Designing a New Home

Rather than purchase pre-designed home plans, we wanted to design our own home.  We wanted something simple yet functional.  To make it easier we purchased software.  This software is the current version of what we purchased.  W has been the chief designer and found the software to be mostly user friendly.  It was certainly easier than trying to draw it out.  He was able to easily move things (walls, cabinets, etc) around to achieve the desired look.

We chose a single story house, because I plan to get too old to climb stairs one day.  We wanted a large open living room and kitchen area.  We also have a large pantry and a laundry room big enough for a freezer in addition to the washer/dryer.  The house will have one bedroom with a second room that could be a bedroom.  This second room will be my craft room instead.  We will have 1 3/4 baths, a small walk-in closet, and a foyer.  I wanted a buffer between opening the front door and the rest of the house.  We will be adding a small front porch at the time the house is build.  Future planned additions include a back deck and a garage.

Our current home is 960 square feet.  The new house will be 1650 square feet.  It is not huge compared to the size of most homes.  We chose this size due to the fact that there are only two of us.  We never have house guests.  The house will have a good layout.  The poor layout is my main complaint about our current house.  We also wanted a house that was affordable to build and maintain.  Large houses are nice and are fine for some families.  We downsized twice from our original design.  I need to see things so we looked at a house that was very similar in size to what we chose.

Writing it out makes it sound like a very simple process, but it was tough.  We went back and forth for months.  Just when we thought we had the final design, we made another change.  Pinterest is good to a certain extent.  I quickly learned that trying to design the "perfect dream" house was impossible.  I am sure no one loves absolutely every single thing about their home.  We included all of our top wish list items and finally called it done!