First Drafts of the New Floorplan

Back in October we got some first round floor plans from Michael Gelb.  Here is the first floor:

You'll notice first the front of the house stays as it currently exists.
Then you walk back into the kitchen/dining.  These plans also have only a half wall between the kitchen and the front living area.

Then you walk back into an area I will call the "back foyer".  Here on the left is a door out to the driveway.  And on the right is the elevator.

From there, you can either go down an interior ramp on the left, or head down a short, wide hallway to an accessible 1/2 bath on the right, and a play/therapy room at the end of the hallway.

If you go down the interior ramp, you end up in a mudroom with cubbies, storage, and a dog worthy shower.  The stairs to the basement are also located in the mudroom, as well as a door directly into the garage.

And here is the second floor:

On the second floor, the front bedroom (currently our master bedroom) stays the same, and Morty's current bedroom stays the same.  However, that's about all that's the same.

Where the bathroom is becomes a hallway that goes back and then turns to the right.  From there you can go through a door into the accessible "Morty bath" or make a left to go down the hallway with the elevator on the right.

If you continue through the door at the end of that hallway, you enter into the new master suite.  There on the left is a walk-in closet, and on the right is the master bath (notice this is the new home for our existing clawfoot tub)

Then past the bath and closet is the master bedroom.  At the back of the bedroom is a french door that leads out onto a deck.



We have a bunch of changes that we want to make to this plan including the following layout items:
- Kitchen - needs more room between the island and cabinets for accessibility - willing to take out the 1/2 wall and rearrange the island
- Kitchen - include an area with an open lowered counter, so that Morty has his own kitchen prep space.
- Kitchen - pantry can be moved to the understair hutch location (this is currently a poorly built hutch)
- Playroom - close off the back wall to meet with the front of the closet.  Then there is space for a stackable washer & dryer in the mudroom
- Morty's Bath - the shower is too small and needs to be bigger to accommodate a bath chair and a care attendant

We met with Michael and went over some of these things.  He has been working on round 2 draft, entering it into a CAD program, and doing elevations.  We also had to get a plot plan re-done to add in the garage (we had plans made before the garage was built, but didn't have the garage in there at the time, obviously)

Meanwhile, Jim and I have begun a lot of thought on more of the details.  Jim researches heating options and scours Craiglist to find windows and boilers.  I obsess over things like flooring and tile and other finishes.  More detail on these things to come...

Kitchen!

I've been trolling on Pinterest and thumbing through This Old House magazines that are piled up in our house, trying to find an ideal kitchen layout to fit our house.  The original plan that Michael Gelb drew up had the new kitchen in the new addition at the back of the house (same spot as the existing kitchen).

However, as I'm pretty sure I mentioned, we're thinking about moving the location to get more use out of our existing square footage (i.e. the dining room that is essentially a really big hallway from the family room to the kitchen)  Well, I think I found a perfect layout:

If you take out the wall between the sewing room and the dining room, the dimensions are just about the same.  Doorways are in a slightly different location, but if you flip it, it's essentially the same...  the kitchen would be in the existing sewing room and the eating nook would be in the existing dining room.  And the "to new family room" would be to the existing family room.

Of course, we'd have to get rid of the chimney.  But we don't have a real fireplace anyway... and the oil burner could be vented a different way.

Here's a couple other pictures:

Drool, drool, drool.  Excuse me while I wipe the drool off of my chin.

Here's the link to the gallery on This Old House.

Now, we're not sure exactly what we would do with the space between this and the mudroom, but there's got to be an elevator in there somewhere, and maybe it's a "Morty Suite" with a bedroom and big accessible bath... or maybe since there's an elevator, the Morty Suite can just be located upstairs and the downstairs is a therapy room/equipment garage and bathroom??  Maybe part of it is a hallway that is a big ramp from the mudroom to the existing house?  (there's about a 2-3 step difference in the design from the house to the garage - was supposed to be a step down to the kitchen and 2? steps down to the mudroom)  Still debating this one.  Anyway, we meet with Michael Gelb this weekend to go over our needed changes to the design.

The REAL reason I haven't done anything this summer... I'm PREGNANT!

