Preliminary plans

Let the fun begin!! As we were waiting for permits to come in, our builder told us to start thinking about plans, both for the elevation and the interior. We looked through tons and tons of those books filled with hundreds of elevations and site plans. Some good ones are Impressions of home and Homes of Grandeur by Design Basics Inc. It also helped to go to Realtor and check out the houses currently on the market.

Elevation. For the time being, we only had to have a general idea of the elevation we were going after. Did we want brick? (yes) Stone? (maybe) Cultured stone? (hmmm..) Drivet? (no) What colors did we like? (red, traditional colors) What sort of roof were we going to have? (no idea)

(There are two kinds, a gable roof and a hip roof. A gable roof is two-dimensional, while a gable is three or four. Here is a house with a gable roof (top) and one with a hip roof (bottom). Notice the gable roof is two pieces of roof, while the hip has three or four "faces," which gives it a more aesthetic look. A hip roof is a LOT more expensive than a gable. Before understanding the difference between the two, I would never have noticed! But once they explained it to me, I couldn't see a house without realizing what type of roof it had, and how all the "nice" houses had hip roofs! We were on a budget, though, and a hip roof was out of the question. We decided to go with the gable... but we asked if we could have a small part of the roof be hip. The answer: yes. Success!

The house with the hip roof also has what are known as "coins," those rectangles on the edges of the exterior walls. Coins give a house flair and pizazz. We decided against them, however. With the color of brick we wanted (red), we thought they were unnecessary.

Plans. It's important that you sketch a general idea of the layout you want for your house. Even if it's done on a dinner napkin. I chose the Paint application on my computer and came up with the following drawing.
We took the cardinal directions into consideration. Southern and Eastern exposures are better than Northern and Western (South is best). You want the rooms you use the most (which for us are family room, kitchen/nook, and master bedroom) to have the best exposure to keep you warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Most of our decisions were made based on that, as well as trying to stay away from the house to our north that's pretty close.

We also had a little "problem." The lot is not level, the original house was set on ground which dipped four feet about 5 feet from the house. The driveway as I had drawn it below would require a retaining wall to keep the driveway from sloping downward. A retaining wall, if done properly, is very costly, and if not done properly could settle over the years. My dad, who had done one for the pergola he had built, did not recommend it! So we decided against it.

Preliminary plans are helpful, especially when meeting with the architect. The more information you include, the better. By the time we met with ours, we had a pretty clear idea of what we wanted our house to be!

Next: Meeting with the architect!