I’ve been playing around a lot with some home design software, and I think we’ve finally created a plan that meets most, if not all, of our criteria. It’s about 2,900 square feet, with four bedrooms (master suite on the first floor), large kitchen and pantry, open to the family room, with an office and a playroom for the kids, and a good-sized mudroom for all their coats and boots and such. I haven’t really worked on the kitchen layout yet, and it seems like there’s some wasted space upstairs that I could do something more sensible with. But overall, I’m really happy with it.
Of course, we’ll still be talking to an architect and/or a home designer, because I’m sure there’s some stuff I haven’t thought of, and I’m very sure no one is going to be able to build anything from my drawings anyway!
So, at any rate, here’s the front elevation (the roof on the garage is kind of messed up, so disregard that).
The first floor (click to open as a larger file):
And the second floor:
So, what do you think? If anything leaps out at you — good or bad — I’d love to hear about it!
I’ve been using Chief Architect’s Home Designer 10 Architectural; there’s a bit of a learning curve, and I don’t think the roofs tool works very well, but overall, I really enjoy playing with it, and I’ve had a lot of fun creating the interiors for our house as well.




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January 6, 2013 at 2:20 am
Carl Maletic
Alexis/Jay;
I left a comment, but it didn’t post for some reason.
Which was: I think the Veranda is great. And, what are the green circles and dashed lines near the Entry area? And, of course, I would like to see some construction details; as there are a couple of tough geometrical problems to solve.
Good job!
January 6, 2013 at 12:17 pm
Sanveann
Hi, Carl! The dashed lines aren’t really anything — they were just used to separate rooms in the program, and I can’t seem to hide them. The green circles are pillars.
You can see the original plan here. We added the veranda, reworked the upstairs and made some other changes, mainly to the mudroom/laundry room area.
I have some other worries, mainly about the amount of light that will get in (particularly into the kitchen).