Better Late than Never

I uploaded these drawings nearly two weeks ago, but got interrupted and forgot to finish the entry. We're nearly complete. Just a few minor tweaks to the basement to go. Stewing on elevations now. In a way they are harder because I don't have a concrete idea what I want. One thing I do know is that I get tired of siding. I'm told bricks are too expensive here to put all the way around a house so I guess I'll have to compromise on that issue. The inside is more important to me than the outside.

A New Contender

Yes, that's a house in there.

We stumbled upon this place a couple of weekends ago while driving north of Columbia City and just happened to notice it is for sale (by owner). So Liane called and made arrangements for us to see it, which we did yesterday.

After having looked at it I can say it's one of very few we walked away from we can actually envision ourselves living in. It's about the only house I've seen on our quest that has a master bedroom, bath, and closet comparable to what we want. It has a walk out basement, a good sized out building, and the view from on top of the hill it sits on is pretty spectacular. The configuration of the rooms is decent, although we'd have to make a few changes. One of the bigger drawbacks is that virtually all of the woodwork is oak, just like what we have now and are SO tired of. This includes a set of bookshelves built into the great room, and the bar area of the basement, not to mention all the kitchen cabinets. Normally I'm not one to be put off by decor because I feel like things can be reworked, repainted, etc., but swapping out all the cabinetry would be a huge expense, and not really something that would add much to the value of the house. This is a major drawback for me.

They also are asking quite a bit too much for it in my estimation. But...at the end of the day it could be workable. They aren't in any big hurry to sell so we have time to sort through our stuff before we have to make any decisions.

Meanwhile, we're still waiting on what is hopefully the final layout from Nicole. Then we go to blueprints, and then the fun begins.

Buying a Home

Simon, a friend and coworker happens to sit near my office. I often hear his conversations with customers. He's fluent in a few languages so it can be quite fascinating to listen in (somehow it makes me feel more "worldly").

He's been building a home, which is now nearing completion, so sometimes I hear him talking to contractors, banks, and so forth. Recently the "talking" has been more like yelling. A couple of days ago he sent me the following.

Today's topic is buying a home. Enjoy.

DAY ONE:

March 1st:

Enter the scene a young happy romantic couple smiling with their beaming children they are pre-approved and very happy as they saunter out of the bank with a colorful picture of their dream home in their hands.

June 1st:

Me (With a glittering face): What else do we need to do to be able to secure the money for our house?

Bobby the Banker: "Well your credit is perfect and you make way more money than you need to live on and have a lot in your savings account and it looks here as if you have the signatures of all of the living presidents on the bottom of your resumes. You will be just fine, we should have you in your new home in a couple of months.

Me: Great wonderful you are the best banker ever.

Bobby: "I know, I know...now sign here on the dotted line...(insert theme to Jaws).

ONE DAY BEFORE CLOSING

Ring. Ring....

Me: "Hello"

Bobby: "Its Bobby the Banker, I'm working remotely today (he says from his iPhone from the golf cart between Tee #4 and the green) but I noticed that you failed to include the blue prints to the sheik of Iran's bedroom along with your credit application (mutes phone to snigger to the under-writer)....silence..

Me: "Are you serious"?

Bobby the Banker: "No, I'm just kidding... seriously that would be ridiculous... we meant the sheik of Oman. Anyway, get that to me by tomorrow or we won't be able to close.

Several weeks pass and thanks to a covert operation run by an ex-CIA agent and a group of underground spies working in close contact with the mafia and the Afghan rebels, I get the plans in my hand and pay off the spies. Fortunately for them only one of them dies recovering the blueprints.

THREE WEEKS AFTER ORIGINAL CLOSING DATE

Ring....ring..

Me: "Okay Bobby, I managed to get those blueprints."

Bobby: "Really? (flipping through the Psychological Torture Methods for Dummies manual while his caddy fishes for an iron at the 16th tee)... "Now we noticed in the well report that you submitted last week that there was no test done for Kryptonite" (barely containing himself as the lender tips the caddy with a hundred dollar bill).

Me: "Okay I didn't see that in the list of things to test our water for, but then again I only read the first 647 pages of the FHA requirements before I fell asleep. "

Bobby: "Well it is pretty clearly stated there on page 648 just have that faxed over to me when you are done."

Click.

Me to my wife: Sweetie I need to rent the space shuttle to go get some krpytonite for the bankers,

My wife: "Okay, well I already sold my hair and all of the family heirlooms last week to pay the rent since we aren't allowed to use our bank account or any of our credit cards so that the lender doesn't ask for more photocopies.

Me: "We ran out of ink for the photocopier again, huh?

