Nervous about addition-any last minute suggestions?
rockybird
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
I’m doing a garage/room addition to a midcentury home and I am so nervous it will not work with the existing home. I think it will work, but I am still nervous. THe room will be for keeping my small birds, but would be a great office, workout room or art studio.
The addition is staggered because of setbacks. At each stagger, the exterior block pattern changes. I hope this will look okay. Any recommendations? We will be submitting next week for permits!
This faces the road. It staggers back where the block changes:
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6 years agoRelated Discussions
What veggies can I add to the garden as last-minute additions?
Comments (10)Carrots -- plant now, and cover with hay in the fall and harvest during the winter. Parsnips work this way too -- harvest parsnips in March before they start to grow again. Savoy cabbage and gigante kolrabi -- plant now and eat during winter (I cover the savoy with agricultural fleece and leave in the garden to eat Dec - Feb, and harvest the kolrabi in late fall and store) Both want many days of growing , so now is a great time to plant (I've got seed trays I planted last week of both.) I also plant rutabagas in mid summer, eat the greens when they're big enough, and then eat the roots in late fall/early winter after at least two hard frosts (mulch well.) parsley -- plant now for fresh winter parsley/walnut pesto. And the basil, as suggested above, and be made into basil/pignioli pesto and frozen. summer lettuce Plus all the great suggestions above. In my Zone 5 garden I have to plant kale now to get a harvest by fall -- and then it lasts all winter under cover (some varieties last better than others -- but all will last a bit into the fall) Good luck!...See MoreGetting ready to 'go for it'- any last-minute advice??
Comments (12)About the slugs: some little sunk-in-the-ground lids filled with yummy flat beer. Around very favourite plants there is a suggestion that a circlet of ordinary copper wire will keep them at bay - or nasty sharp grit to tickle their undercarriages. Clear away any decaying green material. Acts like a slug motel. Avoid the delicacies such as Delphiniums until the garden is a lot older and the soil is really healthy. (Three years+) One garden I know was plagued with snails and slugs despite having a lively bird population. It was no effort at all to collect a two quart container full of the beasties and still find more next day. Over three years the soil has been amended with a high animal manure compost and the weeds have been put into the compost bin. The slug/snail population has dropped markedly. If you do want to plant things known to be yummy to the munchers - grow them on in containers until they have a booming root system - and then plant out. Poor old 'Percival' the Delphinium came home root bound and I potted him on, put him in the recovery zone and picked up a gooey remainder next morning. I put the remains well out of slug reach. He grew on, and has been untroubled in the garden ever since. Same with Hostas. Just think of slugs as the jackals of the garden - pouncing on the weaklings - and the ones that cost the earth ;) PS It doesn't have to be your beer......See MoreFinalizing cabinet order this week... any last minute thoughts for me?
Comments (35)For the pass through, I am thinking that something like this would look a lot simpler/cleaner and less fussy. So you'd be keeping the doorway from the kitchen to the dining room that you were going to close and losing the two tall skinny vertical stacks of cabinets on either side of the passthrough. Not only would that visually break up some of the continuous walls of cabinetry, but instead of that whole complicated area where the oven met the pass through, you'd just have a nice clean, straight line of cabinetry dying into the wall and some open space. Visually, that corner of the kitchen will be a lot less heavy and won't compete with the range for focus. Also, functionally, if you are going to be using the dining room more often, I think it'll be nice to have the dining room that much more open and accessible to the kitchen. My last visual issue is how the angled windows now relate to absolutely nothing. They used to match the island angle and curve around a table. There were reasons for the wall to be like that. Particularly with everything else in the new kitchen's being so square and symmetrical, that architectural oddity looks SO out of place. You might at least do something like this to the island:And maybe do a range hood in an especially angular shape to tie into it all. This one that I posted earlier would probably work: You can see how that would related more to the window/island angles than something like this (made of curves and straight lines) would: When you repeat an element 2-3 times around a room, it looks like a deliberate design choice. With exactly one angle (the windows) in the room now, it doesn't look deliberate. That said, while I think any/all of those changes would make the kitchen look a lot better, it doesn't really address the functional layout problems that make this mostly a one-person kitchen. I'll do a different comment with some suggestions about that. Usually, you determine how much space you have, your goals, and then the general layout that would make the kitchen function best. THEN you figure out how to make the kitchen look pretty with everything where it needs to be to function best. It's always possible to make a functional kitchen beautiful. It is VERY difficult to do the reverse. And just brace yourself -- total symmetry is an enemy of function. The most useful kitchens have things staggered around the room so that people are not on top of each other when using them....See MoreOur plan..any last minute suggestions.
Comments (77)Dantastic, You mentioned one of the most valid concerns/issues. There is a roof cricket between the gables and I am still revising how to simplify that area. Mark/ILoveRed: I worked on a simplification of the roof a while ago and that option modifies a bit the back gable: I got rid of the Dutch hip (above the screen porch) and detailed the gable similar to the garage gable. I my opinion, it looks better and cleaner - but that might change again if I change the roof....See Morerockybird
6 years agolast modified: 6 years ago
beckysharp Reinstate SW Unconditionally
6 years agorockybird thanked beckysharp Reinstate SW Unconditionallyrockybird
6 years agorockybird
6 years agorockybird
6 years agolast modified: 6 years ago
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