Our Builder, Anderson Sargent, has been in communication Designer, Chris Everett. This is the first draft of the building plan. I will follow below with the changes we need made to the plan. (I know this not the the most exciting stuff... but we are trying to cover all aspects of the building, planning and permitting process. I hope there are some that will find a view of the whole process valuable.) I will post the final plans when they are done and report on all the rest of the back and forth then.

 and a side view

This was a great start for a home office (much nicer than our current house actually). The second floor in the plan was open, that is why I did not include it. The primary purpose of this building will be an office is for a Speech Therapy practice. We do not want it to feel like a school or medical office, where these children may have experienced "failure". We want this to be a new environment where they can heal.

From a design perspective this is a great use for a rectangle. The large wrap around porch will be great for clients to relax on. The real advantage of it is that the sun will not even touch the walls on the south side of the building in our hot summers. With second story porches this will me mostly true for the east and west walls as well (except mornings and evenings). The north will be a great sitting porch in the summer. I love the simplicity of this, nothing fancy, just a great building.

What we need to change:

We like the basic layout for a home office. We asked that the second floor be restricted to space on top of the offices with a walkway in between (right above the door). This means that the open space goes all the way to the roof. The concept for this was that when people walk in, their field of vision will open up after walking in ~5 ft. We want this office to make a great first impression by opening up quickly to let people know that they have come to a healing place, a place where their children will experience success. We have given much thought into making this place feel great.

Following the same line of thought we want all supports for the roof moved out of the direct line of the windows.

To increase the floor space on the inside, we would like the stairs moved outside (meaning the second floor will have a different entrance).

We would like to doors on the offices to be on the corners of the office (opening to the center of the building). We did not like the idea of being presented with the office doors on the way in. We also thought that parents would feel better seeing the doors from the waiting area.

We needed to add a restroom and a small office snack area. A full size kitchen with the restroom would qualify this as a house, meaning more taxes, more red tape, we would have to cut our property in two, and it probably would no longer quality as a home office (being on a seperate peice of property). We are building this building as an office, not a living structure, this means we have to leave certain things out.... But we do need a place for Rachels' clients to use the restroom. So the "kitchen" lost to the restroom.

Seeing the plans for the first time makes me feel great. We are now on our way.