the end of the begining
We bought land. Quite a while ago now. We weren’t fully committed to this plot for a long time. We’re fully committed now.
Our Architect JS is great, he’s held out hand through the process of design, re-design, left-field curly ones and whims. We’re not complete strangers to the design process, we’re not even strangers to various building forms (two of our homes were off the plan). I just haven’t encountered this personalised design process before.
I’ve never had to think about the size of my appliances, how often I iron or what type of toilet suits us. These are all things we take for granted. Not that I don’t think about design in a myriad of ways each day, it’s just that we rarely apply it to ourselves in such a personalised & long term way. For example, we’ve designed our house to be adaptable for our old age, we’ve designed it to be climate responsive (for all but the most catastrophic occurences), we’ve designed it to be beautiful (subjective - I know!) and we’ve designed it to enhance our built environment not mire it.
So we find ourselves at the end of the first chapter of building. We’ve got plans! The council approve of them & we’ve asked 4 builders to give us a price. Now we start the business of negotiating, honing, trimming (I’m assuming a budget overspend already) and work out what the critical parts of the design are. Next time - your budget is your friend!
