Author Archives: Lauren Nicholson

Kisses from Katie

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I just finished reading a book called Kisses from Katie, about an 18 year-old girl from Tennessee who left her home and family to work with orphans in Uganda. She had planned on staying only for a year before returning to the states for college. But she fell in love with the country and the people, and now Uganda feels like home. At age 22, she lives in Uganda and is a mother to 13 adopted children.

The book resonated with me in so many ways. Although my own mission isn’t a religious one, I believe the essence is the same. It’s what Buddhists call groundlessness, and Christians surrender. It’s about love and connection and being a part of something much larger than myself. It’s about surrendering to uncertainty and getting away from all the static and excess that interferes with that larger purpose in our modern Western lives.

As I read the book, I began to think harder about how I could create that same sense of purpose and connection in my own everyday life.

The paperwork and the monotony of the work I do as an interpreter kills me. I can feel the liveliness leave me, every time I have to say, “Please sign these 15 pieces of paper,” as I proceed to ask the same 10 questions over and over again, while pondering how many trees die to supply hospitals with excessive amounts of paper, most of which goes straight in the trash. I despise that part of my job, and unfortunately, that’s most of what I do. On the days where I have to stand under fluorescent lights, registering 20 kids for routine doctors appointments, sometimes I feel like I can barely contain my frustration as I try to merge our bureaucratic, litigious society with people who come from a totally different world where healthcare and education are never a given. Often I’m the bridge between someone who hates their desk job and a person who doesn’t know their child’s birthdate, and I feel like pulling my hair out.

But the moments when I’m sitting in the Emergency Room with a mother whose daughter is dying from a rare genetic disorder, and the doctors insist that she won’t live much longer; I watch the mother refuse to give up on her daughter, and I can feel myself come to life.

In April of last year, I fell in love with two boys who had lost everything, their home, their mother and their brother to the tornadoes, and in the few months I spent working with them, I’d never loved my job more.

When I sit with children who have been sexually abused, and I see them slowly learning to trust someone again, or I watch as parents come to therapy themselves, recognizing their mistakes and learning to be better parents. When I see a sickly, precious little girl recovering from a stem cell transplant, or I have to tell a family that their child has just been diagnosed with cancer, their pain breaks my heart, but those experiences yank me back to the present moment. I feel so connected to those people, and those moments are some of the most meaningful experiences I’ve ever had. Much like the feeling of being in the woods with only my backpack, I feel at home.

It makes me sad to think about how many years I’ve spent doing less than the most meaningful things in my life. I’m constantly searching for meaning, but I wonder if I’ve been searching in the wrong places.

I’ve spent most of my adult life being responsible, trying to enjoy the moment, while I plan for my future. At my first real job, I would have them deposit half of my paycheck into my savings account to begin investing in my retirement plan. But I don’t want to obsess about the future anymore. I don’t want to be reckless or put anybody else out either, but I’ve been living as if I could somehow avoid pain and tragedy if I just planned or invested well enough. As if enough planning could protect me from the messiness of life. I don’t think it works that way.

I have rental properties, and although they probably cause me more stress than anything, my goal was to pay off my houses in another 15 years and retire. And by retire I mean, only pouring my heart, work, and energy into the things I love the most.

But I can’t wait that long! My life is slipping away while I wait to have enough money to live the life of my dreams. So I’m thinking of trying to live the life that I want and trust that the money thing will work itself out. It may or may not, but the worst-case scenario would probably just be me living with my mom and trimming her bushes in exchange for some of her delicious organic meals.

As I write this, I’m thinking to myself: “You know you have a life that many people would dream of. You get to travel, you have loving friends and family, you have your health, a decent job, a beautiful place to live, an adorable dog, a boyfriend that loves you.” But that’s not enough. It’s not enough because I’m still spending A LOT of my time, dealing with paperwork, sitting under fluorescent lights in an environment that stifles me.

And I don’t feel very alive.

After my divorce, I was in so much pain that the whole world lit up. The intensity of pain I was experiencing opened me up to a whole new world. I couldn’t possibly hurt anymore than I was already hurting, so there was nothing to run from. I could be totally open to anyone and everything because there was no need to protect myself. And that openness brought me such joy and showed me parts of myself that I never remembered having experienced.

Although I don’t miss the pain, I miss that feeling, that openness. As I move further away from that painful time in my life, I become more and more comfortable and less willing to be uncomfortable. And the more I run from discomfort, the smaller my world becomes.

I know this is not a linear process, and I’m not a linear person. I struggle to focus on one thing, and the details around what I think I want can change as quickly as Alabama’s bipolar weather. I’m interested in and passionate about so many things. One day all I can think about is building this Passive House and how much that means to me. Then the next day I want to either take off into the woods or go care for dying children in Africa, and my Passive House dream starts to feel incredibly privileged and pretentious.

