Houses Are Plastic

Which is something that an architect said to us when we were first thinking about doing something in addition to adding the garage. After we saw his bill for just doing the preliminary (and last!) sketches, we realized that the plastic he had in mind was in our wallets.

This is, we know, a Problem of the Idle Rich, but one thing that s on our minds -- well, mine, anyway -- is the Elevator Question. I've no idea what it costs to add a residential elevator. If I had to swag, I'd say around $40,000, from start to finish. Even if it was a quarter of that, though, it carries additional freight which scares me. For example, where do you put it? Our house is the traditional bilevel style, with three bedrooms, two baths, kitchen, dining room, and living room upstairs, and two bedrooms, bath, and den downstairs. To put in an elevator, two of these rooms would have to be impacted. Do we lose the master bedroom and the storage area below? Doing that is okay for downstairs, but for upstairs means either adding a new bedroom over the garage, or moving into one of the downstairs bedrooms (both of which, incidentally, are currently in use!), possibly merging them into a larger room. Or do we merge the two smaller bedrooms upstairs (again, both in use), and somehow add the elevator with access from the garage to the central upstairs hall?And then theres the question of cost. If we did all of this, would we end up with the most expensive, not to mention oddly designed, house around?

You can see why building new does being to exert a certain fascination...

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We thought up a way. Still not at all sure its a good idea, but -- this is what the back of the house looks like. The structure on the deck is the kitchen nook we put in about eight years ago. So -- extend the right two thirds out about six feet, from the right side of the deck (lose the stairs) to the left side of the garage. Enclose it. Put the elevator inside, accessible from both extended areas. Use the remaining space to expand the bedroom above, and the storage room below. And maybe - probably not, but maybe -- enclose the area under the deck, too.

Is it doable? Dunno. Financially feasible? Probably not. But it wouldn't change the 'look' of the house, at least from the front, while still giving us the functionality we'd want, plus a little. So ... maybe.