On Monday the 23rd we visited the home of Doug Hansmann & Denise Thornton. They worked with Whole Tree architecture (an amazing company) and a local builder to design and build a whole tree house using trees harvested from their own property. Nothing was wasted building this house, even the trim was made out of unused parts of the trees, as well as bookshelves and kitchen and bathroom counters.

Whole Tree building was founded by Roald Gunderson the owner and visionary for Whole Tree Architecture. Check out more about Whole Tree houses here: ttp://wholetrees.com/.

This beautiful house incorporates many green technologies including straw bale walls and a solar heating system with both passive heating and solar heating and hot water. The owners Doug and Denise were not only very interesting and lovely people, but they were also very generous with their time, giving us a three hour tour and answering our incessant questions. They even allowed Ian and Jonan to climb onto the roof - a very cool roof made out of sod and grass!

Doug and Denise put a lot of thought and commitment into green engineering and design when building their home. Doug is a chemist/professor and Denise is a science writer. Check out Denise's blog here: http://digginginthedriftless.com/