Measure twice, cut once.

My grandfather, Bill Seward, always told me to measure twice and cut once.  I have discovered when you apply this principle to developing plans it's more like measure fifty times, pace things things out at least thirty-two times, draw it on the ground with chalk and try to envisage what furniture would fit where twenty times and then have about seventeen anxiety attacks that perhaps the economy is stuffed and you shouldn't be renovating at all.

So that's what James and I have been doing recently and is the reason you may have noticed my blog has been quite of late.  However, we think with a few tweaks the latest iteration of our plans will give us what we need. Plus the economy needs building industry needs stimulating so we might as well be the trendsetters.

You may recall in my last instalment I had to tell our building designer that whilst his plans were great they weren't going to work for us. About a fortnight ago we received new plans, straight away we were much happier - the whole thing seemed to provide us with the space and the requirements we wanted and was along the lines of what we always thought would happen to this house - basically a box on the back.

Click on the picture to see the plans clearly.

Peter Latemore said to have a good think about it all and get back to him.  You might be interested to know the approach James and I took to considering the layout and functionality of each room. It may seem over the top but remember I am anal and James is a business analyst...you put these things together and you get this...a spreadsheet which lists each room and the things we needed to think about for each room eg light, security, storage, entry/exit, heating/cooling etc.  You can see the spreadsheet here and the list of things that that we came up with here.

Once we felt that we had measured, paced, discussed and debated enough we made a time to meet with Peter and ran through what we thought needed to change.  The main things are that the pantry will swap places with the laundry, the drying area will move to the side of the house and the screen that divides the deck into two areas will be removed.  One of the windows in the kitchen will be removed to make space for a hutch for the kettle etc.  There are few other things - I guess we will get another plan soon that I can show you.

So now we are approaching the stage of the working drawings being produced and council approval.  We also need to start confirming the cost  - that will be the topic of my next post and I guess what has been worrying us most of all - BUDGET!!

The best laid plans...

Does anyone else get scared of tape measures?  Functional tools but when they retract the zooming sharp sides freak me out, I'm terrified I'll end up with a massive cut, like a paper cut but bigger.  This week I've confronted my fear as I've obsessively been measuring lengths, widths and trying to envisage room sizes because (drum roll please)...we received our plans. 

Here is the existing floorplan:

 and here is what was proposed:

Proposed floor plan

I received the plans at 9am on Monday morning with a busy day ahead  of me - excitement combined with excruciating pain, all I wanted to do was rush home and feast my eyes. 

What an overwhelming experience it was when I finally had the chance to look at them closely.  As a novice I quickly realised reading a plan isn't as easy as reading a book - understanding perspectives, measurements, elevations, roof lines - these things take time. From my experience this week, getting a feel for a plan isn't something that should be rushed.

Something that was immediately obvious, even to my untrained eye, was despite the plan ticking nearly every box on our very detailed brief it didn't solve a fundamental problem with the way we live.

It seemed that our current issue of the kitchen area being too small for two growing boys would remain somewhat. What we had wanted was a big family dining table (not just breakfast bar) adjacent to the kitchen plus a small lounge area.

James and I spent about 4 hours trying to work out different ways our need could be met with the proposed plan.   Changing the family room to a meals zone seemed like a very big space just for a table (it's not big enough for dining plus lounge) and the space adjacent to the breakfast bar called "reading" just seemed too small, I felt it would be redundant.

I went to bed feeling dreadful, in my odd way I was feeling as though not getting the plans right first go was all my fault. Was my brief too brief after all?  Were we unclear about what we really wanted?  Were we overwhelmed by Peter's enthusiasm for his initial concept of adding an extra bedroom, forgetting about what we really wanted?

I woke the next day determined to resolve this and called Peter as soon as I could.  I felt very nervous making the call, it was like ringing to tell someone you think their baby is ugly.  He reassured me not to worry, that this was a normal part of the design process and that we could resolve it.  We told him our ideas and with his suggestions we came up with this (the pink lines are what the new plans will be - hard to see I know, hoping for another plan soon!) :

We've spent the weekend with the tape measure (panic!), pacing out rooms and trying to envisage the various spaces.  It's interesting to observe the different approaches different people take to visualising spaces; some can do it on paper, some need to stand in certain directions, others need to measure out a space in a completely different place to see how large a particular size is.  Whatever works!  James and I have drawn chalk lines on the ground and in an OMG moment I didn't freak out when I saw he had drawn on the kitchen wall in permanent marker - it's all going soon enough anyway!!

The roof line - we have decided to "settle" for a hip roof over the fancy skillion option Peter provided - by doing so we will save enough to put in a powder room.

The deck - anyone ready for a BBQ?

So it's been a big week, an exciting week.  What have I learned?

When you are on a tight budget you can't get everything you want  (farewell kitchen desk nook) - it's about getting what you need (apparently I need a butlers pantry! - I didn't expect to get one! have you got one?  Do you like it?)

What do you think of our plans?  (if you can't see them leave a comment below and I will try to upload in a different manner)

PS - a BIG congratulations goes to our lovely designer Peter Latemore, not only was it his birthday his week but he won the "Designing the Dream" Award at the Building Designers of Queensland Brisbane  North Awards.  If only we had the budget that would have been spent on that house....