To Begin, Part 2: Determining the House Plan

As mentioned in the first post, we originally thought we would just find an online plan that we liked and then edit it to our needs.   This is a great way to save money in drafting costs, and many of our friends had built their houses by editing an existing plan with much success.

It sounded good in theory, but as I experimented with house shapes via Google Earth, it told a different story.  Take a look at these examples:

The house plans were nice (and would have been more economical to build due to more stacked square footage = cheaper building costs), but it wasn't doing our lot any justice.  We were having a hard time reconciling that all these plans gave us a very short-sighted back yard to the treeline, as opposed to the long sunset view we knew was there.

Now look what we eventually decided upon:

I call it our "Boomerang House".  The main living area (kitchen, great room, den) is that left side "wing" with the yellow arrow views.

As I mentioned previously, this wasn't without some compromise.  Our garage had to go on the right side due to HOA, so my kitchen ends up further from my garage than I would prefer, though a mudroom entry helps alot.  Our material costs will also go up some, due to stackable footage being only in the center portion of the house.

Our architect knew I wanted 1) my Uncle Tom's Kitchen (see posts under Kitchen label) and 2) these yellow area views as our priority starting points for a plan.  The house built itself around those two main parameters and we ended up utilizing the best part of our beautiful lot.


THE PLAN ITSELF - CURIOSITIES

There's also some quirkiness to the plan that is intentional: 

1.  "Business in the Front, Party in the Back" -  We had to adhere to HOA guidelines so my hopes of a more-modern home appearance were dashed.  The back, however, is more conducive to our preferences.   My architect cringed a bit on a few backside window decisions but I'm okay with that - you'd have to walk 2 acres back and look at the entire house to ever notice a few inconsistencies.

2.  Size - this house is way bigger than I would like, but it's the best compromise my husband and I could reach in his love of huge houses.  I also have a moral dilemma with it.  Sigh.

3.  "Museum Rooms" - I was determined to have minimal "museum rooms", as I call them.  Our old house had a formal dining room and study that were never used.  As it stands now, we still have a formal dining room (again a compromise with the husband) but it's small and to be honest, it's a room that is very much an afterthought that I could care less about.

4.  What's Up With That Master Bath? - our old house had an ingenious layout to utilize the views, and the best view from the master bedroom area was...  the bathroom!   It was wonderful and I'm copying that concept.   We spend significantly more time in the master bathroom showering/dressing than we do hanging out in the actual bedroom.   It's for that reason we opted for the best view to be in the master bath, not the bedroom.

5.  That Upstairs Rec Room Is Weird- yep, it is.  I'm okay with the quirky shape and expect to put in an odd-shaped fort in all those weird nooks for the kids :-)

6.  Why's the Powder Room So Far Away? -  Although common practice these days to add a powder room very close to the kitchen, I opted not to locate a bathroom in the main living area.  I wanted the main powder room a little bit removed for privacy purposes.   In my old house, I liked the fact that it was a bit further down the hall, and guests did too.

7.  There's No Such Thing As A Forever House - so we did do a few things to make resale value appealing if we were ever to move, which we don't intend to.  However,  life's thrown enough hilarious curveballs our way that I would never count on that.  Therefore we put a "second master" downstairs (it's just going to be a guest room to us) and we are putting in a capped hookup for a stackable washer/dryer in the mudroom across the hall from there, should one ever need to live downstairs.  That way, all the bases are covered both in growing old and resale value.