I go in circles, zig-zagging back and forth, just hoping that ultimately I’m moving in the direction of my deepest desires. I know that I will continually swing back and forth between my desire for safety and comfort and the longing for aliveness that only comes from first feeling incredibly uncomfortable. Simplicity is my luxury, and I can only hope I’m slowly headed that way, whatever concrete form it may take.

I was looking at an old journal and found this poem I had written a few years ago:

I feel a terrifying peace
Something that says,
“You don’t have a choice.”

It’s something infinitely bigger than me
Yet at the same time as small as me

I realize that somehow
I’m the most and the least
Important thing in the universe

And I think maybe I don’t have to be scared
Or maybe I do

Maybe being terrified is part of it
I’m terrified of my peace being stolen from me…

It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted out of life
I believe it’s all any of us ever want

I want to spend the rest of my life
Being with that peace
And looking for it in places it can truly be found.

Why Passive House?

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Affordable Passive House in Urbana, IL, built for $110/ square foot. The trellis is designed so future vines can provide shading for the south facing windows.

The Passive House builder’s training last week was more than I could have hoped for! I met some wonderful people, learned so much, and now feel more confident in my understanding of what it takes to build a Passive House.

I have a newfound respect for the amount of attention I will have to pay to the details of the construction of this home and for the amount of time and energy I will need to invest in convincing people that we can do this, especially here in Alabama.

I’ve gained confidence and fear at the same time. Building such an air-tight envelope makes for a more energy efficient building, and the intentional ventilation creates superior air quality and comfort within the home, but it also means the building is less forgiving if mistakes are made during construction. If the walls aren’t designed well or the windows aren’t installed correctly, you can create a situation where water can accumulate in your walls. And with airtight walls it’s much more difficult for the building to dry itself out.

Up until now, I’ve relied a lot on my experienced subcontractors to educate me about their trades and best building practices. But in order to make this project happen, I will have to be able to communicate and demonstrate how to do a lot of the construction details to my subs. I think many of them will be open to it, but some will probably fight it.

Building a Passive House, in many ways, is like turning conventional construction on its head. It will be an uphill battle talking with inspectors and subcontractors, to convince them that this new way of doing things is going to result in a better building.

Essentially, Passive House is a building that won’t become obsolete in 20 years. The goal is to create a super-insulated, airtight, thermal bridge free envelope that uses balanced ventilation through efficient mechanical systems, high performance windows and doors, and passive elements to create a comfortable, durable building that’s renewable ready!

On the first day of training, we looked at some graphs that showed our projected increasing energy demands over the next few decades. With a growing global population and technology reaching parts of the world that have never known things such as air conditioning, the only way we’re going to meet the rise in our global energy demands is through energy-efficiency.

In the U.S., 40% of our energy consumption comes from the operations and maintenance of our buildings. Buildings built to the Passive House standard consume approximately 90% less energy than conventional buildings, so imagine how much energy can be saved if all of our buildings were built to this standard!

I often hear the argument that renewable energy is too expensive, out of reach, but that is largely due to the fact that our buildings are inefficient, so it requires a lot of renewable energy to operate the building. If we make our buildings 90% more efficient, then renewable energy, such as solar, starts to make a lot more sense.

Currently it costs around 10% more to build a home to Passive House standards, but a lot of people are working to show that it can be done affordably. One of the Passive homes that we visited in Illinois was built for about $110 per square foot, which is pretty cheap! And as the construction standards and some of the materials used become more widely known, it will become even more affordable. As Adam, one of our instructors at the training says, with a Passive House, your monthly payment, when you add up your mortgage payment and your energy bill, will be equal to or less than your total payment with a conventional home. What doesn’t make sense about that?! And then you’re putting your money into the quality and equity of your home instead of giving it to the power company!

The Passive House standard is based on the performance of the building. For example, to meet Passive House certification when the home is tested under pressure with a blower door test, there can be no more than 0.6 air changes per hour, compared to 7.0 allowed by code! But the specific way the building is built depends entirely on the climate of the area and the availability of materials. So each project has to be evaluated individually to come up with the best system and materials to use on the house.

The learning curve on all this is steep, which is why it’s taking me so dang long! The other houses I’ve built were designed and built in about 9-12 months total, and I think we’ve been in the design phase with this house for about 9 months now. We probably have another 3-6 months to go just to finalize the design, to enter all the data in the Passive House Planning Package Software, estimate the costs, and submit the project to the Passive House Institute for pre-certification. I’m hoping to have every construction detail drawn and planned out before we start building, and I’m guessing that once we break ground, the actual construction will take a year or so.

