The upside-down.
Notice anything different? Eh??
When last we met, we were in the throes of finalizing a solution for our septic system problem, a problem with many facets indeed, like:
Site constraints in the form of a well radius and water system easements
Setbacks from the street and neighboring properties
A drain field site up-gradient from the French drain in the footing of our home’s foundation
Setback requirements from said foundation’s drainage system
Not enough room
Still not enough room
Not. Enough. Room.
I’ll spare you the painful details of all the back and forth and designs and redesigns and code-reading and code-interpreting and Department of Health phone calling and exasperated let’s-give-up hands-throwing and jump to the ending, which is, fortunately, a happy one: WE HAVE A SEPTIC DESIGN.
Not only do we have a septic design, it’s already been (drumroll, drumroll, drumroll) sent to, reviewed by, AND :party_emoji: :confetti_emoji: :champagne_emoji: APPROVED by the county.
We just had to get a little creative to make it work. And in this case, getting creative meant doing something so simple it almost seemed too silly to suggest:
We flipped the house upside-down.
This new layout aligned the foundations within the easements and setbacks JUST differently enough that the drain field and tanks for the septic system (each with THEIR own setbacks) could fit. So what was once at the south end is now at the north. The garage will be south. The guest room will be north. A portion of our drainage system is no longer as originally designed but should work out just fine, and one of our bedrooms will technically be an office/gym because the septic system is designed to support a 3-bedroom house, not 4, but, these are all fine compromises. Totally fine!
We are DELIGHTED that this solution lets us keep our house as designed, without needing to chop off sections, lose the garage, or dramatically alter the footprint (like was originally suggested by the septic design folks).
What HAS been a little tricky to wrap our heads around is just the spacial imagination required to picture the new orientation. Basically the house has been flipped on the vertical axis, so while it’s functionally the same, everything is… well, inverted, and after more than a year of visualizing ourselves walking in the front door and turning left to go to the kitchen and right to go to the bedrooms, it is oddly confusing to have that now be opposite.
But if a bit of brain-bending while the lot is still empty is the price to pay for keeping our perfect floorplan intact, we can afford that.
As the old saying goes, “Where there’s a will there’s a way—and Sam Westing has left quite a will!”
Sam Westing willing, the slow crawl toward this house actually coming into existence continues. Once the septic design saga was behind us, the team was able to focus on finalizing a drawing set to get out to builders for bids.
And there the drawing set currently sits.
Next up will be reviewing said bids once they’re in, choosing a builder, getting them through the vetting process with our lender, finalizing drawings to submit for permits, getting our HVAC and mechanical design and lighting plan locked in, making final spec selections, submitting to the county, applying for our loan, making a plan for groundwork, sorting out a landscape design… ya know, not much.
While those cogs slowly turn, we’re already shopping for accent chairs. Too soon? Feels too soon.
More updates to come (shortly, we hope).
