We had an initial discussion on the design of the interior of the house. I think we’ve always agreed in principle to make it a Modern Asian style, but of course there will always be differences in opinion on what this style really should look like, and on what would look nice in this particular house.

John showed us several dozen pictures for us to comment on, to try to zero in on the style we were after. We agreed on lots of white, with dark woods as contrasts, with lots of green plants wherever possible, and with lots of glass. We want kind of an “outdoorsy” feeling inside; peaceful, natural and serene.

We also agreed to keep the interior fairly simple. Nothing overdone, nothing heavy. Natural materials, simple furniture. We will use light to create atmosphere, and we kind of like John’s “signature” designs using a lot of floor-mounted uplights. There will be many more meetings on the interior design, as we move closer to completing the structure of the house.

We continue to refine the design, working on the same basic concept. John added some pretty interesting support structures to the third floor. I kind of like them, even though they fill no structural purpose. They seem to bring the roof down a little, and makes the house look less tall. It also adds a Balinese touch to the design and makes it more Asian, which is great.

We’ve also de-emphasized the exterior wall of the basement, so that from the rear it looks more like a 2-story house on top of a base, rather than a 3-story house. As for all the glass, I’m still not sure it’s a good idea. It looks great, is modern, and gives us a fantastic view of the valley and beyond. But it will also be expensive to build and the glass might retain so much heat that it will be prohibitively warm inside. We continue to tinker with the façade.

I had another working lunch with John today, and received the first elevation plans. This house looks massive! I’m beginning to realize just how much we have specified that the house should contain! We want the house in a Modern Asian style, but this looks a little too large to be particularly Asian. On the good side, the front of the house (which has only two stories above ground) looks a lot smaller than the rear (which has the basement showing).

However, I’m not ready to give up and shrink the house just yet. I’m worried about cost, but let’s see where this leads in terms of design and budget before we do anything drastic. We discussed a few ideas on how to make the house look smaller, and how to keep costs down.

Today we visited a local media room design company to try to get some ideas for the design of the media room, but also to validate the dimensions of the room. We met with the project engineer for their Home Theater Division and learnt a lot.

For one, the room is definitely large enough for a dedicated home theater. (I’ve had a hard time deciding if I should refer to this room as the Media Room or as the Home Theater, but since my wife might want to use it for Karaoke, and since I can picture myself sneaking off there to listen to classical music once in a while, I’ve decided to call it the Media Room). One of the sample media rooms they had in their showroom was the same width as our room (about 4.05m), and although the sample room was a little longer than ours, it had the same distance from the screen to the back of the couch (about 4.90m). We are comfortable fitting in two 3-seater couches inside, one behind the other, with an ideal 30-degree viewing angle from the rear couch that will also be raised a foot or so above the front couch.

We got lots of suggestions on what screen, projector, speakers, amplifier and DVD player to buy. Basically the selection is down to the usual question of quality and brand versus cost. He promised to send me a quote with a few options in a couple of days. Considering our mid-range budget, off-hand he suggested a projector by Panasonic, a screen by Stewart, an amplifier by Denon and speakers by Focal JMlab. I’m still not convinced, and will have to spend some time checking datasheets and online reviews. We want a nice screen, and an 82” screen will do, but do we really need to spend $2,000 for it? I agree that the silver surface reflects better, but how much better is it really than a regular white screen? Watch this space for details.

We also got some other tips; for example, their sample room uses the Lutron GrafikEye controller for lighting. Even though I had planned on using a lower-cost single-scene, 2-zone controller for the lights, the project engineer pointed out that if we will also use the room also for listening to music and for Karaoke, we will probably want more than just one scene. Oh well, maybe we’ll spend for another GrafikEye here after all, in addition to the two that we have planned on using in the dining and living areas on the ground floor.

He showed us a Crestron controller, which I was well aware of from previous research, but considering the cost we do not plan on getting one. Its main claim to fame is a nice touch-panel user interface and flexible IR- or serial-port control of all audio/video equipment and lighting. However, there is nothing there that I cannot build myself, given enough time. Hopefully I’ll find the time for that over the next year or so, and rest assured that you’ll find the designs described here!

We had a brief discussion on wall paneling. He agreed with what I had learnt elsewhere, that the side walls should be soft, and absorb sound, while the rear wall should be hard and reflect sound. Mind you, he also said that if we plan to put in wall-to-wall carpeting we might not need any special wall paneling, but I’d like to put it in if it can be done cost-effectively – based on his explanation that the sidewalls need to absorb the “second reflection” off the speakers, I just feel that we’d get better sound. He did agree that we don’t need to get any fancy off-the-shelf panels though, but can simply build our own from foam and fabric. He suggested to use ¼” plywood on top of the concrete hollow-block walls, onto which we staple ½” of hard foam with a nice dark-colored fabric on top.

Finally, they were using a nice setup for piped-in music throughout the store, with a Harman-Kardon amplifier driving multiple speaker pairs via line-matching transformers. This is something I’ll probably duplicate in the house, when I have time, although I plan to use a PC to queue MP3’s instead of the CD-changer they have here. Once the distributed remote controller setup is in place, I should be able to design it such that you can queue different songs in different rooms and at different volume levels, although this will require one server sound-card and one amplifier per room.

I just received a techie report entitled “Soil Investigation”, with reference number GII-32582-56159-07, compiled by a bunch of geotechnical and materials testing engineers.

These guys just spent a day drilling two ten-meter deep holes into our lot, one at the north-east corner and one at the south-west corner, with a “trailer-mounted, rotary wash drilling equipment employing the wash boring method with Standard Penetration Tests.” They also analyzed disturbed soil samples obtained with a 2-inch split spoon sampler at 1.50 meter intervals.

It appears that the site “is generally underlain by 3.0 to 8.50 meters of soils consisting of soft to medium stiff silty clay and dense sandy silt. Underlying these soils is weathered tuff (adobe) which extends to 10.0 meters.” I hope that this means, in layman’s terms, “your lot is unlikely to slide into the valley during those heavy rains we get here once in a while.”

They end the report with recommendations, and have the following to say regarding foundation support: “The structure to be constructed at the site investigated can be supported by either isolated spread footing, strip footings or mat, depending upon the geometric constraints imposed by the architectural layout. The footings shall be embedded at least 1.20 meters below existing ground surface and can be designed with an allowable soil bearing capacity of 50 kpa (1,045 psf) for dead plus live load. The bearing capacity can be increased to 65 kpa (1,360 psf) if total design loads include wind or seismic forces. Anticipated total settlement is 2.50 cms. Isolated spread footings shall be provided with stiff footing tie beams to minimize differential settlements.”

I hope all this means, in layman’s terms, “you won’t need to spend a fortune on the foundation and your house isn’t going to fall apart in an earthquake.” Wish me luck.