The Wind Chime House

LAYING OUT THE PLAN

Original House Plans

As we were moving into the wind chime house, the previous owners asked us if we would be interested in keeping the original house plans. Um…. YES! PLEASE! As an architect, I couldn’t say no. As we started to create new plans for this place, it has been very helpful to look over the original plans and know what walls are bearing or not. It has also been really fun to look at the landscape plans from 50+ years ago and see what they originally planted in the yard and compare it to what is there now. Back in the day, it was a pretty spectacular house.

After living in the house for a couple of weeks and getting a feel for the new place, we started to draw up plans for what we wanted this house to become. As a couple it has always been the plan to have enough rooms in the house so that each of our kids could have their own space while they are living here, but also when they start their own families and come back and visit. We also wanted to have a space for them to be able to show their personalities (as long as it meets my design standards, of course, #kidding, #notkidding).

The original home had 4 huge bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Our plan is to add another bathroom and bedroom. In both the upstairs and downstairs we are splitting the big bedrooms in half to create an additional bathroom upstairs and an additional bedroom downstairs. If you were wondering, yes, the bedrooms are that large that we can cut them in half and still end up with decent sized rooms.

We have gone back and forth on the style we want in the house. We are torn between restoring the original character back into the house or making it our own? What would you do?

At the end of the day, we have chosen to use keep as much of the original mid century character of the home as possible but also pair that with the lighter scandinavian color scheme. The final look will include grays, blacks, whites, natural wood tones, and greenery to compliment the look. We feel like the indoor atrium will fit in perfectly with this design.

Trying to decide what to do with the fireplace and staircase has been the hardest decision yet. We are currently toying with several ideas on what we could do to them so they fit flawlessly with the design style that we have chosen for this house. Head on over to our instagram stories to see what ideas we are thinking. What would you do with this monstrous fireplace?

Stay tuned for next week as we begin to delve deeper into the interior design of the rooms of the house.