Well, it’s been a busy few months! We have gone from our program (completed over Thanksgiving week) to our Heritage Preservation Committee pre-approval submission (submitted February 16th). I’ll try not to be too verbose and let the pictures speak for themselves, but suffice to say we are off to a nascent start.
I love that the design honors the city lot and doesn’t go too big. Our footprint will be about 1200 square feet (per floor) + a screened-in porch off the east side. The screened-in porch entrance to the living room will be a huge glass retractable wall. How fun for entertaining!
I also dig this wonky feature in the middle that starts with the big windows in the front of the house and ends with the stairwell jutting out the back of the house. This “not square” feature took some time to grow on us, but once we got there, we fell hard for it. There are two areas (one in the front of the house, and the other you can see with the dotted lines in the middle near the island) that will be open from the second to first floor.
We went with a galley kitchen which I am excited about. I don’t know why – just am… It sits right in the openness of the middle feature.
As for the sustainable design elements of the house, there were three major wins in this early design phase – 1. Maximizing sunlight based on how we live. and 2. Perfecting the south-facing slope of the garage for PV Solar Panels or Solar Shingles. (I’m really hoping for the shingles but trying not to get too excited about it). 3. Maintaining enough outdoor space for gardening, composting, chickens, etc.
I’m sure a ton will change from here. We go in front of the HPC on March 9th to get the initial direction from the team. We are paused until then…
(Shout out to Locus Architecture for being awesome partners on the project thus far.)
Up North Urbanite 