporate an open concept floor plan on the main level, and make the home as energy efficient as possible. We knocked down all interior walls on the main living level and our kitchen, living, and dining areas are now part of one big awesome space. The front door got moved to the lower level and the garage was ditched (you can’t have cars parked in front of such a cool house!). The wrap-around porch is good and beefy – built with native pine from the local lumber mill – and provides a real farm house touch. We’re huge fans of energy efficiency, so it just made sense to also make it a deep energy retrofit project with 2 3/4″ exterior rigid foam and closed cell or open cell foam on the interior. The oil boiler got tossed and we replaced it with a condensing natural gas boiler with radiant floor distribution throughout the home. Along the way we also created dozens of garden beds with literally thousands of native flowers, trees, and shrubs. The 500 sq ft patio with dry-stack fieldstone walls is nearly complete. We can get much better pictures than the ones attached here. I’m also happy to write up a much more detailed report on this project if you have any interest. By the way we did much of the work ourselves, using carpenter friends and various trades-folks to handle the stuff we couldn’t do.