Initial sketches!

One of our many inspirations

We got our first sketches back from the architect! It's pretty funny how my wife and I both got really excited to see our ideas put down on paper by a professional. We were both pleasantly surprised by how much of my wife's initial sketches was preserved by our designer. Again, we could tell he was really listening to us.

The current layout of the main floor puts it closer to 2500 sq ft, which is larger than we had initially planned for. However, we are willing to be a bit more flexible with the square foot ceiling in order to incorporate the features we really want. We can also reduce the size of some of the rooms to get us closer to our initial targeted square footage.

Here are our initial questions and thoughts regarding the design and his answers/input where applicable:

1. The space between the powder room and the mud room is a closet? It's a laundry room measuring approximately 9'x9'
2. Is the one-car garage a necessity? If so, can it be pushed to the right-hand end of the house? In this market and at this price range, a three car garage is paramount for future resale.
3. Mud room and pantry are a bit smaller than what we had envisioned. We want the mud room big enough to accommodate a built-in bench in the middle of the room. The mudroom is 6'x9' and the pantry is 5'x8'. *This is plenty big now that we have a sense of scale*
4. The computer nook is not a "must-have" at this point, if it helps with spacing. I like the computer desk area and it uses a strange corner in a good way. I would keep it.
5. The bedroom side of the house feels a bit cramped. We would like better spatial separation of the master bedroom from the rest of the house (i.e. no shared walls if at all possible); a master bedroom "wing," if you will. If the current layout on that side of the house needs to be preserved, perhaps we can push the other bedroom upstairs? If you remove the second bedroom from the main floor that will certainly make the house smaller and shift it upstairs. You have to ask yourself if that is how you want the house to function. It would be a long trip to the bedroom upstairs with small children. *After some thought, we agree that the house functions better with the second bedroom on the main floor.*
6. The area adjacent to the master bedroom towards the front of the house is space for the closet/bathroom? Yes.
7. On the current floor plan, it looks like the loft/bedroom on the second floor would sit above the garage. We are concerned this could make the loft cold(er) in the fall/winter and noisy with the garage doors opening/closing.  I haven’t resolved the loft level entirely in my head, but it needs to be where it can have a window to the bedroom. I was going to have a look-over into the kitchen area and then, yes some of it over the garage because that’s where a window can be. We could stack it on top of the kitchen and dining but that would prevent the large open ceilings you like in the photo. It has to be over something.
8. We’d like the front entrance to be able to accommodate a large, oversized, solid-wood door. The entry is very very tall and big, It could accept any door of any size. 

After our conversation, it was clear that a lot of the issues we had were because we didn't have a sense of scale and size while looking at the schematic. The layout as it stands is better than anything we saw during our house hunting, and it looks like we are close. Things we need to resolve:

1. The spatial relationships in the bedroom wing of the house.
2. How to configure the one car garage. Just make a large three-car garage? Move the one car garage to a different area? Leave as-is?
3. The loft, while it is a cool feature, is not a necessity for us especially now that we are projecting the main floor to be a bit larger. If we forgo the loft, the number of bedrooms will then likely play a larger part in the design of the basement.
4. If the absence of a den will not hurt potential resale value, then we are flexible with what we do with that space. To get the square footage down we could combine the den/great room space while decreasing the overall size a bit. Just an option we can think about.

The exterior definitely reflects the design themes we are going for, but the long roofline without a break looks a little "empty" to us. I think it probably has mostly to do with it being a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional structure. Our architect reassured us that it is definitely as dramatic, if not more so, than the picture we provided him (see beginning of this post).

We are extremely happy with the initial sketches and excited about the ongoing collaboration and productive back-and-forth we've been having with the designer. He'll be getting back to us with some revisions of the main floor. He'd like to have that solidified before tweaking the exterior and thinking about the walk-out basement.