I can still to this day remember having the conversation with the foreman from Canbec Construction, the team which we used to build our custom home, and we were talking about floor plans. This of course was ahead of me speaking with the architect and I was asking the foreman for some ideas. It was during this chat when he reminded me that given the fact that this was a custom home which he was building, the idea should have been all my own, and that it was in fact my decision, well that of myself and my husband.
Following this chat we tried a number of ways to map out the floor plan, and here is what we considered and how we finally reached a decision.
A Day in the Life
Most of what we were doing during this planning stage was trying to visualize ourselves living in the property. We would quite literally consider what we would do after we’d been to the bathroom, or when we got up in the morning, where we would make and eat food and then how we would get back to the bedroom to get dressed. All of these small details may sound strange, but ultimately if you are designing your own home then you want a floor plan which makes sense for you.
Thinking of the Future
In our case there will be no more children but we are aware that our young kids will grow up and that means that we had to create a floor plan which would be flexible enough to still suit us once he kids grew up. Again this means that you have to visualize of how things may be, what their needs will be and how the house can fit around that.
Focusing on the Negative
This sounds odd but one f the best things that we thought about when we were planning the floor was the things that we didn’t like about the houses of others. Ultimately we would think about our friends and then focus heavily on what aspects of their homes we didn’t like. We found this much easier than to focus on the things that we did like, because there were fewer of them. Working from the negative we were then able to understand what to do in order to avoid that in our home.
Ideas and Research
And finally we invested multiple hours online, checking out the homes of others are trying to steal some ideas and get some inspiration from what others have done. There is so much information out there with regards to this that it isn’t hard to grab some crucial ideas which can help you to deliver a perfect floor plan which looks good and which suits the needs of you and of your family.
Good luck with the floor plan and if you need any further ideas please feel free to get in touch.
