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A Nice Day For Drive

by Eli Swanson | Mar 28, 2019 | Uncategorized

I always love to see the projects that I have drawn blueprints for after they have been completed and are being used for what they were intended to be used for and so recently Elaine and I decided to go on a drive and visit a projects in Central Washington.

The home was located in Desert Aire, an interesting community on the Columbia River about 22 miles south of the Vantage bridge. A thousand-acre development originally developed for the well-off to build vacation and seasonal homes and enjoy the golf course and marina. A billboard calls it “The Palm Springs of Washington” and indeed it gets only 7 inches of rain compared to Spokane’s 16.5 inches.

I had never been there before our recent trip and had never heard of it before last winter when I got an email from Karen Chiaramonte, of Kirkland, who had been designing a new house on the same software program, Sketchup, that I use and love.

House plan r3 walls2 — I was extremely impressed at both how well she had learned Sketch Up and how far along she had gotten with the design for the home that she and her partner, Cecil Rodreguez wanted to begin building in the early Spring and then live in with her parents.

web shot — For the most part Karen had the layout nailed and I design the roof and helped with some ideas and practical adjustments to make sure that the home that she had envisioned came to life in the best possible form. Once the model was hammered out, I drafted a full set of plans which they gave to their builder who got permits and went to work building this great home.

Modern House plan — Their modern home design in Central Washington was a standout in the community.

black modern house plan — Windows bring the outside in and expand interior spaces. With a ceiling sloping from 14′ to 12′ and all that glass, the great room of this home is very well lit and spacious.

modern home design in central washington back wall glass — The view out back looks across a small airstrip to the mountains bordering the west bank of the Columbia River.

modern home design in central washington front porch — Elaine’s favorite part of the exterior design was the front entry.

modern home design in central washington front door — Especially their dramatic front door.

modern home design in central washington airplane hanger

While I love the whole house, my favorite part was that they appreciated my efforts on helping to design their beautiful new home that they recently hired me to draft plans for the airport hanger they are planning to build on the lot next door. That ought to be worth another trip, or atleast a side trip on way to Seattle someday soon.

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PDF FILE: PLAN ON IT

Back in the old days there was no such thing as having a plan on something called a file.

You had your plans on something called paper, big sheets of paper that had to be roll up and bound with a rubber band in order to carry around to subcontractors and suppliers and bankers and everyone else involved in the process of getting quotes and prices and calculations and financing and permitting.

In the old days there was a lot of driving around town passing out and then gathering up the house plans.

Now days the plan is passed around with the touch of a few buttons via email to all those involved.

The Pdf is what you are buying here because it is all that is necessary for now. When the time comes and you need the plans in hand on paper, it is easy to email or hand-deliver the file to a print shop like Kinko’s and get as many copies as you need.

Printed at 100%. the plans are 2′ x 3′ and at 1/4″ scale.

Printed at 50% they are at 1/8″ scale.

SKETCHUP AND LAYOUT FILES AVAILABLE

I am a laborer who learned how to frame and then learned how build and then learned how to draft plans by hand and then by Sketchup.

I did not and never plan to learn CAD. When I had to make the jump from hand drafting to computer drafting, I chose to learn Sketchup because it looked fun and CAD did not.

Sketchup is fun and hugely popular around the world. Each of these designs has a full Sketchup 3d model that can be accessed with Sketchup Free and a Layout file which needs Sketchup Pro to open.

WILL MY PLANS EASILY GET PERMITTED IN YOUR NECK OF THE WOODS?

Conservatively, I would say the answer is to not count on it, but I would add there is at least a 50-50 chance they will.

I can only tell you that they all did in my neck of the woods which is Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho. For the most part, our planning departments are fairly easy-going compared to what I have heard of in other parts of the country.

In one of God’s more favored parts of America, where I live, we are not beleaguered by high winds nor shaky ground. If you live in a less tranquil region, my plans will likely require engineering, but that is not a deal breaker.

Even in our area, sometimes my client will want a design with too much glass or too high of walls for the plans to sail through the permitting process without some structural engineering.

Once we have gone through the process of coming up with the perfect design and produced plans that a general contractor can bid and build from, my client then gives the plans to a structural engineer who does their work to it. It is actually a very common step in custom home building.

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