![]() ![]() Around their tiny cul-de-sac, now lined with three other houses and a photo studio, some newly designed homes were already underway when they broke ground, making for understanding neighbors. The Darnells’ new neighborhood was already home to a handful of modernist houses, all built in recent years between clapboard Victorians and 19th-century folk-style structures. "We went home and scrambled to see how much money we didn’t have," Jamie remembers. They saw the land and knew they’d found their spot. A few steps away is a pedestrian bridge spanning the highway with a big cow statue on a pedestal in a park at the far end-fitting for a place known for its steaks and stockyards. The hunt eventually led them to a somewhat forlorn plot in the city’s Westside neighborhood overlooking an area known as the West Bottoms with Interstate 670 to the north. "We’ve really been invested in the redevelopment of downtown," Jamie says, "and that’s something we wanted to be a part of, too." So when the couple started looking for a piece of land, the same motivation informed their search. Jamie’s firm, El Dorado Inc., is based in the city and has been an agent for renewal in the downtown area. And we knew we wanted to build our own house, and that was definitely more of a possibility here." "Growing up here, the goal was always to leave," Michele explains. "Then I married an architect, and there’s a cabin there now."īut it took another decade before the couple started building their own house back in Kansas City. "We camped on that land forever," Michele says, remembering family trips. They soon married in the mountains of Colorado, a 13-hour drive to the west, near a patch of property owned by Michele’s family. "That was all by design," Jamie says.īoth natives of suburban Kansas City, Michele and Jamie met at the copy machine in Jamie’s architecture firm about 16 years ago. The eastern side of the house faces the Art Deco buildings of downtown Kansas City-the Paris of the Plains-rising out of some trees. Perched on a bluff with the former Kansas City Livestock Exchange and a knot of railroad tracks below, the copper-clad house looks westward toward the flat expanse of the country’s midsection and, in spirit at least, the mountains beyond. Typical homes have so many leaks, it’s like having a window open all the time, winter and summer.Michele and Jamie Darnell’s house sits at the edge of one thing and the beginning of another. Don’t pay to heat and cool the outdoors! Air leakage and improperly installed insulation can waste 20 percent or more of the energy you pay to heat and cool your home. ![]() The biggest benefit of Solid Core Design versus a stick built home is energy efficiency. The first Solid Core type construction was made in 1935 and the buildings are still in use today, nearly 70 years later. Ridge beams with SIP panels can eliminate trusses and open your vaulted great room with extremely high R-values and air-tight panel systems. Using solid core roof panels, a home can have high vaulted ceilings or an “attic” area that is conditioned space inside the building envelope. The building package includes pre-assembled, insulated headers, along with window and door cutouts and horizontal and vertical electrical chases. Drywall, knotty pine, or other interior finishes are field applied as needed. Exterior and interior facings are shown with in this photo with OSB. The thickness of foam is adjusted to increase R-Value. When we build with SIPs, or Structural Insulated Panels, the wall and roof panels are built by joining high performance rigid foam insulation to Oriented Strand Board (OSB) or plywood. Saratoga Construction is proud to be a building partner with Energy Panel Structures, one of the industry leaders in SIP panel (Solid Core) building systems. ![]()
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