I would make all the changes you want. On my build, I went through four different versions of the floor plan, each with 35-40 changes each. This included small adjustments, like changing the size of a window, to significant ones, like moving stairs, walls, etc. My architect told me to really study the plans and suggest changes because this was my only opportunity to customize the house. My theory is that if you are going to live there, you need to be happy with your layout. Good luck.

You have better ideas for your home design than any architect does. Because you know how you want to live in it and what furnishings you want/or have. And you know your own taste better than any architect does.

Your architect will make sure that your design ideas can be turned into a building that will stand up, can have a reasonably attractive roof shape put on it, and will fit and your land without excess cost.

An architect, like anyone else for whom time is money, maximizes his profit by doing the least amount of work. Don't let that be your house. Don't let him blow you off. Ask him to sketch out, on scrap paper, how the shower and toilet drains would work. Then have him show you other bath configurations that would have the same plumbing. Last I knew, it only cost a couple hundred dollars to run that separate drain. You might be willing to pay that for a better design.

Think of your architect as a technician. YOU should drive the design--not him. He should tell you if your ideas are unworkable, unbuildable, aesthetically horrendous, or unaffordable (and have a builder actually do that, because most architects don't have a CLUE as to building costs).

We went through months of design work with our architect. The plan we have, and love, was one I designed and finally made her understand how to draw. I gave her scaled drawings. This should not be your architect's opportunity to play Frank Lloyd Wright. Unless he's that famous and you want to live in a "Wright" house. Otherwise, show, draw, and/or tell him what you want and insist that he draft it.

Remember that YOU are paying for his services. The house is not being designed to what he wants or feels like doing, it is to be designed to what YOU want. You are paying for his skill and knowledge [koff-koff], but if you aren't comfortable with the results, that's a red flag to check further into the matter.

If you have difficulty mentally translating blueprints into 3-D, either ask to see his CAD plan or make your own to-scale model by using cardboard.

And while I suspect I understand his comment about drains, that certainly is not a good reason to refuse improvement in the design of the room. If you saw an awkwardness on the door while it was on paper, imagine the awkwardness of having to live with it!!

Frankly, I'd not only make a cardboard model and check measurements such as door widths, I'd swing that blueprint past an engineer. There are plenty of architects out there who can design good stuff, but you are going to have to live with the real thing so it might as well be right.

Thanks for your quick responses!

Building a to-scale model with cardboard is an excellent idea.

Then, I can see what I think I am talking about.

:)

Barbara

I think you need to go for what makes you happy. One other way to visulize would be to use some home design 3D view software to get an idea of what you'd like. There is a post currently on the page that I'm linking.

Here is a link that might be useful: Design software

Concerning the drains, i think i would get the advise of a plumber. Running them on paper can sometimes differ with the install onsite.

I absolutely agree that if the floor plan looks awkward to you on paper, you're going to hate it once it is built. However, another thing you might want to think about is whether you really want to drain the shower and the toilet thru the same drain. I'm not a plumber but it sure seems to me like if that line clogs up somewhere down below where the two lines meet, you could have water (and waste) from your toilet backing up into your shower. UGH!

Instead, you might want to find out if grey-water recycling is legal in your area and, if it is, consider whether it would make sense for you to re-use that shower water to, say, water your lawn. (Grey water is any used household water EXCEPT water from the toilet) You can't do that if the shower drains into the same pipe as the toilet.

Of course you can change the design if you don't like it!

At the same time, keep in mind that the architect--if indeed it is an architect--may have some experience and expertise that would make his/her comments worth considering.

I've built a number of homes and I never had pipes drawn. That's for the plumber to figure out. It doesn't take more than a few minutes really. Besides, structural and site considerations usually render such plans pointless.

How huge is your bathroom that two stacks are needed? Sounds unlikely to me.

Even working with good plans, I usually end up making on-site changes on the fly, including ceiling heights and room dimensions. With poor plans, you're lucky if the corners of the rooms meet each other!

I have seen d.w.v layouts on the prints. Most if not all plumbers will tell you they are useless!

The drains comment really sounds to me like a red herring tossed out to avoid redesigning the space.

Thanks to everyone for your responses. One of you was kind enough to list a Punch Home Design help page. I am going to have a look at that bathroom through it.

And then, I will know what to do.

Thanks again, everyone who replied.

Barbara

We're in the stages of designing our house. The first designer(not an architect) acted like he pretty much wanted to design the house he wanted, and maybe incorporate some of our ideas. Even though we lost a good portion of our deposit, we fired him. It wasn't worth continuing with him.