My wife: "Yes and I've already robbed the kids piggy banks twice, we really can't afford to make any more copies, plus the bank is asking us for the interest on the construction loan that is now overdue from the delays and we owe another month of rent on our apartment that we hadn't planned on.

Me: "I'll think of something."

AN HOUR LATER:

Me: (to the black market organ vendor on the corner): So you can really only give me $10,000 for this kidney.... Okay go ahead and take it...can you give me more if you don't use any anaesthesia?

FIVE WEEKS AFTER ORIGINAL CLOSING DATE (from my hospital bed)

Ring, ring forever...Bobby's voicemail picks up..."Today is Monday November 1st, I will be out of the office for the next month in celebration of the ...umm...Thanksgiving Holidays...yeah... feel free to reach any of my associates if you require immediate assistance...

Me: (after three hours of calling everyone at the bank..getting transferred to Bobby's cell phone...by a desperate secretary...)

Ring..Ring...

Bobby: "Hello..how did you get this number?...)

Me: "I got your Kryptonite".

Bobby: (getting desperate) "Well good. Did you have the County Official certify that the Kryptonite was captured according to the state code, I will need a letter in triplicate, signed by your paternal great-grandfather as well as a relative of the author of the original superman novels."

Me: "But both of those people are dead.

Bobby: "Well that isn't our fault, the government has made mortgages a lot harder for everyone this year."

SOME INNUMERABLE NUMBER OF WEEKS AFTER ORIGINAL CLOSING DATE:

My Four Year Old Daughter: (Eating thanksgiving dinner- on top of a cardboard box shared with her brother in the middle of my furniture-less living room)

"Daddy, why can't we move into our new house now?"

Me: "Daddy isn't really sure sweetie... I couldn't get on the internet to find out who wrote the superman novels because the cable company has already moved our phone and internet over to our new house..

This fairly well encapsulates the mood of many of my friends as they've neared the completion of their homes they've built. Something to look forward to....

November...

I never thought we'd still be working on drawings in November. Very close now, I think. Didn't I say that on one of the drawings a few weeks ago? In fact, I think I thought we were done. HA! That was September 20th.

This is Option #1 of a couple of similar, but different versions. Initially I liked the other one better (it had a shorter hall to the master bedroom), but after a few minutes this one grew on me and is now my favorite, primarily because of the laundry room, half bath, and the closet off of the garage entry. Liane has a few minor (?) reservations so we'll just have to see where we are after sleeping on it a few days.

I Aint No Architect...

...but I did stay at a Red Roof Inn last night. Yeah, whatever.

Updates have been slow to come recently, which reflects the slow progress we've made. It's hard to believe, but people do have lives and important things they must tend do beyond working on my drawings. Additionally, I think we are becoming that nightmare client. Everyone who does custom work for others knows what I'm talking about -- the one where you just can't wait to get the project done because it's never going to be good enough. I don't think that's us, but...if the shoe fits... I do have some specific things in my mind's eye and so does Liane. We are very close.

To try to "help" I dropped a few lines on one of the old sketches, which was pretty much the first serious drawing we had.

As usual my lines gloss over a lot of details about how things will really fit together and work, but I liked how the garage fit in on it, and Liane liked the kitchen layout the best (although I wish we could have a bigger pantry). There have been a couple since then that I could have lived with, and I liked certain things about them better, but when Liane didn't like the kitchens on them it kind of blew them up. And in looking I realized there may be a way to do everything we want with the garage nestled up into the front of the house more. The big problem with that design had been the layout of the bathroom and trying to keep it all around 2400 square feet. Since then we've realized the 2400 number is not going to be attainable, so with that loosened there are other things we can do.

We'll see where it all goes.

It is difficult because not only do Liane and I not agree on everything, but we sometimes change our minds about the relative importance of various factors. So it is a bit of a moving target, and to some extent it changes depending on who you're listening to.

I wonder if anyone finds this humorous? I do. I am perfectly willing to step back and see how nutty we are at times. And that's the idea of the blog.

Patience of a Saint

We got some more ideas and drafts from Nicole the other day. Much of it was based on the last round of changes and input from us after stewing over the last drawing. We're still unsettled on the kitchen layout, master bath (though we're very close there, I think...), and the whole garage, laundry room, half bath area.

