I Moved the Stairs!

We decided to move the stairs from the middle of the house over to the side, and that changed everything upstairs and downstairs. It added features and took others away. Here is the new version, with two downstairs options. The differences in the downstairs versions was to try to make our master bedroom more efficient, and freeing up more storage space. Please comment constructively about what will work, what won't, how we could be even more efficient with space, etc. Remember, the upstairs is the main living floor with the downstairs as the bedroom floor. Thanks!

We're on hold...

We haven't even touched our house design in a month or two. We've been busy with other things. Trips to plan, family to worry about, etc. I'm sure we'll get back into it soon, though. We really want to live at Manzanita Village, but we also know that our current house is appreciating well, hopefully faster than construction costs are going up.

Not a lot of progress...

Between the Olympics and repeated family illnesses, we haven't spent much time on the house in the last month. I've tweaked the floorplan some, though, and hope to get it posted again soon. I think we're just about at the point where we can interview some builders, pick the one we like best, and work with him or her (and possibly consulting with an architect) to finalize the plans. We have gotten a couple of good recommendations for builders, so we have a starting point. My biggest challenges still, though, are making the mudroom a good layout, creating storage for our bikes (one of which is a tandem and thus quite long), and making our kitchen/dining/living area laid out correctly. You can draw in all the furniture that you want, and even do walk throughs in the software, but unless you're actually IN the room, you can't get a real feel for it. I just hope it turns out okay.

House plans, take two

To those of you who are following the process and like to make comments (which are so incredibly appreciated, you have no idea), here is the next version of the floor plans. There are some changes, like how the master bath and closets and such are oriented, how the utility rooms downstairs are organized, and some changes in the kitchen. Also, yes, there is a two foot overhang of the living room over the greenhouse. That is intentional. For anyone out there who has a room or large space devoted to organizing life, coats, hats, shoes, mail, things like that, I'd love some input on layout and arrangement of the front mudroom on the top floor. I want to organize it well. The shape and size are not finalized, by any stretch.
Top
Bottom

The Current Floorplan!

This is my current floorplan. Ed has had some input, but this by no means represents what he wants in the house. He'll do up a floorplan very soon and we'll combine the two. His shouldn't be too far off from mine, as we agree on rooms and mostly relative sizes. Some vital information. In the floorplans, down is more or less north. Up is south. It's just how I've visualized the house, because the front door is on the north side of the house. We have a steep downhill lot, so you walk in on the top floor, and out back you walk out the bottom floor. We will have no immediate neighbors on the west side, but our neighbor on the right side will be about 6 feet away (no typo). It's a cohousing community. That's the way it works. An important note: This plan is a work in progress. Most of it has settled down into a mostly final state except for the following items, which I'd love input on (I'd love input on all aspects, too, however): island in the middle of kitchen versus table in the middle of kitchen, organization of master bath and closets, and I guess that's it. This is a rough plan I've done, and if things are off by an inch or so, please ignore it. Windows aren't set to stock sizes, that kind of thing. When we finalize it, though, we want to use as many stock sizes as possible. I also forgot to draw in the countertop in the kitchen and the square table in the office. Sigh. The house will be Craftsman style, hopefully with a dormer in front. The attic will remain unfinished, but set up so we could finish it in the future. Though we have a height restriction and it may not be tall enough for a regular space. Also, all ceilings on both floors will be 8 feet. The area under the screened porch will remain an open patio for now. We're not sure what we'll do with the space later.

Main (Top) Floor


















Bottom Floor

Panic.

We will find out on January 24th whether we need to panic or not. The city will (or won't) institute a huge water fee for new construction for any houses that don't already have a building permit by May 8. If they decide to institute it, we need to get the house designed in about two months (we need to leave time for city review, architectural review committee of the cohousing village, etc.). This is a matter of about $10,000 extra, so we're quite concerned. Ed thinks we can get it designed by then, but I'm hoping it doesn't end up an issue. Panic!

Our Kitchen, Future IKEA Shrine

Ed has jumped in during the past few days to join me in the house planning. Not that he wasn't doing some before, he just hasn't been doing it as constantly and blatantly as I have been. He's spent some time with my Mom's house plans to see what goes into plans, to make it easier for him to draw them up once we're done desgining.

I see the kitchen as a real focal point for the house, both because it's what you'll see to one side right as you come in, but also because we'll spend a lot of time there. Plus it costs a lot more to improve it once the house is built. For a bedroom, well, you need spots for furniture, but other than flooring and paint, and maybe light fixtures, you embellish with your furniture and other things. A kitchen goes in at the start (bathrooms are that way, too, but we haven't gotten to bath design yet).

I've formed my (current) top choice for a kitchen look. It involves light yellow cabinets (which I never thought I would like—I'm oddly drawn to them), a white apron front farmhouse sink with (preferably) one bowl and built-in drain boards, white subway tile backsplash throughout (rectangular white tiles), some wood countertop (from IKEA), some black countertop (like Richlite or Fireslate). Lots of windows. A shelf just in front of said windows for plants and whatnot. I'm not sure about the floor yet, but I think rubber would be great for a kitchen. There are a lot of sources for rubber floors, including some recycled varieties. We'll look into it more as time goes on. Interspersed in this post are a couple of photos that show off features I'd like to include. Pardon the quality, I took photos of my television from a show that had a kitchen I liked.

Ed isn't huge on the yellow. He would rather wood cabinets. He wants a hearthy look, but agrees that brick in the kitchen isn't a great idea. It's too porous. I'm hoping he can find photos of what he's going for, because so far he isn't sold on my idea. If he finds any, I can post them here. I hope we can find something we both like, because the kitchen is too important for either of us to settle. There are other looks for kitchens that I like (brown cabinets with a green backsplash, for example), but the photos of kitchens that I'm really drawn to and that evoke feelings in me that I'd want to recreate in my own kitchen are more light in color. No white cabinets, though. We have that now and they look dirty all the time. And I've lived most of my life in places with white walls, white ceilings, blah blah. I want color, even if it's a subtle color.

Most likely we'll get cabinets at IKEA, since they are quite affordable, and apparently durable. They supposedly got rated in third place in a Consumer Reports study, behind two high end cabinet companies that charge 3 times and 5 times as much for the tested cabinets. Go IKEA! I wish they had a larger selection, but I like the STAT Light Yellow, or perhaps the DUVBO gray-white. If we were to go wood, my first choice would be ADEL medium brown and my second choice would be ADEL birch (though I really want colored cabinets and I'm not big on light colored wood). IKEA has a very large kitchen planning department, and a wide variety of cabinet sizes, shapes, functions, etc. I'm looking forward to laying out the kitchen and figuring out what will go where. IKEA also sells laminate floors, but I'm sick of the faux wood look. They also sell appliances, range hoods, sinks, faucets, etc. We'll have to look at all those individually.