Thoughts on changes to this front elevation?
Tolla
18 days ago
last modified: 18 days ago
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Craftsman Inspired/ Craftsman Light - Thoughts on this elevation?
Comments (14)A coupla things for you to ponder hawkeye. You plan still looks like a generic "one house fits all" run of the mill suburban tract house. A house like that will NOT do this great site justice. You have beautiful piece of land!! With great sites or sites with great views (and we have a lot of those here in Annapolis) or even a view of a pool in the backyard, I like to set it up where that view is seen when the front door is opened. You'll be looking at the kitchen counter where the sink is and we all know how those look like most of the time! Not to get into a bunch of design theory mumbo jumbo but great designs are not created as objects. They're created as relationships and the object is born out of that. There are 1000's of these relationships in a typical house and one of them is the first thing seen from the front door. If that relationship is respected then your views out the back literally become part of the house itself to anyone coming in not to mention the house will feel larger and be considerably lighter/airier when looking through it to the view beyond. And building a house this way doesn't cost a dime more then building your plan above. As examples of what I'm talking about I have some houses in an "ideabook" I put in there long ago for some long forgotten houzzer. They are there to illustrate how to not stop designing at the exterior walls and in all of them the site becomes part of the house. The entry views go clear through the house to great views beyond. Also, I'd get the living space oriented to the back and look to make the screened in porch more integrated into the design. Right now it looks like the house was half up before someone said "OMG, where's the deck and screened in porch!?!?!". Gotta go now but more on how to go about this later....See MoreFinal Floor Plan and Elevation Thoughts
Comments (27)It's a big house but with a very small living area. When furniture is floated and traffic must go through a room, there is very little space left for furniture. Think about this. I like to sleep in, too. Since your house faces East, you won't get morning sun in the bedroom and can still have more windows/light. My own very large bedroom faces west and has two windows on that wall and one on the north wall. I also live in KY and morning light comes late here unless you're in the Central time zone part of KY. Even then, it's not broad daylight at 5 AM in the summer the way it is on the East Coast! The way the plan is now, you're ruining what could be a lovely master suite. With two teenage grandsons and having had two children of my own, the last thing on earth I would want is the garage entrance right next to their bedrooms! Even the nicest, best child WILL sneak out at some time and you're inviting it and also inviting "guest" you might not want in your house at an inappropriate time of day. You have acreage - for heavens sake get rid of that garage where it is now! That plan is for small subdivision lots! I can see the reason for the two baths if this is truly your "forever" home - when children are married and come home with their families, an extra bedroom will be very welcome. In a big house with the bedrooms on separate sides, I'd want my main laundry to be near the children's bedrooms as that is where the majority of laundry will be. I'd also want a stacking w/d in the area of the MBR so you don't have to haul your own sheets/towels/clothes all the way across the house. Do you really want your master bath right on the front of the house? With the tub at the front window? I'd want it on the back where I could bathe with no window covering and look out at my property, not the driveway and a guest who might arrive early! There is a reason that houses had halls for many decades - even centuries! It means one does not have to walk through rooms to get to another. It means there are walls on which to place furniture. It also separates space. I know - "open concept! open concept"! Sometimes separation of space is a very good thing! If you're having adult entertaining, do you really want children walking through the living room/great room? Your dining room is VERY small! My own DR is 13x13 and I'd kill for an additional 2 ft in length and width! It's very tight when people are at the table - I can't even walk all the way around the table to serve. And I hate passing plates across someone. If my lot were not so narrow, that's one wall I WOULD knock out and expand that room, but alas, not to be. You have a huge lot - make that a room that you can seat your entire family at someday when your children are grown. As others have said, the drawings are faint and my old eyes have had trouble reading the plans. I agree with all about that gigantic roof. You'll thank us someday when you have to re-roof that thing and it costs a year's college tuition to do so! And it won't be In-State in KY! Okay - wife wants a vaulted ceiling. Your living room will be cold in the winter and hot in the summer. Your heating/ac bills will be enormous. It will be noisy. You live in KY - it does get cold in the winter and Lord knows it gets VERY hot and humid in the summer! If I were going to spend this much money to built a large house, I would hire an architect and I would listen to his advice - especially your wife needs to listen. My own house is only about 2800 sq feet but I have more true living space than you do - bigger rooms. You can do better than this....See MoreElevation Thoughts! Opinions/comments welcome!
