Somehow we lucked out when we bought our house at 10208 Carol Street. Not only was the house lot size an acre, but the property came with an "out lot". When our neighborhood was developed our house was the first one to be built. Most likely all the planned house lots were laid out, and platted, before our house was built. The house lots are all about an acre in size, and they curve in a rough "U" shape. The space kind of left over, in the middle, was designated the Out Lot, and tagged onto the first house property. I believe it is called an Out Lot because it cannot be built on. Our neighbors (original owners of their home) have told us that the developer could not get that lot to "perk", meaning they could not qualify the land to support a septic field. (Great Falls does not have public water or sewer services.)
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| A Forest thru the Trees |
Having the Out Lot as part of our property gives us a lot of privacy (no pun intended). In the summer you cannot see any of the houses that surround us. And of course, it gives us that much more land. When we first moved in the front yard was a dense grove of trees, and the back of the house was a forest - no yard at all. Over the years Steve poured a lot of sweat into selectively cutting down trees, digging up roots, renting and loading dumpsters to haul all the wood away, bringing in topsoil and grading, and finally creating grassed yards for us in the front, back and side of the house.
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| Fallen trees, over the tennis court |
Of course, once we had selectively removed trees and created lawns storms started to wreck havoc, literally. It started the year of Hurricane Isabella. Our trees were being uprooted. The year of Hurricane Isabella we lost about six trees. Since then every year we seem to lose anywhere from one to three trees. It's very sad to see, but the trees have had a good life and for many of them their time had come.
But the lot still remains well-forested, particularly within the Out Lot portion. Looking out to our back yard has always been enjoyable. We knew when we started designing the house the focus of the primary family spaces - Family Room, Eating Space and Kitchen - would be the back yard. So a lot of our attention in the design centered on the Family Room. There are lots of windows in the Family Room - 11 to be exact!
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| Drawing of the Family Room & Eating Area, looking toward the backyard |
Spatial proportion is important to understand in Architecture. The sense that a space "feels right" comes from the space having the proper sense of scale and balance. I fretted over the size of our Family room. I wanted it to be just right; not too big and with a sense of intimacy. The jury will remain out, as to how successful we have been in our design attempt, until the space is completely finished. But so far I am having very good feelings about this room.
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| The room starts to take shape (looking towards stairs) |
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| The "view", without the windows |
It was neat to have such a big expanse of open view, before the windows went in.
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| Looking down to the Family Room |
Footnote: As the drawing through the Family Room shows above, we did not plan to have an octagonal window in the upper part of the wall. One day we took Alex over to the house. We walked up to the balcony and looked down on the family room. Alex asked if there were going to be any windows in the upper portion of the wall? I said "no". He looked at me and said, "you won't see the outside from up here then." The next day the builder asked "Don't you want windows in the upper portion of the wall?" Everyone's an Architect!
So I guessed we caved. Steve and I played around with drawing in all sorts of window sizes and shapes. In the end the only thing I was comfortable with was the octagonal window. It is exactly at eye-level from the balcony.
It's that issue of balance. I am concerned about how the wall will look from the outside as much as from the inside.
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| Looking toward the Family Room from the backyard |
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