Capitol Hill Blue Forums Misc. Topics General Stuff The journey of the cabin to a real house

Thank you Gregor.

I'm chalking it all up to pure luck all the way around. Even finding Larry was luck. The people that he knows are quality. This project is in good hands.

...and oh, the shower above? Is going to e a steam shower - I've always wanted one. The unit is compact and it will fit in the cabinet under the sink and e located next to the wall. The unit is $1,300. You only live once.

Multiple showerheads, Rick! With individual controls. You have one chance to do this!

Excellent! Plans that have been drawn by an architect and gone through engineering are very likely to breeze through the building permit people. I wonder how much they are going to charge you for the permit. Some places in Southern California are exorbitant. To thwart development, I suppose. They talk about the housing shortage and promote fill-in building rather than sprawl, but then charge homeowners developer prices. They also want developers to pay for all roads, utilities, infrastructure, etc. that cities used to pay for through taxes.

It's a percentage of the cost of the build. The city hasn't told me what the percentage is. Larry said to give them a $150/sq foot figure. Larry just finished getting the restaurant permitted through the city and it's now open.

That house I told you about that Larry designed and that's how I found him, turns out, it is a converted house to a restaurant.

Larry also wants to put a sign out front of my house after it's permitted, one of those "coming soon" signs with what the project will look like - so people walking by can see how the finished project will look. It will also double as advertising for his business.

I told Larry that he needs to fix the direction of the Hardie boards on his drawings because he has the boards going vertical, the boards are to be horizontal as they currently are, and they're staying that way. I'm not redoing the Hardie board siding on the original portion of the house.

There is going to be wood stained plank boards on the tower, that will be vertical. I think the contrasting thinner wood stained plank boards going vertical, will look nice with the wider painted Hardie boards going vertical. The garage will be stucco with stone going up about 3' from the ground.

This rendering that I found online is the inspiration for the porch for my design.




See the part of the building where there is stucco and the stained wood on top, next to the porch? My design has those very elements as well. I took a lot of inspiration from what I saw online and incorporate those ideas into my project. Then told Larry what I wanted.

This is the design that inspired the entire expansion, and what I was originally going for:



...then Larry and I got carried away.

The project was a true collaboration between myself and Larry. He came-up with ideas, I came-up with ideas.

For example, before the third story was added to the garage box, I wanted the kitchen box to be e two master bedrooms with a Jack and Jill bathroom in-between. Because that box is 17' x 14', that wouldn't work, Then, I suggested the same thing over the garage.

Larry had always wanted the kitchen to be on the back of the house - and it turns out he is right about that, because there will e a 10' x 9' opening to go into the kitchen from the living room. Having two bedroom doors there just wouldn't look right.

This is one of my ideas that was nixed:


( I drew the drawing with Excel. Each square is 1' x 1')

I put a bathroom completely across the entire front of the garage box with two doors to enter the bathroom - one from each bedroom. But the rooms would have been too small, and the shower that Larry designed was a corner unit. It just didn't feel right - and to be honest that bathroom would have been a let-down as compared to how the rest of the house was shaping-up to be.

The I hit upon the ideas of making the garage box one more floor and making the master bedroom a loft bedroom as a nod to the original house design and to put a bath with a walk-in closet. And to make the room feel more open, there are no walls around the stair case - only railing.

The one goal for the entire project was to make the house feel open and to bring the outside in. Larry and I never lost sight of that goal.

Here is the final project layout:
(As you can see, the house is 45-degrees to the sidewalk. It was important for me to have the front porch and the garage parallel the sidewalk and street. I can't understand why the guy who built the house originally put the house on a 45-degree angle.)




NOTE: Yes part of the deck goes over the setback. Decking is allowed to encroach 2' into the setback. Also, the area under the decking won't be open and visible, both Larry and I hate that about decks. When we dig out the dirt for the garage, the dirt is going to help level-out the side yard with a retaining wall and the lawn will be level and even with the deck. Essentially, the deck will be a wooden walkway from the kitchen to the front of the house with cable railing separating the deck form the lawn area, and then act as a safety barrier as the deck protrudes over the rental unit and out from the kitchen's outdoor double doors.

The deck and the kitchen's double doors were Larry's ideas. He wanted a deck around the house from the get-go.

The "ground floor" (garage, laundry room and rental unit)

The "main floor" (original house, kitchen, transition hallway, office, bedroom, bathroom, guest bathroom)



I wanted a sink and toilet in the transition hallway for guests who come to visit. I'm considerate that way.