I am tired.  I don’t think I am ready to submit.  It is all just rushed and I haven’t started the forms.  OP doesn’t not have necessarily a good website for submittal requirements.  One requirement that I saw required a site plan the site survey probably won’t be enough.  There are gaps in the drawings but it is hard to say how hard they will review the stuff.  I am hearing some bad things from other architects, but I think we just need to get it into the system and take our hits.

Demo plan

new floor plan

Electrical Plans

West facing exteriorSouth facing exterior

north side exterior

Bathroom idea

Here is some more work. The tub move currently is only giving us a 30×60 tube and requires us to make the door 30″ and move it closer to the toilet and generally is pretty tight. It will be import to verify the exact location of the toilet. I am showing a short depth toilet like in the basement here to minimize the interference with the door. But we will need to verify the location of the collar to confirm that the small toilet will work.

I didn’t include a sketch but the plan is helped maybe by flipping the toilet and sink. This might not be necessary or desireable. But I did a drawing with the toilet and sinks flipped and I liked how it made the toilet more private or at least not immediately viewable from the hall. The double sink configuration is very tight on a 7′-0″, but it is close to working. Another 3,4,5,6 inches would be a big help. I again really think the tub wants to be as big as the tub downstairs here which is 34×66. Does the linen closet want to opening off the bathroom (I think it does) or does it want to opening of the little hall area where it could be larger and more usuable than the way I have it laid out.

Kitchen version 1, floor plan and elevation

I am liking the kitchen. I will find photos of Micah’s house but Mark Bebbe a classmate of mine centered the stove/range on a large window and had a nice contemporary exhaust hood “floating” out in front of the glass.

I really like the separate doors up at the top of the 42″ upper wall cabinets. Again I thought the little LED display case light was really nice at showing off nice dishes that we saw at Troy’s showroom. It really makes that upper shelf of a 42″ cabinet, I think, more “usable” given that it is just really too high to use the upper shelf on a 42″ cabinet. Again please warm up to the exhaust hood idea. Thoughts and comments are welcomed.

Appliances will start to be very important. For example. The fridge probably wants to be 36″ wide. Also I am just showing a 30″ wide stove. We could go with a wider stove and take advantage of the window opening more and still make the 15″ door units work. I really like standardizing as much as possible on a 15″ wide door/drawer unit. I think 30 and 15 inch units work much better than 12 and 24 units. They just seem to proportion better. Also I like to not have 24 wide units mixed in with 30″. Also base cabinets want to relate to the layout of wall cabinets.

I will try to make some time tomorrow to draw up what we sketched on the deck and respond to any comments that come back.

So in order to get a head start on things before we move in, Thor, Matt, and I met tonight to draw up plans and, well, make a plan. First project is definitely going to be kitchen remodel.

The Sunshine Nightmare

There are no appliances in there right now, and the whole thing looks like it came out of a lemony sunshine 70′s nightmare. But… how to do it? and how will this fit in with our long term goals for the house? and what are our long term goals?

Our thoughts right now are to redo the kitchen and bath, back porch, floors, paint, ect, and then evaluate where we’re at, either then creating some living space in the basement or adding on a second story. And right now it seems that every decision we make will affect how things turn out down the road.

Matt drew up some plans, and we got out our tracing paper–art hour for adults!! I was tempted to use crayons instead of pens.

I am a big fan of the more modern open floor plan, with flow between the living spaces, and then a separate private space. This would involve tearing down walls, and putting up new ones. Basically as much work as possible. Thor seems to want to do as little as possible to the floor plan while still revamping the space (not that I blame him since he will be doing most of the work). Matt is doing his best to mediate between the two of us. As the professional in the group his opinion generally holds more weight. He uses words like “dynamic” to describe asymmetries created in a room by moving walls around.

The possibilities seemed endless and overwhelming, I won’t go into the round and round.

Final decisions, at least enough to get going:

• Kitchen: blow out the pantry. Hold out on putting in a permanent central island, open up the kitchen to the sunroom with a peninsula, move door to backyard from basement stairs to sunroom. New cabinets, appliances, ect.
• Back porch: do a deck, and not screened in porch (I will only be denied for so long, though), and then a patio in the back yard. Room for porch swing and grill.
• Bathroom: blow out one wall and make it bigger. Put in bigger bath and double sinks.

Now we’ll see how much of it will actually happen