Design Session Five

We didn't quite know what to expect when we arrived at Kent Friday afternoon and went up to Wes' office. After he assured us that we could build a wonderful house for our budget, he showed us the first floor revised floor plan below. Earlier in the design process he had showed us a very similar layout, but now that we were intent on shrinking the footprint, we spent a lot of time reviewing this plan and really started to warm up to it.

What had been 3,150 sq ft just Tuesday was now 2,750 and it still looked pretty good. There were a few changes and not all of them minor.

The Den was now a Sitting Room, which I think has to do with how big it is and whether or not it seems to be part of the master bedroom suite or more of a separate room. The Master Bath and Dressing Area were configured differently. These changes allowed Wes to reduce the square footage on the left hand side of the house, and since that also reduces the upstairs there was a pretty good savings.

The Great Room was also reduced, but then Wes added an extension to it in the back that would be used to put the dining room table and make the room more interesting.

The right side of the house was not reduced at all. The only change Wes made was to replace the Screened in Porch with a Covered Terrace.

After talking though all these changes and adding back in a fireplace in the Sitting Room, we really warmed up to them and it doesn't feel like we're giving up anything. Maybe the only exception is the Screened in Porch, but Wes says that will be easy to add in later if we want to.

One if the interesting parts of the conversation involved the Sitting Room. When I was describing how we would use it, and drew myself lying on the couch watching TV and then showed Kim delivering Dinner to me, Wes thought I was joking. No matter how many times Kim said.... 'No, it's embarrassing to admit, but I do deliver Dinner to him while he lies on the coach almost every night' ... Wes just wouldn't believe it.

Below is the how the upstairs would look with the new downstairs configuration. The Bedrooms are a bit smaller, but fine and we still have the same sized unfinished room over the Kitchen wing for expansion.

All in all, we're really happy with these changes and Wes will now start back into drawing the elevations for our next session.