House of Dreams

In Lucy Maud Montgomery's book, House of Dreams, the main character Anne describes to her fiancé Gilbert what she wants their first home to look like. I think everyone has this dream and there are those who are lucky enough to achieve it. We are still waiting for our ship to sail in, but in the meantime it's something nice to think about.

So to banish the gloom from my last post, I decided to think of the house I would like to someday own. This is basically my version of the perfect house:

If you'll notice there's only one floor. We're currently living in a house that has three (3) levels and not only is it a pain to maintain financially, stairs are not a senior citizen's best friend.

Another thing is that there aren't too many rooms. My ideal home is one that I can clean on my own without any help and doesn't waste space. By the way, the dotted lines you see behind the storage area represents the clothes line which is next to the outdoor sink.

Though the most important consideration for me would be the orientation of the house itself. I've read that an energy efficient home has the daytime or main living areas facing north, and the least used areas (namely the garage and storage) facing west thus bearing the brunt of the hot afternoon sun and serving as a heat buffer for the rest of the house. Hmmm... we might need to reverse this.

As you can imagine, this plan requires a bigger plot of land which is great as I want as much space between us and the neighbors (when you dream, dream big). This falls in line with yet another guideline that there should be a set back of least six meters to prevent overshading from neighbours to the north.

In case you're wondering where I got this lay-out, it's from Home Plans. A few years ago, when we were still trying to decide whether to build or just buy a house, I bought a book on house plans from Book Sale. From the more than 200 options, this was the only one that appealed to me, but please note that what you see above is the version I've fixed to suit our purposes. To view the orignal drawing, please click here.

Now here's hoping someone out there will build this house for themselves and invite us to visit. Because while I can imagine what this house might look like, the reality will probably be different and I'd like to know in advance if adjustments need to made (hahaha!).