shadesofmauve (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shadesofmauve) wrote2012-07-17 03:45 pm
shadesofmauve) wrote2012-07-17 03:45 pm
Remodeling angst whine (with bonus floorplans)
When ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
emony42 came to visit this weekend she came up with the brilliant idea of making fake windows out of cardboard and nailing them to the wall so we could really visualize it, and it helped! I was so close to finally making a decision on windows for my studio, so I could finally draft plans, get approval, and place the order. I could actually move forward with my garage -> studio conversion plan.
Something still didn't feel right, though.
Here is the current layout of the north end of my house (one story ranch house, nothing fancy).
Project Goal: I want a studio I can work in, that I want to work in. It won't just be painting area -- it's painting area, office, work table, etc. I need it to be inviting, and for me that means light and warm. I have a pretty spectacularly bad case of Reynaud's syndrome; warmth is vital. I also still need a space to store 'garage' type stuff -- the shop vac, my bicycle, and tools (mostly hand tools or small power tools at this point, though I'd dearly love a chop saw).
I'm going to try to write this in order, but since all the issues are interrelated that's a bit difficult.
My original plan was to wire, heat, and insulate the garage, and use it as my studio. Simple, right? But if you're me and you take a year to empty the garage of crap and another two to get all the old drywall off (because I was busy doing other things, not because I'm taking it off with an X-acto knife or something -- it was really only a few days worth of work) then you have time to over-plan and worry and come up with all sorts of issues and contingencies.
The design problem is the balance between light, heat, and privacy. I need natural light or I won't want to be in the room and I need heat or I won't be physically capable of working in the room. The north wall faces the Nasty Neighbor, who's a rotten piece of work, and the nasty fence between us, which is also a rotten piece of work. Still, I want light, so large windows, not just clerestory windows, seem in order. The current idea is 3 or 4 two-foot wide windows that start about waist high, end near the ceiling, and have sheer curtains or shades.
There's no way I'm leaving the overhead garage door. It takes up head-space, it's creaky, and it's nigh impossible to insulate effectively. I really don't like the idea of framing the space in as a wall with a person-door in it; I've seen houses like mine where they went that route, and I think it makes confusion about which door is the 'front' door and looks tacked on. I'd prefer carriage doors with windows or french doors, which would let in the east light. My Awesome Neighbor* suggested three french-type doors, but with only one of them opening, which I think is an interesting idea (it's easier to seal against infiltration but has worse insulating properties of the door itself, compared to constructing insulated carriage doors. See why this is all so complex?).
My dad has been pushing the idea of a (potentially temporary) wall between the studio/office and the shop area, both for cleanliness and because it makes it easier to heat the studio. That's been the working plan for the past year or more, and it looks like this:
The problem is that it means I don't get any of that yummy east light in the studio, unless I do something funky with the temporary wall (like put cheap windows in it, or make it a pony wall, at which point it isn't doing the insulating job anymore). The garage door faces east. I love east light; I adore it, I bask in it, it makes me happy. I really like the idea of having some 'shop' space, but I'm not so keen on dividing up space into weird little chunks (There's a secondary concern that weird space division is a negative point when selling, but that's why we're talking about making the wall temporary -- undo the bolts and poof, no more wall).
E said something negative about shutting off the light and breaking up the big space that really depressed/irritated me (mostly in a "couldn't you have mentioned that a year ago?" and "It's not your space!" kind of way), but after sleeping it over I came up with an idea that was more work AND had more potential than anything he'd suggested. Et Voila:
The cool thing is that it would allow for easy future expansion of the (very cramped) kitchen (north into the laundry room space), and give me a bigger studio with east light and a view out to the road. The problematic thing is that it requires tearing down a wall, building a subfloor on the garage slab that matches the subfloor, tearing up the laundry room (which is where all the studio & shop stuff is 'temporarily' stored), and reflooring/redry-walling-ing the laundry room. That's a rather bigger project than I had planned.
I'm not sure I can feasibly DO that, and I'm not sure if it's really a better plan even if I can. Or rather, I think it's a better plan, but is it enough better to be worth tearing out an extra wall, ripping up the laundry room floor, figuring out something to do with the washer-and-dryer while the floor is ripped up, etc? Do I have the money to do it (hell, do I have the money to do the first plan? Is the second plan actually much more money? It may not be). I may well never have the money for the kitchen, as much as I want to fix it -- if that's the case, what use is planned expansion?
Dad told me today that I needed to stop feeling down about it and get back to a place where planning was fun, and stop being upset that I had options when some people have none. But knowing that I have it good compared to others doesn't make me feel more motivated; it just makes me feel guilty, less deserving of having the options I have, and more incapable of trusting my own judgement.
Update! In the three hours since I started this post, I think I may have figured out what to do. It all depends on making the front door good enough, really. If I leave the whole garage as one room for the moment (phase one), use a lot of glass in the doors, and use clerestory windows to the north with a gap where the wall would be in phase two... that might work, and be less expensive than larger windows at the outset.
I'm sure I'll come up with a reason why this plan is worthless in ten minutes, but there ya go.
