Minor Changes (beyond our control)

It appears no house has ever been built to completely match the plans. As we're learning, this is a combination of all sheets of the plans not necessarily all matching, and changes we want to make once the walls are up. Generally, the sooner a change can be spotted, the less expensive it is to make. These are the minor changes that we've made so far:

Exterior

Utilities entering the house: You'd think we would have noticed where these would enter the house, but it never even occurred to us! The water, gas, electricity, etc. was set to enter our house on the west side (side facing the camera), about dead center. Since we plan to use this area as an extension to the house, this wasn't going to work. We had them moved to the north side, but of course waited until after the slab was poured. Definitely one of our bigger mistakes.
Deck stairs: These get their own page here.
Front yard: Read about that here. This was most definitely not our fault.

Downstairs

Door between the entry and family rooms: Here we wanted a pocket door, but it was framed for a regular swinging door. We were talked out of changing it. It doesn't matter much, just one more thing.
Second door under the stairs: There was to be a 1/2 door under the stairs in the family room, next to the utility room. In the words of Derek, ``that would look stupid.'' He was right. We got rid of it.
Bathroom: See bathroom on a separate page
Fireplace: There was going to be a downstairs fireplace on the south-west corner in the family room (bottom-left of the floorplan). We went back & fourth about this a few times & decided against. It is framed, and has gas running to it in case we change our minds.

Upstairs

Inside stairs: Originally the architect drew these in with a two-level landing. We had it changed to a single-level landing (what's the sense of a two level landing?) Unfortunately, the change didn't propagate to all of the sheets and one beam was not moved the 9'' required for the extra step. By the time we realized this, this part of the house had been almost completely framed (everything except the stairs). This could have been changed, but again it doesn't make that much of a difference. When I build the table for the landing, I'm just going to make one set of legs 7 1/2'' longer than the other.
Kitchen island: We had planned for an island in the kitchen. When everything was framed Lynn & I went to the house & drew out the kitchen in chalk. The island suddenly didn't make any sense because there wasn't nearly enough room. This was probably a throwback to an earlier, larger design. We changed it to a peninsula and all is well.
Dining room -- pocket door: There was to be a pocket door dividing the dining room from the hall to the bedrooms. On those rare occasions when we throw formal dinner parties (to date, it hasn't happened), we could simply close the door. Well, the structural engineer made the wall into which the door was to go a sheer wall. Bye-bye door. Now it's another archway.
Drop down stairs to the attic: Our existing house has a large attic, and no easy way to access it, so we thought in the new house we'd put some pull-down stairs & have access to the wonderful, large attic. The roof trusses are spaced 2' apart, leaving almost no room up there. As a friend said to me, ``perfect for large straight pieces of cardboard;'' Useless for anything else. Don't know how this slipped by everyone.
Entry to master bedroom: This is rather minor as it only changes the swing to the door, but it's a change none-the-less. The door was supposed to be hinged next to the closet & swing toward the closet. Unfortunately, doing that blocked the bathroom & closet. To get to either, we'd have to open the door, enter & close the door. No! Simply swinging it the other direction (into the room) fixed this.
Master Bathroom windows: The master bathroom has a wonderful large tub and from it the view is of the city of Santa Cruz and the Monterey Bay. Perfect for relaxing with a book, a glass of wine, and the view. Unfortunately, the windows were about 4 1/2' up on the wall. From inside the tub there would have been a beautiful view of the wall. Luckily this was caught before the windows were ordered.