Monday, February 25, 2008

One more rendering of the house


I thought you might want to see one more rendering of the house from Punch! Pro. This is a generalized view, but might give you some idea of how the house might look.

We couldn't figure out how to make a screened in porch. Also, the basement is just four walls and a garage door, but in the current plan, it includes a walk-out door and some windows. Yes, the decks are floating in their own little universe.

And for you really sharp readers, you will note that the sun is setting on the northeast side. We plan to have the sun setting in the southwest.

Changes to the upstairs


Here is the new floor plan for the top (bedroom) floor. We've made a nice master bathroom and closet area. The master bath is largely Chuck's doing (our GC). We also opened up Hannah and Josiah's bedrooms on the other end of the house.


The roof was raised on either end of the house, providing some additional square feet. Previously, the master bath was a part of the master bedroom; now it is its own room.


We had a bowed-out area on the first floor, for the gas fireplace. (No windows behind the fireplace, of course, but windows next to it.) We extended the bow window up to the second floor. To the right is a view from the master bedroom, standing at the door.

The renderings here are from Punch! Professional Home design. It is a somewhat clunky program (ask us sometime about the floating toilets and the doors extending into the next floor). Punch! could not export a JPEG of the blueprint layer, but it was able to do a DFX/DWG export, and I used Free DWG viewer to turn the DWG into the JPEG that you see above.

Give a man a program, and you frustrate him for a day. Teach a man to program, and you frustrate him for life.

No, that's not the color of the bed spread, floor, or walls. I think we will be spending some time playing with those later.

I have bids out to several window manufacturers. I think we will be looking for a double-soft Low-E argon window. It sounds like windows have gone up significantly in efficiency (= letting in light when you want it and not siphoning off heat at night in the winter).

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Plans are in for review

Well, the plans have been submitted for review before the permits get issued. Hopefully if there aren't any changes that need to be made, we should have our permits by Friday. If there are changes that need to be made, Chuck will make those and resubmit the plans for final review. Rajah plunked down our money for a construction surety bond so that we can pull the permits as soon as the plans are approved.
Hopefully soon we'll be able to start pouring the foundation and working toward framing. Stay tuned...