Last year in February of 2008 a 4.7 earthquake hit my general area of North East Nevada, destroying the old 6th Street ghost town of Wells and wrenching about 100 homes unlivable and still in need of demolition. The place is a wreck. My two floor log home 35 miles out of town was changed from a square to a parallelogram. Oddly, it's still standing and was not condemned, but I need to disassemble it and rebuild it somewhere else. My property, known locally as The Big Chunk of Dirt Ranch, has almost a 360 degree unobstructed view (the only obstruction is the side of the mountain the cabin sits on). There are no buildings, neighbors, lights -- nothing -- for a minimum of 15 miles in any direction, and even they cannot be seen from my property. This August I hope to have a Rocio Romero prefab home in place. The "front" of the house will face the eastern slope of the mountain side and the glass back of the house will take advantage of at least a 190 degree view of nothing but the valley below of sagebrush steppe and the seemingly unending views of Nevada's basin and range. The best part is that her completed design, finished with toilets and bidets, polished concrete radiant heat floors and all electrical appliances and fixtures will come in under $125,000. The worst part is I'm dependent upon old geezer contractors for bids who think I'm crazy and insist they know better than I do what I want. It will be a challenge, but I've got the perfect property of endless nothingness to take advantage of her design. I'm currently negotiating with her on a semi-customized LVL home with a separate studio to: 1 balance the construction setting as you'd do with sculpture, and 2 have a place for guests to spend a month with their own privacy. Sort of a design-conscious studio apartment without the apartment building.
And yeah, I could easily enjoy a dignified death passing out on the deck or even inside from the master bedroom. Check out the following link:
Rocio Romero, modern design and prefab architecture
And to satisfy those who wonder what the sagebrush steppe looks like, here are two photos: first is from the deck of the first floor looking west, second is from the 35 mile highway mark outside of Wells looking east to what remains of the cabin -- that little white speck. I pretty much own everything in the photos that doesn't belong to the BLM, which is half (every other 640 acre section, like a checkerboard). So, wandering around naked night and day isn't much of an issue, except when elk or deer hunters come by trespassing, then after a couple of beers they usually end up naked too. :biggrin1:
