Young Residence Reflection
The project I have been working on for this semester is designing a home/cabin for clients. They have given me sketches of their house. I took the sketches and started the design in Autodesk Revit. The square footage of the house needs to be at is 1500, the first area of the house was at 1530 SF, when I started, now the area is at 1520 SF.
There are three floors of the house, first floor, basement, and the loft. I would screen shot the progress of the house and would email the pictures. We would then discuss and the client would let me know how it looks and he would show his wife as well. They would tell me what I needed to fix and how it needs to be. One fix was that the master bedroom was a bit too small and the living room was big, so I fixed that. I made the master bedroom bigger and the living room smaller. I made sure to keep the house symmetrical because that was how the sketches were and they wanted it that way.
I met with them to go through the house plans and they both decided that they wanted to make a major change, which was to move the garage from the first floor to the basement, so I had them sketch out the basement so I can be able to make the new design. It wasn’t too hard, to make, I just needed to let them know that the garage (being a double car garage, 20x20) will take most of the space. Doing this change, one bedroom had to go, so now there is the entertainment area and kitchenette, bathroom, bedroom and an office plus, storage and utility closet.
I had added two sides, to the loft because when I was doing the roof, the elevator shaft, which goes from basement to loft, was sticking out and it wasn’t looking as good. I expanded the loft to be able to make the roof look better. Then the front of the house, I was trying to figure out how to do the big windows. I pulled windows from revitcity.com but my client didn’t exactly like the windows and showed me what kind of windows I put in curtain wall windows for the big window. It took a while for me to learn how to figure out the curtain walls to work but I was able to figure it out.
I learned to put the porch and the deck in that my clients wanted (the basement is a daylight basement). It was going to be a back deck and front porch but the clients decided they wanted a wraparound porch. I fixed the foundation walls as well because it was not looking right and it was too tall and looking back on previous Revit projects learned how the foundation need to be and the height of the wall. It took a while to fix the walls and adjust doors and windows but it worked out. It helped me to learn to make sure to check the elevations so that measurements don’t get messed up.
I always made sure to take a screen shot each time I finish up for the day, so I can document my progress and so I can send my clients the pictures, so they can see the progress. I remembered how to do the wall sections (from past projects/classes) and elevations and put them onto the sheets. I worked on the plumbing and the electrical plan sheets. I can put lights on the first floor but I couldn’t figure out for the loft or basement because the lights are ceiling components and can only attach to the ceiling, but could show where the outlets and light switches go.
This was a fun project to work on because I got to learn and remember Revit plus I got to work with actual clients, which will help me in the future. The total time I worked on the project was 45 hours. I made sure to design it the way the clients want it, gave a few pointers and what would be best, so the house looks nice for when they build it very soon.