Garrison Colonial, Facade Renovation

Featured throughout this website, the owners skipped Model Home Drawing so far, except for this look at the front facade of this Garrison Colonial where there renovations galore. Later on, we might do something else on the backside, once we're settled on more specifics about the build out. . . that's a ways off right now. If you looked quickly at these Garrison Colonial home plans, you might mistake this work for small home building plans — the footprint to start with is about 480 square feet (which you can double for interior area given the two-story structure). But that footprint won't look like small home plans in-the-making once we add a foyer for 30 sq. ft., the outcome of the room addition building plans to the backside for another 640 sq. ft., and, quite likely in the longer term, another 800 square feet of footprint alone for a prospective garage building plan covering two-stories — half of which could be inhabitable space.

You can see the front facade renovations in the following series of pictures of "before" and "after" in 2D and 3d CAD home design. These Model Home Drawing are as far as the homeowners needed to go in order to be satisfied with the work planned. The effective purpose of these CAD design home drawings has been to get a perspective on the impact of different renovations to the front facade — foyer, new windows, new front decking, window boxes, etc. While we have drawn a lot of variations — window size and type, deck configuration, etc. — here we'll show you last or latest shots, and allude to how and why we got there.

Also, you will not see some elements of the home at all, either before or after, in early-on CAD home drawing. For example, the existing, chased chimney is omitted. As is the new one. So is any CAD home drawing of the left exterior elevation, visible as a blank wall in the perspectives.

A two-story entrance foyer extension with a large, single-swing door and sidelights, plus a gable-end roof line.

Larger windows on the upper floor to match with the lower floor's to the left side of the entry.

A large window (bay, bow, or picture) to the right of the entry (probably shuttered, too, once the owners study this home drawing, making the point of a Model home drawing's efficacy; namely, that in this instance, the big window initially chosen for this home drawing was just a little too wide to accommodate the shutter width shown on the rest of the front face; and, if anything, this bigger window's shutters must be no narrower than the rest on the front face . . . so, in went a slightly narrower window of size.

First, a 2D home design elevation of the front-face and a left front perspective in 3d home design from a "before" vantage. In the 2D home design version, the squiggly line to the lower right is a rough approximation of the grade. (Autocad Granddad has yet to be satisfied with more picturesque modelings of terra firma.) As well, you can still make out a few of the Concept home drawing's rear build out posts. Finally, you can see that progress on the backside build out is still early on (though in just a bit you'll see it's more advanced than drawn here).

You can see some challenges with exterior design from either of this home drawing. Overall, the physically advanced upper floor, for lack of alternative attractions to the eye, almost inspires a fight-or-flee sensibility. The steep, high grade to the right and its resultant cover-up of lower-floor home designing opportunity on the right sets the home front out of balance. Add to that offset the off-center front entry and deck, and the home looks tipsy, imbalanced, left-heavy. (Including the undrawn chimney chase on the east end of the existing home compensates some, but doesn't fully rebalance the front face.)

Lastly, a 2D and 3d home design view of the after version — this time in color. (Definitely, shutter the bay window.)

(Billable time to consult and draw this home drawing to this point — about 20 hours (the deck, alone, a third of that time).

As to further develop our perspective on this build out, the Autocad Granddad adds the chimney chase. Without it, it appears too tough for us to visualize how well the front face balances out. Right now, the face looks left-heavy — bigger windows, bigger shutters, bigger deck entry, bigger stairs to the entry. All left (except the big window). And, though the foyer is right-of-center, it's not enough to balance out the visual weightiness leftward. We reckon that the chase will pick up some of that slack, and so will the window to the right of the foyer. We also reckon that the rightmost window could just as well be a picture window. The depth of a bow or bay is lost viewing straight-on and obscured from the left approach by the foyer. In fact, there is no right-side approach to this real property. Cost control and relative ease of installation favor the picture window, too. (This design viewpoint in neutrality as between picture, bay, and bow vanished once the Autocad Granddad drawn in the bay window's build out at the foot and crown. Big deal. Then, the bay ruled.)

The chase is not enough. We'll have to plant that right side to add still more visual weight. Perhaps, clad on the exposed foundation below the big window will help, too. Maybe even enlarge that little window to the right of the decking.