That's right, folks! 18 weeks now and counting... It's sort of at the point where I can't disguise it very well anymore, so the jig is up, so to speak. As far as the house goes, it's like a curse and a blessing. A curse because it really bugs me to see all the exterior paint that still needs to be shaved, but a blessing because I actually have to relax a little! I'm playing it safe because there is DEFINITELY lead in that peeling exterior paint, and it's best just to save that for another time. (ya, like when there's a baby crawling around getting his hands in the lead paint dust!... just kidding)

I think when most people are pregnant, they get all excited about putting together a nursery. But to them, all that means is picking paint, spreading it on the walls, and buying some new baby furniture. Maybe add in a few decorative items. So simple and quaint! Well, it's just not quite like that for us. First, we have to figure out where the nursery will go. And then, depending on where we pick, it could mean some major work. Here's our options:

1. Change the already mostly complete guest room over.
Advantages with this room - it's on the same floor as our bedroom and would be the simplest conversion, meaning walls, ceiling, floors, electric, and lights are already done - the most like a normal person's nursery project. Disadvantages - we can't fit a crib AND a guest bed in that room, so the guest bed needs a new location. Plus, there's no heat in that room, so we'd need to get some kind of space heater or other solution.

2. Fix up the attic space above the kitchen. Advantages with this room - it would be on the same floor as our bedroom (circled in yellow). Disadvantages - everything else. The room is poorly insulated, if insulated at all. All the walls would have to be demo-ed, electricity wiring and insulation added, new drywall put up, a new floor put in, the window would need to be repaired and have a storm window added, plus we would have to deal with the sloping ceiling. We thought about adding some cute cubbies or something to the kneewalls, but the time the built-ins would be put in, the room becomes very long and very narrow. Plus, as with option 1, there's no heat in this room. Not to mention the weird entry into this room. You have to go through the bathroom, into the "closet room" and through another doorway (follow the blue arrows).

3. Fix up the attic space above the main house. There are really 2 options within this option:

3a. Create the attic space we actually want. Advantages - it would really improve the useable space of the house and up the resale value. We would knock out the walls between the 2 rooms:


and



and create one bigger room. It could be a room that could actually become a child's room/playroom. There is a perfect space at the window to create the window seat/bookshelf unit I would love to have. Disadvantages - it would have to be some major work - demo some walls, repair and open up the stairway , add some electric and lighting, lay down a new floor, deal with a chimney smack in the middle of the room, actually make the window seat built-in. Then the major disadvantage is that we would have to walk up and down the stairs every time the baby wakes up.

3b. Just fix up one of the attic rooms. This could be fairly simple. Advantages - the walls are in decent shape, so it could just be some minor wall repair, painting, a couple of outlets, and a rug. This is also the best repaired original window in the house. Disadvantages - again, it would still be on a different floor. And with the knee walls, it's pretty small.

After humming and hawing (as my father would say) over all these options, I think we have decided to do option 1 and move the guest room bed up to option 3b. That should be the simplest for us.

It would be nice to have option 3a for the longer run, though. But that will probably have to give way to the future phase 1 garage addition and phase 2 garage/house connector with a mudroom (potentially including a kitchen and 2nd floor additions) Hey, it's nice to dream, at least!

Floorplan

So the appraiser put together this little sketch of the floorplan. It's not exactly accurate, but it's close enough to post in a blog. I like how he called my closet room the "Sitting Area"........ sounds like a parlour or something. And I like how he added a "closet" to the guest bedroom.

If I knew how to draw things in Autocad, I'd put something together that's a little more accurate, and then I'd show how I want to change the space a bit. But I don't, so you will just have to look at my crude drawing and imagine the kitchen as one straight block - the blue rectangle, and about 6 feet of mudroom/laundry room built on to the left side - the red rectangle. That get's really long and skinny - so maybe there's a kitchen-accessed pantry in the back or something. That's something for Stacey to think about...

What I don't really know is if I should bother to do anything with the 2nd floor in this addition I'm dreaming up... You start wondering how much to spend before it's better to move someplace else. The layout upstairs is so wierd, that you'd get into changing everything just to make a good flow. Or you just make just one giant master suite - and change the attic storage to a master bath, cutting off all the bathroom doors but one. What a novel idea - only having one door in a bathroom... But why have one, when you can have 3???