a little do it yourself

i love architecture. i always have. i have a dozen or so pretend houses in my head at any given time, a habit i formed by the time i was in kindergarten. my first serious pretend house, that i worked on from about age 6 to 8, was 3 or 4 stories tall and the front was a huge glass atrium with stone floors, a babbling brook, a bridge to the front door, and balconies across each floor overlooking it all. now that i have grown up, i realize that house would be the temperature of an easy-bake oven in the summer, impossible to heat in the winter and the babbling brook would most likely smell like an indoor public pool. live and learn. these days i draw multiple re-designs of the houses i live in using the existing footprint. sometimes with additions, sometimes not. these drawings are from my last house using the existing footprint with a garage addition. it is 3500 sq feet of stone and shake with copper flashing, eyelid dormers and a glass roofed conservatory room. it is sooo pretty in my head, planned out to the last hinge and doorknob. maybe someday i will get to bring one into the world just the way i see it.
p.s. in real life this footprint belongs to a 1952 flat roofed attempt at mid century modern. (yes, a flat roof in new hampshire and yes, it leaked when we bought it but not after we reinforced the seams and no, i never shoveled the snow off it).