We talked to her today based on these drawings, and at one point I recall words being uttered that both annoy and amuse everyone I've known who's been in the business of creatively designing things, whether that's building projects or mixing records. Yes, at one point Liane actually said (in regards to an aspect of the kitchen) she wanted to go back to where we were on the first (serious) drawing. AAAAAAHHHHHHH! And Nicole, to her credit, didn't even blink. Well, maybe she did. This conversation was over the phone. Now that I think about it her eyes could have rolled out of her head, but if they did we didn't know. This kind of thing used to drive me nuts mixing records. Once the recording was complete I'd always start the mixing phase alone, spending time to clean everything up and get organized. I'd get the mix to a reasonably complete and good state, then I'd bring in the artist, which usually resulted in spending days zeroing in on the little details that would be in their mind's ear. And after two or three days of this they would sometimes declare that it sounded better when they first arrived. ARGH. Of course I agreed, because when they first arrived it was my mix and all my ideas we'd be listening to without their influence mucking it all up. Nowadays, with computers, it's pretty easy to get back there, but in the old days it was almost impossible to get all the way back.

So I laughed on the inside when Liane said that. Poor Nicole. She really has the patience of a saint.

For those who are following along here is a brief tour of the drawing updates.

This is a partial front elevation drawing. Not much detail yet. She's just trying to get a feel from us what we like. Of course the right half of the house is still up in the air so she (wisely) hasn't tackled it yet.

Rear elevation. This drawing, more than any other one I've seen, really starts to show how over the top it is. Holy cow. No, we don't really need this much room, but when we plug in our various wants and desires this is what we end up with. What can I say?

This is the upstairs loft area. Assuming we even do this at all, not much of the upstairs will be finished. Most of it will be storage; space that can be constructed and turned into living space later if anyone wants to. Part of my reasoning for even having an upstairs is to make the front facade look more stately. Imagine that front elevation drawing without the upper window and a lower roofline. The other big reason is that the upstairs area should provide a much better view of the lake at the back of the property...although I'm now gathering that the windows on the back of the house may not be high enough to allow this. Hmmm...I'll have to think about that.

New revision of garage area, with changes to laundry room, half bath, and master bath. Still not quite settled on this. I am deeply concerned about how far the garage sticks out in front of the house. At this point this is probably the only thing about the design that is "bugging" me. Other concerns are minor and I think can be dealt with pretty easily. Liane isn't bothered by it at all so this one is entirely my hang-up. We're going to try swapping the two car bay with the one car bay, and making a few other changes to see if we can push it back a little more. The master bath has been reworked again, and we like it even better. In this design the tub and shower would share a raised platform, not unlike the one we saw at the Parade of Homes. This alleviates the problem of having to have the bathroom share the same slab as the garage because of my no-step up or over anything criteria.

Kitchen variation. It turns out Liane couldn't get comfortable with how far the sink/dishwasher area protruded into the space in front of the dinette as it was in the last drawing. I liked it a lot, but she just couldn't get her head around it. So this is a variation that minimizes it some. We'd probably still have to make some changes to this, mainly because we can't see the oven/microwave area not having a counter next to it. Maybe swap fridge and ovens. Not sure. This drawing shows what I think is the winning idea for the master closet. We had to give up on the island, but I think I'll like this peninsula better in the long run.

Kitchen variation #2. Liane and I got the idea of putting the dishwasher at an angle from the sink at the Parade of Homes. Don't think it's going to work for us though. I think it causes more of an egress problem than the straight design did. This drawing shows the first idea for the master closet peninsula idea. We like the other one better though.

This is one of two basement ideas worked up (the other is nearly the same). Hard for me to even think about this while the upstairs is still in flux, and who knows how much of it we'd be able to afford to finish anyway. You'll notice the studio is carefully positioned under the spare bedroom upstairs, which should minimize sound transmission issues. That drives the position of the main TV to the opposite wall. My idea is to be able to see it through the studio doorway. Most of my best work on the computer is done with a sporting event on TV. The rest of the layout is pretty much in flux right now. The doors at the bottom of the steps may seem weird, and we probably do need to rework that area, but Liane and I agree that for the sake of sound transmission we want to be able to close the basement off from upstairs.

If we do end up with the master shower and tub on a platform together it means the retaining wall can be moved/simplified accordingly. So in this drawing it would move up to follow the contour of the garage, which will mean less backfill of dirt needed to support it, and should save a little money.

The ball is in our court. We've given Nicole our input on the kitchen and laundry/garage areas. But she wants more input on the basement so she can tackle it all at once. We need to sit down and think through that part a little more.

Whew, this is seriously hard work folks. Big, big decisions that we know we'll have to live with for a long time.

You've got to be KIDDING me!

One I neglected to post from the Parade of Homes. Another disco ball.

Is this is competition for the Columbia City Discotheque? I guess everyone wants to be a DJ these days. They did throw a gratuitous guitar in there. Oh, and don't forget the trumpet on the bed...because anyone who plays a Randy Rhoads style Jackson guitar is bound to also be interested in trumpets and mirror balls. Seems like they should have gone all the way and put a Copter-Sphere in for the lighting fixture. And how about a fog machine? Jeez...

