Size, Cost and Decisions

The previous post looked at just the layout of the floor plans, and some comparisons between them. Here we talk about some other issues that were raised by these plans, and what we've decided to do.

Size

After seeing these two sketches, we spent a while discussing size. The first sketch, with the fully built downstairs was around 2600 sqft. The second, with only stairs on the lower floor, was 2300 sqft. We decided that we could not fit everything we wanted into just 2000 sqft without feeling cramped. We do a lot of entertaining, and hosting people comfortably requires space — space for a dining room big enough to seat 10-12 people, space for a dedicated media room big enough to sit 10-12 people, space for a kitchen big enough to support both of us cooking regularly, etc.

Looking at projected costs, our budget, and our desires, we decided that 2500 sqft was a reasonable target. That would give us enough space to comfortably fit everything we really wanted without going outside what we can afford. This pushes total estimated cost to roughly $825k, which is a far cry from our original estimate of $700,000. However, as we get closer to starting construction, we have a better idea of how much money we actually have saved versus how much we need to borrow. Based on those numbers, things look fine.

Are we worried that costs will keep increasing like they have been? Yes and no. We are not in a situation where things are costing more than we expected in an initial budget. Instead, we are choosing to increase our budget to get more space than we originally planned.

Plus, now that we are close to locking down a layout, the size will be fairly fixed. The remaining unknown cost is construction, and that tracks size fairly closely, so our costs should be stabilizing. There is some contingency built into the construction budget, and other large budget additions can be planned as alternate additions (which we can choose to include or not later in the process). So hopefully, at this point, we should be able to manage the costs at a finer level.

Decisions

We had a good meeting with Markus (the architect) and Yuval (the builder) to discuss the plans, and work through some options. We considered (and eventually abandoned) an interesting design that attempted to combine the media and living room on the north edge of the main room; we could shut off a smaller media room or open it up to the main living spaces to get seating for larger groups.

We eventually decided to go with a modified version of plan two, with the stair on the west. Because we could not get a media room that met our criteria on the main floor, we decided to build out the media room downstairs. This allows us to shrink the north-west corner of the main floor (the media room in plan 2) and use it as an office. This should allow us to hit our target of 2500 sqft, and get a nice layout all-around.

With the general layout/relation of rooms locked down, we'll move to a deeper exploration in CAD to allow us to get sizes nailed down, and start getting a better idea of what the house will look like on our site in all three dimensions!

More Sketches

We received some sketches right before Thanksgiving and a second set right after. Now, a month later, we finally have a chance to discuss them. Our architect has graciously allowed us to share his sketches so you can see how the design has progressed. First we'll go over the sketches and discuss our thoughts on them. The next post will talk about some issues that these sketches raised, and what we decided to do.

Both plans share some similarities that come from the constraints of the site. The garage is on the east side. The house is an approximately 30' by 30' square to the west of that. The garage overlaps the main floor, causing an indent of several feet on the east edge, starting at the north and going down about 25'. This effectively turns the main floor into a rectangle, with a little jut out at the south-east corner for the entry.

The upper floor takes up the full square; we will use part of the space over the garage for an upstairs deck. The lower floor can run the full north-south length, but only about 15' or so deep (from the western edge) due to the hill on the east.

Plan 1: Stairs on North

Plan 1 is approximately an open floor plan interpretation of the traditional four square, although the stairs on the northern wall are separated from the entry in the south-east corner. The stairs leave a narrow space in the north-east corner; just large enough for a very small office and a powder room. The kitchen takes up the south-east corner; counter, pantry, cupboards, etc. run along the east wall; a north-south oriented island defines the edge of the kitchen.

On the south edge, cutting between the main kitchen area and the breakfast nook, a walkway leads from the entry in the south-east, along the south edge of the kitchen, then to the living room. The western edge opens the main living and dining space to the view. The dining room lies in the north-west corner and flows into the living room in the south-west corner.

