It was a rare snowy February day in 2013 when we went to Steve Miller’s office, a Structural Engineer in Truckee, CA.  We took in the original and our modified blue prints for the Fuxagufer West.  We wanted to remove the walls between the kitchen and dining areas and a large passive solar atrium that went all the way across the front of the house.  He quickly informed us that the walls we want to take out are ‘structural’ so it will mean tearing out existing foundation from an area we had not planned to remodel and could be costly.  Of course we said, how bad could it be? We need to do this!  So it begins…