After a couple of more rounds of discussions back and forth, the floor plan is seriously beginning to take shape. It’s starting to look like the house we’ve had in mind for the past few years. The layout is pretty customized to our specifications, yet we think it would still have fairly broad appeal, if we ever decide to sell it.

John suggested that we widen the storage room in the basement, from 2m to 3m, so that if we ever decide to turn it into a “regular” room we could easily do so. This also meant that we could widen the media room next door, which was great. We made the home office a little larger, although I’m still not sure about keeping all the electronics inside the office itself instead of inside an electronics cabinet.

The new water feature outside the main door is going to be great. The irregular, symmetric pond kind of “wraps around” the corner of the house and promises to give the house that special character. As you approach the main door, you have to step across a series of wide stone slabs seemingly floating on the surface. We plan to add a pump and keep carp in the pond, which will also be visible through the large windows in the foyer and in the adjoining dining area.

The biggest improvement to the floor plan is on the second floor, where John has completely revised the layout of the kids’ bathrooms. The floor usage is much better now and the kids’ rooms look great. They get their own bathrooms, with bathtubs, and we have even squeezed in a loft above each bedroom, with two pull-down ladders! I hope we’re not spoiling the kids, but they are really great kids and we have always wanted to be able to give them the rooms that our parents couldn’t afford when we were young.

The Master’s bedroom is also looking pretty good. It’s got lots of glass, overlooking the valley and east towards Mount Makiling and Laguna de Bay, the lake. We’ve also squeezed in one bathroom each for my wife and I (don’t ask) plus a walk-in closet. The entrance to the bedroom is large enough that it’ll fit a desk and an easy-chair for reading.

In case you’re curious about where in Asia this house will be, it will be built in a beautiful little 40-hectare community called Ayala Westgrove Heights outside the city of Sta. Rosa, in the province of Laguna, in the Republic of the Philippines. If you really want to know the exact location, it is at:

Latitude: 14°14′14.61″N
Longitude: 121° 1′9.47″E

And for you who run Google Earth, this file will to take you to the spot (save it to your desktop and double-click it).

I had a good lunch today. I’m a sucker for good food, and good food is so inexpensive in the Philippines. But today was extra special. Today John (our architect) unveiled the first draft of the floor plan for our house. Over tuna sashimi and Japanese green tea, John and his assistants showed me what they had been working on for over a week. Based on a detailed questionnaire that we were asked to fill out, they estimated room sizes and floor plan layouts that they believe would fit our family’s lifestyle and preferences.They did a pretty good job, considering that we have some unusual requests. On the other hand, they also told me that “unusual” requests are normal for new homeowners. I guess that’s why people like me design and build instead of buy. (I feel too tall for a standard mid-level Filipino house, and too poor for a Filipino high-level house).

The ground floor will have a guest room, a kitchen, a dining area and a living area. The layout was pretty good, but I asked that we expand the guest room a little, since my Dad always asks for a spot for his laptop when they come visiting. And I’m wondering if we shouldn’t move the porch so it faces east, isn’t that good Feng Shui? The second floor looks ok, but I think the kids will complain if they don’t get bathtubs, so we’re throwing those in. And we’re going to relayout the master’s bedroom a little. This should be interesting.

The basement will probably undergo the biggest changes, as we refine the floor plan over the next few weeks. My office is too big, the storage area is too small, the maids’ and driver’s rooms are too large, there is no space for the central electronics hub, the media room is (probably) too small, and there is no sauna!

(I know what you’re thinking. “Sauna? Media room? Maids? Spoiled brats!” Well, I tell you, I deserve this house, and besides, this being Asia the house will be a lot less expensive to build than you probably think.

Finally the contract is signed!  After months of thinking, counting money, searching, and negotiating, my wife and I now have an architect. For the first time in my life, I will design and build a house from scratch. It’s exciting and scary at the same time. Exciting because of the freedom to design and build a house that fits our family perfectly (hopefully), and scary because of the amount of money involved. This will be our most expensive project yet. And this is the sketch that made us decide on this architect:

This house design is not exactly what we wanted (how could it be? we had not given him our specifications yet), but it did show us that we were at least communicating well with the architect and that he was willing to work with us on our terms.

This weblog is about the design and construction of the house, and about the cost-effective home automation I will be installing in it over the next few years.