Where to Start

Well, neither dh nor I are capable of designing a home, and the lot is so small that it's not possible to buy someone else's plans and adapt them to our space, so we needed to hire architects to design our house for us.

Luckily, J found a design team that we think are going to be terrific. They have designed a number of eco-friendly homes already, and yet they are a young couple with lots of enthusiasm for good planning and the challenges of building a home that will suit our family's needs and energy. The company is called Solares. J and I think the designers are very intelligent and they seem to be excellent listeners, which is very important. They also seem to really understand what our priorities are for the house, starting with the need to be practical and user-friendly, and ending with family-focused.

We first had a couple of meetings with them, to determine whether or not we suited each other as architects and clients, and to ask questions about the project, on both sides. After we decided to go ahead with the project, they gave us a bunch of homework! The work was about 2 pages of questions, which in John's case morphed into a 9 page essay (to be fair, he included a bunch of photographs in the 9 pages), and in my case it turned into 7 pages plus photos. Both kids had to answer their questions as well, and C had fun choosing the photographs she liked best from style magazines. If her bedroom doesn't end up purple I'll be very surprised!

The homework was designed for C and T (the architects) to get a feel for our family's needs, wants, lifestyle, etc. I think we all got a kick out of imagining a day at home, five years into the future -- although it made me laugh when I read that John had included a dog in his future, whereas I had specifically said we are not getting a dog, regardless of what John said, so don't even think about it!

The main words I wanted included in the approach are: unpretentious, practical, efficient, intelligent, organized, colourful, simple, comfortable. We'll see what they come up with and how it fits with this vocabulary!