Construction Journal March 2003

Now we are looking at plans, researching building types and interviewing architects. By the end of March we had bought a program and designed house number one. It was a southwestern style with a flat roof a parapets. We designed patios off most every room and it had lots of corners. We called it the stealth bomber plan because of it's silhouette. We really liked the idea of strawbale, but were told that it just really wasn't feasible in Southern California because of earthquakes. The last week of March we were looking through the paper and saw an ad for free telephone poles and strawbales. Mark called on it thinking they would be great for landscaping walls. The woman told him they were leftovers from their strawbale house they had just finished - in the same county! We immediately went on the internet and started researching again and found two sites of interest. One was Tony Perry of Santa Fe, New Mexico and the other was Bob Bolles in San Diego, California. We called both and Tony invited us out to Santa Fe to see one being built.