OH and living in an earthome is COZY and economical. :) My parents build it in 1983-1984. It's 3BR 2BA, and about 2400 square feet (rough guesstimation). Every single room was used every single day. Their only regret was not having a sound proofed music room, but how could they have predicted they'd have two musically talented + incredibly obnoxious teenagers? :D Almost the entire south side of the house was floor to ceiling windows. The only other window in the house was a skylight in the kids bathroom (which they recently replaced with a solar tube due to 25 years of moisture issues!) The bedrooms don't have windows, so you sleep in TOTAL darkness. It's also 15 miles from the nearest town...one of my dad's friends was visiting from Los Angeles. When he woke in the morning to total darkness and total silence he lay there for awhile, and then called out in a meak voice "Dennis?" "Yeah, Rick?" "Oh thank GOD I thought I was DEAD!!!!" We never were scared of tornadoes, despite the frequent damage neighbors dealt with whenever a big one came through the area. We rarely needed to turn on the heat and we didn't have air conditioning at all...yet the house was always a comfortable temperature.

Dian, your pantry addon faces south, and that, to me, is a prime spot for something pretty to happen. Since it is adjacent to the kitchen, perhaps a builtin row of floor to ceiling closet-depth cabinets across the west end of this room would work for a pantry, and allow you to make a nice sunny breakfast room with a place for some container plants. If not the windows, then a good skylight could give a lot of light there. I realize most older homes up north are not air conditioned so an opening skylight could help remove heat from the kitchen area. And, if it should by chance leak, the damage would not be as critical to the entire house as a skylight over the main living areas would. I think the wedge shape gives you home a distinctive quality, and it could be a very nice place for a desk and a reading chair. Of course, its use depends on what room the wedge leads to as you leave the MBedroom. And where are the windows on the MBedroom? I see none on the front wall and none on the back wall, so that means the windows are only on the Northern end? Is that a little cold? Of course it is true light, and artists like that, but this light gives very little warmth to the room. If you do not have closets on that back wall, I'd think about putting two separate windows in there. Space them apart, so you could maybe build in storage drawers on each side, in between, and under the windows, to give yourself a pair of window seats. This kind of project would depend on where the doorway from the wedge is located. Hopefully not right at the corner. :) Slateberry, the Taunton Press did a fine job with the Cape book. I again read parts of it last night, as I thought about the similarities in our Cape and in Dian57s cape. The fun in having a cape (if you keep your sense of perspective) is to not redo and get it over with, but to do and to do and to do again, in a progression of steps which fits the house around you as your family grows or changes. Hubby built the two upstairs bedrooms with a bath at the top of the stairs when his two daughters started growing up. The room over the garage, a couple of steps up from the dining room level, turned into his son's room. Then he added the 12x34' family room across the back when the 3 kids were teens and needed space for their friends. His wife wanted a fireplace there, so he added that. He wanted a place to get away from the bustle of teens, and added the porch off the bedroom which we are now turning into a master suite with a walkin closet (already built) and a 3/4 bath which is not plumbed yet, but is adjacent to the original only bath on the main floor, at the head of the stairs coming up from the basement. I would like to see a shed dormer extended toward the backyard, to make the upstairs larger, but with just the two of us, that is not a real objective. The tiny doghouse dormers on the front make the house look very authentic to the cape style. Not authentic is something I want for the front entry, which would be a covered entry, same angles as the gables of the dormers, just enough to give the entry some presence. To get the idea what it would look like, I've taken some digital photos of the house from the street, and then drawn the ideas over copies of the photo. I use PaintShopPro (not Photoshop, but that would work very well too). Dian57, when you have more photos of your house, present or past, please link me to the album online or upload them here. There are so many options for these houses, depending on your needs and priorities, and it is exciting to work through it all.

I wasn't able to find your sketch within a couple of minutes. It's better if you post the relevant pictures directly in the thread. One thing I've always found annoying because it ALWAYS looks and feels like a mistake, is that whenever connecting two destinations, a person must travel up or down BEYOND the destination elevation, and then return to the correct elevation. In other words, going from the upper deck to the basement level and then back up to the pool level does not seem efficient or classy. In order to "flow" from the upper deck to the pool, I believe you would have to make the connection directly from the left end of the deck, and it would thus have to be separate from the expanded deck affair that you are contemplating. To make it separate would not be a bad thing in my opinion. Can't tell from pictures, It might could connect at the outside of the deck and pool, or possibly hug along the house walls. A patio looks better to me than a 2nd story deck on stilts (or some half-derivation of that.) As you have a raised mound of earth off of the back of the house, it seems like you could develop a patio that is supported by a sturdy retaining wall, placing its elevation about two steps below the upper deck level. It would not seem so much difference that "flow" is interrupted, and it would give you the opportunity to include the features you're after. It could also be extended to include a second, even lower, level that puts a little more separation from the firepit area. A new, better and more direct path to the water could come from it. I have no idea what visual effect this will have from the basement area, between the mound an house. We can't see if there's a cave back there, or what. The sketch is rough, vague & general.

I love when the exterior of a home acts as an introduction to the interior. If I were selecting the colors from the picture posted by @Jilly from Maria Killam's website I would want to walk into a home with fall colors, not a home that was decorated with coastal colors. I am painting the exterior of my front door a deep red. When you open the door you walk into a foyer with purple red and green slate. The red door will match the red in the flooring. Red is an accent color that is used throughout my home. You may also notice that the pink brick wall (back of living room fireplace wall is the same brick as my home. The plants that I chose for the front garden include a red dwarf maple, silver coral bells (purple and green leaves, pink flowers, and blue pacific juniper, pulling in some blue greens, deep reds and purple tones.