This is an update on our new house construction project. We have been working on a house plan for some time now, since not much work can be done on the property until all the permits are issued, and most of those depend on approval of a house plan.

We have certain criteria based on desires and the requirements of the lot. We had thought that the view, if there is one, would be downslope facing Lavender Trail. Due south would be about a quarter turn to the right, as seen from the house site facing Lavender Trail. We want a covered deck on the view side, which we will call the front, but no steps to ground level so Leah will feel more comfortable leaving a window or door open on the deck at night. We also want a sunroom on the right side of the house so that it will get as much sun as possible.

Our working plan had the living room on the right and the master bedroom on the left, both opening to the covered deck, and a sunroom to the right of the living room with doors into the room and onto the deck. And then Saturday as I was trying to lay out a line marked in ten-foot increments so we can measure the slope, I wandered away towards the Fouche Gap side of the lot and realized we could probably get a view in that direction along the ridge of Lavender Mountain and possibly down into part of Little Texas Valley. There are lots of trees in that direction, some quite large, but I think judicious clearing would allow a nice view. So now the logical place for the living room is on the corner where the master bedroom had been. Flipping the plan solves that problem but creates a new one. Since we won’t have access from ground level to the front of the house, the main entrance needs to be on the side where the living room is. Before we flipped the plan, it would have been easy to bring a walk from the rear of the house, where the garage will be, to a door on that side. Now, with the living room on the other side, guests will have to walk in a counter-intuitive direction around the garage and then along the side of the house. We may need a sign, but since we almost never get guests, it shouldn’t be too big a problem.

Most of the smaller house plans we have looked at have compromises in things like bathroom size. Some of them actually have a smaller master bath than guest bath, and neither of us will be happy with that. The master bedrooms are also much smaller than our current bedroom. So we are stretching plans to expand bathroom and bedroom size. The good news is that we have now managed to get a reasonable first cut of a floor plan with only a few of our own compromises, like needing a map to find the front door.

The next step will be to measure the slope at the house site. That is going to have an impact on another requirement, which is a way to turn around our travel trailer so we (and by “we” I mean “I”) don’t have to back down a long, sloped, curving driveway. I’m afraid it’s going to mean significant excavation. But we’ll know more in a few days.

I wrote the preceding on Saturday night. After I wrote that we had a “reasonable first cut” for our house plan, I thought more about how the garage roof would fit onto the roof of the house, and I concluded that we had a problem. I’m sure a good framing crew and a good roofing crew could solve the problem, but one of my aims is to keep things as simple as possible, so all Sunday afternoon I worked on a different floor plan, one that would resolve that issue and, at the same time, cut the square footage a little. Now I think I have managed it. There are some compromises; you will still need a map to find the “front” door. But if there’s one thing I have learned from studying house plans, looking at houses, and designing and building our current house, it’s that the entire process is one of compromise. Even if we had an unlimited budget, which, of course, we don’t, there would still be compromises. I’ll eventually build a model of the house, which will let us visualize the layout and how it will work. There may be changes after that. But another thing I have learned is that house plans often change during the construction process. Our current house lost a second story as we built it, and that’s a pretty drastic change.