The architect was here for about an hour, and was chock full of valuable information!
1) We will NOT be extending the TV room by five feet – he said we’d get no value back from that, even if we did put a guest bath on the second floor for the guest room. So we won’t be doing that at all.
2) He DID, however, agree that putting a private guest room bath over the garage on the front of the house WOULD be a good add to the house, and relatively “easy” to do. My only question: where do we put all the boxes we currently have stored in the garage attic space??????? *lol* We’ll definitely him him draw up those plans. I think we’d do well to have a 4 bed 3.5 bath house in this neighborhood. And our guests (few as they are) would appreciate not having to share a bathroom with our messy kids!!!
3) He spent the time getting our thoughts on what we wanted our kitchen to do/be when all was said and done. We definitely focused on STORAGE being the main issue. We told him the current “work triangle” is hopelessly bad. We told him the current pantry is an okay SIZE but the layout is horrible and we’d appreciate something a little more user-friendly. We told him we want to try to use as much of the new granite countertops as possible so that isn’t a wasted investment. He said that could definitely be done (which made me very happy). He pretty much said we’d have to count on getting all new cabinets, with which Denis and I are both okay. We told him along with the new work triangle we want new, wider double ovens and a better-placed stovetop range.
All in all he was a really nice guy and had a quiet, calm demeanor. I’ll probably be calling him on Monday to let him know we’d like him to come in ASAP and begin the measuring and whatnot to get some drawings for us. His quote was reasonable once he added in a discount for finding him on Angie’s List. He was also kind enough to give us an estimate on what he thought the addition would cost, but presumed we’d be paying $150/sq ft. There’s NO WAY we’re willing to pay $150/sq ft for ANY addition. We’re aiming for $100/sq ft – $110/sq ft at the most! We’re not made of money! *lol* I told Denis he probably quoted that because he’s used to working on high end homes, not cookie cutter homes.
He said he’ll come up with two sets of drawings so we’ll have two options to choose from, and then based on our feedback he’ll do a third drawing with our change requests. From there we’ll continue to finalize until we have exactly what we want. At that point he’ll create the final construction prints which we will then take the contractors to get THEIR bids. I’m hopeful that we’ll have final drawings by June, but we’ll see. Either way, it was a good meeting and I have a good feeling about this!!!