Updated floorplans and elevations!

These actually have measurements on them! And by request of my architect, I toned down the colors a bit :-), so it will be more of this dark slate colored concrete (believe it or not, it looks beautiful in reality with the wood and stone accents). Actually, we will not treat or paint the stucco so the concrete will be its natural color.

I've included a description of our plans to give you the background of why we designed it the way it is. A lot of it is for practical reasons!

SITE PLAN
Here's the site plan of our 3 acre, Hill Country lot, 8 miles W past Bee Cave on 71W. We're practically Willie Nelson's neighbor :-).



FIRST FLOOR PLAN
Downstairs features a guest bedroom almost completely separate from the rest of the house. We did this on purpose, as this would be convenient for my elderly parents (no climbing of stairs). Whenever guests stay over, they have a more private area and a beautiful patio area where they can sunbathe nude if they want to :-D (there are big bushy trees surrounding the guest patio). The living room is open to above and has an open layout, combining the living, dining, breakfast nook and kitchen. We wanted to avoid walls, as I don't like having a very compartmentalized house. Also, we used a spiral stair to conserve space for a stairwell. The kitchen will be made of IKEA cabinets and have a hidden large pantry to hide ugly appliances. We will have only drawers there, as cabinets are impractical (ever try to get something at the back of a cabinet?). One amazing experience, as Ted calls it, is that when you look down the countertop, it goes from inside to out in one continuous countertop material (probably concrete). There is an exit to this floor in the mudroom that leads to the separate garage port. Our utility room is very large to accomodate for the geothermal system and a laundry room with Jan's little private "dirty" work area and my work storage. Our chem-free, Eco-Smarte swimming pool is made out of fiberglass for low maintenance and will be 16' wide by 40' long. I intend to use it a lot for exercise and cooling myself off in this heat! Notice that the green area is how the 2nd story is placed above the first story.

SECOND FLOOR PLAN
One of our wishes was to open the door to an indoor balcony, and this moderately sloping lot calls for a catwalk to lead into the 2nd story of our house. When you open the door you are lead to the indoor balcony that overlooks our open living room. When you look to your left, you will be greeted by our roof garden where we'll grow lots of organic vegetables and herbs. Our masterbedroom is modest sized, but has a parting divider to our master bath (the wall doesn't go all the way up to the ceiling, and is only 90% up). We plan to have all showers in the guest bathrooms (who uses those rinky dink tubs that get so filthy anyway?) and in our master bath, we want to do a "slate" tiled shower/japanese style soaking tub. There will be sliding doors to the 2nd bedroom for when a little one comes and we can opt to remove the door and make it into a separate room. The exercise (or bedroom 3) and office (or common area) are separated by a chic sliding door wall divider. The remarkable part of this 2nd story are the two balconies, both north and south that are nice when you want to get some fresh air.


SOUTH ELEVATION
The catwalk leads to the 2nd story of our house (see purple door) and you see a view of the master bedroom's balcony.

WEST ELEVATION
Here you see the side of the house where the roof garden is located and a large trellis where the guest suite's private patio is. Feels like a B&B. :-)

NORTH ELEVATION
Here's the back side of the house where you see the 2nd story overhang the pool lounge area. The balcony shown on the 2nd floor here belongs to the common area/office.
EAST ELEVATION
Here's the other side of the house which shows the side where the swimming pool and pool lounge are under the 2nd story overhang of the house.


The exterior uses stucco, wood siding and gabion walls (wire baskets that contain stone). This style is called a Hill Country Contemporary home, which is beautiful against the landscape of the surrounding area. Here's a pic of a gabion wall with bench. I like this idea a lot: