Ready to launch

Things are slowly moving forward since the last time I posted. We have decided on the specific lot we would like to purchase after some exhaustive research and discussion with our realtor and designer. Yes, we've also officially retained the services of a designer/architect as well.


We first met the architect last weekend on our visit to Salt Lake City and were impressed with the fact that he listened and took his time. These were two aspects we find essential in someone who is going to take our ideas and, in extension, our dreams and execute them into a working plan. He was able to take the ideas in the form of broad-idea pictures and sketches we provided him and was able to synthesize (at least verbally) the design concepts my wife and I were thinking about. We then had a telephone conversation later in the week where we hashed out some more specifics. At that point, he had taken the time to walk the lot and was able to provide us with some feedback regarding the general layout of the house within the context of the landform.

My wife came up with several floorplan sketches which we asked the designer to use as groundwork and inspiration for his preliminary schematics. We drew inspiration from contemporary mountain homes with exposed beamwork, clean lines, soaring ceilings with a slight Asian influence; similar to a lot of the more modern homes you might see in the Pacific Northwest.

 

contemporary exterior design by seattle architect David Vandervort Architect

contemporary exterior design by denver architect Forum Phi

  

The two plans are very similar with some subtle differences.  

Plan 1 Main Floor

Plan 1 Basement

Plan 2 Main Floor

Plan 2 Basement

We will have some schematics back from our designer within the next week and we are both excited to see what he comes up with. At this point, the design process is extremely fluid and the architect has encouraged us to come up with what we like and dislike in concrete terms as we proceed. The bottom line being that the more thorough we are in the design, the more we save in money and headaches down the road.

Concurrently, we are hoping to make an initial offer on the lot by the end of the coming week. We are currently gathering financing information from several different lenders to look at all our options before we make a formal offer. I'll go into more details on this aspect in a later post.