The house's first floor defined

First floor framing...when the house is done, the driveway will shrink to the right. There will be a little backyard lawn next to the back of the house.

I traveled to Vermont today to see the house. It is fun to peek in and see the beginnings of rooms laid out. They look smaller than I remember them (in the original house) and smaller than I have been visualizing them in the floor plan. I am hoping it is one of those illusions or if they are small, they will still 'work.'

The original back of the house had a little lawn next to the driveway. You could enter the kitchen from the back of the house (kitchen door in the far corner).

The original house. Unfortunately the Ash tree had to go. Too close to the house. The saltbox house section on the far left won't be there but there will be a screened-in porch in the same area (not yet framed). The kitchen door is in the far corner (there will be a kitchen door in the new house as well). The other door you can see in this photo above will now go to the mudroom.

So here's the back of the new 'replacement' house:

Plywood now covers what will be the kitchen door to the left. There is also a mudroom window on the back to the right of the mudroom door. There will be kitchen windows above the sink as there used to be to the left of the mudroom door.

If you enter the mudroom it will be straight in front of you and long(ish). It also goes to the right in an L shape (a place for the laundry). Beyond that is the bathroom. The bathroom will have two doors- one into the hallway near the mudroom, the other into the bedroom. The kitchen is around the corner to the left.

So exciting to see this laid out.

When I was a girl, my sisters, neighborhood friends and I used to 'make houses' in the woods. We used logs and branches to mark out where walls were and where the rooms existed. Little openings between logs were doors. They had no real walls, instead they were more like a floor plan.

We had more fun creating these houses than actually playing in them. We loved describing to each other what all the spaces were. This was my first house-building experience.

Here's Phil Godenschwager's floor plan for the house.

Picture you are standing at the mudroom door in the back (see upper left hand drawing's door) and looking in. That is the location from which I took photos today.

Here's what the back of the house will look like when the 2nd story is on, the screened-in porch (to the left/south) is framed in and the associated little landing/porch is added to the kitchen door on the left. The mud room door is the door on the right. The upstairs bathroom windows can be seen here in the small dormer in the center.