Wait Until The Last Minute To Finalize Your Floor Plan

When we were finalizing the front of the house (in the last post), we also had to really finalize the layout and dimensions of the house overall. We had a rough plan and had figured some basic dimensions out, but hadn't factored in all the walls and outside dimensions. And we definitely hadn't tackled exact dimensions for the second floor. 

So assignment #2 from our builder was to finish that up. In most cases you would have already purchased some blue prints and that wouldn't be something that you would need to do, it would already be done. But, since we went the super custom route and didn't pay an architect to make our drawing, we got to do this ourselves. 

It was actually quite fun to really get this done to scale and make sure everything lined up and had enough space. This is also where we got that our front wall was the 22 feet.

FIRST FLOOR:

SECOND FLOOR:

On the second floor, remember all the area you see the brown floor will be open to the square white area. That is our loft space and where the computer/office area will go.

Also on the second floor, the long rectangle that is white will be un-finished during the build. The hope is to turn half that into a theater down the road, and keep the other half unfinished as attic storage space. It will also have sloped ceilings as it will be built in the rafters, but all the other rooms upstairs will have little to no slope to them.

After we spent our evening getting these plans together and placing the house on the property, we started to think about what our builder would probably need next. To finish the dry-in we need to decide on window placement and sizes, and a front door! 

Toodles! 
Liz and Mike

Scrapbook Layouts are Easy. Floor Plan Layouts are Hard.

Our builder directed us to a couple of websites with great floor plans. All we knew we wanted for sure was 3 bedrooms, 2baths, and a loft overlooking a vaulted ceiling great room. It was easy to filter this criteria out but none of the floor plans were really speaking to us. So, we took inspiration from a couple of elements that we liked in a few different plans and came up with our dream home floor plan ourselves.

Features that we love:

• Very open floor plan when you first come in our home.
• The great room with a overlooking loft.
• Stacked stone fireplace as a focal point for the great room.
• Curved Staircase just adds some additional charm.
• Master on the first floor and separate from the other bedrooms.
• Walk-in pantry in the corner of the kitchen and a large island.
• Large walk-in shower in the master bath
• Master walk-in closet accessible from the master bath

Features that we love:

• Loft/Study area is open to below giving the feel of a very large area for Liz to work from home.
• Additional storage area that can be finished and turned into another bedroom or 2, or a home theater down the road.

Then, because Mike and Liz are both visual people, we took our floor plan (at least the first floor), into Google Sketchup to get an idea of the proportions of the spaces to each other and how well furniture and other items would fit around in the space.

We considered adding a third garage bay for a while and Liz's Uncle Bill had a brilliant idea - just extend the two-car garage and make it longer instead of having to pay for a third door! Perfect. We really wanted the extra space since our garage will pull triple duty of being a home gym, car storage, and Mike's workshop area.... at least until our budget allows for a separate workshop building.

Half of this back deck will be a covered deck (from the middle bedroom upstairs). So it will be easy to turn into a screened porch area right off our master (and a perfect place for a hot tub according to Aunt Dawn) and still have open outdoor space for grilling.

Tell us what you think of the plan - we are still making changes and tweaks based on things we see (mostly on Pinterest) and feedback from friends and family.

Would you angle the island?
Do you like the idea of having outside entry in the master?
Anything you would add or subtract (and save us money)?

Toodles!
Liz and Mike