"Tate Residence"- our house plan

I never thought I would ever build a house.  Especially not at the age of 27!  It is a complete dream come true and I feel so blessed, but there is one down fall- the options are endless!  It is so much easier to decide on things you don't like when you are searching for an existing home, but when you have no restrictions (besides budget), creating a clear vision is a struggle.   There are many styles of homes; on the West Coast you are more apt to find Craftsmans, Bungalows and Mid Century modern homes.  The Mid West has Puebelo and Santa Fe style homes.  In the South where we used to live the homes have a French Country style to them (and no basements!).   Here is our home in Louisiana.  I will do a separate blog post of the before and afters, we only lived in this house one year and one day, but we loved every second of fixing it up!!!!

Now back to our East Coast house plan, we worked with a well known Philadelphia Mainline Architect firm McIntyre Capron.   We told our Architect what we were looking for; number of bedrooms, bathrooms, layout etc.  I really wanted 11 foot ceilings throughout which is what we had in Louisiana.  Since this was going to be a two story home I had to give up my high ceilings.  Instead we compromised on 9 foot ceilings throughout and 12 foot ceilings in the family room and morning room.  At least I will have somewhere to put my Christmas tree!  Another thing both Andy and I loved was a Center Hall layout.  We spent our Sundays going to open houses to figure out what layout we liked best (Dr. Andy and his young trophy wife were our open house persona's, ha) and every time we walked through the front door of a Center Hall it would take our breath away, yes I am dramatic. 

Based on our list of wants and must have's our Architect gave us 10 or so house plans to look at.  We picked the house plan that would allow for the 12 foot ceilings, had a center hall stair and had the best kitchen! We made a few tweaks here and there by bumping out the family room and mudroom but in the end I think it will be perfect.  It is a little scary to build a house off of what you only see on paper!  

Speaking of a house on paper- here is the first floor layout

Unlike my husband, these drawings still look completely foreign to me, even after months of looking at them.  Here is a breakdown of the first floor, described as if you were walking through the front door;

Center hall foyer, stairs are directly in front of you, the formal living room and study is on the left, and the dining room on the right, walk through the foyer, there will be double doors leading to the out door space and a powder room on the left along with another entrance into the study, an entrance into the kitchen is on the right.  The kitchen has a 10x4 island, I am crazy excited about this, it might be my favorite part of the house!  The kitchen is open to the morning room and family room.  There is a side entrance along with a 3 car garage which is connected to a mud room and has a back stair up to the second floor.  

Second floor layout...

Andy wanted his mother who will be visiting from Louisiana to have her own room and bathroom so there is a princess suite.  We also have 2 other bedrooms that have a Jack and Jill bathroom.  The master bedroom has a sitting room, his and her closets and his and her vanities.  Although I am contemplating making that a hers and hers vanity with Andy getting just one sink :).  The second floor also has a laundry room.  No more carrying laundry up 3 flights of steps! 

In total our house will be 4,133 square feet, 4 bedrooms 3.5 bathrooms, we might add another powder room but that hasn't been officially decided yet.

Once we had the layout finalized, the next step was to pick the elevation (what the exterior will look like).  I wanted to stay true to the geographical location we are in.  There are lovely old historic farm houses and colonial homes which inspired our decision to go with a stone Georgian elevation.  We really feel this is a classic and timeless design for the Philadelphia suburbs.

Every time I see "Tate Residence" it cracks me up, it seems so legit and professional.  In reality we are just two crazy kids, living with my parents trying to make a dream come true.