The Parade of Homes

An annual event in Fort Wayne, and probably a lot of other places, the Parade of Homes is put on by the Homebuilders Association. When Liane worked for the architect she used to have to work the booth for it, and one year I helped her (still wondering how I got sucked into that). We thought it would be prudent to check it out this year.

There were seven homes in it this year. Admission has gone up to $9. I'm still trying to figure out how they get so many people to pay $9 to walk through houses and be sold to all day. Gotta' hand it to 'em there. And we did, $18 for the two of us. A lot of other people did too. It seemed very crowded to me. Almost difficult to walk through and see the houses. You'll notice a line to get in one of them above. It turned out that was mostly caused by the lady with a builder working the door who had to tell everyone ALL about it as they walked in.

We've seen some pretty spectacular houses in the past at the few of these we went to. This year, not surprisingly, the entries were a little more down to earth. It struck me this time that it seemed like more of an interior design show. The houses were nice, but for the most part pretty basic in terms of their design and construction. What appeared to set them apart from one another in many ways were the little things that had been done -- the extras, and the decorating. I can look past most of that pretty easily though, and get right to the design of the house while still enjoying the decorating ideas.

A few highlights below...

A fairly attractive kitchen. I especially liked the hood over the stove top. Not sure I'd want that one for me (glass hood, hard to keep clean?), but it looks cool here. Undecided, but I think I might like the high contrast colors.

I had mentioned a while back, when we were first struggling with how to keep my shower flush with the floor, that both the tub area AND shower could be raised, and I was okay with that. I even did a mock up showing the tub at an angle like this, with the shower off to one side (as this one is -- to the right) and Liane didn't like it. But she liked this bathroom. Go figure.

Not totally dissimilar to the way part of our kitchen may work. For us the sink will overlook the dinette, but I wonder if we should consider the angles like this, and maybe even the bar vibe? Ahh...decisions.

I kinda' dig the three side fireplace. Liane isn't enthused. Guess that will be another debate at some point.

I like it. Liane didn't. Big surprise!

Cool sidewalk. Practical?

Kind of a nice vibe here.

Seems like a smart and functional way to use the area under the steps. This idea might be worth stealing, except I think my studio will be in that area on our design.

Ultimately I didn't see a house I would want to buy, even if the price wasn't as over-inflated as these were. However there were aspects of each of them I really liked. I think we got a few good ideas.

Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding...

I think we've arrived at a workable plan! Nicole really is good at this stuff. She's done the impossible, and gotten us everything we asked for with minimal compromises. She even came up with some other really good ideas in the process. Hooray!

Click on the image for a larger view.

It looks like the garage had to be moved out some, and the closet shape is slightly weird, but those are things we think we can live with. There are still some minor things we want to move around and change, and still quite a few little details to be worked out, but the basic floor plan is finally ready...we think. We do want to sleep on it a couple of times first. I've started a list of little things to think about and change. For the most part it's not stuff that would cause any major walls to move or anything.

After a few weeks of getting increasingly discouraged about this project I'm excited again, and looking forward to pushing this train down the tracks to the next stop, whatever that is. Obviously the next step is to get the floor plan for the loft and basement done.

If there are any opinions, thoughts or concerns from the peanut gallery it's time to start submitting them as we very well could be just a few weeks away from submitting this thing for bids.

Cannot Defy the Laws of Physics

The meeting with Nicole went well. The good news is that she really does seem to understand what we want. The bad news is that doesn't change the problem. I think she wants to tell us, in the voice of Scotty from Star Trek, "Captain, you cannot defy the laws of physics." We're trying to feed three rooms (bed, bath, closet) from one point (the end of the hallway) and we have an arc of about 110 degrees (more or less) in which to do it. That's going to make for some odd shaped rooms or a longer hallway. If we push the garage forward the job becomes easier, but I'm not a fan of houses in which the front facade is dominated by garage so that concerns me. I'm also somewhat hesitant to push the rest of the house further down the hill on the lot because it will make it harder to be able to see the lake at the back and cause more dependance on a retaining wall between the front and back yards. We could also maybe look at a way of moving the kitchen out of there to make more room, but that pretty much blows up the rest of the design and causes a total do-over. So that would be a last resort I guess. If either the kitchen or the garage moved out of the way the available arc of space at the end of the (short) hall could be a full 180 degrees (like most normal houses) and it would be a lot easier to get it all in there. Barring any change in the laws of physics the answer may lie in some compromise involving all of these things: slightly weird shaped rooms, slightly longer hallway, slightly more garage on the front, and somewhat moving the kitchen.

The ball is in her court now, so we'll see what all she can come up with.

Workin' Them Pixels

Don't pay the ransom. We're still here. Liane started school a few weeks ago, and we've had a few other things happening that caused the house to go onto the back burner for a bit. We're back at it now. In fact I've been doing some drawing of my own. We came to a standstill on a few issues, the most difficult of which has no easy solution in sight. The east end of the house has to hold the garage, master bedroom, master bath, and a huge walk in closet. And the only way to get to it all is through a hallway near the front of the house.

It makes for a really long hallway and some odd shaped rooms, the latter of which doesn't bother me...up to a point, but the long and circuitous hallway gets me down. It's a problem that likely can't be entirely solved unless we blow up the house and go in a different direction. But we're trying.

Rather than continue to have Nicole go through gyrations I wanted to try a few ideas myself, just to have a better handle on it, and also to let her see a little of what's in my mind's eye. We meet with her tomorrow to go over my drawings. I hope she can come up with something better than I've been able to. I'm really not that happy with any of it. This is really a tough challenge. And it's frustrating because otherwise we're very close.

Boogie Nights

This takes the cake. We're continually fascinated and amazed at the things we see in people's basements. This house we looked at today evidently serves as the Columbia City Discotheque. What you can't see very well at the bottom is there is an actual hardwood dance floor built in. We were pretty much speechless when Chris fired up the lights and disco ball motor.

We looked at several houses today. All of them had potential on paper, though in the end only two stand as contenders. And like all the rest they have their faults. They could be made to work after several tens of thousands of dollars in remodeling and fix up. We'll keep them on the list while we try to finalize a draft of the house we want to build that will be suitable to find out how much that's going to cost.

Today, for the third time since we've been looking, we arrived at a house only to find the owners still home. Today's incident was by far the most exciting. We had been walking through this house for about 10 minutes when we made it to the master bedroom. We heard a radio on in the bathroom so I let Chris take the lead...and sure enough, you can about guess what happened. Ooops!! The owners and Chris shared a moment you can only imagine. They thought we weren't going to be there until 2:00. He had arranged for us to be there between 1:00 and 2:00. This type of time discrepancy has occurred twice before, far less dramatically. Not sure where the communication breakdown is, but suffice to say we were extremely careful entering the rest of the houses today.

Not too Soggy

Drove out to the property we are considering at lunch yesterday. It had rained like cats and dogs the day and night before so I thought this would be a good time to check and see how warranted our concerns over the drainage are. I haven't mentioned this before, but after the initial drop-off the property is pretty flat all the way out to a common area behind it, then it rises again before getting to the drop off for the small lake. We wondered if water might stand in the lawn after a rain. I am happy to report that it didn't. Well....it may have for a while, but by the time I got there (several hours after the rain stopped) there wasn't any standing water. This is very good sign considering I still saw water standing in quite a few other places in town.

As a side note, I finally measured the distance and time between it and Sweetwater. There are several slightly different routes that can be taken, but on the one I think I would take most of the time it came out to 9.6 miles and took me about 13 minutes. Not bad considering it will shave about 20 minutes off the drive for Liane.

Something is Missing

Notice something different?

(Don't you guys love it when your wife asks you a question like this? Nothing will freeze you in your tracks faster, because of course the real answer is, "No, but if you'll give me a minute to look around and think about it I might be able to come up with something." Guessing is a pretty dangerous undertaking though.)

We're in the process of making our house ready to put up for sale. Of course we still have no idea when it will actually go up for sale. Too many steps in the puzzle have to happen before we get there. Those of you who've been here before will recognize that we tore out the two cabinets over the peninsula. There's still some finish work to be done, but this is close to what it will look like. Definitely more open.

Funny thing about selling a house. That seems to be the time where you're supposed to fix and upgrade all of the shortcomings. I don't get it. We've been living here for years and it's been fine, but now that we're thinking of putting it up for sale we have to spend thousands of dollars upgrading things. Why wouldn't we have done this stuff before...so WE could enjoy it? It's like company is coming over and we have to suddenly clean up and fix everything.

Whatever. I go along because the prevailing opinions of the experts is to do this stuff. New countertops are next.

Hang in There

If anyone is actually reading this I just want to let you know that the real excitement hasn't started yet. So hang in there. I promise it is going to get more interesting at some point. Just how interesting remains to be seen...

And feel free to post your comments.

More Changes

Last night we spoke with Nicole to discuss some of the changes in the layout we are working on. There are a variety of issues still being sorted out, including: size of garage, size and configuration of master closet and bathroom, and mostly just how to fit all that stuff elegantly at the east end of the house. It's proving to be difficult, which I knew would be the case after having done some of my own sketches early on while I was working on getting some ideas more codified in my mind.

