Designing the Right Floor Plan

We had found a house, made an offer, it was accepted, paperwork was signed and the house was ours. Not really as straight-forward as that makes it seems, but in the end we owned it. Now came the next steps of how do we remodel it to make the best use of the space that is both efficient and eco-conscious as well as appealing to potential buyers?

We began the process with several solo walk-throughs of the space to navigate around and conceptualize its potential. In parallel, we continued to review the space with our engineer who helped measure the space in order to draw an existing floor plan to scale. The floor plan would be our lifeline to frame out how to best change the existing layout.

When we received the scaled version of the current floor plan, our main goal was to logistically understand which walls we could remove, which needed to be reinforced and which were bearing walls. These decisions needed to be factored into our budget planning.

When it comes to remodeling a house, anything is possible. However, anything being possible also means additional expenses and in increase to our budget. So we set out to make the changes to the floor plan ourselves.

There were many things we needed to consider throughout this process in creating an open floor plan that was both eco-conscious and fluid. We must have gone through ten different plans until we finally had what we felt was the ideal floor plan. A meeting with our engineer to review our floor plan was set up so we could evaluate a floor plan he designed, compare it to ours and evaluate if the changes could be done within budget.

How did the two floor plans compare? Well, let’s just say that we weren’t very close. There was some back and forth discussing which made the most sense (you can get a better picture of this by reading our Laundry Room: Inside or Outside? post). In the end, we decided to move forward with our design as it maximized the space within the parameters of the property.

Our lesson from this was to trust our own instinct. Everyone has a different vision and opinion on how to best redesign an existing structure to bring life back to the house. Needless to say, if your gut is speaking loudly…make sure you go with it!