As my husband makes his way back down South after a delightful two weeks, my thoughts turn to the future. I’m sure it is partially a defense mechanism – the future contains the time where we are no longer living apart – but we also have design work to do.
If I didn’t mention it in a previous post, our builder is a bit of a cowboy. He doesn’t like architects and prefers to build from a simple, hand-drawn floor plan. It is surprisingly analog, but after seeing several of his houses, I have complete trust that this won’t result in a disaster. As a product manager, I’m actually a bit more comfortable with it. It is very similar to how I build products. Create just enough specification to get what you want, but provide the space for iteration and innovation during the build. Of course, houses are WAY different than software, but this feels familiar and comfortable to me.
To create this base specification, I’ve been working with a designer. She’s an artist by training and took classes in architecture, but never got her degree which absolutely doesn’t matter for the kind of work she is doing. I’ve included a picture of one of her floor plan drawings here. When finalized, this will be copied and laminated for use at the job site. They’ll lay the bricks and take care of all the electrical and plumbing as they go. It’s a seriously analog process in a digital world, but if that’s what the cowboy wants, I’m not going to protest.
Working with her has been great. Not only is she cheap ($25/hr.), she’s always thinking about a person actually using the space. Suggestions she makes are typically because of user behavior or environmental factors, which I appreciate greatly. Having never lived in the area, I don’t know all the factors I need to consider. I was thinking about having only open shelves in the kitchen, but she pointed out that cabinets will help deter the massive cockroaches that los sudcalifornianos regularly do battle with. We’ll have double-paned hurricane proof windows and lots of light but shade to keep out the strong mid-day sun. The position of doors and windows both account for people movement but also to take advantage of natural air conditioning of the sea air.
We’ve been working on the kitchen design, but based on the last update, I think we need to switch to the outside areas. The structural engineer finally weighed in the retaining wall, and it will need to be constructed out of cinder blocks – which means we shouldn’t start the build until hurricane season is over. Watching hurricane Harvey literally fill the greater Houston area with water really puts perspective on how destructive water can be. A non-porous wall can turn into a large mud pit if a hurricane passes through, leading to a costly re-build. Waiting is the right decision, so we will delay our groundbreaking until the beginning of October.
One other thing we learned from the engineer’s assessment was that retaining walls and the pool area will need to be completed before we start laying bricks for the house. As building issues go, this is pretty minor, but it does put a bit of a crimp in our plans. I had hoped house was first and pool second. While we do really want a pool, it isn’t essential for living. We don’t have unlimited resources for this project, so I’d hoped that we could prioritize the must haves for financial reasons.
Now that the pool is first, we’ll have to be more careful with sticking to a budget and may have more compromises to make down the road. To that, I’ve been entertaining the idea of continuing to work for a bit when I finally move down there. Not my favorite thought, but it would certainly solve for budget creep. I’ll keep it in my back pocket and continue to pursue that possibility at my new job. At this point, it seems feasible, but who knows what the future will hold.
