Our story so far: Deep in the midst of the framing and mechanicals phase of renovating the old Methodist church into our home, we focused on ceilings.

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One of the features we dreamed of on the second floor was skylights. Our Number Three design rule was “Natural lighting brings the outdoors indoors.” While traipsing through a model home during an autumn Parade of Homes tour, we discovered a novel skylight that transmitted light from the roof to a main floor kitchen with a series of reflective surfaces inside a tube. It was a Solatube, the brand name for a tubular daylighting device. During a conversation with an installer at a home improvement show, we learned Solatubes can also include a bathroom vent and a solar-powered nightlight, which would be perfect for our upstairs bathroom.

Tyler hurried to install the pickled plywood planks on the upstairs ceiling, and the Solatube installer arrived bright and early one Monday morning to install one tube in the bathroom and another one (without the vent and nightlight) in the adjacent area which would someday house my office.

The Solatubes generated an amazing amount of natural light upstairs, just what we imagined. And, we learned we could get a tax rebate for utilizing energy-efficient lighting. Score!

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Tomorrow: As long as we’re being energy conscious, we think pink. Read about it here.