Comments (53)I know that there is a lot of discussion about the location of laundry rooms. I grew up in a house with the laundry room right next to the kitchen, and that was fairly innovative for the time the house was built in our area where laundries were typically in the basement or in a room near the garage. In my own places I've had to put laundries in two of them, the previous owners used a common laundry facility or the laundromat. I have had three different locations 1) off the master bedroom in a large walk in closet 2) in the kitchen 3) in the basement (currently) In each case location was dictated by where it would fit best. I think there are pros and cons to each. In the house I grew up in, while laundry was done regularly by my mother, when I was little there was a baby sitter who also got paid to iron because everything in my house got ironed at that point. Later there was a cleaning lady who did sheets towels and blankets as a part of her job, and as my mother became increasingly disabled it was good to have the laundry off the kitchen because she literally came downstairs in the morning and did not go upstairs all day long if she was home alone, her mobility was very limited. So off the kitchen was great, she could do laundry next to the two rooms she spent the most time in, the kitchen and the library. (The cleaning lady also set the ironing board up in the library next to the laundry room so she could watch TV while she ironed, which took hours) When I had mine in the master bedroom closet, honestly it was very convenient, but on the other hand things rarely ever got fully put away, because it was all right there, dirty clean, everything. For me it got sort of disorganized, and if I wanted to iron shirts or something, I didn't want to iron in the closet. So I dunno, that location was okay because the laundry was done where it was generated but it became very disorganized for us. In the kitchen, the benefit to this was you had to do it and put it away, and you would rarely do a washer load and then forget to put it in the dryer or to start the dryer. Other than that I did not like it right in the kitchen. Ours will currently stay in the basement because the rest of the house isn't laid out for it to go anywhere else but I don't think it will bother me too much. If I was able to put it anywhere I would probably put it in a separate laundry room near the kitchen if my house was big enough to do so. For us the current convention of having it closest to the bedrooms was not optimal for us in terms of keeping things organized....See MoreElevation thoughts appreciated
Comments (39)Not sure if you're familiar with Maria Killam and her blog, but one of my favorite posts of hers is First Rule of Design: Boring Now Equals Timeless Later, which is great advice for house exteriors as well as interiors. worthy's comment is about those people who have gone through with, and are living with, floating stone gables, usually on their McMansions. Not those who, like you, are having a discussion about and working toward an understanding of why this inauthentic feature is undesirable. Sometimes a thread will end up with rabbit trails, hijackings, and semi-inside jokes, especially from those who get a bit punchy weighing in on each and every "would you look at my plans please" post, which tend to add up over the course of a month. I wouldn't take it personally or be quick to find offense where none is intended. And worthy did in fact make quite a worthwhile comment, echoing cpartist, that The rear elevation is also lacking symmetry or thoughtful asymmetry. This is typical of plans drawn from the inside out. Until I started hanging out here about eight years ago, I was a nescient amateur myself. There's no shame in lacking knowledge, especially in a field like architecture; as it's often mentioned here, architects and others with design talent have a particular ability to consider, all at the same the time, a house's interior, exterior, and siting -- rather like playing 3D chess. In fact, coming to this forum lacking knowledge in search of knowledge, education, and assistance, is a good thing. At this point I'm slightly less lacking though still an amateur and still aware of my limitations, and our house, hopefully soon to be completed, is much better off for all the lessons I've learned from folks here....See Morechispa
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18 days agolast modified: 18 days agoJ Sk
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18 days agoK Laurence
17 days ago
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