Addition Blueprints

East side

West side

North side

The blueprints are done!  This is what our house will look like when we're finished. We couldn't be more thrilled with the plans! 

We had Brent Windley as our architect.  He was amazing.  Jonathan was saying he used to be a professor of architecture at Utah State University but has since retired.  Now he just does extra jobs on the side.  We LOVED working with him.  He surprised us by how fast he got everything done!  He also had a great sense of humor, which really helped when he had to listen to our crazy ideas of what we wanted.

We began our planning with a few goals in mind:

1. We didn't want the addition to stand out from the rest of the house.  When we first started studying additions to old houses we noticed that many of the new sections didn't match the original house.  We could identify the exact decade the addition was, well, added.  While it would be obvious that our addition wasn't original, we wanted to keep the house as period-looking as possible.  Because of this, vinyl siding is out. =(  This also meant that we couldn't build two stories, we had to stick to a story and a half.
2. We want more kids, therefore, we need more bedrooms.  We needed to get as many rooms and bathrooms as we could without going over budget.  
3. We needed STORAGE. Before Walmart was invented, people didn't accumulate stuff. Decorations, clothing, childhood toys, scrapbooks, DVDs, games, etc.  It all begins to take up space.  The pioneers who built our house didn't take our hoarding ways into consideration.  We need a lot of closets and attic space.

With these understandings clarified, we began to plan.  As I said before, our architect was very patient.  He took time to explain why we couldn't have a lot of the things we wanted because structurally, they simply wouldn't work.

After our first meeting with Brent, I broke down and cried to my husband.  The plans we saw were so different from what we wanted!  I felt like we had space in all the wrong places and not enough light and air where we wanted it.  Thank goodness for Plan B.  It was so much better!

It is time to get the metaphorical ball rolling!