Even including the niches either side of the chase, it's still could be light on the right. And the niches themselves pose close attention. What we're after is to visually widen the interior width of the room one wall of which contains the big window on the right facing. And give the room some added character. Provisionally, we've chosen to build niches on either side of the fireplace, or the fireplace chase — depending on your perspective.

Home drawing these niches can be a real pain. The AG already lost the first set of detailed measurements and home drawing from scratch. Screwing it up again is not in the AG's book of work rules. So, he went back to the owners with this little message in a bottle . . .

Related topics include: How do you want to trim the niches on the interior wall? How could the final trim of the mantel affect placement of niche trim, and, therewith, the niches themselves? Does the chase exterior get trimmed differently, now that we're aiming for a cottage look? (For example, I beefed up the width and coverage of the chase trim boards on the Autocad 2006 home drawing, and it looks better to my eyes. Exterior trim alteration to the chase may influence the way we build the niches, particularly in regard to depth, wherein would that we set the niche depth at less than chase depth by, say, a foot, then we could double the road-facing trim on the chase — one line on the outside edge and one on the inside as it abuts the niche .... a distinctly heavier visualization.) Is the pitch of the niches' rooflines a matter for our home design interest, as that pitch may influence the height of the niches' interiors? Do we want natural light in the niches? Etc.

All is settled, and then some. From left to right: 1) add a window to left front corner to cross-vent the then second-floor corner room, and set that window as large as the two others on the same floor at the front face; 2) all the shutters will be paneled; 3) the second-floor double-hung windows will be Pella PTD 3365 at 2'-9"x 5'-5" unit dimension (not RO which in this unit and the next are 3/4" larger in width and height) and on the first floor will be Pella PTD3357 at 2'-9"x4'-9" (meaning the windows on the second floor will clear the siding at the same 2'-0" that the first-floor windows currently clear); 4) the big window will be Pella's largest 45-degree bay with double-hungs PTD596529B at 8'-9 5/8"x5'-6 1/2" (again, unit dimensions, not RO which is 8'-10 3/8 x 5'-7 1/4"); 5) the niches will clear the interior floor at window sill height with doored cabinets below and an interior opening above of 3'x2'x4' apx.; 6) the niches will be trimmed with Howe casing as elsewhere and stand no more than a foot off the redesigned fireplace mantel.

All these changes are reflected in the two pictures to follow. First, we'll look at a 2D home design front face to get a feel for curb appeal to the Garrison Colonials front facade renovations, in elevation.

Notice that the balance either side of the foyer is much improved. Sure, the chase helps, even as does the barely sketched-in niche on the right. The AG thinks that what makes this face look so much improved is the larger height of the second-floor windows overall, and their shutters, plus the humongous bay.

Talkin' about a revolution. From where we started, this is a different home front. And you can see in the backside wire frame just how major this remodeling job is getting to be. Oh, happy day!

The big bay window went in this past weekend. Mother! Pella makes an ok window. But – you pay a lot – about $1500; we got fer shissen tech advise on even how the window is built; delivery times were totally screwed up (which wears quickly when the crew sits and waits and waits some more . . . . and finally goes home); installation instructions should have preceded this delivery by days and days, as the only by-the-book install of this monster if you're going under a soffit is to cut out the soffit first!; then again, the installation instructions were so poor, maybe it would not have mattered; a couple of crucial gadgets that come with the unit failed on their first test; and the outset of this big bad boy (i.e., the front-to-back depth, notably the horizontal extension of the bay past the exterior wall) was completely blown in the tech specs — by damned near 50%!, forcing a major rework of how to deal with topping the bay, not with the existing soffit, but now its own roof! It took all the AG's years of building experience to get this behemoth in the R.O. safely, and a lot of follow-up time to get the mini-roof right.

The Autocad Granddad bought Peachtree products for years, until they once stuck it to the old boy bigtime. Andersen still makes the best windows and doors in their painfully arrogant and non-customer focused way. While Pella's been suitable lately for the AG, it'll be a long, long time before he goes anywhere near 'em again.

We're rounding the last corner or two on the front facelift. As planned. While there's still plenty of skilled labor between new and the day the front it done, it's time to reckon with the backside of this build out next, before the serious interior work begin. This reckoning will be in the form of a separate case study, since it has the makings of a very different set of constraints and imperatives in home design and home building. There is a bit of modeling work to be done before Builder Plans.

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