*Awesome Neighbor shares a fence line with Nasty Neighbor, but Awesome Neighbor went to architecture school with my uncle in Oregon, and so had been a family friend for years, and lets my borrow his tools, mower, and expertise regularly. The only charge is letting him talk my ear off. :)
emony42 came to visit this weekend she came up with the brilliant idea of making fake windows out of cardboard and nailing them to the wall so we could really visualize it, and it helped! I was so close to finally making a decision on windows for my studio, so I could finally draft plans, get approval, and place the order. I could actually move forward with my garage -> studio conversion plan.Something still didn't feel right, though.
Here is the current layout of the north end of my house (one story ranch house, nothing fancy).
 |
| From House ideas |
Project Goal: I want a studio I can work in, that I want to work in. It won't just be painting area -- it's painting area, office, work table, etc. I need it to be inviting, and for me that means light and warm. I have a pretty spectacularly bad case of Reynaud's syndrome; warmth is vital. I also still need a space to store 'garage' type stuff -- the shop vac, my bicycle, and tools (mostly hand tools or small power tools at this point, though I'd dearly love a chop saw).
I'm going to try to write this in order, but since all the issues are interrelated that's a bit difficult.
My original plan was to wire, heat, and insulate the garage, and use it as my studio. Simple, right? But if you're me and you take a year to empty the garage of crap and another two to get all the old drywall off (because I was busy doing other things, not because I'm taking it off with an X-acto knife or something -- it was really only a few days worth of work) then you have time to over-plan and worry and come up with all sorts of issues and contingencies.
The design problem is the balance between light, heat, and privacy. I need natural light or I won't want to be in the room and I need heat or I won't be physically capable of working in the room. The north wall faces the Nasty Neighbor, who's a rotten piece of work, and the nasty fence between us, which is also a rotten piece of work. Still, I want light, so large windows, not just clerestory windows, seem in order. The current idea is 3 or 4 two-foot wide windows that start about waist high, end near the ceiling, and have sheer curtains or shades.
There's no way I'm leaving the overhead garage door. It takes up head-space, it's creaky, and it's nigh impossible to insulate effectively. I really don't like the idea of framing the space in as a wall with a person-door in it; I've seen houses like mine where they went that route, and I think it makes confusion about which door is the 'front' door and looks tacked on. I'd prefer carriage doors with windows or french doors, which would let in the east light. My Awesome Neighbor* suggested three french-type doors, but with only one of them opening, which I think is an interesting idea (it's easier to seal against infiltration but has worse insulating properties of the door itself, compared to constructing insulated carriage doors. See why this is all so complex?).
My dad has been pushing the idea of a (potentially temporary) wall between the studio/office and the shop area, both for cleanliness and because it makes it easier to heat the studio. That's been the working plan for the past year or more, and it looks like this:
 |
| From House ideas |
The problem is that it means I don't get any of that yummy east light in the studio, unless I do something funky with the temporary wall (like put cheap windows in it, or make it a pony wall, at which point it isn't doing the insulating job anymore). The garage door faces east. I love east light; I adore it, I bask in it, it makes me happy. I really like the idea of having some 'shop' space, but I'm not so keen on dividing up space into weird little chunks (There's a secondary concern that weird space division is a negative point when selling, but that's why we're talking about making the wall temporary -- undo the bolts and poof, no more wall).
E said something negative about shutting off the light and breaking up the big space that really depressed/irritated me (mostly in a "couldn't you have mentioned that a year ago?" and "It's not your space!" kind of way), but after sleeping it over I came up with an idea that was more work AND had more potential than anything he'd suggested. Et Voila:
 |
| From House ideas |
The cool thing is that it would allow for easy future expansion of the (very cramped) kitchen (north into the laundry room space), and give me a bigger studio with east light and a view out to the road. The problematic thing is that it requires tearing down a wall, building a subfloor on the garage slab that matches the subfloor, tearing up the laundry room (which is where all the studio & shop stuff is 'temporarily' stored), and reflooring/redry-walling-ing the laundry room. That's a rather bigger project than I had planned.
I'm not sure I can feasibly DO that, and I'm not sure if it's really a better plan even if I can. Or rather, I think it's a better plan, but is it enough better to be worth tearing out an extra wall, ripping up the laundry room floor, figuring out something to do with the washer-and-dryer while the floor is ripped up, etc? Do I have the money to do it (hell, do I have the money to do the first plan? Is the second plan actually much more money? It may not be). I may well never have the money for the kitchen, as much as I want to fix it -- if that's the case, what use is planned expansion?
Dad told me today that I needed to stop feeling down about it and get back to a place where planning was fun, and stop being upset that I had options when some people have none. But knowing that I have it good compared to others doesn't make me feel more motivated; it just makes me feel guilty, less deserving of having the options I have, and more incapable of trusting my own judgement.
Update! In the three hours since I started this post, I think I may have figured out what to do. It all depends on making the front door good enough, really. If I leave the whole garage as one room for the moment (phase one), use a lot of glass in the doors, and use clerestory windows to the north with a gap where the wall would be in phase two... that might work, and be less expensive than larger windows at the outset.
I'm sure I'll come up with a reason why this plan is worthless in ten minutes, but there ya go.
*Awesome Neighbor shares a fence line with Nasty Neighbor, but Awesome Neighbor went to architecture school with my uncle in Oregon, and so had been a family friend for years, and lets my borrow his tools, mower, and expertise regularly. The only charge is letting him talk my ear off. :)