Design Kick off

Last night marked a very important occasion in our household- we hosted our kickoff design meeting!  We actually have two people on our design team.  B is the lead on the project and she is our architect/project manager.  She invited one of her coworkers, L, to help with the project.  Our understanding is that B is very good with storage and layout, while L excels in design and feel.  Because we're currently living in a 650 sq ft apartment with will be similar in size to the garage, we invited them here to look at our space, how we're using it and discuss what we would change.

The Lead Up

In preparation for the meeting, hubs and I began jotting down notes of what we wanted or didn't want for the space.  There was no particular order, just as it came to mind.  We wound up with a couple of pages which we sent to the team before the meeting for review.

Some of the items may seem silly, but after living in a small space for a month and seeing some friends' apartments around town, we wanted to be clear about what we were looking for in the space.  The design team also sent us a list of questions to consider and be ready to discuss at the meeting.

Generic Questions:

-Think about a day in the life for each of you. As a group? During the week? On the weekends? As Anna grows up?

-How long do you see yourselves living in the DADU?

-How specific do you want the design to be? Hyper personal with a narrower audience? Or generic and flexible to accommodate a wide variety of tastes and functions?

-Do you have any specific sustainability goals you'd like to accomplish? I live life through this lens, but there may be specific things you're wanting to explore or incorporate. 

-Degree of privacy between you guys and daughter.

-What furniture, equipment, fixtures, etc are you wanting to bring with you?

Activities: (How would they be physically manifested in the design of your home?)

-Sleep

-Shower

-cook, eat, grow, store

-waste mgmt: trash, recycling, compost

-learn

-work

-clean and maintain home 

-visitors, day and night

-seasonality of activities (stuck indoors in winter, outside spring/fall, etc, )

-recreate

-leisure

-socialize

-hobbies

-technology + electronic integration

-exercise, meditation, spiritual/religious activities

-media storage (books, music, movies, etc.)

-clothing storage

-child development / stages of life + their accommodations) (coming from a person with no children. Going to need your guidance on explicit needs!) 

The Meeting of the Minds

With our daughter at the babysitter, we were free to really look at our space and get into the details of what we wanted.  Once the design team arrived we all got straight to work.  We went through each room, opening up all our cupboards, storage areas, etc and talking about what was there, what worked for us, what we wanted out of the new space, and what was absolutely a no go.  Ideas were thrown out room by room as they tried to tease out our style and exact needs.  We purposely didn't clean for them so that they could see how we really live.  During parts of the meeting I felt very exposed with all my stuff on view, but I was glad that they could see exactly what we had, where our inefficiencies were and why we weren't using some places well.  All of us are well-researched in tiny living, so it was also fun to throw out some possibilities for what might be in our final project.

The Exercise

In an effort to further tease out our tastes and refine what we're looking for, B&L posted tons of images on the wall.  Some of them were just rooms, some were storage options, some were tiny house samples- it really ranged.  S and I were each given 15 dots- 5 green, 5 black and 5 red.  We were to use them as stoplights (black representing yellow) and place a dot on pictures that spoke to us.  There were way more images than dots, so this was a difficult exercise.  After we were finished, we removed the photos with no dots.  S and I had to each justify our dots and talk everyone through our rationale.

As we discussed our choices it became clear that we were looking for completely different things.  S was most interested in storage and choosing designs that wouldn't be expensive to build.  Having no knowledge of the building process and trusting that the storage will be there, I focused more on the design and feel of the spaces.  We didn't conflict on anything, we just didn't put stickers on the same photos, like, at all.  In the end, our tastes are similar and I think that we'll be a good balance for each other as we continue to navigate the design process.  

After that was complete, B&L determined they had the information they needed to proceed.  The next step is for them to come up with three ideas.  In a couple weeks we'll meet again, they'll present their ideas and we'll choose one for them to flesh out in more detail that will eventually become our garage.  I'm so excited that I can't wait for the next few weeks to fly by, and yet, when I think about all the things currently sitting in the garage and in our storage unit, it makes me with that time could slow down.