The intial blueprints that were created to start the process of designing our house were created while my twin two year olds napped. Armed with a five year old, candy to keep the five year old happy, and a 25' tape measure, we set to work measuring the outside perimeter of the house. I mention this to drive home the fact that the intial step in this project does not need to be exact, although we actually were pretty close in the end. There really isn't a need to hire a professional to create blueprints during the inital design phase of the project.
The magic of Home Design Software... The next step was getting the walls into the computer. I can't stress enough how important it was to have the plans on the computer, it made every change effortless simple. There are various home design software programs out on the market, over the course of our project I bought 3 different ones. The intial program that I used for the first few years was Broderbund Home Designer 3.0, I fell in love with this program, but it did have limitations, like creating the right roofline. I later bought the other two programs, but they didn't match up to the user friendly Broderbund. The software out there is pretty amazing in a short span of time you can get a relatively descent idea of what it might be like to walk through your new home. I fell in love with the feel of my kitchen years before it actually appeared.
I did spend a lot of time getting to know the various software programs that I used, but at the beginning of our project I had loads of time. We bought our house knowing that we would most likely remodel in five years. I measured the house with my five year old within the first month of moving into the house. I spent almost 4 years tweeking the layout and design of the interior. I realize that four years is a lot of time to work on a design, but having all that time was wonderful, because we were able to adapt the design as we learned and developed our needs for the house. Case in point when I started the design we were a three kid family, three years into the design, we realized we would need to fit in another bed. We didn't actually change the number of bedrooms in the house, but we did make one of the rooms considerably larger for the twins.
So here's my bulleted pointers about blueprints.
- Initially the measurements don't need to be exact
- Measure the outside perimeter first and then assume the walls are 4-6 inches deep
- Spending time and thought at the beginning of the project has many advantages
- Even on a small space such as a bathroom, it's helpful and cost efficent to have a scale drawing of the space for furniture and fixture placement
- It's much easier to make changes on paper/or the screen before you start breaking down walls
- Home design software is a must
- Broderbund Software - Easy to start with, very intuitive, very buggy (it crashed a lot) I loved it when it worked, was a little too basic for more advanced features like the roof. I think they did make more recent versions, but from what I read about them they edged closer to the Better Homes and Garden model.
- Punch Software - Great reviews, I found it a little less intuitive and not as user-friendly maybe if I were an engineer I would have enjoyed using it more.
- Better Home and Gardens home designer - OK, it got me the closest to the end result of the entire home, but it was not as intutive as Broderbund especially for spaces like the kitchen and bath.
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