On the Set

Brian and I both love the look of a Craftsman bungalow. Happily, it's a traditional style that will be very much at home here in South Bend. While most of the new houses in the neighborhood are some variation of the Four Square, many of the older homes nearby are bungalows. We like their cozy feel.

In the 1920s you could order your bungalow straight from the Sears catalog, but it's not quite as straightforward now. The design stage of the project could easily be it's own little children's theater production called "Goldilocks and the Three Bungalows"...this one's TOO big, that one's TOO small and this one is JUST RIGHT!

One thing I learned is that it is relatively easy to make a list of all the features you want in a house and much more of a puzzle to turn that list into a 3-D structure. Everything is so interdependent and what we thought were small easy changes often had more of a ripple effect than we planned on. Fortunately, Len took it all in stride and added a foot here and moved a wall there. After much agonizing and a little compromising, we ended up with a house we think we can both live with and live in (on paper anyway)! There have been a few changes since this sketch was done early on in the process, but it's pretty close!

The basic house facts are: 2500 square feet (plus a finished basement), 3 bedrooms upstairs and one in the basement, 3 1/2 baths, a 3 car garage (the Triumph - the gift that keeps on giving!), a patio out back and a great big front porch! For those of you planning visits, don't worry. Our guiding principle was always 'surge capacity' and we should have plenty of room for both after-game and overnight guests in large numbers!