Wow, 110 days!

It's amazing to think about how quickly time is dripping by now that we have passed the 6 month countdown. We're already early into March and before we know it'll be April, May, and then DA DA -- JUNE! Of course, planning for the wedding is going to speed up the next couple months considerably as we begin to make preparations and take care of all the "decision making" of details.

I have a tendency to "future trip" and I also really enjoy making house plans. While I do not possess any CAD abilities to draft actual blueprints, I do use a cool program called SmartDraw to create house layouts with basic dimensions. It has the ability do electrical and plumbing schematics, as well as irrigation systems but I don't know enough about that to effectively use them. BUT! I have worked long and hard on several designs for our future "homestead"which will utilize alternative building supplies such as tire bales, straw bale, even shipping containers! Experimenting and researching the benefits and deficiencies of the building materials has been an ongoing process -- and will continue -- but I have drafted a house layout that we are definitely liking as a real potential for our dream homestead. It also has the ability to be built in phases which is important when you are "paying as you go," which we also intend to do to avoid the ridiculous black hole of mortgages, interest, and big banks. It takes longer and more work but when you consider that the savings can average at well over $100,000.... well, bring it!

Click on the thumbnail to open it in Flickr.

I'll outline the details of the house plan:

A 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bathroom home with a semi-attached 2 car garage with above 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom apartment.

The garage apartment will be constructed from a 2x2 structure of shipping containers which will be 16 x 40 space of two floors. On the bottom floor is a two-car garage and a workshop which can be used for processing pet food as part of our raw food business plan. This can also be built as phase one, creating a living space and workspace while working on the main structure. The shipping container model also will make it relatively quick to construct and will make an excellent guest house space. Or for our kids when they come home from college during the summers.

The main house has three bedrooms featuring two master suites and a half bath for guests. There's a library/office room for our love of massive quantities of books. We would also like to have a "homestead library" for those in the community who want to check out books about alternative building, canning, sustainable living, etc. A unique aspect of the rooms are the murphy beds. If we intend on using straw bales and/or tires for our interior walls, they are deep enough to contain recessed beds -- also known as murphy beds. This is an attractive way to store the beds and create more space in the rooms.

Another special feature that we are especially passionate about are built-in fish tanks. I've featured a couple of them in the house. Whitney and I both love fish and they create a calming atmosphere in any situation.

The house also has a walk-in pantry, walk-in storage closet, and a utility room. There's a formal dining room for entertaining and an upstairs loft. The loft features two game tables (we love pool) and another murphy bed for guests.

Okay so basically this is a big ass house but it has everything we could possibly want and hey, I like to shoot big and for the ideal!