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This is the first in a series of blogs that will follow the client experience on a fully custom home from start to finish. The goal is to provide a hopefully easy to read, and sometimes entertaining look at the Echelon Custom Home experience.
Stay tuned for another group of blogs on our Echelon Series Homes.
Part 1 – ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
This is often the scariest part of the process. The first meeting is essentially a blind date with what you are hoping is your future spouse… Ok maybe not that scary but it is the first time you sit down with Tim Tice and discuss the overarching goals for your house.
The first meeting is a get to know each other meeting and an opportunity to identify critical components. Things that are critical include: lot dimensions, property location, exterior style, are we capturing views, how do you plan to live in the space, and your budget goals. There are also a lot of special considerations that are different for every project: I want to use my kitchen for big family gatherings, I really want the owner’s bedroom separated from the rest of the house, I would like an open floor plan, we have an elderly relative we need to accommodate, a rooftop deck is a must, I have always wanted a rock star bathroom! This list is pretty endless and open ended. It is critical to the success of the project and your long term happiness to get every idea on the table, so they can be discussed and integrated, modified, or discarded as necessary.
Once the initial meeting is complete our team does some heavy research on all of the regulating bodies that may affect what you are allowed to build. These could include: town, city, county, DNREC, and HOA to make sure we understand our limitations. Once we have this information, the team will put together concepts that do their best to maximize the usage of the property and meet all of the needs you discussed at the original meeting.
At the second meeting, which can be handled remotely through computer conferencing or in person, the design concepts are reviewed. As our lead designer says, this is where the true start of the design begins. Floor plans are reviewed and tweaked, sometimes heavily revised, prior to taking a look at exterior elevations.
So as you can see in the examples above, it really is a blank canvas painted to your specifications. The only limits we have are the rules of the regulation bodies, and of course physics. ☺
Check back soon for the part two in the series, interior design and selections.
So, if you have managed to read to here God bless you, you are a trooper. Here is how it ended, but be warned the hero of the story does not prevail…
A thruster is a front squat (Barbell high on your chest, full squat) then as you are returning to vertical pushing the weight directly over your head in a shoulder press. This exercise is an oxygen destroyer, it forces your body to use every big muscle group and as a result the oxygen gets depleted very quickly.
Ah the drama continues…so much for my goal of 7 rounds. Life definitely does not always cooperate with my Crossfit plans. This week was also my wife’s 40th birthday and I had a big weekend event planned, which included renting a house for the weekend in Rehoboth and surprising her with flying a friend in from Chicago. My first plan was to do the workout Friday night, but after getting back from the airport I was coerced into having a few beers with the girls who were celebrating with my wife on Friday night. Then the plan moved to Saturday day, I was on Dad duty but my son was supposed to get picked up for a birthday party at 10:30 so I had planned for an 11:00 workout. I had a client meeting at 12:30 and then organizing the rest of the nights activities for day 2 of my wife’s celebration. Perfect. Yeah, not so much, the person picking up my son who is usually super punctual if not early did not show up until 11:25, grrrrr. So Saturday was out and that only left Sunday. Sunday after my wife’s 40th birthday party with 20 friends, so of course I didn’t drink at all and stayed sober so I’d be fresh for Sunday. Haha, no chance.
Ok so in my last post we talked about our company promoting fitness for employees and my participation in the 2012 Crossfit games open. Sunday March 4th was the last day to post scores for round 2 of the competition. Round 2 was the snatch tree 30 reps at the following weights 75, 135, 165, 210 or as many as you can get in 10 minutes. I knew going in this was not to my strengths, what I wasn’t planning on was disturbing an old injury. GRRR! The workout was hard but more frustrating than anything else, I would do this one again anytime compared to the first workout. However, I didn’t get a second chance, (workouts are posted on Wed you have until Sunday to complete and post your best score), due to my injury.
We are currently at the start of week 2 in the open. The week 1 exercise was 7 minutes of Burpees to a 6” target above standing reach. A burpee is basically going from a standing position to a push up position flat on the floor back to standing then jump up to touch a target 6” above your standing reach with both hands. This may not sound all that terrible but feel free to try it at home, it’s about as close to self induced water boarding as I can imagine. At about 3 minutes breathing is a distant memory, at 5 minutes your legs turn to cement, at 6:30 your coach/judge is yelling 30 seconds GO, GO, GO!, after about 3 hours 20 seconds has gone by and you try to grind out 2-3 more in the last ten seconds. After which you desperately look for any position that might help get air into your system. Fun, huh? Fortunately you can do it more than once, because the workout is announced Wednesday nights at 8 PM and you have until Sunday at 8 PM to post your score. So I did it twice, because I wasn’t happy with my first effort. Thankfully I did improve, I would have been seriously unhappy to have done it again only to get the same or a lower number.
