For Version 9, there really wasn’t many changes to the main floor.  We really just discussed a few things with Mike.  We talked about changing the curved stair case to be squared off so that a window can be added downstairs in lieu of the display shelf.  Mike felt like the staircase really added some much needed architectural detail to the house.  And that it’s a key focal point to entering the basement.  Since we will be able to look over the banister to the right of the fire place in the great room to the space below, the curvature will really be something unique for us.  In the master bath we discussed adding in shelves on each side of the bathtub for storage and display.  I originally only was thinking about shelves on the side closest to the shower, but Mike reminded us how symmetrical that room is and really adding it on both sides is the only thing that would make sense.  He’s going to look into that and see if it could work for us.  We added a few more transom windows upstairs and to wrap it up we removed a portion of the deck that was covered outside.

Preliminary Design Version 9 – Main Floor

Downstairs, we added two sets of transom windows off of the main room, and we discussed storage room 1.  We’re thinking that the purpose of that room will be to store the boys’ toys and we moved the door to the other side of the room (by the bathroom)…that means increasing that space.  We also would like to at least install the stub outs for a future washer & dryer.  That way when the boys are old enough we can give them their own laundry room.  I swear that laundry is endless in our house!  Moving the door to the other side of the storage room also gives us a great usable space in the boys rec area.  In our house now we have a great art center for the boys to color, craft and create…I’m thinking that corner will be perfect for just that!

Preliminary Design Version 9 – Lower Floor

We spent the last few weeks driving around and looking at single story homes, took tons of pictures and really honed in on what we wanted for the exterior.  And Mike really delivered.  We thought that there’s really no reason for us to build as tall as what we were thinking in Version 8.  And that although we love it, the maintenance and costs would be more reasonable if the roof were lowered.  This means less of a pitch (which is better for installation and upkeep).  And although we love the look of the large single gable, splitting it into two still give us the coastal look that we’re going for.  In the back of the house, the gable over the great room was raised slightly which gave us the look we wanted on the interior of the house (so that the vaulted ceiling would be perfect).  The windows in the great room are gorgeous too!  The exterior is really looking great and I think we’ve nailed it!

Preliminary Design Version 9 – Exterior

It’s hard to see unless if you really read the details, but there’s been quite a bit of changes in the house.  We enlarged the pass through in between the kitchen and the great room to 5’ wide.  We love it now!  It still leaves us plenty of cabinetry in kitchen but really opens up the space.  The vaulted ceiling was also added to the great room – but because of the roof on the back of the house, the sloped ceilings in the great room don’t exactly line up with the walls of the room.  That’s a bit weird, and we’re definitely going to see what other options we have for that.  The office has also changed shapes…we’re really pretty flexible with the office.  We know we want to have it on the main level at the front of the house, but the shape can be pretty much anything.  As long as it can fit two desks, we’d be fine with it.  The exterior of the house is most critical at this point, so the office can morph to fit whatever we need the exterior to be.  Other details that were added to the house was transom windows above the doorways and windows of the main floor.  We both love the look of transom windows and are excited that we can incorporate them into our house design.

Preliminary Design V8 – Main Floor

In the basement we decided to recess cabinetry under the stairs to really increase the amount of counter space and storage that the bar has.  We also tweaked the shape of some of the unheated storage spaces.  In the unheated storage room 3 we added a possible space for a tech closet.  We’ll need to discuss the exact space for that with an audio/video expert.  For now, at least it reminds us that we’ll need to put it somewhere in the house.

Preliminary Design V8 – Lower Level

The exterior is really where we saw some significant changes happening in Version 8. The roofline was really heightened to create one large gable and one smaller gable.  I actually really love the way that this exterior is looking.  It’s a shingle style with a lot of coastal details and really adds a lot of height to the front of the house.  But now is it too tall?  I feel like goldilocks…the first is too small, this might be too high, we need one that’s just right!

Preliminary Design V8 – Elevation

Preliminary Design V8 – Exterior Perspectives

So that we could really understand the roofing, Mike provided us with a roof plan.  And I’m glad that he did!  It gave us a good grasp on how the roof lines all fit together.  This was especially important for us on the back of the house where the two gables are so closely spaced.  We definitely think that rearranging that a bit may give us a better interior ceiling line.

