Last week I installed old floor plan software from 1998, hoping it would be compatible with Windows XP. Surprisingly, it was. My mission was to put my rough ideas for the new addition down on paper for the architect to see. I’ve had the basic design floating around in my head for five years now, but it was important to put it down on paper in a scale drawing. The software (Total Home Deluxe by Broderbund) does a far neater job than I could with paper and pencil. And give or take a few inches here and there, I think my design will work okay. My wife passed the diagram on to the architect. He is the expert who will ultimately decide how realistic my design is. Later this week, we will have the bedroom and bathroom area measured. Probably by the end of the week we will sit down with him for our initial consultation and that will start the ball rolling on the bedroom/bathroom.
Major clean-up in progress
Our office/computer room in the addition has been horribly cluttered since we moved in. It’s the room where clutter from the rest of the house got stashed whenever we had company. RRSP statements have been piling up for five years waiting to be entered in Quicken. Other papers, notes, newspaper clippings, kid’s artwork and school work have overtaken the desk and any available floor space. We can’t store stuff in the basement because of the water problems. We can’t store stuff upstairs, because it is still a construction zone. So things have been piling up in the rest of the house, especially in the office.
Well, I spent about ten hours last Friday into the not-so-wee hours of Saturday morning finally tackling this mess. The result: clean and organized for the first time in half a decade. I still have to go through the paperwork for Quicken, and there are still a couple of boxes out in the open because there is nowhere else to store them, but the clutter is gone. It is now possible to walk into the room without tripping over anything.
And if the final design of the addition is anything like my rough sketch, this kind of clutter will be a thing of the past. My rough office plan has a six foot wide closet and plenty of wall space for multiple book shelves and other storage.
Architectural costs:
There is a charge for the initial consultation. This is where we tell the architect what we want to accomplish. He will then come back to us with some ideas. At that point, we can choose whether or not we wish to continue with his services. The fee covers his time and efforts, since we could walk away and hire someone else to implement his ideas.
