Your architect has just presented you with the first draft of the blueprints for your new home. Now what? An initial reaction may be to count the bedrooms and bathrooms. Make sure nothing was left out. After all, the architect probably asked you upfront how large of a house you were looking for and how many bedrooms and bathrooms you wanted. So, you count the rooms, stare at the blueprints and nod your head accordingly. Here are some items you may want to consider when reviewing your blueprints.
- Shape. If you have spent your entire life inside a suburban track home, you may believe that all rooms must be rectangular. No, I’m not advocating an octagonal room for cage matches. Instead, rooms can have bay windows, recessed walls and other architectural details to make the room more interesting.
- Light. Focus on your sources of natural light. Make sure you have enough windows to illuminate your living space. If your design permits, consider large, expansive windows to open your room. Also, consider which direction the sun rises and sets relative to your house. This can affect both the lighting and temperature within your rooms.
- Noise. When we think of noise, we sometimes only focus on external noise, such as an overhead plane, street noise, or a nearby school. However, you should also consider the noises created within the house, such as kitchens and bathrooms. If someone in the family is an early bird or a night owl, noises from a shower, faucet, toilet or microwave and easily awaken others with rooms near a kitchen or bathroom. In a two-story house, most designs place the bedrooms upstairs to shield them from such noises. In a one-story house, focus on your layout. Try to shield the bedrooms away from the kitchen, living room and bathrooms, if possible.
If you are planning to remodel a kitchen or bath, or build a new house, you should read the 2005 California Building Energy Efficiency Standards:
- during the design stage when you are working with an architect, and
- again during the construction stage before you head out to the lighting store to pick your lighting fixtures.
Here’s all you need to know: “The most dramatic change since the previous Standards is that high efficacy luminaires are required for almost all rooms in residential buildings.” In other words, if you are installing something other than fluorescent lighting (and using screw-in compact fluorescents doesn’t count), California imposes all these additional requirements—some easier to satisfy than others.
In real estate, the three most important things are location, location and location.
When remodeling or rebuilding a house, the three most important things are to measure, measure and measure. When you receive your initial blueprints, compare the measurements to your current living space to get a frame of reference as to how large your new bedrooms, kitchen and bathrooms will be. Things look larger on paper when your imagination is unencumbered by reality. Only when the walls have been erected do you pause and think: hmmm, that surely looked larger on paper!
Before you finalize your plans, measure again. Unless you are using custom-made cabinets, know that kitchen and bathroom cabinets usually come in 3-inch increments. So, if windows or other items need to be centered, make sure they will center with your cabinets, else will you be wasting an inch or two here and there using fillers.
Finally, plans inevitably change throughout construction. You might even switch vendors mid-stream. If you decide to change your cabinets or items based on the recommendation of a new interior designer, measure again to make sure the new plan fits in with what has already been done. Else, you’ll be getting very familiar with the change order.
One great tool to help you measure it the Leica Disto A3, a laser distance meter. Costs a lot more than the standard tape measure, but when you have a lot of measurements to take, it saves a lot of time. Press a couple buttons and you can take all the measurements for your closet space. The tape measure is still handier for short distances, but when you’re measuring long distances by yourself, you don’t have to worry about the tape measure being straight or folding or any of that other nonsense. As an added convenience, it switches easily between inches and feet-inches. Not sure why, but some vendors want their measurements in inches and others in feet-inches.
You may have seen the ads encouraging food shoppers to buy local. And, that makes a lot of sense. Buying local supports neighborhood farms and gets you access to fresher food. Or, at least food that wasn’t trucked across state lines or flown in from overseas.
Well, the same rule applies when hiring an architect. Hiring local gets you access to an experienced professional who is familiar with the local planning process and local building restrictions. Find an architect who has designed for your city multiple times. This way you can benefit from their experience and get your building plans approved quickly instead of being stuck in a seemingly endless cycle of rejections and revisions.
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