I’ll write another post soon for any construction geeks out there that want more information about how I plan on building the walls of this house and an explanation of the ventilation system that makes Passive House possible!

From Alaska to Illinois

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I’m headed to Illinois tomorrow for my first Passive House builder’s training. It’s their inaugural builders training and takes place in a college town called Urbana, “the heartland home of superinsulation, air-tight envelopes, ERV, and solar gain principles that underpin the modern passive house movement.” The US Passive House Institute is located there and 8 Passive House projects have been built there in the last 10 years.

The training focuses on general passive house principles, hands-on field focus on the building envelope, HVAC considerations and cost optimization and bidding. I’m really excited about the training and learning more about how to actually build a Passive House (and a little nervous that I’ll be totally under-qualified). Hopefully, I can post some pictures of the Passive House projects there that have already been built!

It’s also fun to be in a hotel for a week where there’s nothing but me to clean or take care of! It’ll be quite the contrast to the tent I was sleeping in last week in Alaska.

Last week, eleven of us spent nine days in Alaska through UAB’s Outdoor Pursuits. We spent a few days in Denali National Park, backpacking in the Denali wilderness, hiking on tundra, which is actually a plant and not a place like I thought.

The views were amazing, and I didn’t suffer nearly as much as I expected. The weather had gotten cold enough to take the mosquito level from intolerable to just annoying. And we were among the lucky ones that were able to see Mount McKinley, all 20,328 feet of it!

The mountain spends most of its time hidden behind the clouds and only about 30% of visitors get to see it in all of its glory. If you get to Wonder Lake on a cloudy day, unless someone told you, you’d never know a giant mountain existed behind the fog. Josh, our trip leader woke us all up at 5:30 one morning when he saw that the mountain was totally exposed.

Early morning Mt. McKinley

In the backcountry part of our trip, we got caught in a freezing 12-hour windy rain storm, which made for a cold, uncomfortable day and reminded us that tents are only water resistant and NOT waterproof! But it also made for some quality time with Xuan my tent partner and made clear sunny days seem like heaven!

After climbing out of the wilderness, we headed south to Valdez, where we spent a day sea kayaking up to the Shoup glacier. It was absolutely beautiful. I even swam in glacier water, and if you know how much I hate the cold, I’m sure you’re really impressed!

We saw every kind of wildlife we hoped to see, from grizzlies to moose to wolves to loons, luckily most of it was from the safety of the park’s camper bus and not on the trail! The landscapes are among the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, and I hope to venture back some day to do some more glacier hiking and ice climbing.

No matter where you are in Alaska, it takes 8 hours to get somewhere else. It’s one of the few places in the US that has been kept truly wild. And especially in the national parks, they’ve worked really hard to keep it that way. Other than social trails that people have created, there are no trails in the Denali wilderness. No private vehicles are allowed on the park road, and the park rangers work incessantly to educate people on how to respect wildlife and “leave no trace” as they explore the park.

Kayaking at Shoup glacier

So from Alaska to Illinois, it’s been a happening month. I’ll have to miss half of Birmingham’s Sidewalk Film Festival this weekend, which breaks my heart. But I got an early morning flight back on Sunday, so that I could at least catch some of the Sunday films. Sidewalk is one of my favorite local events!

My home hasn’t leased yet, so if it doesn’t happen in the next few weeks, maybe I’ll start working on finishing the basement. David has the house drawings and the climate data for our region and is working on entering the data to run all the Passive House numbers for the Avondale house. Once we’ve entered all the data, we’ll know if we need to change any window or door sizes or anything else with the design before we finalize the drawings to meet Passive House standards.

A Few Steps Back

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There hasn’t been much happening in the way of Passive House lately and the peaceful life thing kind of comes and goes.

I should really quit proclaiming with such confidence what my next step will be. I’ve felt some sort of pressure to define where I’m headed and then follow through with it. I think I’m scared of looking like an idiot for starting a whole blog about a Passive House that isn’t being built.

But the larger message of this journey and project is about creating a life that’s more in line with my deepest values and the life I want for myself.

I believe that this house will be built someday, but I don’t know that for sure. And if it does happen, I don’t know when it will happen. The truth is I don’t know anything. Although I can hedge my bets on what tomorrow will bring, I NEVER truly know what the next moment holds. A minor car accident, a busted sewer line and a broken air conditioner within the last few weeks have been good reminders of that.

For the moment at least, I’ve taken some pressure off myself. The number one thing I know is that I’m tired. I need to rest, and I need more time and energy for me, and my patience for riding out the uncertainty of all this is waning.

I’ve enrolled in some certification programs to learn more about some things I’m passionate about and want to make part of my professional life, but I need more space and less responsibility in my life to dive in fully and really make those changes.

