Thumbnail Doodles

 Here's what I'm thinking. Build a garage with an apartment above it. No, build a garage but put the apartment over BR3 so that it has a view of the forest. Or, maybe just build a solid carport. In all cases, the car area angles about 20° so that the new driveway gives the big Douglas Fir more leeway.

I'm working on refining the As-Built drawing in Chief Architect, after which I plan to create drawings for the project. The thing is, I still don't have a design that I can run with. So, in parallel with the as-built, I'm sketching thumbnails at 1/8" scale. Using Chief Architect as a design tool is fine, but not at this early a stage.

Scheme "A"

Scheme "A" has the apartment above the garage. I wanted to keep the stairs indoors, so that the house is attractive to large, weird families as well as to people who want two (or three) rental units.

Scheme "A"

Problems that became clear include not having a Carkeek view in the apartment and apparently not understanding how the roofs might work. It has the advantage of grouping the plumbing in a wedge aimed at the breezeway.

The second floor is about 719 SF. It makes for an odd, windowless hall, but it mostly works (except that I think the garage door has to swing in the direction of egress). We can get past the egress issue by providing a door to the side yard.

The breezeway becomes a kitchen for use as party central for the "large, weird family" scenario, or the kitchen for BR3 in the three rental units scenario. Recall that we retain the breezeway door because we want an accessible transition from the driveway to the main house for the "aging-in-place" crowd.

Another problem is how close the electric supply is to the apartment. We don't want the expense of moving the main breaker panel, but moving the mast and possibly the meter isn't that big a deal. It's a 2" conduit on the outside of the house with a big, unwieldy set of wires inside. What is a big deal is that the electric company has to come out and move the power.

Scheme "B"

The 2x4 rafters over the existing garage are sagging--the corners are drooping, which throws the gutters off, trapping rainwater. The breezeway roof hits the lower garage roof oddly (the two little half-gable ends), but the breezeway roof needs to stay where it is for the existing electrical wires. Also, the eaves around the garage are lower than the house/breezeway eaves, which creates a problem.

So, both schemes "A" and "B" imagine demolishing the roof (not the ceiling) above BR3 and framing a new one. In scheme "A," I'm showing a gable for more headroom in the attic storage.

Scheme "B"

I almost immediately turned the U-shaped stairs into L-shaped ones so the stairs start in the central hall and you emerge into the apartment above staring south at Carkeek. The stairwell becomes the divider between the living area and the kitchen. This change isn't shown on the drawing because I didn't do more than make a note.

As drawn, the bedroom and bath are too cramped, so the demising wall has to move west. In this scheme, the second floor is 598 SF. Not clear whether loft storage above the garage would be accessed from the garage (attic stairs, etc.) or from the apartment.

Scheme "C"

But then I thought: maybe we just need a carport. Skip the second floor apartment.

We could expand the Workshop and provide a dry path to enter the house.

Scheme "C"

My temporary plastic carport proves that a roof with open sides keeps the rain and pine needles off the cars. (Alas, the cedar pollen blows with the wind.) 

The Main House shows some of the improvements Peggy designed a while ago.

I have some decisions to make regarding the breezeway. There's no reason the main house has to include a circulation doughnut. We could close off the kitchen and the hall. However, I would like to be able to park in the carport and walk through the breezeway to get to the main house. Maybe that's just nostalgia. Anyway, putting a kitchen and an apartment-sized washer/dryer over the basement would be much easier than putting it anywhere else.

"One-piece," or tilt-up garage door

In the workshop, I'm imagining a tilt-up door. Lightweight aluminum frame with corrugated aluminum on the door. This would effectively extend the workshop into the western side of the carport for bigger projects. This photo shows a spring unit, but I'm thinking of a triangular frame on a pivot so that the door, when open, is part inside and part outside the wall.

Over on the east side of the main house, I'm imagining new garden doors. Off BR1, a tiny space surrounded by a 6' bamboo fence. Off the Living Room, a full patio with access to the front yard and a narrow path to the backyard. Room for a table and some chairs.

Andersen 100-Series

A new garden door in the breezeway would have a lock for keyed entry. Andersen Series 100 gliding doors are the least expensive. They come in 5', 6', and 8' and are solid vinyl ("Fibrex"). There are many other choices, obviously.

Opening the east wall of BR1 means that the bed must go against the fireplace wall. The wall is 73" and the Queen bed is 66", so it might be nice to design a custom headboard that eliminates the need for nightstands.

The drawing also shows a proposal for an outdoor kitchen hiding the basement door, as hinted at in the previous post. 

Staring monomaniacally at Scheme "C," I realized that the carport roof could overhang the setback such that cars could be parked somewhat closer to the street. That could make the Workshop larger and improve the windowless hall. I could put the BR3 kitchen out there (except I don't know how to deal with connecting to the sewer. (I could add the kitchen sink to the existing sewage pump and hope it has the capacity. Or, if wishing and hoping is a thing, maybe the kitchen sink could drain through a pipe under the breezeway and still be high enough to tap the main sewer--that isn't an option for a toilet or a shower.)

Scheme "C" - Alternate 1

The problem with Scheme "C" is that I'd like to be able to advertise the house as 2000+ SF, not 1600 and change, and this adds almost no living space to the plan.

One of the things that inspired Scheme "C" is the idea of a corrugated polycarbonate roof over the carport. It's pretty dark on the north side of the garage with huge trees to the west. A "glass" roof would be welcome, I think. Suntuf panels are available at Lowe's for $1.85 per SF, so the roof materials would be about $1,000.