C
camerong
Guest
Designing a “Catholic” House–thoughts on floorplan?
Hi everyone,
I started a thread called "Designing a ‘Catholic’ House last December, and received some wonderful ideas on how to make a house most conducive towards faith life at home. Here’s that thread. Basically, my wife and I are designing a house that will be built in the Spring. It’s in a new neighborhood within a view of a new Church, and we’re very excited. We have a 9 month old boy and another one on the way.
I realize the design of the house is much less important than what goes on inside the house, but as long as we’re completely in control of the design, we might as well try to foster the domestic church as much as we can. Since we are hoping for a large family, we will need a reasonable amount of space–on the other hand, I want to have a modest, reasonable house that allows us financial freedom (and does not allow us to accumulate too much junk!). I’m torn between these two goals.
They say that the average house size has increased dramatically in the past 50 years, even as family sizes have shrunk. This floor plan is 2,300 square feet, which is bigger than I hoped–but I think it is a pretty efficient plan, meaning it will cost much less to build, heat, and cool than most 2,300 square foot houses. Some of the features (second floor laundry room, big mudroom) will really make life easier for a large family, minimizing cleaning and allowing us more time and energy to spend with the children. Also, we will be doing a bit of the work ourselves, and doing a lot of the built-ins later on. But I still feel twinges of regret at building such a large house…
At any rate, I would love to see what this faithful community thinks of the plan. Posting to this forum is often part of our prayerful discernment!
Any and all suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you!!
First floor:
Second floor:
Hi everyone,
I started a thread called "Designing a ‘Catholic’ House last December, and received some wonderful ideas on how to make a house most conducive towards faith life at home. Here’s that thread. Basically, my wife and I are designing a house that will be built in the Spring. It’s in a new neighborhood within a view of a new Church, and we’re very excited. We have a 9 month old boy and another one on the way.
I realize the design of the house is much less important than what goes on inside the house, but as long as we’re completely in control of the design, we might as well try to foster the domestic church as much as we can. Since we are hoping for a large family, we will need a reasonable amount of space–on the other hand, I want to have a modest, reasonable house that allows us financial freedom (and does not allow us to accumulate too much junk!). I’m torn between these two goals.
They say that the average house size has increased dramatically in the past 50 years, even as family sizes have shrunk. This floor plan is 2,300 square feet, which is bigger than I hoped–but I think it is a pretty efficient plan, meaning it will cost much less to build, heat, and cool than most 2,300 square foot houses. Some of the features (second floor laundry room, big mudroom) will really make life easier for a large family, minimizing cleaning and allowing us more time and energy to spend with the children. Also, we will be doing a bit of the work ourselves, and doing a lot of the built-ins later on. But I still feel twinges of regret at building such a large house…
At any rate, I would love to see what this faithful community thinks of the plan. Posting to this forum is often part of our prayerful discernment!
First floor:
Second floor: