Floor Plan

We had a friend ask to see our floorplan so we checked with our builder and got permission to post it online.

Rob and I have been looking at houses for fun, for years.  We like to visit the Parade of Homes, as they are known in Utah, or the Cavalcade of Homes, as they are known in Illinois.  We've been talking about what we like, what we want, and what we need.  I will be honest.  This house goes way beyond what we need, but meets most (if not all) of our wants.  Every other day I feel greedy and wonder if we shouldn't have settled for a smaller house that would have met our needs, but then we get up to the lot and start walking around and planning things and I get excited for the possibilities. 

We had such a lovely home in Aurora and when we first started planning and designing this house we didn't want to lose any of the facets of our previous house that we really loved. 

I enjoyed collaborating with Curtis, the draftsman at Visionary.  He listened to my suggestions and ideas and found ways to make them work.  We had several good meetings as we worked to customize one of their basic floorplans and tweak it to fit our wants.

Every other day I get a little freaked out about the size of the great room.  It seems REALLY BIG to me.  But, as Rob reminds me, when it is time to host the entire family for holidays and celebrations, we will all fit.  And that was one of our wants.  Room for dinner for two (most of the time), dinner for five to ten (a couple of times a month), dinner for up to twenty (once every other month, or even a little more often), dinner for forty plus (once or twice a year, or more).    

I am excited to see how the piano is going to fit in the niche we created for it.  The fun thing about the niche is that it also created a nice little sitting area in our bedroom.  Once upon a time we were going to extend the deck all the way across the back of the house and have a sliding door from our bedroom out to the deck, but common sense prevailed and we decided that was a very good place to save some money and simplify.

The laundry room is really my project room, my work room, my "do" room.  I'm still looking for the right name.  I'll craft, sew and scrapbook in there, work on my computer, do laundry and iron.  By the way - we'd love some suggestions on a good name for that room so please leave a comment with your name ideas.  (of course, you can leave a comment any time you'd like - it lets me know people are actually reading this)

Downstairs is Rob's office.  He is excited to have such a nice place to work in and nice views out back.  I'm a little worried that he is going to get lonely being downstairs all by himself.  He's so used to being able to pop in and out of his little room here in the duplex.  Or maybe I should be worried that he'll enjoy having that room (and the rest of the basement) to himself and I'll never see him again.  We may have to get an intercom system.  Oh that's right - we text now.

What I like about the way the family room design worked out is the tv viewing area will be in the dark corner.  Rob asked me to hang dark wooden blinds in our last family room so he could get the best picture on the tv.  He was right, but it was a hassle to open and close the blinds.  Since there are no windows in this corner of the room that will no longer be an issue.

Our thinking with the two bedrooms is that one will be a dedicated guest room and one will be more of a bunk room & play room for the grandkids.  Over the last few days I've been wishing we added one more small room that we could use for our exercise equipment.  Rob thinks there will be plenty of room for it in the family room.  He's right, the room is big enough, but I'm not so sure I want that equipment out there.  I don't want to worry about little children playing on it and getting hurt.  I don't want the lingering ODOR haunting the family room (although I don't know why I am worrying about that - the odor won't bother me, but I do worry that it will bother our guests and I'll be clueless). ... ... ...  Maybe I'll have done such a good job purging and downsizing that we can turn the storage room into our exercise room. (HAHAHAHAH - I really shouldn't blog when I'm tired - I get SILLY)

I got the idea for a second laundry room from Brian and the bathroom layout is very similar to the bathroom the kids shared in our home in Naperville.  With the two separate rooms someone could easily be taking care of business, and leave the sink open for washing hands or brushing teeth. 

I've never had a cold storage before.  I'm intrigued to see how we end up using it.  Maybe I'll start canning.  It would be a great tornado shelter, IF we still lived in Illinois!  Rob says it would be a great safe room!  (yeah, IF we lived in a movie)

Hydronics Layout

This is part of what I've been spending my time designing. 

First, Rob and I had to figure out how many zones we wanted in the basement.  Each zone is controlled by a thermostat, so all the rooms or areas in that zone would be consistently heated. 

We decided we wanted the office to be one zone, the family room and bathroom would be a second zone and the bedrooms would be a third zone.

Then, Ray (over at Peterson Plumbing Supply) worked up our heat loss calculation.  This is determined by several factors including the size of the room, how many exterior walls there are, and the number and size of windows and doors.  I know there is more than that, but that's the simple version.

He determined how many loops of PEX we need for each zone, how long each of those loops need to be and the distance they need to be laid from each other. Then I took those calculations and started to design the best way to fit the linear feet of tubing into each room - from the boiler - through the room - back to the boiler in one continuous loop without crossing the lines.  Each colored line in my drawing represents one loop.  We had two loops in zone 1, two loops in zone 2 and four loops in zone 3.

 

If we had an exterior wall that wasn't covered by earth (which is two and one half walls of our basement) we needed to run the PEX closer to the exterior wall (two lines of PEX at 6" centers) and that tubing needed to be the line that came directly out of the boiler so it would be the hottest.  As we moved into the interior of the room we were able to space the tubing at 12" centers.  I couldn't run the PEX too close to the walls.  I needed to run it through doorways and not under walls.  I had to avoid the areas where cabinets were going to be installed.  All of those factors played into how the design came together.

Some of the rooms were easier to configure than others and some of the areas I got too fussy about trying to make it perfect.  Also, you can't bend PEX too tightly or it will kink so all those square corners are really rounded corners but VISIO doesn't do curves too well (at least not in a way that makes it easy for me to caluclate linear feet). 

It was nice to have the design laid out ahead of time.  We had to make a few adjustments as we worked but overall we stayed pretty true to the design.