On the lower floor, the stairs let out directly into the media room, which fills most of the space. The north-west corner, next to the stairs, has an office/guest that opens onto the media room. The south-east corner contains a full bathroom, again off of the media room.

The upper floor has a large gathering area in the center from the stairs to the south edge. To the west lie a pair of bedrooms; a play loft connects the bedrooms. The bathroom just to the east of the stairs services these bedrooms. The master suite takes up the eastern wall. The dressing room and closet space lie in the middle and provides access to the deck above the garage. North of this (the north-east corner) is the master bath, and the south-east corner is the sleeping alcove, which is just large enough to fit our bed and a couple of nightstands.

Plan 2: Stairs on West

Plan 2 moves the stairs to the west. They bump out so that the landings fall outside the main straight-line envelope of the house. In this sketch, the lower floor is not built out. The stairs go down to open space roughed out for future expansion.

The living room is still in the south-west corner of the main floor. The north-west corner contains a media/guest room. There is a full bath off of that room, located in the center of the north wall. The kitchen is just below the bath, oriented east-west, with the dining room as an open area between the kitchen island and the south walkway (which connects to the entry, same as in the first plan).

The upper floor is similar to before, but now the two bedrooms are split by the stairs instead of closets. The open family/play area has been converted to a smaller utility room with washer/dryer, sink, counter space, and storage. The master suite has been enlarged to fit a small office into the north-east corner, off of the dressing room, since there is no space downstairs for it.

Comparison and Issues

At first, we found the stairs on the west a bit odd; the western edge seemed best for the main living area: it has the views, and it provides the best connection to a deck outside. But western stairs provide some interesting advantages.

With the stairs on the north, there is a relatively narrow slice of space to the east (since the garage cuts into the east-west space on the main floor), and that space can only open to the south. This basically requires it to open into the kitchen, which is not great. With the stairs on the west, there is room for comfortably-sized rooms to both the north and south, and access to the bathroom is not directly off any of the main living spaces.

This layout allows for a nice L-shaped kitchen, which gives us a nice amount of counter and cabinet space. Western stairs provide a nice focal point for the interior layout, and they make the space in the northwest corner more private. However, the dining room in plan 2 is a bit small, and we worried about it spilling into the walk-way from the entry.

In contrast, putting the stairs on the north provides a large open space along the western edge of the house. There is less distinction between the living and dining rooms. It would be much easier for them to visually merge into one space (this isn't necessarily bad, but is different). The kitchen is more linear and, since the north end of the kitchen provides access to the north-east corner, has less space for counters and appliances. The office on the main level is too small for two people, and isn't really necessary if there is a second office downstairs.

Both layouts had some issues with the media room since we hadn't provided enough clarification. Neither was able to be closed off completely to block out noise, a key feature for us. In plan 2, the media room was not the right size.

Both sketches were interesting, and had some really good elements; but these are both larger houses than we had originally planned on...

Design Sketches

Things have been fairly quiet until recently.  We got the first round of design sketches a couple weeks ago and have been reviewing them.  There ended up being various delays, so it's taken longer than we hoped to get these first sketches.  But thing seem to be moving again, so hopefully we will soon have even more progress to report.

In this round of sketches we're mainly focusing on getting room layout finalized.  However, the sketches also start to incorporate details such as benches, window seats, closets, counters, etc.  It is nice to see some of our customizations and personality start to show in these diagrams.

Overall, the general functionality on each floor is roughly the same as in our original discussions.  We are considering fully building out the bottom floor, which would have a guest room and full bath in addition to the media room.  We're still playing with some ideas, and may make the guest area an extension of the media room instead of a separate room to conserve space.

The upper floor sketches provided a nice idea of what the master suite might look like.  It is really nice to see that coming together, and how it might work for us.  But other parts still need some development; we've decided that we don't really need a large play/gathering area upstairs; and would rather have a smaller, focused utility room.  So that will result in some bigger changes to the upper floor.

