As-Builts: A Peek at the Real Thing

If you've been following the As-Built series in this blog, you're probably expecting to see how all our measuring, jotting and sketching rolled into a final document. I promise the final as-built is coming soon but I came across this and thought this would be a good time to show you a real take-off.

This sketch is my friend's house.  I designed an addition for her birthday, and of course, an as-built was necessary to begin the design.  There are a few things to point out here:

1. This sketch is a mess. If you look closely you will notice some similarities, but it's cluttered and hard to read.  This is what a fact-finding document looks like in the real world.  The examples in this blog are from my book, which I carefully developed as a visual tool.  So go ahead and be messy like this.

2.  When I'm measuring for as-built drawings I want to just get it over; it shouldn't take more than an hour.  You'll notice that some of my dimensions are in inches and some are in feet. I like to jot down measurements in inches when I'm measuring in the field.  I don't spend a lot of time looking the tape measure up and down, I just look at the inches and bam, I'm onto the next measurement. Then I can convert my measurements in feet/inches with a steaming cup of coffee, where I'm less likely to make a conversion mistake.

3.  This was the extent of my notes.  I didn't need to go back to her house to get any additional information.

So there you go!  I'd love to see your plan sketches. Leave me a comment and we'll post yours too.

As-Builts: Plumbing and Stuff

This weekend blog is about those semi-permanent elements in a house, such as cabinets, appliances and plumbing fixtures.  It's useful to locate these things on our as-built drawing because it will help us make decisions down the road.

For example, let's say we want to remodel the kitchen. If we can upgrade the kitchen and locate the new sink and hot water heater in the same location, we'll save money (otherwise we'll need to have a plumber reconfigure the supply and waste for the sink, as well as the hot water heater supply and distribution).  Or maybe the kitchen is the most important thing and we just bite the bullet, wipe the kitchen slate clean, and design a whole new kitchen.

So go ahead and draw the upper and lower cabinets (it will help to know how many linear feet of storage space we currently have) and then measure and draw those appliances (the refrigerator, the dishwasher, the stove and the oven, if they are separate).

We also need to locate the plumbing fixtures in the bathroom: the sink, the toilet and the tub.  We may as well include the built-in bookcases, since they are also semi-permanent.

That's it; we're done. Sort of - at least the investigative part.  Next time we'll take all this information that we've gathered and draw the final, real as-built drawing.