Rebecca, David and I are meeting all together for the first time tonight to discuss the latest version of the house plan and to learn more about the overall Passive House concepts. I’m really looking forward to them meeting each other and moving forward with the design. I was hoping to be further along by now, but I’ve learned that anything in construction usually takes about three times longer than I expect, and I haven’t wanted to rush the process!

Here’s the latest version of the first floor that we’re working with: FIRST FLOOR_VS 2._013012

I wanted to add additional square footage to the office/ flex room, so that it could also double as a bedroom or TV room, and I felt like I didn’t need as much space in the kitchen. So we bumped out the office wall two feet into the porch and brought the back kitchen wall in 2 feet. We shortened the island from 9 feet to 7 feet, put french doors at the back and a pantry along the wall in the kitchen that is shared with the master bedroom. This also created the extra storage that I felt like was missing in this scheme.

Overall, I’m happy with the design. The living/ dining area is open to above. The office will be two-story as well. The second floor has a large loft area for dancing, two bedrooms and a bathroom.

There are two things that I’m still a little concerned about. One is the thermal envelope. When building a Passive House, you have to create a thermal barrier, and the more corners you have, the harder it can be to create that barrier. I may need to sacrifice the two feet in the office and bump the kitchen back out two feet to create more of a rectangle, which may work better aesthetically, too. That’s one of the things we’ll discuss at our meeting.

The other concern is cost. My hope was to get the house down to 2,000 square feet or less, but I’m realizing that’s not very realistic based on everything I want in it. Currently, we’re at about 2,230 feet (330 feet is for the dance area!) It’s still a relatively small house, but I’m worried about how expensive the actual building costs will be. It’s difficult to build a home from the ground up and fight the temptation to have the best of everything.

But since one of the main goals is to drastically reduce my expenses, I don’t want to over build. I also want the home to fit in well in the neighborhood. Once we finalize the design, I’ll start bidding out the project to see how close I am to the budgeted amount!