Overall, the plans are still larger than our target size, so we need to work towards reducing the overall area, see what does and doesn't fit, and determine how much space everything really needs.  I think that will actually be the most challenging aspect. Certainly, it's the most in-flux aspect at the moment.

There has been a little more activity than just the sketches. Earlier in November, Yuval hosted a party for everyone on the project.  We met our new neighbors, and they all seem great.  We also got a chance to meet some of the other people we'll be working with during the process.

New blog address!

Just a reminder that we have a new blog address!  We're now at http://setsuzokuya.blogspot.com.  Make sure your bookmarks and reader feeds are updated.

Our pattern language

For once, I (Erika) am writing a post.

A Pattern Language provides the classic reference for defining the qualities that make buildings work and houses homey. My own sense of what I want from a home developed largely from reading and rereading this book. The book is massive; it contains 253 patterns which can be used to define everything from an entire geographic region to a corner of a room. Such complexity seems overwhelming, but fortunately the authors provide a way to get started. In the words of the book:

[E]ach part of the environment is given character by the collection of patterns which we choose to build into it. The character of what you build, will be given to it by the language of patterns you use, to generate it.

For this reason, of course, the ask of choosing a language for your project is fundamental. The pattern language we have given here contains 253 patterns. You can therefore use it to generate an almost unimaginably large number of possible different smaller languages, for all the different projects you may choose to do, simply by picking patterns from it.

To generate your own pattern language, A Pattern Language, suggests the following steps:

1. First, find the pattern which best describes the overall scope of your project. We chose pattern 76, "House for a small family"
2. Turn to the starting pattern and read it. Add the patterns mentioned at the end and any other interesting patterns mentioned and add them to your list of candidate patterns.
3. Repeat step two until all of the connected patterns have been read. 
4. Remove any patterns you aren't sure about. The list of patterns can easily get too long. We ended up pruning over 30 patterns from our initial list.
5. Add your own materials. If there are things you want to include that aren't captured by patterns in the book, add them.
6. Change any patterns that you want so that they are appropriate for your situation and desires. Change the name of the pattern so that it captures your changes clearly. 

We have gone through all but the last two steps. In a future post, we will  talk more about the patterns that make up our personal pattern language.

Status & Inspiration

The beginning of October was a bit slow for house design.  We were both sick and had several events during the weekends, so we didn't get a whole lot done.  What we have been spending time on is collecting a lot of inspiration photos and notes.  We compiled a document with links and photos to things we like, and made some notes about what especially we like in each photo.  If you're interested, you can view the document.

We also have written up a lot of notes about what we liked and didn't about the initial proposed design, both by ourselves and meeting with Yuval.  Right now we're working to get the overall layout, sizes, orientations, etc. set; and then go into more and more details of each piece.  Hopefully in the next couple weeks we will have a firmer idea of what the rooms will look like.

Setsuzokuya

With our decision to switch to the Bellevue project, 'Taltree 4' no longer works as a name. As we pondered new names for the blog, we decided to come up with a name for our house, which we could then use for the blog.

The theme of our house is connection: we want to facilitate connection between our family and guests and the outdoors, between our family and the community, between our family and guests, between guests with each other, and between the family remembers living in the house. The idea is to design it in such a way that these relationships happen naturally, and are encouraged by the layout of the house.

We wanted a name to reflect this theme. A name should have a meaning, but it should also be a distinct identifier. Calling our home 'House of Connections' sounds a bit strange; it is more a description than a name. We decided to use another language, since we can use a word that has an appropriate meaning; but will not be immediately understood or interpreted by most people. We both have connections to Japanese, and will probably have some Japanese influences in our house, so it seems appropriate to look there. We found the word 'setsuzoku', meaning 'link, connection, union'. We appended 'ya' to that, which means 'house, shop' to get 'Setsuzokuya'. This has the same meaning, but sounds more like an appropriate name or identifier.

As you can see, the blog has this new name already.  The blog URL will be updated to reflect this on November 14th.  At that point, you'll need to switch your RSS feeds and bookmarks to point to http://setsuzokuya.blogspot.com.