Have you ever built a house?

Did you know it can make you gain weight?

When you spend countless late nights drawing and measuring and trying to visualize spaces you end up(or I do anyway) doing a lot of this

and then in return a lot of this......

Oh yes I did put the coffee pot in the cabinet!  It was one of those wow I can't believe I just did that moments...and yes I snapped a quick pic with my phone.  How could I not share my absent mindedness with a few friends.  Friendship is about being transparent right?

Well here is what has kept us up so much.  Last year we started contemplating coming up with our own floor plan because we couldn't find a floor plan that would work on our lot (it slopes down a little so it needs to be long and shallow to trim foundation costs).  We found some nice plans but they were all missing at least one thing we were looking for. Whether it be a mud area from the garage, or a large laundry room, or a space where our 10 foot dining table could fit but we don't want a formal dining room.  You can imagine there aren't a whole lot of one story plans out there that fit the bill.  Oh yea and we want it to be a one story...

That's were we googled and came across this floor planner website call Floorplanner.com.  There is a tiny little learning curve but it is pretty easy to get started and it's free unless you need to work on multiple designs(then there is a small fee).

We worked on a couple of different options.

Here is option #1

Oh and I forgot to mention we were also trying to shoot for 2400-2600 sq feet and no larger.  Due to the HOA restrictions in our neighborhood we have to build it at a minimum of 2400 sq feet.  Once we really started looking at floor plans we realized it would be hard to fit all that we wanted into anything under 2600 but we still wanted to shoot for it. 

So anyway..back to it..

Option #1

You see there are tons of details missing here but we just wanted a simple drawing to give our architect so he knew what we were thinking.

The main goal was(and is) to have a "great room" that consists of the kitchen, living and dining all in one space.  Our last house had a pretty cramped little main living area so I am determined to be able to have more seating in the new casa.  You'll see the dining table rests right between the the kitchen and living.  I couldn't decide if I loved that idea or not.  Sadly the one thing that turned me off from that design is not wanting to be limited in the type of lighting that I could put over the dining table because then we would have to look through island lighting and table lighting to see what was going on in the living.  Silly right?  But still something that weirded me out.  The one thing I loved was having a window over the kitchen sink!    You will see you walk into a mudroomish area from the garage and then right into the playroom or as the hubs likes to put it "family room" because he never wants the kids to think our house revolves around them and their things.  I get it I totally do but...anywho..

There are three bedrooms around the "family;) room" and two baths.  One of which is a jack and jill bath for our girls to eventually share.  We will have one room and bath as a guest area until the kids get older and don't share a room any longer.

Below is our work up of another option.

Ignore the details or lack there of.  There is a reason we had to hire an architect!  Some things we just couldn't figure out how to do (like lay out our bathroom).

I hade been "pinspired" if you will by this

source

We already had plans for an 8 x 4 island so I obviously was loving the length of that one but I also loved that the island looked into an area of windows surrounding the dining table...

Actually..you know what?  The original inspiration came from this HGTV dream home kitchen

HGTV Dream home 2011 Kitchen

You can't tell much from this pic but if you go to the site you get the vision.  We have already come to the conclusion that we can't afford to do a fancy smancy ceiling like this but oh isn't it purdy!

So this was what we took to our architect.

And here is the hopefully finalized plan!  

There is a good chance we have really gone over our building budget by adding the large porches and probably the playroom..oh I'm sorry.."family room" so we may have to nix the 'family room" all together.  If that is the case who knows what that end of the house will look like but for now here she is..

We love it!

Unfortunately it grew to 2800 sq feet though.  I think this is all par for the course of designing and building right?  Please tell me yes.  You gain things, you lose things, you squeeze and stretch things until you finally get to a house you love and hopefully can afford.

I will be sharing some exterior inspirations and elevations next!  

If your in the Austin or Central Texas area our Architect is Wilson Robertson and you will be wowed by his work as we go along I'm sure!