Favorite House Details: The New Wing

Components:

Main Level Goals

Adding 2 car attached garage
Hallway and staircase inside finished house (Upper and Lower)
Mud Room with room for washer dryer and large utility sink
Family powder room-or just toilet area off Mud Room?
Large Kitchen Pantry
Mommy Office (about 10'x12')
Family Entrance Big enough (about 6x8)
Cubbie area hidden from major views

Upper Level

Larry's office above garage, maybe with kitchenette
Hallway with windows to office, maybe bath
Leftover space maybe bedroom or utility room

Lower Level (Basement)

Nanny or In-law Suite--We realized this would be a great location for this.
It would give the nanny her own staircase to come and go. We could do egress windows that would be relatively private, vs. the windows from the other side of the basement that would be visible from the patio/entertaining areas. Also, it would be under the pantry and mud room, which would be relatively quiet compared with being under the family or dining room. It would separate the nanny basement from the family basement. The area in between where we would drop the floors will be used mostly as storage, so we could partition an area for her backing up to our storage area. Now, all the space is used well and the current therapy room could stay where it is and the new rec room will be a bonus.

Turret

Addition off the back of the newly designed kitchen area.

This one has a 2-story gable roof. I liked the header detail, and the stone curved wall similar to ours, but in a smaller scale.

This is a second view of the house above.

I liked this 1 1/2 story garage. I also like the set of 8 windows in the dormer on the front elevation.

Phase 1 will become an "L" wing off the front of the house on the side where the current entrance exists. The photos above are from homes in the Highgate neighborhood that had pretty "L" shaped wings that might spark some ideas for our project.

I have drawings of what this looks like that I have given to Geri, but I have not been to Kinko's to scan in the big scale drawing yet.

This wing makes sense when the kitchen location is moved to the area of the home where the current staircase and dining room are located, just inside from the veranda.

This is a concept we toyed with early on, and have come back to because of multiple reasons.

Cost. We feel like we can get a big impact in our daily life for the amount this portion should cost. In the long run, we still want a beautiful result, so we want to do it right, but this seems like a very practical area to start.

Function--Most of the dysfuntional areas of the home would be fixed in one swoop. The "Family wing" would give us all of the utility areas that this house is missing, without having to knock down a portion of the house to get them. Since it would be built in the current driveway, which was going to have changes anyway, it could be mostly built before it ever impacted our living space.
Use of the property--The play area has really changed the way we use our property. If we move the kitchen to the veranda side of the house, it places it in a great viewing location for watching over the entire yard where the kids play.

Easier to phase. We would never need to lose our kitchen until the new one was complete.

The area where it would attach is a part of our home we don't like very much anyway. The stone veneered current library would be preserved, as would the Japanese maples in this area.

It makes a lot of sense to have the noisy kitchen area under our Master suite, rather than the kids rooms. Same goes for the garage.

Position of Mudroom with pretty view and access to back yard.

Positions of Pantry for easy restocking from family entrance or garage

Position of Mommy Office to monitor driveway, family entrance, and kitchen.

Development of the whole lot. We can do a few more landscape upgrades to this side of the property, such as more privacy along Persimmon Road, and the shade garden outside the mud room, and slowly work our way around the house in a methodical and phased approach. Yet, we can have the property looking pretty good from the side and the front yards in the short term, without touching it again.

The Turrett, that we loved in the latest plan, can be put in a great location for viewing the willows and the play area. It would take up the space inside the corner shown in the photo below. The view from the turret can be seen here.