I had planned on building the garage first and possibly living there while I built the rest of the house. But the city gave me a big huge NO on that one. Then I decided to finish my basement. I was going to rent it out and create more income that way. I had started gathering materials and checking out thrift stores, getting prices from subcontractors and was just waiting on the carpenter to get started.

Then last Thursday, I got a call from a realtor that handles corporate relocations. He thought he could easily find people who would be interesting in renting my property. Based on the monthly rent he quoted me, I decided that was a good option. He listed the property on his website and a couple is going to view the house today. Who knows if they’ll rent it, but when I looked at the numbers, this option really does make the most financial sense.

So that’s the idea of the day! I’ll lease my home, live with my mom for a while, and take some time to myself to figure out what I can achieve professionally and personally, some time to focus on me without having to take care of anything else, just existing and exploring!

I’m sure by my next blog post, I’ll have a totally different strategy, but I’m trusting myself, one tiny half step at a time and seeing which doors aren’t dead bolted shut.

And those are the doors that I will walk through. Sometimes I walk up to a beautiful door that I REALLY, REALLY want to open, so I turn the handle, but it’s locked.

Then I knock really loudly and even yell to see if there’s someone inside who could let me in. When that doesn’t work, I pull out my sledgehammer and try to beat the door down.

But when that iron door still doesn’t budge, that’s usually when, exhausted, I take a step back and ask myself if maybe there’s another door that I could open with a little less effort ☺.

Trusting myself is something I’ve talked about in theory for a long time, but I’m really just beginning to understand what it means to live that way. And that’s the most valuable and rewarding thing this project could bring me.

Most of my life I have longed to feel passionate about something, anything. I would think to myself, if I just knew what I was passionate about, then, I would gladly pursue it.

It’s hard for me to believe, but I now have an inkling about the kinds of things I want to spend my life doing. I still have a lot of fears and doubts, but it’s like I’m standing on one side of a raging river and the fog has finally cleared enough for me to see through to the other side. Now I just have to figure out how to build the bridge to get there.

It’s pretty amazing to live in a world where it’s possible to fine tune and tweak my deepest desires and longings. I have enough support and security to move beyond survival mode and create my dream life.

I believe it more than ever, I believe that I can create a life full of fulfilling relationships, and professional and financial fulfillment, no excess, just bountifully, beyond my wildest dreams enough.

(As far as concrete progress with the house, the city did approve the variance for the garage, so that’s good news! I turned the garage to take up a little less space in the setback area. Here’s the visual if you’d like to see the updated site plan. I like how it frames in the back yard. Site Plan 2_070212)

Exterior Images, Variances, and Gas Leaks

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In Avondale, the zoning regulations say that a detached garage can’t take up more than 30% of the back 25 feet of a lot, but since there’s no alley access and my lot is so narrow, a 2-car garage would take up about 40% of that area, which means I have to apply for a variance. Here’s a link to the site plan if you want to see a visual of where the garage sits on the property. (You can also see the first floor plan; we angled the back wall of the master to create a little more space in the bedroom without encroaching on the driveway!) Site Plan_062012

I spoke with the variance guy at the city today about getting the approval, and apparently the deadline for their July board meeting was yesterday, but he said if I got him the paperwork today, he could try to squeeze me in. (I swear it feels like there’s some unwritten rule saying that every tiny step of the building process must take a minimum of six weeks!)

So I rushed to get everything together and ran down to city hall between appointments.

I walked in, and the building was vacant. It seemed strange, but I looked around and tried to walk through the metal detector. At that moment, a guard appeared and said I would have to leave, the whole building had been evacuated because of a gas smell that has been permeating the city of Birmingham today.

Shucks!

So I called and left variance man a message. Hopefully he’ll still take my paperwork on Monday, and hopefully, they’ll approve it in July! That’s the first hurdle to getting the building permit.

If the variance gets approved, I should be able to take my elevations, color rendering, material samples and landscape design to go before the historic design review board in July. Once we have their approval, then we can finalize the construction documents and start building!

I did get some disappointing news last week when I talked to a city official. Things seem to change according to who you talk to, but when I went in person, they told me I wouldn’t be able to get a permit for the garage alone. I’ll have to get the permit for the house and the garage at the same time. Because the garage is an accessory structure, you can’t get a permit for the accessory structure unless there’s a primary structure that’s already built. I’m still hopeful that I’ll be able to move along more quickly with the garage, so that I can use it for storage while I build.

Here are some images of the exterior elevations, so you can start to get an idea of what the outside of the house will look like!

I’m working on a color scheme right now, but I’m leaning towards an old looking Bessemer like red brick for the foundation, the brick columns, and the partial brick walls of the house, then a blue/green/ grey color for the siding, chocolate brown on the window trim and eaves, and a bright red for the doors and window grids!

Any thoughts?

🙂