Construction Drawings Construction drawings are a set of plans and specifications which are used to carry out the agreed upon design ideas. These plans are usually the ones submitted to governmental agencies for review and approval. Contractors use these drawings to bid projects by calculating costs for materials, labor, overhead and profit. Most people do not realize that plans and specifications are legal documents! They are part of the construction contract. “I give you money and you build this.” The…

Since we live 3,000 miles away, the design process is being done with starts and fits. Some times it’s hard to get a concept across by phone. I have started to sketch out design ideas, scan them and email them to our designer. It seems to take forever to create design ideas, get them refined, sent out, reviewed, commented and reviewed again. By that time we have rethought the ideas and have come up with additional ideas and changes. I’m…

After much round and round we have refined our needs and hopefully be within budget. The original idea *sigh* was way to big and expensive for us to accomplish. So now to our refined plan. The least expensive design is a square house with a hip roof. We worked with the rooms and room sizes we could live with and worked our way outward. We were able, with many design iterations, to come to a design that will give us…

Another part of a preliminary design is to see what the elevations would look like based on the preliminary floor plans. Our idea is to have the exterior walls stuccoed in a Mediterranean style with medium texture. Due to budget concerns we want our concrete roof to be as light as possible and still resist hurricanes. The lighter the roof the less wall structure we need to pay for. To do so, we are going to paint the roof with…