The designer we are working with now, is very receptive to our ideas and changes. It's a much better working situation for both of us. We've made dozens upon dozens of changes, and I've never even caught a glint of impatience from her. She does provide input on what is possible, and what is not. That's her job. But, I trust that her suggestions are not based on what is easiest or most profitable for her.

We're enjoying the experience, and getting the house the way we want it.

Bottom line...it's your house and your money. Listen to the advice and counsel of the professional you've hired, but at the end of the day, if it ain't what you want, it ain't what you want.

Barbara, Can you post a sketch of your house plan here? Then we'll pick it apart for you!

Are you working with a licensed architect or a draftsman/designer/whatever? Only a licensed architect can stamp plans for submission to a municipality for building permits. This is a State license. Just holding a degree in architecture from a university isn't enough.

chisue - not all states/municipalities require an architect's stamp on residential plans in order to get a building permit. Texas, for example, does not. I think North Carolina does. It varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

I'm not a plumber but it sure seems to me like if that line clogs up somewhere down below where the two lines meet, you could have water (and waste) from your toilet backing up into your shower. UGH!

just to clarify this for you, if you have a clog in the main drain water will back up thru the lowest fixture in the system. septic or sewer, it does not matter. in the house we used to rent the main line out to the city sewer used to clog and water/waste would back up into the tub. in our current house we had a clog between the house and the septic tank and again, backed up in the tub. since the tub drain or a floor drain are usually the lowest drains inthe home, these are where a main line clog will generally show first.

chisue, I am not sure yet how to post house plans. I copied instructions from one of the posts on using photobucket.

I will take a picture of the plans and try to post it that way.

It will be fun to receive feedback on it, and I appreciate your offer.

On the architect questions ~ yes, I believe he is registered as an architect. The state we are building in requires that all plans carry the stamp of an architect specially trained in construction techniques for weather conditions here. (Hurricanes.)

He is a wonderful man, and has created a lovely home for us. He does seem to hear me when I talk to him. He has made several changes upon my recommendation (or questions, or however our interactions with our architects can be described).

My question for all of you has to do with whether we should invariably bow to the professional's expertise.

It's that old fear thing. If I do it and it's wrong, I will feel foolish. If I do nothing and it's wrong...I guess it's still on me, because that was how I had sketched it out initially.

To answer the question of the person who wondered how huge the bathroom must be? It's tiny ~ that is why it matters so much. It is an 8x10 guest bath. I don't know how many stacks it will have, but I am picturing smokestacks here.

Something tells me you mean plumbing vents?

I will have to take those pictures and see what you all think.

It's eerie how a sketch becomes an engineered thing without anyone once discussing other potential ways to arrange things.

That is what I am concerned about.

I would like to make it better, and I am not certain that he is not trying just to get it done.

And we are not even talking about how I feel about the windows he gave me instead of the ones I had drawn.

Or all that lovely Victorian trim I would love to have on it, instead of something more dignified. :)

What to do, what to do!

Perhaps we need to rephrase our questions to direct the professional's attention to our true concerns? In this case, for me, it was that the bathroom seemed too narrow.

I think that may be the correct way to address concerns with our architects.

So, on the windows, I am just going to say they look bare to me.

Stark.

And that would be a better way to handle the bathroom thing, too. Just tell him it looks narrow to me.

And maybe, on the Victorian thing?

I could just tell him I would like it trimmed in a Victorian style and see what he comes up with.

That makes sense to me.

One of us should write a book on how to communicate with the person creating your home. That has to be where those mix ups occur. Both parties are speaking clearly, but the pictures our words have created in our minds are dissimilar.

For anyone still with me here, I wonder why our architects don't work our houses up on one of the computer
programs so we can walk through them in 3D?

Now, how easy would THAT make everything!

Isn't it true that if you have a scanner, you can just scan the plan in and the computer will create the house?

Or am I dreaming again!?!
Barbara

I had a 5.5x11 hall bath and a 7x11 guest bath in my old house and the length or width of them never bothered me and I never heard anybody say anything about it either. I don't think 8x10 is small for a quest bath and seems like it would be fine.

That's true, lyfia. But the eight feet that the bathroom is wide is taken up by shower and toilet on one side and vanity and linen closet on the other. Between the fixtures, there is a three foot ~ or less ~ corridor.

Or at least, that is how it looks on paper.

The architect says it will be fine that way ~ and it probably will. But I did figure out a way to rearrange the fixtures so that the corridor-like feeling may not have existed. The architect thinks it is best the way it is. And as I said, I have decided to defer to his greater expertise in these matters, because I truly don't know whether the bathroom as designed will have a corridor-like appearance or not.

