Design, take two

We're meeting with our architect once a week to keep the pace moving forward on our remodel and I find myself really looking forward to the meetings. As much as we think about the space between meetings, our architect will still come up with new twists and ideas we never would have dreamed of. I guess that's why we pay him the big bucks!

This week, the conference area was filled with our design ideas, wall to wall. We've been putting pictures on a design website called houzz.com and compiling all our ideas in one place. The architect has a link to our site and can look over all the pictures. He printed quite a few of them out and had them pinned to the walls with notes scrawled here and there: "Outdoor fireplace?" "Need a fence?" "Lighting for stairs" "Tile for fireplace."

Clearly, my personal architect is enjoying the process. I was amazed at how many more details were incorporated this week from our first meeting. It is a lot of work! Although we're still tweaking the design and the overall space, we can begin to visualize how the house will look. We talked a bit about the exterior finishes this time, too. It will be so different from how it looks now.

The architecture studio is a creative and interesting space. Lots of natural materials and examples of their work here and there incorporated as art and structure.

The owner has two large weimereiners that roam the office, Coltraine and Blue. One of them was hanging out in the conference room during our meeting.

Pondering exterior finishes...

 Industrial or residential windows? So many decisions....it gets overwhelming by the time we're done.

They gave us a copy of the preliminary designs to take home this week. We hung them up in the apartment so we can brainstorm and think about different aspects we like, would like to still change, etc. Its proving very helpful - it is drawn to scale so we can easily see how large the kitchen island is, or compare the closet dimensions to what we have now. Designing our own closet from scratch - can you imagine? Everything will have its place. I can't wait.

We went over to the new house this weekend to try to visualize the space with the dimensions they've given us. Ryan had some help taping off the floor to denote the new kitchen space.

The kids love to run through the new house, play hide and seek and hear themselves echo when they yell. They can be as loud as they want and there is nothing they can break.



After visiting the house and measuring out some of the rooms, Ryan dusted off his drafting tools and went to work making some changes. It pays to have your own personal architect!