My Sketchup Homes

About 5 years ago, my girlfriend and I made plans to move to the desert in 10 years to build our dream retirement home. We're not filthy rich, so we're investigating ways to cut costs and maximize value. I'm not a professional architect or even in the construction line of work. I do odd jobs to fix my moms house up, that's about the extent of my experience. So please be gentle and enjoy!

This is the house I've done the most work on. The intent of the L-shape design is to minimize geometry which costs money. The flat roof, simple shapes, and open floor plan are all purposeful designs to minimize labor and materials.

I plan on doing the entire outdoor space myself over the years to save money.

I use existing models for furniture so I can get an accurate idea of the size of these spaces. With that said, this is pretty much exactly how I'd furnish it in real life. The only major difference is that the dining table would be the precise dimensions of a ping pong table so you only need to quickly rig up the net to get your game on.

A view from the outdoor viewing area

The living room view from the kitchen area. I'm doing this to learn as much as anything else, and in this particular scenario, I do not like how small the living room is. Version 2 will be a big larger.

This while kitchen space was drag and drop. Someone else designed it. I'm just using it, once again, to get an idea of space. The actual kitchen would exchange all that empty yellow wall for more cabinets. My main goal is to have the kitchen/dining/living spaces be one big open room with tall ceilings.

A top-down view of the whole first level. That big empty space in the bottom left is the foyer, and there are suppose to be stairs there, but I think I took these shots before I got that far. You can probably imagine.

This area is what I call the guest block. 2 guest bedrooms and the 1st-floor guest bath. I love me some pocket doors, and I hate shower doors, hence the walk-in shower.

This is the hvac/service block. It backs up against the kitchen and includes (L to R) the entry closet, the laundry room w/ hvac, and the pantry. Once again, minimalist geometry to keep things open and crisp, but also to cut down on cost.

Isometric view of that backyard TV area w/ an outdoor fireplace.

Another shot of the kitchen/dining areas.

The area to the left shows another closet and a small hallway to the garage. There is also a small outdoor nook that's completely covered in case I'd prefer to have some seating there for colder/wetter time. I may also wall that off to make either the living room or garage larger.

Nothing too fancy about the garage. I did make it a bit over-sized for a 2-car. I've spent too many years deciding if I want to use my garage as a work space, or park my car in there.

This is a top-down of the 2nd floor which is basically a master suite. I may axe the 2nd story all together since this is suppose to be a retirement home, and I can't guarantee my knees will be up to the challenge of stairs. Clockwise from top left: MBR patio, master closet w/ vanity, master bath, stairs & office/loft, and back to the MBR.

An isometric view of the master suite.

More walk-in showers and pocket doors for the 2nd level.

That's all for my main design. I hope you enjoyed it!

Including this shot as it shows my new design net to the house we just moved out of. I used the county assessors website to get a rough footprint of the house, then took a few measurements of walls and estimated the rest.

This is an older design I made for a monolithic dome. For the sake of speed, I didn't draw the outer shell. I just did the math the figure out what the 1st and 2nd floor dimensions would be. Some of those second-story walls would need to be cut down to follow the curvature of the outer shell.

I start a design by just dumping existing models into it. Sketchup has a 3D model warehouse where you can go find furniture, cars, fixtures, etc. This allows me to estimate dimensions before actually spending the time drawing out a bunch of walls and such. In this shot, I've estimated an entry closet (the red, green, and blue shirts) and a pantry (the white shelves on the left). I started to realize that the curvature was a problem, not only for the final design, but also for just getting around in Sketchup. Sketchup is happiest with straight lines along the X, Y, or Z axis.

Another view showing a closet and bedroom on the 2nd floor, and a bathroom, office, and workout room on the main floor. The rest of the space to the right is open for the dining/living space.

Sketchup has a walk-around feature where you can go stand in the space and look around. This is great for visualizing where to put windows, furniture, etc. In this shot I was trying to visualize how the patio, fireplace, and living/TV area would all work together.

The view as you'd enter the home.

That's it for now. If you like this, I'd highly recommend downloading Sketchup. There's a free version that has very few limitations for the casual tinkerer like myself. Other Sketchup users have built thousands of high quality models that you can drop right into your model and play around with almost instantly. It's addictive. My one recommendation is to start with basic shapes for things like walls and roofs. it's frustrating when you virtually build everything out with 2x4s and plywood only to realize you made a mistake and have to make a major alteration. Get general ideas for rooms and layouts down on a flat floor before you start sketching walls. Good luck, and share your creations as I'm sure we'd all love to see them!