Our Model Home

Home Renovation Lesson 1: Decisions are not easy to make. Ever. 

I'm getting the feeling that we're going to learn this lesson again and again throughout this whole process. We figured this out once before when we had plans of working with a homebuilder to "design" our home. The plan was to stop by the builder's office, pick out some cabinet colors, countertops, floor colors, etc. and be on our way. A one hour meeting quickly turned into what felt like two years of going back and forth putting samples next to samples of samples. The funny thing was, it all looked the same to me. All of the model homes looked similar in color scheme; even by different builders. The only thing that was always different was the layout - and now we're having a hard time deciding even that.

During inspections we found what looks to be the original plans for the house above the stove in the kitchen. Modern technology allowed me to scan the plans with my phone so that we can begin planning our renovation. Once I got the scanned image, I was able to trace the plans in Adobe Illustrator so that we could remove walls and see the plans how we want them. The finished product was my own masterpiece that would make any architect, engineer or my wife throw up a little.

So this is what we're thinking... of course without the crooked walls, broken windows and doors that open into each other. But you get the idea, BIG open floor plan. There's also some columns that need to go in there, but you get the idea, right? Ok it's terrible!

Luckily for us (or for me) El's parent's have been so helpful through this whole process... and we don't even own the house yet! Her dad has built many a house in his life and El and her mom are both really creative. So they decided to build us a model home so that we can see exactly what we're looking at. They stayed up too late one night with a bunch of foam board and glue and, using the plans, made a scale model of the living room, kitchen and dining room.

Excuse the picture quality here.

This is the view from the living room looking past what will be the kitchen and into the dining room. The wall that we took out is load bearing so we need to add columns. The model allows us to move columns around to where we would like to put them. 

Here's the same view, a bit better quality, that allows us place an island in the middle of the kitchen and help decide where the refrigerator goes.

Here's me coming home and realizing there's no ceiling.

Some people would use expensive computer software to draw up a model like this, but where's the fun in that? Plus, El's parent's had a great time designing it  and I think it's a lot more helpful.