Preliminary Design V8 – Roof Plan

At this point we really feel good about how the house floor plan is shaping up and really it’s just details that we’re working on now.  After seeing the kitchen layout in Arizona, we decided that adding a pass through in the kitchen would be good…to really open up the space.  Mike added that into this version of the design.  I’m thinking that it’s a little small, and that we’ll likely want to increase it even more to open up the space though.  At the top of the stairs, we increased the depth of the “picture wall” in Version 6 to be a bookcase in Version 7.  That’ll give us more flexibility for a built-in or shelves (or both).  We also added in the coffered ceiling in the dining room – love that!  There’s really not much else that changed on the first floor, except for the swing of the laundry back door.

Preliminary Design – Version 7 – Main Floor

The downstairs space is really turning out great now.  We’re loving the layout that Mike came up with and really there’s only minor tweaks on this floor too.  We decided to switch Bedroom 2’s closet location with the shower/toilet room.  This will give more privacy to the bathroom and depending on how the site is graded, we may be able to add a window in there as well.  We actually debated a lot about the shower vs. tub in the boy’s bath and ultimately landed on a walk-in shower.  Really the boys only take showers as it is now and every blue moon take a bath in our soaker tub.  So we figured that they can use our tub in the new house too.  So we removed their bathtub and gave them a shower.  All of the bathrooms in the house have showers without doors.  We’re thinking that’ll be pretty nice not to have to clean any shower glass.  In the guest bath downstairs, we took half of the closet from the hallway and flipped it to be in the bathroom.  That creates a decent sized linen closet in there for guests and toiletries.

Preliminary Design – Version 7 – Lower Floor

The outside of the house is where we’re now focusing our attention.  To us, it’s been difficult to really figure out what we want this house to look like.  In the northwest, the majority of homes are two stories from the front of the house…so having a one story is different than I ever envisioned my dream home.  Mike gave us a couple of different options in Version 6 to look at and now with Version 7 gave us yet another one.  I do like how some of the gables in the front of the house overlap, however it feels off-balance to me.

Preliminary Design – Version 7 – Exterior

I just got back from an extended weekend trip to Arizona to visit one of my best friends for her birthday. Her and her husband recently purchased a brand new home in a beautiful gated development in Phoenix. Needless to say, we discussed custom house designs/building a lot on our trip.

After showing her our current design (Version 6), she immediately thought of a different house floor plan that is available to buy in her own neighborhood because of the kitchen. If you’ve been following this blog at all you’ll know that the kitchen nook area has been a big question mark for us. My friend mentioned that this floor plan is actually featured as one of the model homes. We were out her door and to the model as soon as possible! I absolutely wanted to check it out.

Here’s the floor plan, and as you can see, that the kitchen has double islands and the informal dining area in the kitchen is almost the same size as what we’re proposing for our house. With nearly the same layout.

Floor plan of the main floor of the model home

The model home actually has a wrap around couch in the informal dining area to create a nook feel. In addition, the interior decorator realized that the space is pretty large as well, and they actually put two tables in the space. To me, it feels a bit awkward to have two tables in one nook. As we were sitting in it, discussing the space it gave off a restaurant vibe.

We agreed though that a rectangular table will definitely work in the space, even if it didn’t have a banquette. So, this gives me some options and flexibility with the room. Maybe we’ll end up starting with a table and chairs and build a banquette later if we’d like. One thing that was interesting is that this home added 2 feet of walls on each side of the seating area to create an “alcove-like” feel to the informal dining space. That’s a great idea and it did define the space well.

Model home kitchen with double islands and informal eating area

Model home’s informal eating area with 2 tables and a wrap-around couch

This kitchen / great room layout is extremely similar to ours with the great room being adjacent to the kitchen. The biggest difference is that our current plan has another run of cabinets between the islands and the great room and although we’ll have a large opening into the kitchen, there will be a fairly significant wall dividing the two rooms. Below is a picture of the model home and of what our house would look like of we removed the wall between the great room and the kitchen. It’s pretty open, and our house has slightly larger rooms than the ones shown below. But is it too open? It is great for entertaining, that’s for sure.

Model home’s great room view into the kitchen.

Now I’m beginning to think that our own design might be too separated. It was nice to have the space open to each other, however I’m certain that Joel and I would think that it feels too open. I’ve got to discuss it with Joel, but I’m beginning to think that maybe we want to still keep the large cased doorway opening between the two rooms, but add a pass through window onto the dividing wall. This would be something similar to the examples below.