There's also the issue of the kitchen...and here comes the part that's embarrassing, and probably a sad commentary on our lives to some extent...but...we want everyone in the kitchen to be able to see a TV. Liane just loves to watch TV whenever and wherever she is working. She doesn't really watch it that much, mind you, she just has it on in the background sort of loosely following along with whatever is going on. Of course this is usually either reality TV of some sort or something like Oprah. Whew! Women yacking away or crying. Wears me out sometimes. In the kitchen space (which for these purposes includes three separate areas (not counting the screened porch)) she wants to have TV available in the hearth area, for her while preparing food, and for anyone who may be sitting at the bar. A look at the layout makes it clear this will be really hard to do with only one TV. We've been exploring alternate layout ideas to see if we can make it better (more on that to come). One of the more promising ideas has been to rotate the bar 90 degrees and change the kitchen dimensions a bit. Nicole is pursuing several variations at once right now. More to come...

What is it with GOLF??!!

We met Chris again today at Eagle Glen to look at another house. This one backs up to the first hole of the course just like the one we looked at the other day. It's a few doors closer to the tee. This is one of the first ones we've looked at that had a configuration we might be able to live with, and the price seems right, though it's not perfect. But first....what is the obsession people have with golf? I think this is the third house we've looked at with some goofy golf mural on one of the walls.

And there's just golf stuff everywhere: statues, pictures, paintings, posters. I get that this subdivision is built with a golf course, but wow. Over the weekend we visited some relatives in Louisville (also to see their house) and the entire basement was all about golf. Golf people sure do love golf. I have my obsessions too, but you don't see me painting murals of guitars and synthesizers on my walls. I don't even have a picture of Kobe or Roger Staubach displayed anywhere in my house. Whew.

Other than the entire decor having to go this house is a serious contender. But there are quite a few compromises. For starters I figure we'd have to spend an additional $30k to $50k to get all of the remodeling done we'd want to do. And though that along with the purchase price is likely considerably less than building there would still several compromises we'd have to live with. There just isn't quite enough room. The bathroom would never be able to have the type of shower I'd really like. The master closet is too small, with no easy way to make it big enough....a problem we've seen in almost every house we've visited. The laundry room is in the basement, rather than on the floor with the bedrooms. No screened porch, although it looks like there is a place to add one. Kitchen would have to be completely redone from the ground up, and even then is still smaller than ideal. Most of the space we'd really use isn't much bigger than what we have now. But given all that we do like the general layout and if it turns out to be a big enough savings we might consider it.

Still need to find out what it will really cost to build before we can compare.

Banished to the Basement

The basement has been a little controversial. We both agree we want one, but its purpose has been in dispute. Liane wants all of my "man room" stuff in the basement, which primarily amounts to a studio/office and home theater (nothing elaborate). Her reasoning for this is due to our thermomic incompatibility: she runs cold and I run hot. In our current house my space has been in the loft, which I really like, except it often gets warmer than the rest of the house. She's sometimes on the ground floor freezing while I'm in the loft burning up. So if I am in the basement it will be easy to keep me cool, while she can be comfortable upstairs. Logical enough I guess, but I'll really miss the overview of the house and the neighborhood I have from my loft. I've argued that with dual HVAC systems the temperature variation can be largely managed, but she isn't buying...so to the basement I go...

The plans for the basement are still in flux. Aside from the layout still changing, we don't know how much of it we want to finish. All to be determined as we zero in on other details. There are two main demands I have if I am to be banished to the lower chambers:

1) The basement must be walkout style. This has less to do with me needing to get outside from the basement and more to do with the overall feel of it. Walkouts are decidedly less cave-like than even daylight basements.

2) Noise from above must be minimized. I hate hearing the impact noise of people walking around upstairs when I'm in a basement. I still have to determine the best way to accomplish this, but suspect it will be some combination of material on the floor above and isolation on the joists below. Fortunately I have some access to a world renowned acoustician and studio designer in Russ Berger to help figure out the most practical way to tackle it. Also, this is one reason why the bedrooms changed ends. I did not under any circumstances want my studio space near the kitchen above, and likewise I did not want any noise I might be making in the studio to disturb Liane while sleeping. So we put the master bedroom and kitchen at the same end of the house, and will put the studio below at the opposite end. (Of course there are other factors that impacted the placement of the bedrooms that have been covered in prior posts.)

Zeroing In

We obtained a sketch of Draft #2 from Nicole last night. Now most of the major parts are in about the right place, though there are still some details we're changing or as yet unsure about.

