3D sneak peek

Our house designer, Crystal Bueckert at BLDG Studio, uses a program called “BimX” to transfer her CAD drawings from 2D format to an awesome 3D virtual reality extravaganza! Some people are naturals at being able to read a blueprint and imagine the space. I can get a sense of that, but having it in 3D and being able to do a virtual walk-through is a totally different experience.

Here are a few screen shots of the 3D walk-through on the final construction drawings:

This is the “front entrance”. I always call this as the backdoor (my wife calls it the front door) as it is on the north side of the house. There are only three windows on the north. One narrow window beside the “back” door so we can see who is there. One at the end of the hallway for ventilation. And one in the bedroom for fire safety and ventilation.

This is the west side of the house (opposite of the river side). The side door leads to the chicken coop and yurt. Yes, that is an outdoor shower beside the door (one of my favourite features).

This is the southwest corner of the house. The deck is 20’x30′ and faces south.

The “Great Room”. This room faces south with the large (almost 6 foot tall windows) bringing in a lot of light and passive solar gain in the winter months. The overhangs of the roof completely block the unwanted heat when the sun is higher in the sky in the summer (this BimX program allows you to put in your GPS coordinates and perform solar studies to track the light coming into the house at different times of the year – so cool). The ceiling will be finished with whitewashed tongue and groove clear pine. The floors will be either a polished concrete or troweled and sealed (still deciding how much work we want to do on that). The window sills, door trim and miscellaneous wood finishing will be in whitewashed Douglas fir. The windows sills are about 14″ deep, and about 16″ from the floor, meaning there are natural window seats throughout the house. We are not having any baseboards and instead will have a “gallery” finish in which the drywall slightly floats off the bottom of the floor.

The kitchen seems pretty stark in this photo, but you can get the idea (our kitchen cabinet maker is doing his own 3D rendering that will be a bit more true to the final product). The tall cabinets and entire island (including butcher block countertop) will be wrapped in white oak and finished in a whitewash lye with clear coat overtop. The upper pantry cabinets will actually go the full height of the 9′ ceilings and we won’t have open shelves, but instead will have upper cabinets as well. The lower cabinets will be a white slab with a white concrete countertop. We found a pretty awesome fireclay farmhouse apron sink to sit under the east window overlooking the river. I do the dishes and do not want to be staring at a wall while doing them. The east wall will be tiled from counter to ceiling in either a white subway tile or white square tile (yet to be decided).

The master bedroom faces south and overlooks the river. Yes, eye masks will be a necessity.

It was tough to get a decent shot of the master bathroom, but this room is going to be pretty awesome I think. It will have a large shower, double sink vanity, water closet for the toilet and a vintage clawfoot tub. Darcie is currently refinishing one that we found on kijiji for $75 last year. It is turning out really well and I will post some photos of it later. The bathroom will have a tiled wainscotting that I cannot wait to install.