Why Ω?

I hate moving. I’ve done my best to keep it easy; I’ve only ever owned light pickups with bed toppers (the ultimate moving vehicle), and I’ve kept it pretty minimal in terms of stuff. But I still hate it. Considering I’ve moved at least 30 times in my life, I guess I hate staying in place, more.

That said, I’ve completed my last move out. I just have one more move in to get through.

Ω

This is Ω. Pronounced, Omega. As the last letter in the Greek alphabet (probably), it’s the end of the line. The final stop. The cul-de-sac in the suburbs of Life. It’s what the Roman god Terminus scrawls on the signature line of the checks he bounces. For me, it represents my last move. The ultimate endgame. With a little luck, it’s the house I’ll die in. With a little more, I’ll finish building it first.

It’s a beautiful lil spot. A “farmhouse with a modern twist”. The brainchild of my wonderful, whip-smart, and despite what she says, creative wife Dani, and the brilliant and brave designer and owner-builder Amber. To take nothing away from the immense contributions of Amber, Dani designed the bones on her own as she did for every property we looked at over the last several years. If we thought it had the acreage, layout, and location to be a candidate, it got a bespoke home design from Dani. When we finally found our place, this is basically what she drew up.

In our search for inspiration and information, we found a presentation by Amber on her “Little Red House” design. Loving her design principles as well as her aesthetics, we dove deeper and found that she had started construction on a home she’d designed for herself. Not only that, but she was acting as her own General Contractor. Not only that, but she had a blog following the build. Poem Homes quickly became maybe the single most important resource we had for learning how to be owner-builders. Amber then took her expertise and brought it to the Ω design, putting the crucial finishing touches on what Dani had put together.

What we have is a 2 story, 1500 sq ft farmhouse with a full, unfinished, walkout basement, 2 car garage and covered breezeway. Built on a south facing hill on the north side of the Wisconsin River valley, it’ll overlook a barn, garden, woods and pasture, complete with 2 to 4 horses. On a clear day, we’ll catch a peek at Grant County not so far off to the south. It’s perfect.

We’ll be using ICFs and a REMOTE wall system. We’ll have a continuous air barrier and Marvin windows and doors with a great U-value for the price. We’ll have shou sugi ban-ed cedar siding and standing seam metal roofing. And we’ll do it (almost) all ourselves.

But we’ll get into all that nerdy, building science-y shit later. For now, there’s a hole.