I've always enjoyed looking at house plans, drawing my own house plans, and even more so, walking around houses looking at their layout. Even as a child, I knew that someday I'd be building a house to live in. It hasn't happened yet, but I know that someday, maybe even soon, it will.
Jodi got me a book of luxury home plans last year for our fifth anniversary and I love it. Not only does it have the floor plans for the houses but since they are all actual homes, they've included photos of them as well so that you can really see how they look completed. I doubt that we'll ever build one of the houses in the book, but I imagine that we will incorporate many of the good ideas in a home that we build.
Lately, we've talked a lot about what we would desire from the ideal home. Some of the things that we've discussed have included a greenhouse, shop, and craft room. Some may say that we dream big, but I don't see any reason why we shouldn't.
Besides, the greenhouse is to grow healthy food for ourselves and depending on the size we build it has the potential to create a partial income from what we produce out of it. The shop serves lots of purposes. For starters, I'll finally have a place to do automotive repairs on our vehicles where I can get them done fast and efficiently. I'll have a place to finally do vehicle flipping like I've dreamed of doing which would be a fun partial income, as well. Aside from automotive space, it will also have a wood shop area that I can use for all types of things instead of using the front yard like I am forced to do now. And, I see the craft room being an amazing space for Jodi to have all her crafty things available without digging and searching. The craft room could also double as a transition room from the house to the greenhouse so that it could have space in it designed to be a good spot to pot plants, store greenhouse and household tools, and perform various other duties that greenhouses require.
So, in the near future, I'll be toying around with my own sketched out plans of what our obtainable dream house would look like. After I achieve a sketch that both Jodi and I like, I'll throw it together using the new Google Sketchup. I'm not sure when Google Sketchup Version 8 was released, but it's a much welcomed advance from Version 7.
In case you are unfamiliar with Google Sketchup, it's an extremely user-friendly, free, 3-D modeling program. It has simple push, pull, and drag tools to create complex 3-dimensional models fast and with ease. The best part about it, though, is the 3-D warehouse. Anyone can upload their own completed models to the warehouse. And, anyone can search the warehouse easily and download any of the models found there right into the project you're working on. Before remodeling our kitchen, I "built" our kitchen plans using Sketchup and it allowed us to see exactly what our new kitchen would look like. This way, we would be able to anticipate any issues that we would have with the layout. It was relatively easy to put together, too, since all of the cabinets that I used were available for download from the warehouse. So, all I did was arrange them in the room that I created. Version 7, though, when you used the orbit function to move 3-dimensionally around your object, it was slow and choppy. Version 8 is instant and smooth, so it makes the 3-D environment even more fun to work with. Check it out. Click this link to be taken to the Google Sketchup download page.
Dream Home
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