April 2006

April 2006 We now find out that our original blueprints that we have been working with for the last 18 months--will no longer work- unless we want 8 steps up to the front door. They are not allowed to put a full basement into the bank and that moves our one story design with a walkout basement into a 2 story design. We need to keep my 92 year old mother in mind when we design this beach house. We need to keep all the living/kitchen area along with her bedroom and bath on the main floor. The city wants us to make the home a split level design--not at all handicap accessible. (Not to mention that it's hardly keeping within our Nantucket beach house look we're attempting to emulate. So, it’s back to the drawing board. I spend hours drawing and re-drawing designs. I need to keep within the old footprint of the other design- but now we need to move into a two story to fit in all our bedrooms and the extra loft-media room. I fax per my drawings to our draftsman, who is turning my graph paper sketches into blueprints, and then we spend the next 6 weeks emailing design changes between us. Per doesn’t really get the “New England “ farmhouse look- but I am turning him around. He keeps trying to make this look like a mountain lodge, a look popular in Whistler, but not the look we want for our beach home. I have to change his choice of window shapes and finally I get the final design to what I want. Per can draw the blueprints now. Oh yeah- just as I get the final design- Jim ( my brother-in-law, decides he needs 5 extra feet on the property side to get a small tractor down the bank- back to the drawing board, we can shrink the house down 5 feet along the side lines. No problem, what room do we want to live without....kitchen, bathroom??? Not as easy as it sounds--5 feet off an entire blueprint can pose a BIG problem. Between Per and myself we figure it out--the blueprints are finalized and printed!