Floor Plans: The Modern Nature House

Our Modern Nature house has an official floor plan! 

The house is larger than we had originally imagined at 2450 sq. feet. I suppose that's still "modest" by today's standards, and the second floor was constrained by the footprint of the first floor so everything up there is a little more roomy than we may have made them otherwise, but still cozy and I think it will grow well with us. 

Furniture in the rooms serve as placeholders for now. 

First Floor:

Garage

Andy's Workshop

Entry with Bench and Storage, half bath

Eat in Kitchen

Living Space and Project Space

Deck

Second Floor:

Guest Bunk

Deck

Master Bedroom 

Laundry/Storage Room

Communal Bathroom

Kid Bedrooms

There's a lot to be said about this floor plan. So many exciting subtle and not so subtle architectural features have been discussed but because we aren't really there yet in the design phase I will save them to share later. There is a connectivity and flow between the different areas of the house, which can't easily be appreciated from the plan alone.

The lot sits near to an abandoned rock quarry from which granite was gathered in the 1800s for use here in Richmond (buildings and monuments, etc.) and cobblestone streets all along the East Coast. We discovered the remains of an old cobblestone quarry road at the front of the property and the whole lot is very rocky (as I learned watching the soil sampling process). Hopefully there aren't any big boulders in the area where we plan to nestle the garage. Soil samples were taken from the lot yesterday to be analyzed and the results will inform the kind of footings needed for the house as it is currently designed. 

Exterior schematics are next and in the meantime we're obsessing about kitchens over here. These two photos continue to inspire the direction of our kitchen design.  

Layout:

Soapstone counters and driftwood cabinets:

The thing I'm excited about right this moment is we didn't build into the design a "home" for the TV. We're going television free in this new house, something I've wanted to do for years!