The Floorplan

Here it is. The house plan! The "McHouse", as I lovingly refer to it. This plan was a challenge, mostly because Ryan and I could see in our heads what we wanted, but couldn't find a single plan online that came close to being the vision. There were a few things that made finding a stock plan nearly impossible, including the safe room and my need for a decent home office. Also, I am super weird about garage placement and wouldn't stand for a garage door on the front of my home. Garage placement isn't the only thing I'm super weird or picky about, but I digress. Ryan also requested that you wouldn't be able to see straight into the master from the living room.  Anyway, one day I drank a few beers, printed out a bunch of plans, cut them to shreds,  and glued them back together to get this. I present to you this masterpiece!

Our current house is a metal shop/ condo barndominium thing. Ryan drew the plans on a torn piece of graphing paper. The builder built the house right off that sheet of paper. If only this were so simple. We contacted an architect and met with her back in October of 2015. We had concepts about a month later, but there were problems. We asked for a maximum square footage of around 2700. Three of the concepts were just all wrong. There were hallways coming right into the middle of the living room. EK's bedroom was on the complete opposite side of the house. The perfect layout, shown below, was quite a bit over our maximum square footage. Ouch. 

Plan Copyright Ginger Patterson Designs, 2016

  We were fairly discouraged at that point, but Ryan had a few ideas to move a hallway and absorb a bit of office space. We picked up our finalized plans in mid-February 2016 and got them to one contractor for bidding the same day. We actually got a bid back a day or so ago, but that's another story for another day. Here is what we ended up with. We were able to accommodate all of our needs as in the initial concepts, and somehow ended up with what I think is an even more awesome master closet. The safe room shrunk considerably, but the practicality of a big, rarely used concrete room was just not there. There is also a detached carport that will extend from the porch on the back left of the home, but it wouldn't fit on the same screen as the main house.

Plan copyright Ginger Patterson Designs 2016

 As you can see, it was necessary to work with a designer on this process. She had great ideas for best utilizing the space to meet our family's needs, and I loved emailing back and forth with her as we thought of ideas. I told Ryan the other day how strange it feels to not talk or email with her everyday! She was a sanity saver. We ended up with a much larger home than anticipated, but there were was just no other way to reduce the monster without losing some of the features we wanted most. We totally could have rearranged the fireplace placement, but once I show the exterior sketches of the house it will make sense why I was set on having it there.  The biggest advice that I can give when designing a custom house plan is HAVE PHOTOS OF YOUR IDEAS. It was so hard for me to attempt to articulate design ideas, but when I could send a photo of something, the communication felt solid.    I am planning to make a checklist of things to be aware of before meeting with contractors, and I look forward to sharing that soon! I'd also love to chat about the design process, feel free to email me!