Things have been fairly quiet until recently. We got the first round of design sketches a couple weeks ago and have been reviewing them. There ended up being various delays, so it’s taken longer than we hoped to get these first sketches. But thing seem to be moving again, so hopefully we will soon have even more progress to report.
In this round of sketches we’re mainly focusing on getting room layout finalized. However, the sketches also start to incorporate details such as benches, window seats, closets, counters, etc. It is nice to see some of our customizations and personality start to show in these diagrams.
Overall, the general functionality on each floor is roughly the same as in our original discussions. We are considering fully building out the bottom floor, which would have a guest room and full bath in addition to the media room. We’re still playing with some ideas, and may make the guest area an extension of the media room instead of a separate room to conserve space.
The upper floor sketches provided a nice idea of what the master suite might look like. It is really nice to see that coming together, and how it might work for us. But other parts still need some development; we’ve decided that we don’t really need a large play/gathering area upstairs; and would rather have a smaller, focused utility room. So that will result in some bigger changes to the upper floor.
Overall, the plans are still larger than our target size, so we need to work towards reducing the overall area, see what does and doesn’t fit, and determine how much space everything really needs. I think that will actually be the most challenging aspect. Certainly, it’s the most in-flux aspect at the moment.
There has been a little more activity than just the sketches. Earlier in November, Yuval hosted a party for everyone on the project. We met our new neighbors, and they all seem great. We also got a chance to meet some of the other people we’ll be working with during the process.