Now that we have our cabbage, the next step is to come up with a floor plan. After taking some measurements and downloading LayOut, I managed to come up with this:
As you can see, the main space is long and skinny, and we have two lofts to work with. Now we need to take this space and decide where everything is going to be so that my brother-in-law can help us wire it for electricity. I came up with a list of things we absolutely need to have, and things that would be nice, but aren’t strictly necessary.
The Essentials
- A bathroom with a shower stall, toilet, and sink.
- Somewhere to hide the water heater.
- A kitchen (preferably next to the bathroom to make plumbing easier)
- Somewhere to sleep (we’re still trying to decide if we should use the big loft or frame in something downstairs where we can actually stand up)
- A place to put the wood stove we’ll use for heating.
The Extras
- Space for a home office (otherwise I’m going to build myself a lady shack)
- Space for a washer and dryer (eventually, we’ll add a mudroom/laundry room extension)
- A nursery for the baby we’ll have someday
Since LayOut is killing me a little bit, I ended up replicating the sketch above on graph paper with sharpie. Now Drew and I can trace over it and start filling in different layouts. Our brother-in-law advised us to come up with at least 10 so that we don’t just jump on the first thing we think up.
What would you do with this space?
Here is a Good Life Jones coloring contest of sorts! Take our preliminary plans and come up with your own floor plan for the space. Then share them with me. We can’t afford any awesome prizes, but we’ll feature any entries we get on the blog.
I’m pretty sure that you have already come up with these questions, but my brain would like to know a few things: How high is the ceiling in the lofts? Tall enough to walk around in an upright fashion? Is there just the front door, do you want more than one door in the house, are you able to put in more than one door? How high is the ceiling under the lofts? Would you want stairs to the lofts or ladders?
Recently I saw an article on maximizing small spaces and the family had made a loft into a children’s play area, which I thought was pretty cool and there was another family who turned a loft into an office which seemed to be a nice way of being secluded but able to hear/see what is happening elsewhere. I will see if I can find the article and send it your way for ideas.