It's all gotta go somewhere

We Have A Master Plan

The leaves are beginning to fall from the trees; we’ve had our first work day on campus at school, and soups are starting to appear on the menu. Noses are starting to run, and sunsets are sneaking up sooner…and the deep work of rolling up our sleeves and making this addition happen has begun.

This is the first draft of Michael’s master plan for our kitchen/living room addition and “artist’s studio” over the garage. 

Some explanations!

To orient you: the driveway is on the bottom (south) of this drawing (we hope to pour come concrete here and/or add pavers). The scale of this drawing is 3/16″ = 1′ 0″. So for the math challenged among us (ahem, me), that means…uh, what it means is you need a special ruler to understand the scale. For reference note that the back wall of the new mudroom is 13′ wide. 

Yes! A mudroom! A desperately needed space that will fit 3 adults, with a place to sit down and remove wet and muddy gear. And a place to hang it up! We are toying with squeezing a washer and dryer here also. The door we have today will get moved, so you’ll no longer enter and nearly fall down the stairs. 

We’ll enter the house via the mudroom or from the new breezeway that will connect the garage and the house. This breezeway will be an arbor (with plexi above so you stay dry) that will eventually be covered in grape vines or other trellised plants. You can just make out that the path will be sloped downwards toward the west; our architect Michael surprised us with a footbridge that will give you access to the fence gate and the tower (!) that will take you up to the artist’s studio above the garage. The tower will be an enclosed spiral staircase, to take up as little room as possible, but also add character. I would have never thought of this myself and I think it is a really cool idea (not cool for moving furniture in, which will need to be done via a hoist system, Euro style).  

Anyway I’m getting ahead of myself, since we’ll most likely just be roughing in the artist’s studio in the short term (we’re calling it an artist’s studio to avoid permitting difficulties, but we’re planning this space being outfitted with a kitchenette and full bath). 

The kitchen! Bigger, with room for a full-size fridge! But also it will be anchored by a wall of windows and sliding glass doors that will bring in light all year round, and let us enjoy the yard (which is going to be re-landscaped to add drama and year-round foliage).  The new kitchen will lead into a new dining area, which will be more multi-purpose than just dining. This room will have a large table, facilitating our every-day activities. We plan on doing most of our living here: playing board games, rolling our dough for our baking challenges, spreading out books or fabric, doing homework and crafts…

It is admittedly ambitious, and most likely we’ll need to do the work in phases. We’ll be without a kitchen for 2 -3 months (I’m planning on making our basement the new kitchen), and it may be challenging to do the work in the winter. When our construction person heard me talking about using the basement as the kitchen,  she said, “Oh, so you plan on living in the house during the work.” Uh, yea. 

Here’s to channeling patience…

2 Comments

  1. sherry

    It will be amazing. Love the covered entry with all the rain you get. Good luck on the patience. Hope you’ll take lots of pics.

  2. Lori

    Exciting plans! The spaces sound perfect for how you live your lives. Maybe room for a drum set in the new space?!

Leave a Reply to sherry Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

© 2024 MaidaData

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