Differing visions

On Friday, during her lunch break, a co-worker was looking at a real estate listing for a house she was thinking of buying as an investment property:  buy it, remodel it, sell it as a profit.


From memory, this is what it looked like:

Single story; open carport; laundry through the kitchen.  Note that in a lot of older (1960s and earlier) houses around here, the toilet room is separate to the sink-shower-bathtub room.


Her vision for remodelling was something like this:

Knock out the wall between the kitchen and laundry room, to make a larger kitchen; put a deck off the back of the kitchen; enclose the carport for additional living space; and put a carport in front of the old carport -- I forgot to draw that.


But -- that's not at all what **I** saw when I looked at it.  My first thought was what a single person who was waaaay into woodworking would do:

Enclose the carport -- for extra workshop space.  Make the former carport area your handtool space (smaller then the old living room), and link it to the laundry room (for the shop sink).  Use the old living room as your "power tool" room -- bandsaw, table saw, etc.  Put a door on the kitchen, to keep the sawdust out.  Eat your meals in the kitchen.  Use the larger of the "bedrooms" for your wood storage.  Use another bedroom as your "living room" -- you should be able to fit a t.v., sofa, and comfy chair in there.  And that's all you need.


My second vision is what a recording musician would want.  Again, one who lives alone:

The former carport is enclosed and merged with the former living room to create a "tracking room" where the instruments are recorded; probably have the drum kit in the center, guitar amps around the periphery of the room.  A few sofas and such in the room, so it can double as a living room or lounge: the components of a living room actually have fairly good acoustical properties.  The laundry room gets a double-thickness window and becomes an isolation booth for recording vocals or solo instruments -- although it would still retain its "laundry" functionality.  Meals can be eaten at the kitchen table, and the kitchen can serve as a breakroom and lounge.  A door is added to the kitchen, to isolate it from the tracking room (e.g. refrigerator hum, people talking while in the kitchen).  A door is also added to the hallway, to help acoustically isolate the other rooms from the tracking room.  The larger bedroom has a double-thickness window added (to allow visual contact with the performers), and becomes the control booth, with the mixing board, signal processing gear, playback and etc.  The middle bedroom is still a bedroom -- because this is someone's house.  And the top corner bedroom becomes a guest bedroom with four bunks, in case the band that's being recorded is from out of town.


Different eyes, different visions.  :)


--GG