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Self-build homes – a long-time Letti ambition

Check out the li’l cat flap on the bathroom door!

If you used to read the blog I had before I moved house the time before last, you will probably remember that I have always wanted to build my own home, and I would design floor plans at least once a year with floorplanner.com

I also used to subscribe to Self Build & Design magazine, which I spotted in a newsagents inside the hospital I used to attend. I don’t subscribe to it any more unfortunately as it was a needless expense when we moved house and our rent jumped from £500 a month to £850.

I’m not sure what it is that has always appealed to me about building a house from scratch (or rather, commissioning builders to do the actual building for you). Perhaps it’s the fact that, finances permitting, you can have all the features you want in a home. A big part of the appeal for me is that I can make the whole thing wheelchair accessible.

I like to imagine that “one day” we’ll “have money,” that we can buy a home or even build one and have as many pets as we want. I’m not quite sure how that’s going to happen, regardless of how much I need it to. But if I don’t let myself have hopes and dreams then what is the point in being alive.

Anyway, below is my latest floor plan idea. I had to use the furniture choices that the software had (including the dogs and cats available) so it doesn’t match the stuff we own exactly, but you can get an idea of what I meant.

Bedroom, en-suite, balcony.

Balcony around the skylight.

We would maybe have overhead storage above the bed like we currently do, but I couldn’t find anything like that in the software.

Underside of skylight, in long living room with television stand next to the staircase. There would be a banister in real life, and probably an under-stair storage cupboard.

Bobbles looking out of windows.

C’EST HORRIBLEMENT

Office sofa. The door shown would act as another front door, it would have a deadbolt and would allow me to get back into the main house without needing to go outside.

There’d be a gate in this fence but I couldn’t figure out how to make that happen.

A small division between the house’s front garden and the courtyard for the charity office. Obviously toilet windows would be frosted etc.

Plenty of daylight and room for chairs.

Upstairs floor plan; measurements not precise RE: stair position in relation to skylight.

The red circles are CO and smoke alarms.

Downstairs floor plan; it looks quite overblown until you realise the actual house is only one side of it, the rest is an office.

I am a fan of cat flaps on internal doors. The Kitty Pass also exists but I’m not sure that’s great for a toilet.

You may notice from the 3D renderings that I have a bit of a thing for Transom Doors, a.k.a. doors that have a little window above them. Not only do they let daylight in, they allow you to tell when someone is using a room at night (especially a bathroom) because the light is on. We have transom doors in our current house, a lot of them have been filled in unfortunately, but thankfully not the ones above rooms with toilets!

You can get ones with opening windows, too!

I would also have windows around the front door where there was space, again to allow a lot of daylight, and also to help me gauge who is at the door (ideally we’d have a video monitor or something also, depending on money).

On the subject of doors, apparently one should get a composite door for the best security (I have seen some fairly horrifying YouTube videos of how quickly uPVC doors come down).

The archways in the 3D renderings above are shown as squares, but I would have them be something like these:

Lights are shown on the floor plan with a sort of + symbol with a circle in it. “D” in the circle stands for a drop light, or pendant light, the one with a cord hanging down that you can put a lampshade on .Nothing in the circle indicates a surface light, one flat on the ceiling. “R” in the circle indicates a recessed light.

An interesting image about light direction. I like a good diffused or indirect lampshade myself, depending on setting.

As well as wall lamps, I would like to have actual sconces for candles! Preferably ones with glass around them to prevent cat havoc.

The bath would be one like this that you sit down onto and then swivel into:

And the en-suite shower would have a li’l fold-out seat for me:

Also I would HAVE A STAIRLIFT:

This is what the underside of our skylight would look like in the living room, like an orangery roof.

And the top of it would look a bit like this in the middle of the balcony. Our balcony would not be gravel though because that’s horrible.

So yeah, that’s some of my ideas for a self-build house.

There are lots of more intricate things to consider, like door handle shape, having a split spindle on the front door, taps, light switch height, windowsills, whether windows open inwards or outwards like usual (I think a benefit of inwards could be, one, easier to reach, and two, you could have fly mesh on the outside of every window, not only stopping bugs but also keeping cats in).

I would honestly hire Kadek to be my interior designer when I own a home. I love the way she has set stuff up in her house.

You can’t do much with gardens on the floorplanner site, but in mine there would be ducks, plenty of sunflowers, cat fencing, fruit and veg etc. And a shed of course.

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