Floor Plan... Take 2!

After meeting with a family friend, a local architect, a little over a week ago, our design completely morphed into our dream Earthship!  He made a number of amazing suggestions; all of which we took and used to create this new and improved floor plan of our future Earthship home.

Some of the biggest changes are as follows:

1. We no longer have a circular 2nd bath in the front of the house.  We wanted to have a unique aesthetic detail to our home and maintained this with the addition of a craft and play room to the main living space.  The internal curvature of the room will be made entirely from bottle bricks; thus, giving it the effect of stained glass when illuminated from the inside.  The south facing side of the room will be covered in windows to aid in passively heating our space.
2. We now have an entry-way to aid in keeping heat from leaving our home upon entering.  This space will also serve to drop off shoes and coats and will be encased in windows as well.
3. All the bedrooms have moved to the front of the house so that we can enjoy the light that the south-facing window front has to offer (Note: Yes, we will have window coverings so that peeping toms will be kept at bay... unless we are feeling saucy!  Though, I'm fairly certain the only living creatures that would be peeping on us would be raccoon, deer, foxes, etc.).  Also, this allows us to more easily be up to code as each bedroom needs to have an additional egress in case of a fire.  
• Each bedroom now has a wall that serves to mark where a walk-in style closet will be for extra storage and the bedroom square-footage has decreased a bit to accommodate for this. We  feel that bedrooms in traditional homes are far too large and would hope that a cozier bedroom will encourage our Elliot (and any future kids) to spend most of their time in the main living space with family.
• Our bedroom now has an exit onto a private patio area which also acts as a second entrance into the home... so excited about this change!!!
• The third bedroom is now an open den/office area that can be converted into a third bedroom should we have another child in the future... but for now, it will act as a quieter living space with a planter spanning the entire front of the room!
• Both bedrooms have planters now.  We are excited to see what Elliot will choose to grow in his planter in years to come and feel this will be a neat opportunity to teach him how gratifying it can be to grow and take care of his own plants/flowers/veggies.  Although, if he finds this lame, he can just have fun playing in the dirt... that's okay too :).
4. We now have a lot more dedicated storage space in the back of the house that will be much appreciated, I'm sure, as there isn't exactly any basement or attic space in this type of home.
5. There is an additional sink room attached to the bathroom so that if someone is using the main bathroom, others can still get ready with ease.
6. The kitchen is now larger and has two half walls; one looking into the living room and the other looking into the dining room.  This open concept falls perfectly in line with one of the goals of building the Earthship in the first place... it encourages all the inhabitants to co-mingle and interact with one another.
7. The last change is that the root cellar and pantry off the kitchen has been divided into two rooms; one for the utilities and the other as a dedicated root cellar and pantry.  

Overall, we dropped a couple hundred square feet off the total design while maximizing the overall living space!!!  We are so thrilled with the changes that were suggested by our family friend and have sent him a copy of the changes we made to see if he has any more suggestions before we pass it along to someone to sign off on prior to submitting our building permit application.

New and improved Earthship design!

As a mental health status update, both Zac and I are already questioning our sanity in tackling this project but are emboldened by how much we have learned about ourselves so early on in this process.  We never realized just how much we were capable of and have been pushed to our limits as a family already... we are much stronger than we ever thought!!!  This life is far too short not to chase something we are passionate about.  It has taken having Elliot (and perhaps having a bit of a quarter life crisis) that has us both realizing that we only get one shot at living a life we are proud of.  We choose not to go with the status quo and know that all of our hard work will pay off in the future.