This is the main floor. As it stands right now there would be a loft above and a nearly full basement below. I say "nearly" full because the whole master bathroom area will be on the garage slab. This is evidently the best way to be able to achieve the variation in the floor that I want. One of my criteria is to not have to step up, down, or over anything to get into the shower. I want the floor to be flat. Well, that means the base of the shower has to be recessed to provide a way to build the drainage slope. If the bathroom were on regular second floor joists this presents a significant challenge. Actually this idea presents some challenges too, in the form of plumbing, but so far they're the lesser of the two. I've also been told that two large slabs is another complication we want to avoid. So my idea has been to keep it with the garage slab and have them be one. The retaining wall for the basement will follow the outline of the bathroom.

One of the main differences between this and the first draft is that the bedrooms have swapped ends of the house. This is because of how things work out against the basement. We have some specific ideas about how the basement needs to be done, but all of that is a story for a later post.

You'll also notice how much less the garage protrudes from the front of the house. I've decided I don't like houses where the facade is dominated by garage (which is what I have now). I definitely want a "side load" (garage entrance on side of house), and if possible I still don't want the garage structure to extend far beyond the front facade of the house. This plan achieves that, and even though the garage isn't completely side loading it would actually work very well against the primary property we are considering.

Back to the Golf Course

We met Chris and looked through a couple of houses at Eagle Glen over my lunch break today. One of them was the house we drove by the other day, which backs up to woods. The other one overlooks the first hole of the golf course.

The second one had a rather significant error in the listing, which indicated the master bedroom was on the main floor. It turns out it was on the upstairs floor with all the rest. Not a complete show-stopper; just not what we want. Then we discovered that the washer and dryer are in the basement. No deal. There was very little about it we liked actually, though the view out the back isn't bad.

The first one could contend. It would require a lot of work to get it where we'd be comfortable, and even then it would definitely be a compromise. We'd have to turn the office/bedroom into a closet to have the space we'd need. The screened in porch looks like it was supposed to be a three season room that was aborted, ultimately making it a terrible screened porch. Of course virtually all of the decor in every house we look at would have to go. Yuck! This one is no exception.

So....at the end of the day today we're still thinking build, depending on how much it's really going to cost, which we can't determine until we have plans from Nicole that are close. She supposedly has a rough draft ready for us. So we need to get that and go over it. Hopefully we'll soon be talking to the builder about it.

House Photography

Several months ago I began taking photographs of our house in anticipation of putting it up for sale this summer. On web listings it's easy to show many photos, but there's always one, main photo associated with each listing on search results, and of course only one photo can be used with any paper based listing.

I knew it might be tricky getting one good photo so I wanted to make sure I took pictures before everything grew out, and during the blooming season so we could choose the best ones when the time came. I was somewhat scientific about it. I marked off spots on the sidewalk across the street where I’d place the tripod so I could be consistent, thinking I might use Photoshop to merge a couple of shots together later. I bracketed the exposures, shot at different angles, distances and zoom settings. I shot on days with various lighting and weather conditions as well. Normally subjects like this look a lot better when the sky is blue and the sun is overhead or behind the camera. Given the orientation of the house that angle isn’t possible, and when the sun is out strong there are shadows on the front of the house, so I may have to end up in Photoshop bring those shadows out. Or I may have to end up using a shot from an overcast day and then placing a better looking sky into it, which will not be easy since I have to work around at least one tree with sky in the background. I find it strange how little attention seems to be paid to this sort of thing in some of the house listings I see. Sometimes an expensive house will be shown with a crummy little snapshot and an overcast sky in the background.

At any rate I now have lot of pics of the front of the house, nearly all of which don’t show it effectively. It’s a hard house to shoot because a tree obscures the area around the front door, one of the main points of interest in any house, unless the photo is taken at an angle that obscures other areas of interest. There’s just no way to get one, good shot of the whole front.

Shot in late April -- Unacceptable because of overcast sky and the tree has no growth on it. Part of it could be used.

Shot late May -- Unacceptable because blooms make it look like spring, and the left tree obscures the nicest looking part of the front of the house.

Shot late June -- Unacceptable because front is lost in shadows (can be fixed) and right tree obscures the doorway.

Of course as I set about reviewing some of the photos later, with an eye toward possibly using the best parts of shots from different times, Liane tells me that I don’t want to use any of the shots with blooms in them because that connotes that it’s spring, and if we put the house up for sale in the late summer (which is likely the soonest it will happen) photos with blooms in them will make it seem like it has been on the market a long time already. Sigh. I tried to resist asking why she let me take all those photos in the first place, but couldn’t. Needless to say a minor argument over who said what to whom when ensued.

Currently the plan is to trim the tress and try it again. Hopefully I'll be able to piece enough parts together to come up with something acceptable.

Another Contender?

