Act VII - Internal Examination
Entry posted by AliMcLeod
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We were making good progress with the architect; we had agreed on the new external look and received an updated internal floorplan, which was a big improvement over the layout that came with the plot.
We received the first draft from the architect on 7th July 2016, and agreed on the drawings to submit to Planning on 18th August.
During those 5-6 weeks, my wife and I sat with the plans, "walking" through the house, working out how we’d use each space, and going back to the architects with suggested changes, questions and tweaks. Looking back through my records, we had 7 revisions of the drawings, though at one of those was solely a request for the addition of dimensions to the drawings.
The main changes we made during this process were:
Kitchen
The original plans had bi-fold doors, but I’ve heard bad things about their long-term air-tightness, particularly in areas where the wind can gust to fairly significant levels, so we replaced this opening with sliding doors. We discussed a number of options here: 2 doors or 3, multi-track or single track, all sliding, or some fixed panes, but ended up with a single fixed glass pane and a single slider, with the overall width aligning with the window in the bedroom above for external aesthetics.
Living Room
As with the Kitchen, we changed the bi-fold doors to sliding doors. The wall of glass is south facing over the River Forth and will be battered by storms for parts of the year – there was no way I’d have subjected bi-fold doors to that sort of weather.
Living Level Bedroom
This was the major change we made to the plans. My wife has a joint condition that could cause mobility issues in future years. We didn’t know this when we bought the plot with a fairly steep slope and designed a 3 storey house with a lot of stairs and with our master bedroom suite on the top floor…
In partial mitigation of this, we decided to combine the two smaller bedrooms on this floor into a second master bedroom suite. This would give us the option, should the need ever arise, to relocate ourselves to this level.
At this point, we also briefly discussed whether we could introduce a lift into the design somewhere, but the cost put us off somewhat. Looking back, I now wonder if we should have at ensured we could accommodate that in future, although it is not necessarily too late to do that.
Entrance Hall
I’ve not mentioned this so far, but one of the features we did like the original plot plans was a glass floor in the entrance hall, to allow light to flood into the basement. That had disappeared from the plans, so we added that back in. With us combining the two bedrooms, we also manged to address the issue we had of limited storage just inside the front door and added new cupboards there.
Here’s the floor plan that was submitted to planning. We also extended the terrace at the front of the house, to allow us to set up a table and chairs to enjoy the view. This seemingly small change would cause us all sorts of problems in future.
Master Bedroom Suite
We didn’t think the location of the bed in the previous design made the best use of the views over the River Forth, so we moved the bed into the middle of the room, sitting in front of a false wall (probably to be around shoulder height). This provided us with more storage (we envisage a shoe store on the back side of this wall) and also a dressing area of sorts behind that false wall. This change meant we had to change the windows, to accommodate the new location of the built-in wardrobes.
Upper Hall
I asked the architect to make the double height area above the entrance door a bit deeper, so we moved the door to the Family Room to the north a bit and got rid of the store cupboard at the top of the stairs.
Family Bathroom
We added a rooflight into the family bathroom, since it had no natural light.
Here’s what the upper floor plan looked like
The basement area remained largely unchanged:
The externals changed a bit to accommodate the new internal layouts:
And a sectional view:
It was now in the hands of the Planning Officer.
Next, I'll share a little bit more on the various other options we discussed during the design process, including the size/position of that north facing window at the stairs.
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