Design Decisions

In this post I will discuss where I am up to with my thoughts on what I am actually going to do with all the rooms in the School, all 16 of them.

The process started immediately we flew back from Bulgaria having viewed the school; it was pretty obvious that, price dependent, we would want to buy it so the first thing J did was write down a list of all the things that we could possibly want to have in a 16 room mansion.

A list of possible room uses

It turns out it is not that difficult to make up usages for rooms and, as you can see from the list above, there actually weren't enough rooms for all the things that we wanted. Hmmmm.

Having a list of potential room uses is all well and good but really I needed to have a floor plan; E was fantastic once again and took Bekir and Sally (the two experts who will hopefully be doing my roof) across to the School to get a quote for that work, also doing some basic measurements of each room. She sent me this as a total floor plan and numbered each room off. This is where the "Room 13" appellation came from.

The floor plan which E drew for me

From this plan I sketched some notes and thought about the practicalities of this kind of a building.

My main concern was for warmth; during the winters (which get down to about -15 sometimes) I would want to have a "winter apartment" which was heated which I could keep completely self contained so I never had to go out of the heated zone to reach each room.

After a few thoughts my plan resolved as such: my heated zone would consist of rooms 5, 7, the corridor past 7, 15 and a new room at the end of 16. The other rooms being put into immediate use will be 8, 9 and 10. I would be putting a garage door in the external wall of room 8 which would allow the trucks which bring wood to back right up to the store room.

The main issue with this plan is I would have to put a stairway in from room 5 (kitchen) up to room 15 (living room) so that I could get from the bedroom (room 17 - not on the plans but at the end of room 16) down to the toilet (one of the little rooms in 7) without leaving the heated zone.

The view from room 17 - the bedroom

This gives me a target to aim at for the first year; I would be best getting this apartment close to completion before winter, definitely with heating, windows and doors all done and flooring down if not wall papered and painted as I can do that while I am snowed in.

Once I had decided on this I transferred the plan E drew into some floor plan software as an experiment, mainly, but also to capture the thoughts I had developed (including for a guest bedroom as part of the warmed zone by splitting up room 14.

The floor plan I drew on Sweet Home 3D

I will leave this post here now and will post updates as new blogs as things change. I am now waiting for the architect to provide their professional opinion (and yes I did give them a print out of my design hah) and to be advised on how to do the new stairway.