So if we were to do a 1.5 story with the master on the main level, where would you put that, behind the garage then? My thought process would be to first determine priority of room placement in the most ideal location for the use of the room and then if conflicts between room placement develop then rank by how much time is spent and how time is used for each room as well as the importance of that use compared to the importance of the uses for the other rooms. If watching the sunrise from your bed pays off with more enjoyment than having the sunrise and morning sun striking your kitchen, then plan accordingly. For instance, do you plan on using your master suite as a parental get-away from the kids, using it during the day or will your non-sleeping uses be restricted to evenings only, meaning that any views from the rooms would be lost to the darkness of the night? If the views are not important, I'd bury the master suite near the garage in the above sketch. If however, views and day time use are important, then I'd move the master to the east/south/west walls, perhaps right off the entry or in the back off of the kitchen. I'm not necessarily saying to put the master off the entry or off the kitchen, though you could, I'm just using these as examples that reference the above sketch. The way I'm designing my own home is to use a very self-reflective process which tries to understand how I actually live my life rather than trying to contort my lifestyle into architectural trends which presuppose how people SHOULD live their lives. So, to continue on the questioning, why exactly do you appreciate a main-floor master? Is it so that you can avoid stairs? Is it so that you can hear the comings and goings of the kids at night as they try to leave the house, is it because you don't want the kids too near your bedroom, is it because you don't want noise transmission from the master to be easily heard by the kids, and so on? Once you can articulate to yourself why you want something then you can find the best solution for your plan, rather than adopting a cookie-cutter approach. For instance, what I found amusing in some plans was a main floor master with a child's bedroom directly over it on the 2nd. Now, to me, if the goal was to reduce noise transmission from either the child's room to the parent's room or vice versa, the separation by floor, while having intuitive appeal, would fail to achieve the mission. The example I used in an earlier comment was to have a master suite separated by a stairway corridor AND a children's hallway which together create a 7'-8' dead zone, possibly with some walls other than the master and child's bedroom walls also added in between. There are no common walls shared, there is a huge dead zone in between and the goal of reducing noise transmission is, I believe, better served than a downstairs master with an upstairs child's bedroom directly over top, sharing common ceiling/floor as well as sound transmission paths down the walls. Of course, if sound transmission has nothing to do with the appeal of a downstairs master suite, then what I've sketched out is a solution to a problem which doesn't exist, or doesn't matter. I was thinking the master/office space on one side and then the kitchen, dining, great room on the other. That makes sense to me. Would you move the great room from the center of the house below to the front where the dining study is and move the study to where the great room is? Lots of configurations can make sense, but they must make sense in relation to how you envision yourself using the space and the particulars of your lifestyle and preferences. I'd say grab some graph paper, or even blank paper, and just block out the rooms and see how they interplay with each other, note how you foresee traffic patterns within and throughout the space, imagine daily routines taking place within the space. Once you have an idea of how you live, or how you want to live in the new space, then get the graph paper and try to get a better handle on size and furniture placement, and traffic patterns and by the end of this process you should have a very good understanding of how you want the space to be configured. I did the same for my house and this has resulted in me doing away with a formal living room from the now traditional LR/FR combo pack and reallocating the space elsewhere in the home, such as combining the entry with the LR space in order to create a larger sense of space/volume, has led me to create a larger kitchen than would be warranted in relation to the size of the informal living room, has led me to other design changes that likely violate what trained architects use as benchmarks for how homes should be designed. Thank you for the garage tip also - I thought 24x24 was rather large? We will be getting an oversize door for sure. I'd say measure your cars, block out a 24 x 24 space on your lawn, use cardboard boxes or something else to fill the space of your cars, then throw in the other junk you're likely to store alongside the walls of the garage, and see how much space you actually need. Try to get out of your car and see if the door bangs the wall or the other car. A 24 x 24 garage is actually pretty good considering that many designed give a 20 x 23 or something similarly ridiculous.

I have a small 14' x 6' addition on the rear first level of my house where the roof is flat. We had all three condensers for all three ac units placed on the flat part of the roof when we bought the house and had central HVAC installed (3 floors/zones, one unit per floor). The reason we did this is because our yard is small and every foot of space was taken into consideration. This also meant we wouldn't have to worry about security cages for condensers on the ground. Anyway, it's worked out great thus far but my only complaint is that I hate looking at my house from its rear and seeing three huge condensers on this otherwise pretty historic building. I would like to build a railing of sorts to hide the outdoor units and make it appear as if that portion of the roof is actually a balcony/roof deck. There is a full height window that was once a door off one of the bedrooms, so even though we will never use it as such- I want it to look like a balcony off that room. My question is in terms of railing construction and specifically post placement, flashing, and securing to roof. Since this will never actually serve as a safety feature, but rather a decorative one is there an easier way to go about installing railing posts?

Our appeal was denied. It is very disheartening when you're trying to explain something to someone and they have a glazed-over look in their eyes. Glazed might be an improvement! At one appearance, the Chairman of the Committee of Adjustment greeted me with, "Mr. worthy, you must be shaking in your boots after hearing what we said about the previous variance requests." Downhill from there. Our new home will be imperiling the investments and endangering the character of the existing community... Neighbouring property threatened with devaluation. First meeting for the current application, the neighbours presented a petition. (Including the guy who keeps a Class A motorhome, i.e., a bus, in his driveway.) They were afraid we would be driving down the value of their homes and very likely opening a B&B. (Speaking against a previous variance on our street, they said they feared it was really intended to be a mosque.) For our second appearance, the home's "institutional" look and the possibility that one tree of 20 might be damaged (no) nearly killed our chances. The Committee approved--but the neighbours still have 20 days to appeal. I really want to just sell the lot and move on....

If you ignore the builder-grade detailing, its a late Victorian Queen Anne style house. The only unusual feature is the second front facing gable. Its impossible to say if it could meet the zoning height restriction without seeing a definition of "height", the topography of the site, the floor to floor heights and a scaled elevation drawing. With that information it would be a simple exercise to lower the slope of the roof until it meets the zoning restriction and see how it looks. In the meantime, assuming the width of the house is about 36 ft, lowering the roof slope from 12 in 12 to 10 in 12 would decrease the ridge height by 3 ft. Lowering the slope to 8 in 12 would lower the ridge another 3 ft. But the first thing I would do is lower the first floor ceiling to 9 ft and the second floor ceiling to 8 ft. I would also consider truncating the top of the main roof. I don't think it would be very noticeable on this house. One way or another it appears possible to build this house without corrupting the design. A Field Guide to American Houses Everyone should own this book. The old one is $6 used and the new one is $25. I've owned the original version for 35 years.