Revised plans are in for our new, more modest, less ridiculous, two storey house. Spot the difference: Looks a lot like the old version, doesn't it? That's because after much debate, we decided to have a roof deck. But also, after much debate, we decided to partially enclose the roof deck so it's more of an outdoor lounge. We know there's no ocean view from the third floor, or even above. But the rationale behind having something up there is that we want to retain that overflow hangout space. Apparently there'll come a time when our daughter wants to hang out with her friends somewhere away from us. And in the meantime, if we make it useable enough, we'll use it. Which is why we are enclosing it a bit - just with one wall (the stairwell), some sort of pergola, a powder room, a bar kitchen (fridge, sink, etc). Otherwise it will be one of those roof decks no-one ever uses, which would be a shame. So, we've saved a chunk of money, by trading 1500

I guess we just got carried away. And we had a lot of fun doing it. We loved the floor plans and we loved the elevations (eventually) and so I suppose we loved the whole house. We were so happy we were about to submit the plans to the city and the Coastal Commission and get moving on the approval process. But something niggled. When I described the house to friends, it sounded a little excessive. As in, after I described the living space and the bedrooms I had to say 'wait, there's more'. There was an additional story with a couple of rooms that seemed a little superfluous. More of a want than a need. Then again, as we soothed ourselves, 'we're only going to do this once in our lives, we should make sure we do get everything we can'. Then there was a offhand comment the architect made about the build costs having crept up - to 25% over our original budget. We did some calculations and thought weeeeellll maybe we could make that work. But, as I pointed ou

When we started thinking about building our home the first topic was 'how should it look?'. We rarely pass a new build without commenting on its appearance. We have hot debates about cantilevered upper stories, concrete versus wood sidings, roof lines, and how much concrete is too much. (There's no such thing as too much, in my book). But the home design process, as I now understand, begins on the inside. Only after discussing floor plans and getting the space to function the way we need it to, can we turn our attention to the outside. So, almost three months after we started working with our architect, we finally saw the exterior elevations and got a sense of how it will actually look on the outside. We were beside ourselves with excited anticipation. Here's how it looked: Maybe we had expected too much, because our first response was 'meh'. It was fine, as houses go. It just was not at all like the house we had imagined for ourselves. And it did me