As-Builts: Sneaky Permanent Things

You very hard last week and you've earned this week's easy blog.  So far we have located all the walls, doors and windows; we have just a few more things to nail down, so to speak. 

Today we'll locate any other permanent elements that may need to be considered for future planning.  In this example, we've added the exterior porches and the fireplace.  These kinds of elements are pretty substantial and we may want to incorporate them into a future design, or get rid of them entirely.

Another new element in our drawing is the furnace.  This house is older and the heat is an oil furnace, so there is a big hole in the hallway floor with a grill cover.  These things used to creep me out when I was a kid, but that's a different story.  This element is more or less permanent.  It seems like no big deal, and it could easily be overlooked.  It could be an issue later, however, if we designed a new layout and wanted to put walls there. 

Your homework assignment is to look around your house, inside and out, find all the permanent elements and add them to your drawing.  And carve a pumpkin.  The pumpkin has nothing to do with as-built drawings, of course.

As-Builts: I've got your number

We start to get down to business now- just a little - don't panic.  Here's what we're going to do:

Today's blog is about measuring all the doors and windows.  It's simple, really.  We've already located everything in the drawing, we just need to measure a few things and then add the measurements to the drawing.

Let's start with the easiest one - doors.  Most residential doors are 6'-8" tall.  Seriously.  Of course there are exceptions, for example, entry doors are sometimes taller.  Anyway, architects usually just specify the width of the door, unless the door is a non-standard height. That is why you only see the width of the door on the drawing.

Windows are not that much harder to measure - architects will note the width and the height of the windows on drawings.  If you want to roll like the architects there are a couple of things that you need to know:

1. When you note window dimensions you always put the width measurement first, then the height measurement.

2.  Measure the opening of the window in the wall. There may be a lot of other stuff there, trim and so forth, but go ahead and measure the wall opening; you can fine-tune later, if you really need to know. (When would you need to know? Oh, say you want to upgrade your windows with more energy efficient windows...)

So there you go. Measure and jot.  You've already come a long way.

As-Builts: When Do We Get To Windows?

Are you sure you're not an architect?

Yes, today is all about windows - just where are they in our rooms? Just like doors, we want to draw windows approximately where the are in the walls.  I like to draw my as-built windows as skinny boxes on the wall, but it doesn't matter - whatever works for you, as long as you know it represents a window.

It can get a little confusing if you have a bank of windows and how you handle that is up to you. You can locate each window next to each other or lump them together as one big one. Don't worry - you aren't making any big mistakes here.