I know from experience that after the return trip from Asia it is tough to adjust to the time change so I think John deserves a day off.

It is quite obvious from yesterday’s submissions that most people here are interested in completely redesigning the WWWTH project. That is fine but, IMO, it misses the point of the exercise. Maybe the problem is that most contributors here have seen enough floor plans to know the good and the bad.

I have always approach this segment like Mike Holmes – what can we do to “make it right”? And I add within reason. I also assume the house exists and someone is living in it. How can I spend 20-30K and improve this house? Maybe I am missing the point….

While it’s true that no one submitted a marked-up plan analyzing this house yesterday, I thought there was some good commentary (thanks to Doug, Louis, Terri, and MJ) that pretty thoroughly described “what’s wrong with this house.” John’s day-two video provided additional, professional insight that I found helpful and interesting. By all means, let’s do a full analysis of what’s wrong (and right) with the given plan.

So, what then? I often can’t stop myself from taking the next steps – big or small – and developing whatever potential the plan has to becoming a more life-giving space.

Obviously, there are many delimiting considerations – budget, bylaws, strata rules, architectural style, orientation to sun and street, ethics, lifestyle, etc. Some limitations are given in the brief or assignment, and many more are assumed.

But for me, the biggest limitation is my imagination. Given my lack of professional design education and experience, I get stuck in the regular ways of seeing problems and the regular ways of fixing them.

So I’m mining these exercises not just for the stated objectives but for the opportunity to grow my ability to adapt, explore, and invent. Maybe my vision is not always expressed in a clear or persuasive way, and maybe it would take a big, “unreasonable” budget to realize. But I’m good with that … as long as it doesn’t detract from anyone else’s experience of the site. When it does, let me know.

My thinking, sorry to be late on this, is why make freehold homes like this in the first place. I can see if the houses were 20 or 30 feet apart and the garage wasn’t such a big feature but here this is not the case. The garage, therefore the car, and convenient access to and from the home and the neighborhood are the most important feature.

So make them townhouses, a garage in the front with a front door. From the front door you go up the stairs and into the main living area or you stay on the entry level and access the garage and the space behind it. That space can be whatever you need it to be, laundry, recreation, sleeping, storage, anything. At least on the top floor you wouldn’t have a 35 or 40 foot wide garage blocking your sunlight.

As far as this homes environment, front yards are not important, so don’t waste the material or the space. Bring the houses together and maximize resources such as building materials, and increase population density.

I suppose if one or more of the residents had accessibility issues than having everything on one floor would be important but from the layout and what we discussed earlier this month this is not one of those cases.