Design Appointment - Day 1

On the first day of our Design Appointment, we got to the Pringle Design Center about 15 minutes early and checked it. We looked at various tile and cabinet options while we waited to meet with our Designer. At 8:30 AM we started our meeting.

The design rooms are small. The Designer sits on one side of an open desktop, with his CAD terminal. A slave monitor faces the customers on the other side, so we can see the design being modified.

We started with a standard Stirling model on the screen. For Day 1, our Designer said he wanted to concentrate on the exterior footprint of the design. Based on our previous planning, we added a room on the front of the base plan, pulled the garage forward a bit, moved the master bedroom back, and extended the side walls.

We also talked about window location and sizes. The windows were all priced the same at the time we went to design. As an example, it didn't matter if we had a 2' x 2' small window or a 3' x 5' large window, the cost was the same. If we mulled together two windows, than that counted as two windows. Judi and I moved most of the windows to agree with our planned furniture locations.

We put two mulled together windows in the back of the Master Bedroom and took out the slider to the lanai on the 45 degree wall and replaced it with two more mulled together windows. Our reasoning was that A), we didn't need access to the Lanai from the bedroom, as there was the doorwall in the Great Room just a few steps away; B) the doorwall took away wall space that we wanted for a loveseat in the bedroom and for furniture on the lanai; and C) a doorwall would be just one more place for our low slung dogs (2 dachshunds) to leave nose prints to clean up.

We also took out the transom windows above the Master Bedroom main windows. Our reasoning was that these would be hard to have operable room-darkening window shades at and we need to be able to really darken the room for the times when Judi has a migraine headache. The added benefit was that we got credit for each transom window we deleted, so we could add windows elsewhere in the home.

We added windows in the Den, which will have a great view out the back of our home. In each of the guest bedrooms we mulled together two windows to add more daylight.

We put a transom window in the Master Closet to add natural light, and I added a high transom window in the garage.

At about 11:30 our Designer suggested we break for lunch and to let him work on the change order for the costs of the added square footage and the window / door changes. He asked us to return at 1:30 PM. We took a long lunch at a local restaurant. There presently are a Perkins, Chilis, Friendlys, several fast food restaurants, and some good local restaurants available in Mount Dora and Eustis.

Work continued on the footprint in the afternoon and we started on the interior redesign. At about 3:30, our Designer suggested that we call it a day. He said that he would work on tuning up the design work we had done and also on updating the change orders for the work we did in the afternoon. Before we left, he gave us a printout of the design as it was so far.

That evening, Judi and I spent lots of time going over the design and thinking about what we wanted to do the next day.