The restoration/ rehabilitation of the house is just the beginning. It is the most extensive single phase of the plan but after the house is complete there is still much to be done. These images are snapshots of a 3D model I drew in a program called Sketchup. The first image shows the buildings on the site plan, the 3/4's of an acre. I purposely omitted surrounding lands and trees to focus specifically on the land parameters and the buildings themselves. There will be a total of five buildings. The largest mass is the house. The outhouse will remain and be restored. The garage at the road will get completely rebuilt to a new design, a storage shed will go by the old barn foundation, and there will be a small well house in the west yard.
This is as if you were standing by the woods looking across the field to the buildings with the house in the middle. From left, the gateposts signal where the new driveway is. These are actually for safety. I believe that the driveway will be hard to find, especially at night, since it slopes down away from the road. The near side of the garage has an exterior covered alcove that will house the recycle and garbage bins. The garage is actualy sized to actually fit a vehicle. The existing garage is 14x16 feet. The new garage, roughly in the same position, will be 16x24, almost twice the size of the original.
This would be the view looking from the trail
In the foreground is the well house
The road side of the new garage. The dormer is a door at the top of the hill, with a few steps inside to get to the loft. By putting the entry to the loft at this end of the building, it eliminates the need to make the garage bigger to accommodate an interior stair from floor to floor.
The loft will eventually be my studio, and every studios needs a large north facing window, so I've put an oversized window like the attic window in Jimmy Smith's house in the loft that will overlook the property. Below is a 20 year old photo I took of Jimmy Smith's showing the window I am emulating.
Below is the shed that will store the bikes, barbeque, lawnmower and stuff like that. Building this and restoring the outhouse will be phase 2, once the house is done. The garage will be phase 3 and the well house is phase 4. My goal at this point is to have it all done by 2015.
The steps to the road at the front will remain but I'll have to raise them. The steps will get a gate with a lamppost in the hedge along the road.
Aerial view
Lampposts at the new driveway
It will take years to get all of this done, and the plan will no doubt evolve over time, but ya gotta have a plan and a strategy, then getting it done is the easy part.
