One of the
things that Abby and I had done was to take the surveyor's plot plan which outlined
the area where the house could go on the property and using a piece of paper
cut out to the size of the house, we shifted it around until we got it lined up
where thought it would fit best on the lot.
We then went out to the lot
and tried to get a good idea where everything would fit and which trees might
be in the way. And of course I was out in the yard with my tape measure and
sticking little white flags in the ground to get a better perspective of where
the house would be on the lot. One of the problems that we were running into
was the telephone pole in the front of the house seemed to want to be centered
on our front door. While our plan is to curve the walkway somewhat, we didn't
want to look out the front door at a pole or have the house appear from the street
to be centered on the pole. So we shifted the house about five feet to the
north. We found later that one of the additional benefits of doing this was
that it made our driveway longer which at the same time reduced the steepness
of the driveway to the road. I think the garage floor sits about five feet
above the street, so this made a nice difference.Another issue that we had was a beautiful dogwood tree was right on the garage foundation line. It was a mature tree that we didn't want to cut down so we decided to try to save it and have it moved to the dining room corner in front when we did the foundation hole.
I'm sure it made the neighbors wonder why we were out there with the tape measure and moving the flags around. Remember, the house was still standing at that point and the only activity had been me mowing the grass and moving little white flags around. Spending the time to really get a good location for the house on the lot was time well spent.
