The start of something

We bought the property and went on with our daily routines.

But as time passed everyone was asking questions about what kind of house we were going to build. they wanted us to take a first step. And we wanted too. But we didn't know where to start.

How many storys should it have? How many bedrooms? Bathrooms? ("You want children, don't you?") What kind of roof? What kind of windows? What kind of entertainment system? Which kitchen supplies would we choose. 

Should it be really modern (lots of glass), all genuine and grown up (dark wooden floors and heavy couches), Scandinavian (and if we chose Scandinavian... would we stick to Scandinavian minimalism or go for the pastel shade - shabby chic kind of style?)

We were literally overwhelmed by thousands of pages of impressions and catalogues and ideas and questions and good advice. 

What helped us a lot was to take a little time out. Our honeymoon came in quite handy.

Somewhere between Bangkok and the most beautiful Thai islands we simply forgot that we had bought land and needed to build a house on it.

Sadly I had to realize that this perfect little bungalow of ours - with a bathroom without a roof and a massive rock in the middle of it - made perfect sense on Koh Tao... But it wouldn't in Suburbia.

Nevertheless I could figure out 3 things about my future home:

1) I want a big wooden porch.
2) I chose these shiny kitchen floor tiles for my bathroom (yes, i did. Maybe I should have consulted my friends first so they could talk me out of it...)
3) I want a LOT of windows in my livingroom/diningroom/kitchen ... 

I do get the gorgeous view over the ocean from my kitchen table into the bargain, right?

When we returned from our honeymoon, we sat down and started planning.

Soon we realized that we agreed in most of the important aspects-

We both wanted our house to be not too big. 

We wanted one proper storey and one half storey. 

But it should have a basement. 

We need 3 bedrooms (one with a walk-in closet) and 2 bathrooms in the upper storey. And the possibility to capture a fourth bedroom somewhere in the house, if we decide someday, that we will have more than 2 children. 

We want an open kitchen-livingroom-diningroom. But we don't want to see the mess we've made in the kitchen when we relax on the couch. So the ground plan of those 3 rooms must be shaped as an L.

And there should be a lot of light (and therefor windows).

My office has to be on the first floor, so I can throw my school bag in there right away, when I come home from work. 

And we both agreed that we wanted a very simple house with a basic layout. But there should be one eye catcher. We decided to blend in a sunroom into our big open kitchen-living-dining-room concept.