Our current house is 1300 sf. It was 1200 when we bought it, and had obviously been enlarged twice. We added a mudroom/pantry at the back door - both for serious food storage, because both of us believe in canning and cooking, but also so the person at the stove didn't get nailed by the back door. We think we need to add another 400 sf of master suite on the back, because the current master bedroom is huge and public and would make a better living room. Then I could move my office off the sunporch and into the current tiny living room, and keep garden stuff in the sunroom. And the new master suite would have standalone AC for after hurricanes.
However, I've been rethinking all this, after devising the following Replacement House. Since we live less than a half-mile from the Gulf of Mexico, if a Katrina storm came here, we'd certainly flood out. So I worry about flood insurance, and how far that would go, and what sort of house would we want to put back. I don't want a big house, I don't want to pay for a big house, I don't want the carbon footprint of a big house, and I certainly don't want to CLEAN a big house. However, it should have:
A big sunny room to have meetings/do large projects in. It needs to
have a kitchen on one end. And a big deconstructable table. Enough
wall space for tack boards, and lots of bookshelves for books, storage
for project and office materials, ways to hang large paintings or
skeins of yarn, like from beams overhead. The movie setup. This room
will serve as my office space, and my project space, and space for me
to host groups, and space for Daan to host groups. (Most of his life
is not at home.)
Sleeping space for us that is acoustically isolated from the meeting
room. As small as possible, but yet managing to accommodate my strange
occasional middle-of-the-night barfing, so no ladders, or clambering
out of cupboard beds - as much as I love them. (TMI? Daan says it's
just another way I resemble a cat.)
Laundry and clothes storage. I like having the laundry machines
inside - it's easier to keep up with the laundry's progress, and thus
actually MAKE progress. Daan has a significant clothes storage need.
I have a need for him to dump his clothes in the place where they
belong - not the bedroom, not the bathroom, not the living room. The
floor of the laundry is fine. So we need a Laundry/Dressing Room.
Accessible from our bathroom, and Not Accessible from the rest of the
house.
Our bathroom. This requires two parts: a Dry area, which has vanity
and mirror and drug/makeup/jewelry storage, and a Wet area, with a
large shower and bath. We like a separate toilet room, and would like
to look into a composting toilet. I have ideas of putting shower and
bath together in one big wet area, that's closed off with aluminum
sliding glass patio doors. I don't have any problem sharing this bath
area - though the Dry area I wouldn't want to share.
Somewhere for guests to sleep and change clothes.
Cat quarters - featuring sunny nap space, preferably in a high
place, and with connection to catboxes, and storage for food and dishes.
And I like screened porches. Perhaps I'll add another one out the
rear, if we ever get to build this. That would solve the problem of
the Very Private Pool Access.
So here's the basic plan. (Click Download ReplacementHouse.pdf
to see it bigger.) I've made a few variations on the way the garage/driveway would work, but I like something like this best - which puts the brick driveway occupying a good deal of the front yard. This is good, because the south exposure is too intense for gardening, that's where the big trees go to shade the roof, and it frees up the east side, which is the best garden side.
So I'm not scared of hurricanes any more. Just need to refine my car packing strategies.