First Floor Plan Breakdown

Josh and I decided to plan our house before we were even engaged. We knew pretty quickly that we would get married and start a life together. At this point, I was taking an AutoCAD class in my design program. I started drafting for fun to reinforce the concepts I had been learning. I worked on our house plans for over 6 months. We went through so many different versions, ideas, and drafts. I am so proud of the design that we ended up with! Since we are not architects, we worked with a local architect to get our plans finalized to make sure they would meet inspection. He was shocked to see how detailed and thought-out our plans were, and he finalized them with few additions.

When designing this space, there were many factors that we had to consider. Price is obviously a factor. The housing affordability crisis has drastically increased the value of homes where we live. As newlyweds, we needed to be sure this would be a house we could afford. Another thing we had to comply with was building codes and property setbacks. We knew that we wanted an ADU (Accessory Dwelling Unit) that we would live in while we rented the rest of the house out. We had to be sure this would be legal in the city we were building in. Land is increasingly expensive in Utah, and the lot we ended up buying was very narrow and deep. We built the house to be as wide as it could possibly be according to property setbacks regulated by the city. I originally wanted a garage on the side of the house so that it wouldn't be viewed from the street, but with the size of our lot, this was not possible, so we had to place it in front.

Since we are building on a budget, we made the front of our house as interesting as we could, while keeping the sides and back of the house straight. We are grateful that we will be able to get into a house at all, so we were happy to make these compromises.

Coombs' Home First Floor

We wanted the entrance of the main area of the house to be grand and to make a statement. I have heard before that your entryway is like the appetizer to the rest of the house. You want to give people a little taste of what they will see in the rest of the house.

The downstairs also features two bedrooms and a shared bathroom. This bathroom will also double as a bathroom for guests. I had a very distinctive look that I wanted for the kitchen. Here are some pictures that inspired me.

www.studio-mcgee.com

www.studio-mcgee.com

The thing that I loved about these images was the symmetrical doors on both sides of the range. We were able to achieve a (low budget) version of these in our plans, and I am so excited to see how they turn out. In our kitchen, the door on the left goes into the walk-in pantry, and the one on the right goes into the laundry room, mechanical room, and garage. We will be building a custom range hood to tie into our cabinets and the rest of the design of the room.

I can't wait to keep seeing these plans come to life. Stay tuned for more!