But I am going to feel really badly if it does, and I did not insist that it be changed.

These are the little things I am talking about, when we are talking to our architects.

It feels so much like I must be right, but common sense tells me I cannot know more than the architect.

And, after hearing my idea, this is his recommendation.

So I am going to leave it as he has drawn it.

It's such a strange place to be. It's like being asked to make a decision without having adequate information for the decision to have been a choice.

And do you think I can get that darn home design program to work well enough to put both bathrooms in so I can see what I would be getting with each?!?

Arrrggghhhh!

There.

That's better.

Barbara

Not to dissuade you from relying on the 3-D program for the info. you need, but I've never found that they give me a real sense of what a space will be like. It's not like walking through rooms on TV; it's a distorted view.

A lot of people do better mocking up rooms in actual size using cardboard, sheets hung on clotheslines, studs and cardboard and string out the the backyard, etc. We got enough of a sense of size when we were designing by measuring already built spaces. Our own; those in tours of homes, open houses, and new homes for sale; and in friends and family's homes, who were flattered that we liked something enough to ask to measure it. (We always cast it that way, rather than "can we measure your dinky bath so we won't make ours that small?"!)

I understand the discomfort you have both in speaking up and in acquiescing when you don't like a design feature. Just remember that this is not like surgery, where you'd be wise not to insist on your surgical methods. It is, however, somewhat akin to cosmetic surgery, where you would be well advised to have a LOT to say about how you want the outcome to be. And less to say about his surgical techniques.

Think about what the outcome of you insisting on a change that would have been OK as the architect had it. In your bath, assuming adding space would not compromise the adjacent area it was borrowed from, I can't see that you would have made a mistake by enlarging the bath. However, you could be making a mistake, for you, by leaving it its current size. So, in this case, you can't be wrong to enlarge it. My remarks to him would be: "I've measured some similar baths and they're fine, but we've decided that we'd be happier with it if we widened it 18 inches." Or something like that. It's not too late to do that. In fact, he'll probably be more likely to listen to you in the future when you voice a concern if he has to now go back and fiddle with that bath again.

'We' is an excellent way to phrase things. It reflects the collaborative nature of designing your home. And it softens the communication. And, it serves as a gentle reminder that this house is about the wants, needs, and even whims of a particular "we" that will be living in it, and paying a small fortune to their architect.

I understand your discomfort. I've finally spent time, eyes closed, walking through our design over and over. I can't visualize it, but the vision is getting clearer. Still, I know there will be total surprises. We're not doing anything so odd that any of them will be a disaster.

Don't worry so much about how you might feel later. Laying blame, on yourself or someone else, is rarely productive. You will make errors of judgment and so will he. And life will go on. Nothing will be disastrous--unless the house falls down. And, you know, a lot of people live with a bathroom that looks less spacious than they'd hoped for. Even worse, like us, they live with a bath that's functionally barely big enough. In our case, it's a powder room and we intentionally sacrificed size there to gain it in the foyer. Our own judgment. We measured 3 different real-life baths before we insisted with our architect on the size we wanted. I also pulled the NKBA's guidelines on minimum sizes and handed them to her, so she'd see that we exceeded those and so weren't out in left field in our judgment. There's subjectivity involved even in an architect's judgment

Good luck and I do hope you'll speak up--tactfully, pleasantly, with information and thought behind you. And take some magazine pages/photos/online images of some of the windows and woodworking you like. A picture is truly worth a thousand words. "I finally found the woodwork I really like. Here it is; let's incorporate that into the design." (Don't mention that you gave it to him earlier.)

You can do this, but might need to do more homework first to feel confident in what you want.

That is good advice pinktoes (cute name!).

Thank you.

What I learned as I went through that plan again and again is that the architect was correct. Unless we have seen the house built (and in our case, the design was our own ~ at least, initially it was!)

Ahem.

When we put ideas together, we incorporate things that have appealed to us as we drive past one house or another, or we add in things we have seen in a magazine or an inspiration room. But those things that catch our eyes during a drive by or on a magazine page might be very hard to live with every single minute of every single day.

THAT is what the architect brings to the board that we do not ~ an understanding of what it will feel like to live in the space we have created.

Now, I am questioning having made the bathroom larger in the first place. (I did the oppostite of what you did, pinktoes. I sacrificed two feet from a ten foot foyer to change the dimensions of the guest bathroom from five by eight to eight by ten. I think the foyer will still be fine at eight feet...but part of the reason I think that is because the architect went along with that change very nicely.

So my advice, and my answer to my own question, is that we will probably regret it, should we insist on a design change against the advice of the architect.

Barbara