Pass through into great room adjancent to another door opening.

Pass through idea in kitchen.

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Or latest design revision has really been both fine toothing some areas while others are still figuring out their layout. In the upstairs, minor tweaks have been done. This includes the addition of a picture wall inset at the wall opposite the top of the stairs. The office also changed with the extension of the master closet and the office closet, and the addition of a window seat on the north wall. I’m not 100% sure we’re done with changes in the office though. I’m starting to think that maybe the addition of built-in bookcases might be nice since we don’t have those anywhere in the house yet. The HVAC ductwork also moved near the entry which created more useable space for the laundry room…LOVE that!

Preliminary Design V6 – Main Level

The lower level was rearranged a little bit as well…trying to find the best layout downstairs has been a bit tricky. The boys’ bath was reconfigured to both reduce the bathroom size (since bathrooms are pricey) and create a walk-in closet in Bedroom 2. That’ll be nice for both boys to each have a walk-in closet for sure. Bedroom 3’s closet was actually reduced slightly to create a hall linen closet. That was much needed and will likely hold everything from blankets and sheets to towels and washcloths. Who knows, maybe a few games or puzzles too!

The hallway for the guest room area was also flipped so that the entrance is to the stairs for better flow. The closet in the guest room was also rearranged to allow for windows to be placed on three walls. Since the guest room is located under the main deck, having ample light in that room is important to us. A hall linen storage closet was also added by the guest room.

Preliminary Design V6 – Lower Level

Mike also gave us another iteration of the exterior of the house with this round of edits. The exterior combines some of the features we liked about his first sketch with others that we liked about his second. As shown below, the roof line is swept and gabled roof lines have been added to the front of the house. Windows have been added above the front door to create a focal point. Mike added two versions for this – one with a gabled roof as shown in the top and bottom perspective views and one with a shed dormer as shown in the middle true elevation view. I’m really not sure what to do about that or which I like better, and I keep thinking about the previous version without windows above the entry with the overlapping gables between the entry and the dining room. All of the designs work, but honesty, none feel perfect right now. I think that we’re going to need to work with Mike and discuss the options more to really come to a good conclusion.

Preliminary Design V6 – Front Elevation

We’re so excited. Just two days after our last revision we received the latest plan set from Mike. He was working of the exterior of the home and I wanted to make sure that some of the changes I wanted were incorporated before he got too far on the exterior. That meant sending a quick email to him with a list of changes.

Take a look! By rearranging the guest room and bathroom downstairs we were able to bump in the kitchen in the informal dining space on the main floor by 2 feet instead of just 1 foot. He also rearranged the mudroom and its finally to a size that we love. It will have built in lockers for the boys and a coat closet for us which will not only hold the large array of coats that we have because we live in the northwest, but be a place to store the vacuum and other cleaning supplies as well.

Preliminary Design V5 – Main Level

He also shrunk down the great room downstairs which feels so much more appropriate. He did that by increasing the storage on the back wall and by creating a hallway to get to the guest suite. An extra bonus is that by bringing in the back wall, there is now a true “entrance” to what we call the boys’ area. They’ll have a great play/art area and then off of that their bathroom and bedrooms. Also in this round of edits you’ll see that we increased the size of the boys’s bathroom. It now includes a bathtub and a shower. I really like this idea, but since bathrooms are pricey and because Bedroom 2 doesn’t have a walk-in closet, we want to see a different layout for the next round of revisions. We’ve left that design completely up to Mike to create. He’s also thinking that we should have a linen closet outside of the boys’ rooms as well.

Also downstairs, we’ve moved the outdoor living area underneath the main deck. That will create a covered area for hanging out during the summer and keep the main deck for dining. Summer evenings on the property should be pretty shaded due to large evergreens that line the south side of the property so having a covered lounge spec isn’t the highest priority for us. Upstairs we really only want a covered area for barbecuing in the rain.

Preliminary Design V5 – Lower Level

Mike also sent over a preliminary sketch so that we could see what the outside of the house is now looking like since there’s been significant changes since our first preliminary design. This is only the second time that we’ve seen the outside revision so it’s fun to see how it’s taking shape. The design is pretty rough though and it’s hard to really see what’s going on. The main change is the double gable over the entry/dining room.

Preliminary Design V5 – Front Elevation