Yellow Bird Flying

While we were looking for what would become known to us as Sugar Hill in Kentucky, we were busy designing our house.

At first, we were going to use the industry standard Autodesk software products, including AutoCAD. Then we realized that not many people have access to this type of computer-aided design software.

So we switched to Microsoft PowerPoint!

Yes, you can scale and design anything in PowerPoint, as strange as that may seem.

Starting Point

The floor plan for our current house (our current house prior to moving to Kentucky) wasn’t optimal because it was a multi-story house (2 stories plus a basement).  Having spent years taking care of family members who had mobility problems taught us that a single-story home with wide doors and ADA-compliant room sizes was a must for our “forever home.”

While we hope not to have any issues as we age, as our grandparents and parents taught us:  Hope isn’t a plan.

Yellow Bird Flying
Yellow Bird Flying | First (current) House

So we measured each of the rooms in our current house, including the basement and our two-car garage, and made a scale plan-view (floor plan) drawing where we set all of the rectangular rooms on a single PowerPoint page and then determined a workflow area layout (workflow is how we anticipate people will move through the house during the morning, day, and at night).

Our house ended up having three distinct areas:

      1. Private: Sleeping
      2. Common:  Us and guests
      3. Work:  Two offices

After moving the pieces around for a half dozen versions, we found a floor plan that worked.

Size

Next, we took a hard look at all of the stuff we had collected over the years.

When we first moved into our first home, it was right after we got married.  Combining two sparsely furnished apartments into a home was simple:  more than half the house was empty.

This was by plan, because the house we purchased needed quite a bit of work.  By leaving half the house empty for three years, we were able to make significant updates to it on the weekends, while living in the other half.

While we have always had the philosophy of not buying a lot of stuff, we have accumulated a lot of stuff.  Most of it is things we’ve purchased, we use almost every day, but it’s still a lot of stuff.

So we did more measuring and scaled up the rooms a bit to accommodate what we needed to take with us.  Then we started donating the things that didn’t make sense for us to move.

What we learned from the moving process of “stuff accumulation” is a whole other story (upcoming).

Design Philosophy

Having done all of the repairs and upgrades on our current home ourselves, our design philosophy for our new home was part artistic and part pragmatic:

      1. Seemless integration of the inside with the outside (lots of windows)
      2. Easy to maintain

No more things in areas that were nearly impossible to access, and a logical layout for the floor plan.

Yellow Bird Flying
Yellow Bird Flying | Location, Location, Location (Part 1)
Yellow Bird Flying
Yellow Bird Flying | Location, Location, Location (Part 2)

Design

Then we began adding architectural elevations using PowerPoint (a different slide in the deck).  This became much easier when we purchased Sugar Hill because we then had reference pictures about where we’d place our home and how to take advantage of the great rolling terrain.

Twelve versions later, we ended up with a ranch (one story) that had approximately 3,360 square feet of space, slightly less than the total of our first house.  But, underneath the main floor is an unfinished 3,360 square foot basement that’s designed to be used as an expanded wood furniture making workshop, gardening room, and for easy access to all utilities for repair and upgrades when needed (water, electricity, sewer, heating, and cooling systems–HVAC). 

So, a home that has a finished area that’s about the same size as our current home, but with an integrated working basement that doubles the overall size.

Yellow Bird Flying
Yellow Bird Flying | Sugar Hill house (Revision 12)

Architecture

Ideally, everyone who works with us on our house should be local to the area.  The benefit:

    1. Local knowledge of Kentucky
    2. Building up great connections within the state
    3. Giving back to the community by employing people who would become our friends and future work partners on other projects.

So we got to work interviewing people and companies.

Architect, Engineers, Trades, Utilities, and Government

Next time, we’ll share how we went from a PowerPoint presentation design to finished drawings for our home.

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