Head needles

Posted On May 6, 2018

So far I’m having another quaint weekend. Getting excited for the Eurovision Song Contest. Hoping to improve our lawn health in time for our barbecue. Hoping the mining bees go away before I have to sit on that grass.

I had another appointment in Winchester and Will’s boss very kindly drove us again. This time I didn’t throw up in the car! I felt pretty foul but never actually vomited. It was a different car so maybe that made a difference.

Long story short about the appointment, they want to try giving me Botox in my head for the migraines. I’m glad I don’t have to take more pills but also I’m a bit nervous about getting needled in the head. They tried to reassure me about pain levels by saying that it feels just like bee stings.

LITTLE DID THEY KNOW THAT I AM TERRIFIED OF BEES. Hopefully I’ll find it fine and I might actually be less afraid of bees as a result. Most of all I hope it works and that migraines stop happening. I imagine I’ll still get auras and postdromes, nausea/ diarrhoea and stuff, because I can’t see how paralysing my head muscles will stop that, but it should at least stop the throbbing and burning.

Floorplanner has added some more features, including the ability to take shots of the 3D representation of the plan from various angles. So guess what I did.

I added the conservatory into this version, so exported another angled shot of that too.

new bucket list header — Downstairs, with added veranda conservatory (doesn’t seem to be possible to put a roof over the veranda part) complete with dog shower.

3e262ace03014f25567c2d7f76768250910fc279 — View when coming in the front door. Real wheelchair lift would be clear. Don’t know why the transom door is glitching like that.

0aa5b456a14ca6e83a71712bf2d8ee23caa1bc00 — Living room. This sort of cat tree would be on the wall probably on the left of the rear sofa.

365dee287afc5281a04b7f39d7abd691b48f38ca — Living room opening out into conservatory.

b60b30547558de2d11c83b5e3feb189ea2bfa6e4 — View down through conservatory, to where external doors open to covered veranda.

c144316889e43a451182968916f2aed672507e69 — Wider than average front door. That cupboard probably wouldn’t need to stick out quite so much, it would mostly have fuses and vacuum cleaners in it.

4c196d72e30fac3271e463366a857d9ff3ec21a8 — The gallery that would be above the stairs (a.k.a. the cutout of the ceiling) is not shown here.

5521be4fbe1a4ab2146c1bdc16072ab64ec177d6 — Kitchen diner with emerald walls.

c0ec56bfcdb007c44cc73bafb9040c2d22bf8b8c — Secondary living area with TV for when people want to break off.

cb8bb0f945eaa1c9f1998d906d087e723274e3b5 — Built-in storage cupboard. Sink not showing in front of window.

9009ece25230bd11e8fd7f2847730c5c2606946f — Oven would probably be on the right.

64c864d4818f198d3597a69479654fe07d30cc2e — This would be roughly where a roll-under counter was.

6cd9d24627f827e52dace41f2f7614bd6856da6a — Not entirely sure if that table orientation is the most efficient for the space.

ac4b3309fe714999596931d077d1c8d53332599b — Inside the WC, under-stair cupboard on the left. Toilet will probably be a corner toilet in reality to make most of space.

5074cd5fceee326787b7dd78d209238b13103ca3 — I don’t know why that sink rendered so close to the floor.

4e853d46a1a4523c7d99a29e46d3786651456448 — View from the top of the stairs. I’d love this lampshade to hang there. Would probably be a pull-down ladder to a small attic space as well.

c96cc63f4dbb89088af2a3dcffd59baded8665dd — Master bedroom for Will and me (+ dogs etc.), door to en-suite on the left.

1b7cf095fab4c6f9da2c629d69514fe81529caac — En-suite with another weirdly-behaving sink.

a08801a7dbb046f3cb01c6f5c91e51bbabc49870 — Skylight above the stairs is not showing. There would be some sort of light tunnel in the further corridor.

d2f032f7727cc44270f0871e20f9e4cd505da444 — Family bathroom. Storage doors would probably fold back to allow room for a cabinet on the left of the sinks. Bath would be side-opening. No idea why the shower is so short.

db3d66a16c94985951c000d81f0bdc1d40096e23 — What on earth are those sinks doing.

31fe64b0e20ef821fddb874a89f72a240764280a — Bedroom 2, probably our kid’s room. Wall colours are kind of random from this point on.

05ab9aceca3d7e60cdbae2ad5ca51427717e7fb1 — I don’t know why the hallway floors are two different colours either.

478d7583ef58997690b9ca7de999b6a292698ed7 — Guest bedroom. I worry about the proportions of this room, it’s one of the many things a real architect will need to sort out.

9d90dd30b48ee89f690d14ea1bd06244b7d6c347 — Bedroom 3.

0960b92416aa9d5a3ac2ad3081a8f75e2fce3710 — Additional guest and boiler room across the hall.

You have to bear in mind that there are still plenty of things that cannot be drafted in Floorplanner. For example, our doors and window frames are very unlikely to be white in real life, they’d be another fitting colour. Likewise with kitchen cabinets and ceramic bathroom stuff. You can click here for a rough presentation of my decor ideals.

I also wouldn’t be opposed to additional architectural features such as an arched enclave over the bath and things like that, the rooms wouldn’t be so plain rectangularly-edged.

I worry that the house plan simply isn’t big enough (even though the kitchen and living room are both 7 metres x 4 metres). But I also don’t want it to be too big. I don’t want a cavernous, ridiculous mansion. I want room for us to have nice furniture, and room for me to drive around in my chair without hitting that furniture, but I don’t want the excess space to be ridiculous and detract from the feeling of family and homeliness.

There’s a book on Amazon I’ve had my eye on called The Not So Big House which I intend to read at some point, hopefully it will put me at ease about the size of my house plan. I’m sure books like this aren’t written with wheelchair users in mind, but hopefully it will still tell me important things about space.

These are the life priorities I thought of when designing the plan originally:

Doing as much as possible at home; e.g. having space for computer desks in the living room for getting serious work done, but still being near the sofas and TV so the family vibe isn’t gone.
Hosting and guests; I usually prefer to have people over to my house rather than to travel elsewhere. We need room for important occasions like the yearly BBQ and Halloween, when there are going to be 12 or so other people in our house, and we need room for multiple guests to stay over at once. Will has expressed wanting to have a pool table, so we need room that a (probably fold-out) one could go in.
Extended family; space for additional relative(s) to live with us and also to watch TV or lounge somewhere separately if we need space from each other.
Features for animals; space for plenty of animals to live and lounge, things like cat flaps on internal doors to rooms with litter trays, moulding for cats to use as shelves, a dog shower, a seahorse tank recessed into a wall, ropes hanging from the ceiling for a parrot, so on and so forth. The house is as much for our animals as it is for us.
We are interested in ICF as a method of construction, so the outer shell of the house should be simple and rectangular.

If extra wealth in the future allows for additional features, I’d rather that those were separate from the house itself so that the plan remains simple. E.g. if we had the money, I’d have a hydrotherapy swimming pool in a little outbuilding, and a horse paddock. But I wouldn’t try and fit the pool into the house.

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