We’re in the new house, and starting to think about remodeling. It’s hard to do that without a good idea of what’s going on. So I’m going to model the house in a way that’s fairly accurate, to visualize some proposed changes.
Software:
You could do this any number of ways. A lot of building departments are happy to get a drawing that isn’t on a napkin.
I have solidworks. Fusion360 is free, Sketchup also has a free version. But those aren’t really designed for this use case. I don’t want to draw both sides of every wall, and dimension every single thing. We’re not trying to make a surface to be 3D printed or anything. I want to assume all interior walls are 4.5″ thick, exterior walls are some larger thickness, and just worry about dimensions from corner to corner.
Revit is an industry standard, made by Autodesk. If you want to pay $365/mo, or ~$3k/yr, it’s a great option. They have a flexible system where you buy tokens, and then use 10x tokens each day you run the software. This still ends up being $9/day… and the tokens expire 1 year after buying them. So you get to feel like you’re using frequent flyer miles, which I don’t think is a bonus.
There’s also Chief Architect Premier. But even that’s over $150/mo at the time of this writing. Or $1k/yr.
There are many free options with browser access. But they limit the number of projects you can have, limit the number of floors, require logging in, have in-app purchases, etc. Or they limit the resolution of renders and plans, so the work you’ve done is essentially useless when you get a 640×480 .pdf output and just have to recreate it all somewhere else.
Ultimately I went with Sweet Home 3D, which is free open source software, available for windows/linux/mac/iOS/android. It’s not all there yet. Right now there’s no way to create roofs without some hacky workarounds (creating a rectangular prism, then translating and rotating it relative to the floor). It has limited options in settings, and limited objects/textures included. But those can be created and imported, or you can find repositories of items on github/etc. for free.
This is not intended to be a tutorial for that software.
My gripes:
You can’t pan the 3D view. It always rotates about a fixed point on the model, so you can never actually look around as if you were inside the house. Adding a sidewalk and driveway to the ground floor really messed up the center of mass later on in 3D view.
There’s no ability to create roofs or ceilings. There are light fixtures, so there is the ability to create a ceiling fan dangling in midair somehow… I had to create rectangular prisms, scale them to dimensions, then rotate and translate them into place to look like a roof. And they’re impossible to snap into place and get them to stay where you want them.
It’s a work in progress, but I have no idea how large the dev team is. I’m assuming 1-3 people based on the info on their website. I might pay for a $100 or so alternative when it comes time to do actual drawings. Or just slog through it in Solidworks since it’s what I know and will be fast-ish.
The House:
Ground floor:
The three hallway rooms are a storage closet, HVAC, and the water heater. Not much to be done there, especially since they’re central to the house.
The server rack and networking will be centralized in the laundry room again. I’ll start running smurf tube shortly to start facilitating that.
Middle floor:
This is only the colored portion in the middle. The rest of the walls are from the ground floor. This is just a small deck and stairs outside to get up the 54″ to the door, an entryway, and a coat closet.
Top floor:
You can see that the kitchen is a pretty terrible use of space. Appliances (clockwise) are fridge, dishwasher, sink, and range. We currently have a free standing wire shelf in the open corner of the kitchen to augment the pitifully small pantry.
The Plan So Far:
1: Remove the old siding at odd angles (at different spacings, and with rotten pieces haphazardly covered with additional boards) and replace with traditional lapped siding, probably a sage green color. We may do board and batten on the bottom layer that matches the brick in color.
2: Whitewash the brick. Remove the weird pony wall on the front corner. I don’t want to paint it, because the house is old enough that I’d like the brick to continue to breath. I’m not sure what the vapor barrier situation is yet (1978 house), maybe tar paper if anything.
3: Get rid of the modern wedge roof over the entry and have a slope on either side, centered on the door. Maybe take the stairs off and reattach them coming off the front (with a meandering, not straight, path that’s hard to draw in this software). Probably fill that area with garden, and have less people walking directly in front of the child’s bedroom window.
4: Add a garage.
I would like to do 10′ walls here, to have a nice 8′ tall garage door. I can’t maintain the same slope as the existing roof, but can go shallower and still have plenty of margin for shingles. And I’m trying to maintain a short strip of siding under the existing roof to avoid trying to get the shingle spacing to line up, or re-roof the entire house that was just done 3 years ago.
I’m trying to keep the style of the entryway – split the roof, and center the gable on a door. Although that will probably be difficult to design trusses around, and not sure about the code surrounding that small wall that’s unsupported all the way to the ground (probably fine with engineered trusses, but need to check)
I want to remove the french doors into the back room downstairs, and replace with a normal exterior door. And have a single garage door for access into the back yard. Since we’re taking up almost the entire width of the lot at this point…
The electric service is at the back corner of the house, and will need to be moved to the front corner of the garage, then relocate the panel into the garage side of what used to be exterior wall, and run feeder through the attic or slab to the main panel.
The good news is that the underground feeder runs right through the garage-to-be’s front corner, so hopefully we can work a plan with the power company and city to dig it up, cut power at the transformer, re-terminate it closer to the street, then turn everything back on.
Windows in the living room will be removed and framed in (hoping to pull out the headers and return the studs to “normal” with no trace of windows being there. More windows will be added in front, just not sure how many, or what spacing just yet.
5: Reconfigure the kitchen
Move the sink to the exterior wall, remove all 3 existing windows, and put in one centered on the sink.
Remove the large terra cotta tiles and put in new floor. Looking at tile that looks like wood with minimal grout lines. The texture chosen here isn’t final, just what was readily available in the software without importing something.
Delete the wet bar and all plumbing in the floor and wall for it. Frame in the existing entry to the kitchen, and make one larger entryway adjacent to the stairs. The fridge is in about the same position, range and sink are flipped, and dishwasher is on the end furthest clockwise.
Looking to add pantry space in the previously unused corner. Probably in the form of some floor-to-ceiling cabinets with pull out drawers or something. Looking for recommendations here, so seriously leave a comment below, or message me privately if you know me and have ideas.
6: Replace all of the windows. Unsure if we want white or black vinyl/fiberglass on the exterior of the house. I think white is cheaper and easier to find. But we kind of like the look of black or dark grey. Looking for recommendations here as well.
7: Fix the laundry room doorway.
The laundry room is oddly shaped. I’d like to take out the tiny zig-zagged wall where the door is and replace it with one angled wall and a wider door. It was almost impossible to get the washer and dryer into this space, and the washer door almost hits the jog in the wall when opening it (and makes it hard to even load the laundry with half of the door width obstructed by wall).
Outro:
That’s it for now. Just ideas on paper so far. I need to level the house. There’s been a lot going on on that front lately, and I have some documenting to do, which will be coming shortly.
Once the house is level and on a good foundation I’ll dig into the rest of this.
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