Schematics

This begins the phase of the project called, Schematic Design. I like to refer to it as Concepting or in layman’s terms, if you will, the time where the architect tries to design a house that crams in all the rooms needed and doesn’t end up with something he hates. This would be an easy task with a bad architect, one who didn’t care that all rooms have cross-ventilation and didn’t insist on a sense of order. But if, like me, you have a good architect, and a less than ideal sized and shaped piece of property, this task can be quite complicated.

First - and this is the easy part - we needed to come up with a list of what we wanted in the house. Dave presented me with an extensive list of his “wants and gotta haves” and then I was allowed to add to that list. However, I needed to do it in a different color type so that he could easily see the changes - but I really think it was so he could easily delete my changes if he didn’t like them.

The list has the normal stuff like...

• kitchen

• living room

• dining room

• master bedroom

• master bathroom and closet

• Tate’s room

• Simone’s room

• kids bathroom

• two car garage

And some more special extras like...

• office

• mud room

• pantry

• laundry room

• basement workshop

• outdoor shower

• miles of bookshelves

• future green roof

Once that was complete, there was a lot of “research” - better known as magazine-flipping, web-surfing and book-scouring. I’ve been told it’s for space and material inspiration, but I believe that this was an answer to appease me, as the architect really just enjoys magazine-flipping, web-surfing and especially book-scouring.

Then, little sketches began to pop up from time to time...

It was starting to get interesting.

And then one stuck. It was working great. Gorgeous first floor plan, with a two-story office space in the front of the house. Public space up front with all the living space in the back. The second floor held all three bedrooms, two baths and even had space for a laundry room - not a closet - a whole room! We loved it!

It’s only drawback (and it was pretty big for me) was that the garage would exist at the back of the property and NOT be attached to the house. One of my biggest wants was an attached garage.

This two car garage would exist at the back of the property, be accessed from a small lane that runs behind us and be about 50 feet from the back door. I could just see myself in the middle of winter, trudging through my backyard filled with snow, carrying three heavy bags of groceries, corralling two wild kiddos and cursing the whole way. I mean, really loud, ugly, truck-driver-style cursing, filled with fucks and son-of-a-bitches and goddamnits! I didn’t really like this at all.

But it seemed there was no other way to get a two car garage on the property without having the entire front of the house be a garage. This, I didn’t want either.

I propsed the idea of considering a one car attached garage. Yes, we would be giving up the two car bays, but we would be gaining the attachment to the house and not having to sacrifice most of our already small backyard to a garage. We were going to have to make a sacrfice one way or the other and I thought that giving up one car bay was the better compromise.

“Nope. Not going to work. Need the two car garage. Not going to happen. Forget it!” was the architect’s reply. Sound familiar?

So I let it go. I really loved the house design and decided that if I had to live with my angry cursing all winter long while walking from my house to my car and then back from my car to my house, so be it. I would pre-apologize to the neighbors and buy them all earplugs for Christmas.