Sunday, September 9, 2012

A Giant DIY Project

I'm going to try to turn this:






Into this:

casa murillo house plan

After months of being paralyzed by fear of failure and by taking on a project TOO large, I am finally through to the other side and am feeling positive and energized. I'm the owner/builder without a general contractor. I will blog about all the joy and sorrow involved in such an undertaking. So far, the only thing I have decided on are the house plans. This is it. Hundreds of hours of searching house plans online. I'm going to have a draftsman make several changes to the floorplan (which the house plan websites say is typical) and then it's off to the city for permits.
The house is called Casa Murillo on the website where I ordered the plans. My family and I have renamed it "Casa de Manana" (house of tomorrow) because sometimes it feels like it will never happen. I ordered the house plans in CAD format. My draftsman (I found a local guy, online, who answered my email questions instantly {within a minute!!} and knowledgeably) says this is a simpler, quicker, and less expensive way for him to make changes. I ordered the plans from here, but I found the same plan on many different websites that sell house plans.










This is about what the house plan websites show you before you order the complete set of plans.

Your actual plans will actually have over 10 pages that look more like this:


And after a few hundred hours of staring at this foreign language, you WILL understand it.

Summer 2012 Pictures (Northern Arizona)



northern arizona mountains




hummungbird, hummingbird in arizona, hummingbird and flower




lightning, lightning in arizona




old barn, weathered barn




puddle of water




sunset, arizona sunset




stacked rocks