Round 2 of rough drawings arrived, and things are coming together well. However, the kitchen was totally bugging us and we finally realized the problem was: it was just way too big (9 feet from north counter to south counter), yet it was also impossible to make large enough for an island—just not enough room in the east-west direction. Sketches of new kitchen + front entry + window ideas below:

Summary of the requests for round 02:

• We decided that we want a 36" front door and side lights (not a 4' door). The critical thing here is that we want adequate space on the garage side wall to hang coats, put shoes, etc.
• fixing/confirming kitchen appliance dimensions: 36" range, 36" apron sink, 36" refrigerator width and 29" depth
• We don't want more than 7' of open floorspace in the shortest dimension of the kitchen. The original design had a roughly 8'-9' rectangle in the middle of the floor, which was dead space.
• Remove the door between the bedroom #2 and bathroom on the first floor (decided we needed the flexibility of no door on this wall for the 1st floor bath, e.g. room for towel hooks).
• We'd prefer a simpler railing on the staircase, and to have it more open to the entry. Specifically, we were considering a partial wall with the hand rail as cap on top, and entirely open above the rail.
• We want symmetrical windows on the front of the house. We'd prefer stacked awning windows. (And we also want the larger closet it would allow in bedroom #2 on the first floor.)
• After considering, we prefer the smaller windows on the east and west sides of bedrooms #3 and #2—to match the window sizing used on the 2nd floor.
• We want to remove the rear-most window on the west wall of the master bedroom.
• We'd like to discuss the window layout in the dining room, since the kitchen will change.
• From the drawings it appears the stair landing is split with a step; if so, we'd prefer to bring out the lower step and closet if we could in order to avoid that.
• Finally...we decided that a flat entry roof is preferable to the curved roof

Lessons learned: maximum 6.5 to maybe 7-foot distance between counters in a kitchen without an island. the 9' we had before would have been a really bad distance from fridge to sink.

 

A few sketches, lots of discussion, a one-week delay for an appendectomy for one of us, and finally a checklist of questions we've sent off to Forrest:

The highlights of our remaining feedback:

• We like more glass in general (good for views of street and yard, lets more light in) and would like to see how we can weigh that against conservation benefits of smaller/fewer windows. The husband also researched a lot on shutters and exterior sun shades (will have to remember to do some posts on that later).
• We discovered there's an open railing detail between the stairs and the entry. But we can't figure out how open the stair is exactly (the entire thing is open? just to the 1st-floor ceiling only? just on the upper part of the entry? why's there a little angled piece of wall at the west corner of the stairwell if it's open?). The opening might explain why the entry structure is so tall. We may just want the entire stairway to be open to the entry, and ditch the little angled wall piece.
• We're still leaning towards a lower flat roof for the entry.
• We'd like sidelights for the front door.
• We'd like an open structure for the west wall of the porch (get a view down the street, get light into porch & entry area).
• We're thinking bout interesting things to do with the porch. Maybe a really substantial redwood header or some other interesting material. A pole/column for holding up the front end of the roof.
• We wonder if the kitchen skylight can vent (seems like good functionality for the kitchen).
• We still like the idea of skylights in the 2nd-floor bathrooms and laundry room (since that's a completely interior room). We're going to ask if venting & shuttered skylights can alleviate the heat problem. There are these solar-tube things that have shutters.

Yay! First drawings! Today we met at Forrest's offices to review the first draft of the rough drawings. In short:

• The big strokes are looking really great.
• Forrest fit quite a bit more space than we expected (he mentioned running up against the square-footage limits). Current plan does have 3 full baths & side-by-side machines in laundry room upstairs (we were prepared to stack them).
• Seeing the green-roof sections is really exciting (the 1st floor will have green roof, the 2nd floor will save its roof surface for solar water heating, photovoltaic).
• Our solar measurements looked really great. Photovoltaic might be worth the investment.
• Forrest added a little skylight at the end of the 1st floor hallway, and a big skylight in the kitchen. Cool.
• The biggest thing we are still iffy about is the curved lines of the entry structure, as well as its size (it's much more substantial than we typically like). Also I'm tend toward right angles and rectangular prism spaces, but I want to be open-minded. We're rather certain we don't want curved sides though, so we're going to sketch out some ideas with curved roof, slanted roof, and straight roof.
• The entry area needs some refinement. I initially disagreed with adding some extra short little walls to enclose the entry area, but looking back, it seems it might be necessary. We have a new entrance to the garage, and it would be uncool for it to feel like part of the living room.
• Forrest widened the living room (basically took the jog out of that west wall) into the garage space which makes the living room a nice size. Husband is a bit sad it eats into his garage space.
• The master bedroom had to be larger to hit outer supporting walls. But nothing is overly large.
• Forrest proposed a curbless design for the master bath (just tile everywhere, open shower area without door/curtain) and that sounded super cool to us. It does cost more, but we're adding it in for now.
• We had several refinements to the master closet/laundry room wall. We're going to try angling a wall, which makes the laundry room smaller (ok, since we're not going to need all the space), adds better storage space in the closet, and provides a better position for the closet door.
• We shifted some doors a bit.
• The husband really likes a bench seat space, so we added that into the east bedroom on the 1st floor, which freed up more room for a really deep pantry (said to be quite appealing to many homeowners as well), so that had a nice added benefit.
• We mentioned we were entertaining the idea of line-drying clothes. We learned Forrest pretty much always line-dries his clothes. We were impressed.

Forrest and a project engineer came out to take solar measurements on our roof this afternoon. He brought his pug along in the hopes that someone would be around to let our dog out. I happened to be home with a cold, so I woke up from a nap to a lot of barking, and then my dog inexplicably fixated on the sliding glass doors in the back. Turns out there was a pug on the other side. It was nice to have some fun dog-play time.

Forrest, our architect, scheduled a meeting to review our needs/wants list, and to throw around a few thoughts.

He also brought big printouts of our as-built drawings. Some ideas that emerged from the meeting:

• kitchen toward the front of the house rather than the back isn't a bad idea
• skinny little powder room off the dining room is a bad idea (we realized we did it because it was better than a bathroom off of the dining area), so that is tentatively nixed.
• a totally open entertaining space is better than our wannabe-Eichler idea of retaining a partial central wall. But where do we put the TV? On the garage wall.
• Forrest is thinking flat roofs maybe. I'm seeing it. With the right materials and also modest proportions, we shouldn't stick out from the neighborhood. Husband is still mulling it over in his head.
• We like idea of a green roof, which Forrest says should not hurt resale. People just don't seem to try it very much. Husband has always been for green roof (and other flat-roof things such as balconies and roof decks), and flat/flat-ish roofs will accommodate this.
• Forrest pointed out fact that keeping a deck, even when we shorten it, makes the yard feel smaller. He says to consider steps down from the house to a paver patio. We like. We can keep the back door on the garage, and give dog more running space.
• We're not sure we can get a variance to continue the garage wall in order to add space to the garage (it is too close to the property line by today's codes)...so we might not do that. We can still bring the entrance forward, and a little box for the entrance might be a nice focal point for the front facade.
• 2nd floor is the plan. A first floor layout for our place unfortunately requires major wall-moving. When that's the case, it's not necessarily worth the small cost savings and the compromised layout compared to a second floor.

Our homework: get to know the neighbors behind, and directly next to/in front of us. We see two on a fairly regular basis. Got to meet the one in back, and chat w/ the 4th a bit more.

Next meeting...in about 2 weeks.

Last week, the as-built contractor came in and measured the entire house. We got the drawings this week. Next step: surveyor.