Partitions

Lofts always get the coolest partitions. Must be a side effect of living in a big giant cube. We'd like to consider sectioning off the project room into two areas with some sort screens or sliding walls.

Meeting Today

James (the architect) is coming by today to talk with us about the design direction. We've been clipping out pretty pictures of houses from magazines to show him, as well as these photos online. He's also going to take measurements of our house and lot -- I wonder if he'll use some high-tech sonar/laser based device. That'd be neat-o.

Signed

exterior
Originally uploaded by japunto.

We signed the contract with our architect, and put it in the mail. This makes it feel official, and I'm glad to have forward movement.

This is a nice exterior, with a mix of natural and modern that I like. If I recall correctly, it's the house that contains the stylish staircase below.

Exoskeletal Staircase

backbone stairs
Originally uploaded by japunto.

So, we've gotten our questions answered by the architect about the proposal and we're signing it. Scary bags.

Here is a staircase I really like. A lot. As in, I'm going to find this house and burgle them of it. It looks like the spiny exoskeleton of some benevolent giant bug alien.

Regulations

A couple I know are also doing an addition here in Burbank. They're a year into the process (having stalled for a while when they ditched their first architect). I get to hear all sorts of scary stuff from them about local regulations. For example - if you move your garage back you also have to move it five feet away from the edge of your property and into your yard.

Another -- if you increase your square footage beyond ~50% of your original home you have to install fire sprinklers in the ceilings of your home and your garage. Apparently the fire department does this for you and charges a lot to do so. Yikes.

Notes to self: Don't move the garage. Add < 50% to sq. footage.

Proposal is in

We got the proposal yesterday, but I barely had a chance to look at it. I did read ahead to the ending wherein the author tries to kill off the homeowner with the cost. It was very exciting!

Cool v. Cold

Originally uploaded by japunto.

I've been looking at modern architecture lately. For my tastes there is a line you can cross where cool looking houses turn into cold looking houses. As you cross this line residences start to look like small museums.
This house in this photo has cool shapes and ideas but is still warm enough to feel like a house. I think color and material have a lot to do with it. Polished, white, sharp and sterile just don't feel like home to me.

Waiting stinks

My Dad once told me a phrase they used a lot in the army: Hurry up and wait. That's what doing a home addition is like. The initial excitement is tremendous. You run out and buy an armload of architecture books! You pretend to be an architect and draw up your own little blueprints using software that isn't really meant to do that! You start a blog!! Shouldn't the house be built already?!

No. Now you wait for the actual architect to make a proposal. I hate that. Me no want wait. So instead, here's another inspirational photo of the day, scanned from one of the aforementioned books. It smells like progress, don't it?

Blank canvas

So, here is a photo of our house, taken during landscaping. I'll post a photo of the back later. I'd love to post a satellite photo from Google or TeraServer, but that's just begging for some nut-nut among the tens of readers out there to track me down and ask me to babysit her cats. I'm much too busy for that.

The freakout

I was waiting for this to happen. We were out walking the dog/strolling the child last night when Erin flipped out about the cost of doing the addition. I enjoy the benefits of being oblivious to the daily financial operations of our household. So I get to place my head firmly in the clouds and fantasize about brushed metal gutters and suspension bridge-like staircases. Meanwhile she's wondering if we should start looking into selling our house and buying a bigger one. I suspect this may have something to do with the six- to eight-month construction hell we're facing.
By the end of the walk we had wheedled the addition down to painting the door a fun new color. Well, not quite, but we've got to definitely watch out for feature creep. The ninja training center is right out.

Inspirational photo of the day:


This bedroom uses ropes and pulleys to reveal storage areas.

Neatly glossing over Erin's freakout, here are some additions to the wish list:

• Paint the house
• Fix up the sheds in the back yard
• Move the washer/dryer, turn that area into a pantry
• Gutters so snazzy that I'll weep whenever I behold them
  

Our first meeting with the architect

We met with an architect, James Meyer of Leanarch, today to talk about our home addition. He seems like exactly the kind of guy we're looking for. As Erin puts it, he's a proponent of the holistic, big picture approach. Someone who'll help us turn our small house into a slightly bigger, much more functional one. Oh, and with a dash of style and a pinch of modernity. Here's an example of their work that I like:





Our house is a 1939 three-bedroom, one-bath ~12oo sq.ft. bungalow. We've owned it for five years and in that time we've remodeled the kitchen and bathroom, added central air, new roof, new pipes, rewired it and a few other things. None of that changes the fact that it's a bit too small for our growing family.
Here's our current wishlist:

• add an entry way with coat closet
• new fence and gate for the front yard (Erin wants to have a place for our son to play during the lengthy construction process. Stay-at-home moms are clever like that.)
• blow away the wall / fireplace to make the living room bigger, better, faster & stronger; maybe adding built-ins for TV and related parasitic electronics
• add a project room for computers, filing, making stuff, romping, etc.
• add a small bedroom for some as-yet-unconceived (I think) child
• staircase going up to the...
• ... master bedroom/bathroom/reading nook/walk in closet/ninja training facility/deck

We'll add and subtract to and from that list as time goes by.