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Erick Ragni, our architect, showed us the initial conceptual schematics of our future house on July 19th. We’ve been working to improve them everyday since then, because we’re trying to finalize the conceptual schematics by August 8th.

When we met last Friday, Erick brought a second, revised conceptual plan for us to consider (as always, click for larger):

Second concept, first floor

Second concept, second floor

Bill and I have been fine-tuning it nightly, Bill and Erick have been trading email day and night, and we’ll all meet again Friday. The design continues to be a work-in-progress, but here’s what we’ve got so far (as always, click for larger):

Revised entry and office

When I first told Erick that I wanted a front-facing window in the office so that I could survey the front yard and street, he expressed concern that windows look both ways. However, we’re in the floodplain, and our house must be elevated 3 feet to get above the base flood elevation (BFE). Erick realized that the bottoms of our windows will all be well above the head of all but the tallest peeper, and he’s now including a wide expanse of huge windows that look toward the street to capture tons of indirect northern light.

In addition to the big north windows, the office will have floor-to-ceiling windows looking south into the courtyard, and a high clerestory window over the eastern wall of cabinets.

Also, the office layout shows a future bathroom. The idea is that we, or a future owner, may want/need a ground-floor bedroom to support aging in place, or a so-called mother-in-law suite. We’re including a room that’s just the right size for a future bathroom, but leaving out the plumbing and fixtures for now, in favor of having a very large storage closet with a high window.

Finally, we may include a Murphy Bed in a cabinet on the east wall, so as to have one more place in the house to sleep guests. We had previously ruled out murphy beds as too expensive, but Erick alerted us that one can now buy the necessary hardware via the internet and have a local carpenter construct the cabinet.

Revised kitchen

Bill is leading design of our kitchen, and I will leave it to him to comment on the design choices we’re making here.

Revised pantry, mud room, and rear entry

Day to day, we will primarily enter the house at the rear entry from the garage. I’m clear that an awful lot of household clutter occurs when frequent-use items have no convenient home. So we’re designing what I hope will be a hyper-functional “mud room” that will include shoe storage, bench seating, hooks for jackets, shelves for daily use bags and totes, “key drop” drawers for valet items, etc.

Rather than a formal “powder room” for guests, we’re designing a single bathroom on the first floor. It will have nice, guest-worthy finishes, but it will be located in the mudroom, so that we can pee as soon as we get home. It will also include a large shower. The idea is that when Bill comes home from a bike ride drippy/muddy, or when the girls get dirty playing outside, they can rinse off as soon as they come inside, without tracking mud, etc. through the whole house. This is also where we would bathe a hypothetical future canine.

Revised master suite and media room

The master bedroom has a vast window that looks north into the courtyard. Erick’s floor plan for the master suite is clever in that the doorways are positioned such that you can’t see from one part to the next. We’re planning to include “pocket” doors in several places, but in practice, we can leave them open all the time, yet still have visual privacy.

For the master bathroom, Bill wanted his/hers sinks, and a huge soaking tub. I wanted a roomy, well-organized shower, and a ton of natural light. Erick’s plan gives us all of that.

Early in our house hunting, we toured a house that had a large triangular shower with the door in the hypotenuse, and large windows on both outside walls. The windows were as wide as the shower stall, but they started about 5 feet above the floor, which meant that I could see out well, but anyone outside could see nothing below my shoulders. We’re planning something similar for our master bath.

In addition, that bathroom we toured looked out into a fair number of urban trees, providing views of both greenery and wildlife. While our southern neighbor has a large oak tree near the property line, the southern view from our master bathroom would primarily be the roof of our garage. So I asked for a small, enclosed roof deck just outside the bathroom, that we can plant with a rich array of green, growy things.

Erick observed that if we enclose this deck with an 8-foot perimeter, it will provide lovely views of sky and tall trees, while still affording total privacy in the bathroom. He recommended that we not only include an outdoor shower head, but also bring the shower window all the way down to the level of the tub deck. Neither Bill nor I are sure we’re ready to go that far, and I still want an integral shelf for storing shampoo and conditioner. We’ll see!

It will come as no surprise that a man who used his Playstation 3 to watch movies, rather than play games, would like a dedicated media room in our new house. So at the grown-up end of the second floor, we’re building out a big dark room that Bill can equip with our projector, screen, and THX sound system.

Erick has placed the media room between the stairwell and his/hers closets, so that any bedrooms are buffered from any sound transmission. Likewise, the media room is situated over the mudroom and downstairs bathroom, where noise spillover will not be an issue.

Finally, this revision adds a small closet, that we’ll use for A/V equipment, and an en-suite bathroom, where our guests can pee during movies. But these additions mean the room will “count” as a bedroom for resale and appraisal purposes, and be useful as a nursery or fourth bedroom for a future owner.

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As I mentioned earlier, we’re trying to finalize the floor plan — including placement of all walls, doors, and windows — by the end of next week. Our process is definitely benefiting from outside perspectives, and we appreciate all the feedback we have received so far. If you have suggestions for how we can make some part of this house more functional, or see something we’re missing, please send them along. Comments to the blog, email, call, or text are all welcome. Thanks!