Last week we posted some of our larger goals in building the house and said we’d post our house plans along with some explanation of them this week. The plans are in the post below, so now we’re back with some discussion of how we tried to design the house to meet those goals.

Goal 1: To build a well-appointed home custom designed for the way we live

• One of our primary design goals was to follow the trend set by Sarah Susanka with her book “the not-so-big house.” Our new house won’t be small, about 2600 sqft total. That’s about 30% larger than our current home, but still well smaller than many of the new McMansions in modern subdivisions here. We’ll spend a bit more and get fewer square feet, but better built with unique features, top tier materials, and an oversized, center-city lot.
• Many of the houses on the market today just don’t reflect the way modern families live at all – let alone how our specific family lives and uses space.  Most have 2-3 different eating areas and a similar combination of living rooms, family rooms, great rooms, etc. Nicer homes often have palatial but poorly designed kitchens with space to show off a 32 piece china set but no convenient way to grab a soda from the fridge without tripping over the chef. We believe bedrooms are for sleeping in and bathrooms are for… the things that bathrooms are for. Neither requires ballroom sized spaces. And while we entertain small parties of close friends often, we have never had 50 people over (and we hope we never do!)  We’re only building the rooms we really use, and dispensing with the rest.
• We also have some specific requirements most people won’t have. We have older parents who stay over on a regular basis who don’t need to be going up and down stairs, and we have visiting family in wheelchairs who need a zero-clearance entrance and reasonable space to move around and use the restroom. Fitting those needs into an existing development or plan would often require significant modification. We can just design with that in mind from the start.

Goal 2: To build a flexible space that will grow and adapt with our family

• We might be certifiably crazy for trying to do this once, but we’re not _so_ loony that we’re planning to do it multiple times!  That means once this house is built, we intend to stay in it a long time. Our kids are still fairly young now, and we’re still fit and able. But if all goes according to plan, our kids will grow up and move out, and we’ll age in this house. So we tried to consider those future needs in advance, as much as anyone can.
• We designed the loft area to be flexible family space. When the kids are younger the storage area can house toys and games, while the loft area can be the realm of Lego construction and sleepover parties. As they get older it can become more of a lounge and TV spot removed from the more public spaces on the main level.
• We also designed the guest room to double as a future master bedroom should we want to migrate downstairs. The mudroom will have stubs for washer and dryer directly below their planned location in the upstairs laundry room, so that feature can migrate if needed as well.

Goal 3: To build a green and efficient home (without any goals of living off the grid)

• There are many amazing technologies available now for those who want to go green. We’ve looked at the extremes like the German Passive House standard or the LEED certified buildings and decided that’s further than we were willing to go. But that doesn’t mean we want to build something inefficient or energy-hogging either.
• We’re wrapping the outside in 4 inches of polyiso insulation (called REMOTE construction) for a cozy R 26 wall. Plus since the insulation is on the outside, you get no thermal transfer from the studs. (If you think about it, more than 10% of a traditional framed wall isn’t filled with high efficiency insulation, its filled with yellow pine 2X4s, whose R value is a bit over 4.) This also lets us treat exterior walls as if they are effectively “interior” space. No concerns about air leakage around outlets and switches, no worries about running ductwork through there, etc.
• We’ll of course also stuff the attic space with plenty of blown insulation, insulate the basement walls, and spring for efficient window and door options. With all of that plus a well-designed HVAC system, we should be able to run the new place on a furnace and A/C about 1/3 the size of what’s powering our current, smaller home.

Goal 4: To NOT increase suburban sprawl

• This one’s pretty straightforward. We could have bought an empty lot near the edge of town or in one of the nearby bedroom communities. Instead we hunted for quite awhile until the right opportunity opened up in the existing neighborhood we really love.
• Where we live is only 7 minutes to work, which allows us all kinds of convenience and freedom. Its also near a major park and a short drive to shopping and downtown restaurants. It’s a friendly, diverse neighborhood with houses of many different sizes from different eras. Plus you can’t beat the wide boulevard, huge trees, and original black Illinois topsoil. (You know they scrape it all off in those new subdivisions and sell it back to you for $3 a bag!) Philosophically, we’d rather see Illinois soil growing crops to feed the world, not growing McMansions to feed people’s egos.
• We’re definitely bulldozing a certain amount of accumulated equity, but we’re doing it in a neighborhood that can support the kind of home we want to build. And sadly, the one we’re currently in is really in bad shape underneath. We’re not doing the neighborhood a huge disservice to take this place down.