We headed up to Warsaw Sunday to visit some friends and along the way decided to stop by Eagle Glen to drive by a couple of houses that have potential (on paper at least). We'll probably end up scheduling a showing on them to see what they're really all about. The drive by was pretty inconclusive, as usual. I really wish people would take the time to put floor plans on line. It would help us not waste their time looking at houses that we know aren't going to work. You can get a lot out of the photos on line, but the added dimension of being able to clearly see how it all connects together and flows would make a big difference.

Here is one of them.

It doesn't look that much different from what we have from the street, but there is a lot more to it (including the required walk out basement, a screened in porch, etc.). It backs up to woods, which is nice. It seems like the price is right, but as with most it will likely end up being a pretty significant compromise from what we really want.

I think it's going to be hard to be very grounded in assessing these houses until we have a more concrete idea what it's going to cost to build what we really want. Nicole is working on draft #2.

A Good Idea

We continue to look at houses available for sale in hopes that we may find one with the right combination of features, location and price that’s suitable for us. I’m not optimistic about our chances for success. There are probably more farms than single-family houses in the area where we’re looking. It’s also important to keep looking as part of our research in thinking about what we want to build.

A couple of weeks ago we saw a house that had an HVAC vent that blended into the wood floor very effectively. Once you see things like this they become obvious. I don’t know that I would have thought to ask about such a thing before seeing it though.

This same house had another feature (not pictured) that intrigued me. The steps down to the basement were in the middle of a floor, rather than up against a wall as in most houses. So effectively there was just a hole in the floor with a railing around it, and the steps descended below. It struck me as different and cool. If we end up not having an upstairs on our house I would very much like to build the steps this way, which is how Nicole set it up on her initial draft. We may even be able to leave them mostly open if there’s also a flight to an upstairs. We’ll see.

The Cast of Characters So Far

Now that this thing is starting to take shape it might be a good idea to begin establishing who else is involved.

David & Liane Stewart - Us

Nicole – Our friend, the drafter, who works part time for a builder called Windsor Homes. Nicole is taking our raw wants and wishes and turning them into a workable set of prints.

Jim – Nicole’s husband and a great handy man. He’s bound to figure in to the story eventually.

Chris – Our realtor, if we have a realtor. It remains to be determined whether it’s really necessary to use one if we end up building. He’s already been pretty helpful though, so one way or the other we’ll make sure he gets paid. Most definitely I would use him in selling our current house. He works for Mike Thomas Realty.

Rob – Another contact at Windsor Homes, a reputable builder we may use.

Felicia – Our friend who at times seems to live and breathe houses, decorating, and staging. She does have a great eye for it and isn’t short on opinions. I expect she will figure prominently in getting our house ready for sale and probably in decorating the new one.

We’ve already lined up a nice network of help, and we’re sure gonna’ need it.

Staffing

Sunday we went to look at a model home that both Nicole (who designed it) and Chris (our realtor) thought would be good for us to see based on the style of house we want to build. They came up with the suggestion of this specific house independently of one another, claiming it had several characteristics on our list of wants. So we trucked all the way up north in what was close to a 30 minute drive. Having grown up in Louisville I know that 30 minutes doesn't seem like much of a drive to people who live in larger cities, but in Fort Wayne it's an epic journey. Perspectives change. When I first moved here I remember a lady in a store telling me where I could find something I was looking for and she said, "...but that's all the way across town." Well, all the way across town amounted to maybe 25 minutes, which to me was nothing back then. Now a drive of 25 or 30 minutes feels like a journey to Mecca or something.

Liane confirmed (via their website) the hours it would be open on Sunday and we drove all the way up to the very nice, new addition to find it. We found it with a note on the door informing us that nobody would be there due to "staffing." Evidently they don't have enough staffing to keep someone in their model while it is "open" or they don't have enough to have someone update their listing on their website.

So we walked around the house looking in through the windows. It occurred to me at this point that we might look rather suspicious. Nicole had told us that the house recently had a break in and many items were stolen. Here we are walking around looking in windows. I guess a trip downtown for questioning would have added a bit more intrigue to an otherwise (nearly) wasted trip. Actually we were able to see some of what they were talking about looking in from the outside so it wasn't a complete waste.

This is the only decent picture I could get looking through the windows. The great room isn't one of the parts that's most applicable to us though.

First Draft

We met with Nicole again a couple of evenings ago to check out her first draft of a possible floor plan. She had told us she was just going to do a rough sketch, however she showed up with a pretty complete set of drawings (the main floor is pictured here).

There are actually quite a few significant changes we need to make so this isn't really what it's going to end up looking like, though the basic vibe is pretty close. There are still a number of things undetermined too. For instance, we can put a loft on it (in addition to the aforementioned walk out basement). We kind of want to because getting up high is about the only way to get a good view of the lake and other surroundings, but....cha-ching, I can hear the money sucking already.