Trying to find a design of the house that both me and the wife can agree on is like pulling teeth, let alone getting it past the planning authority in France.
With the help of David @ Midwest Render our forever patient draughtsman we are constantly taking his plans and drawing on them with pen, scanning them in and sending them back. Well we decided to get a little more clear cut and use Adobe since neither of us can use AuthCAD.
With some cut and paste butchery to Davids original work we started to work on designs and ideas we liked. The idea was to give David a clear picture of what we’d like to achieve for him to then properly draw them up.
So these are out plans and not supplied by David, so any glaring mistakes here are ours.
Here are the “side by side” plans showing the current layout (top) and the proposed changes to the front of the house.
There are 3 main changes to the front of the house and they all revolve around the creation of light.
1st you’ll notice the barn shutters are now full height glass doors.
2nd the addition of windows to the first and second floors flooding those rooms with light.
3rd to create more room in the kitchen the dilapidated outbuildings on the left are rebuilt with the roof pitched changed to match the house and this becomes the entrance to the house.
While we will have to remove the stone external staircase it at present actually detracts from the property as it’s falling down.
The building to the right that is faded is not currently owned by us.
The rear layout changes are actually more intense than the front. This view overlooks just kilometers of fields so we can be more liberal with the extra windows we desire.
Some of the main changes are the number of Velux windows placed into the roof for the master bedroom ( the 6 ) and the 4 which will be over the 1st floor living area and the last one for the 2nd bathroom. This is an East facing rear and we get fantastic sunrises.
Again the building on the right now mirrors the changes we made to the front of the house with an external door to the garden.
You’ll also notice that the porch has been reduced. This is to allow light into the newly fitted rear barn doors to mirror the front of the house. The current porch is made from an unstable rusted metal structure and will be replaced with an oak frame version, half it’s original width for an evening BBQ area.
