renovation

Playing with Library Designs

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I had been using Chief Architect’s Home Designer Suite 2015 to do my house models to play around with furniture layouts and the like, but found it too limiting. The Pro version would probably be better, but I’m not going to shell out $495 to help figure out where to put my couch.

So I tried out Google’s Sketchup program and, after a relatively short learning curve, started making some models and had a go at creating a design for my library. I took the measurements from our actual Architect’s drawings and built the "room" and then went from there.

I’m not sure exactly how it’s going to play out. This was just a first draft of a design and it’s all kind of rough, but SketchupSketchup made is really easy to visualize how things would look and how the colors would work together. Here are a few pictures of my first go-round (more pictures after the break). Click on any of them to get a larger view.

Library Design 001-06

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Virtual First-Floor Walkthrough

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I recreated (and I use that term loosely) the real architect’s plans for the first floor living area of our house-to-be in Chief Architect’s Home Designer Suite 2015. I got most of the dimensions correct (more or less) which is all I wanted to do initially so I could try out some room layouts and see what worked and what didn’t. The software lets me create a 3D Virtual Walkthrough of the plans, so… that’s fun! Once I got the first floor layout done, I threw in some furniture and kitchen cabinets and created the walkthrough.

The finishes are not correct and some features are wonky since I didn’t actually “build” the house in the software. I just created rooms. So as far as the software knows, the house is a one-story structure that is floating roughly five feet over a lush meadow… which also means the stairs up and down can go nowhere… and the ceilings aren’t correct in some areas. Regardless of that, it’s an interesting (to me) glimpse of what the inside of the house will resemble.