The Prairie Experiment

This house design began as an experiment. I started the design process by envisioning some very general, basic room layouts, using "room boxes". So, what are room boxes? Well, room boxes are these things:

First Floor room boxes

Second Floor Room Boxes

"Room boxes" help you decide things like:

• How many rooms? How many bedrooms, bathrooms, etc.
• What kinds of rooms? Do you want a laundry room? Two or three car garage? Deck, porch, patio?
• Do you want a second floor?
• How do you want the rooms organized? What rooms should be next to each other, and which ones do you want as far apart as possible?
• What is the basic shape of your house?
• What are the basic dimensions of the various rooms?

Of course, with a generalized tool such as the room box generator, you don't have to be very exact. In fact, just get the general idea of what things look like, and generate a basic floor plan. Of course, nothing ever stays the same. As they say, "No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy." While the first floor plan hasn't changed, much, (except to shuffle walls around), the second floor plan got considerably smaller. Final floor plans are below.

I experimented with several different roof designs. Unfortunately, I don't have all of them documented (because, you know, it didn't become an official "experiment" until several iterations had gone by the wayside). Below is the last iteration of "Prairie 2" before I made it into "Prairie 3" and started really mucking around with the roof line.

"Prairie 2" Roof Design

Pretty boring, huh? Yeah, that's what I thought. I had this thing about giving the master bedroom a cathedral ceiling under that sloping roof (on the left side of the house, front), but since there wasn't a way to give the whole master bedroom a high, sloping ceiling, I eventually discarded it. Below is the last iteration of "Prairie 3".

"Prairie 3" Facade/Roof Design

I like the brick facing, somewhat, and probably will visit it again. But ... I changed my mind and decided to keep the façade "clean and smooth", so I discarded the vertical siding and the brick, and went with a brown stucco and the pinkish stucco quoins on all the corners. (A quoin is/are those bands at the wall corners. There are various ways to configure them. I chose a regular, uniform look.) Below is the final version, the one I call 3A.

The Front

The Rear

This is a side view showing the garage and a suggested layout for the driveway. I placed yard lights alongside the driveway, more just to see how they would look at night. Pretty good, they look.

This is the rear view from the other side of the house.

Same view, at night. I do like night shots.

This is the front, from the side of the house. A good image, because it shows the general roof flow and the vertical wall corners.

Same shot, different time of day.

The garage, all lit up.

I think this is a slightly different front view, and shown at night.

This is the second floor deck, showing the layout of the chimney and the door to the upstairs hall. That's a storage closet on the left. A place to keep chairs, tables, etc., when the weather isn't so harmonious.

The deck, again, looking into the back yard.

Here is the requisite shot from inside the front door.

The living room, looking back toward the family room.

From the family room looking forward toward the front door and the living room.

The hallway toward the kitchen and dining. This view also shows the stairwell.

The kitchen has a nice, angled island. It could be an eat-in kitchen bar, if we wanted. In fact, that would work well. That's the door to the garage on the left.

The dining room, and my favorite built-in cabinets. Why not?

This looks toward the sliding glass doors to the back porch. That's the half bath door, on the right. The laundry room is next to it.

And now we look back toward the family room, from the kitchen. That's the master bedroom door in the distance.

There's a bedroom upstairs that backs onto the chimney. I think it's a nice touch to have the chimney show.

This shows the chimney arrangement, while standing on the landing of the stairs.

The upstairs bath. I wanted to show the details around the tub, and the window(s). You can't see the window behind the toilet.