Floor Plans... What I bought, what it might've been...

Floor Plan Sketches
11/25/2007


EDIT: The pictures of my sketches have somehow disappeared. I'll try to fix this problem soon. 11/30/07


I've been meaning to get these up for a while, but it's all a bit confusing. These sketches were hand-drawn, but with much thought, so bear with me. If you click the picture you can make it bigger, as I've written in the functions of the areas.

What I bought: You could not enter one apartment from the other, nor could you access the back porch without going outside to the back of the house.

On the left hand side, you'll see the sketch of the house as I bought it, divided into two apartments, A and B. The A's and B's are written in help to show what rooms went with which apartment. CL=closet, FP=fireplace (two separate fireplaces, one chimney), SK=sink, F=fridge, SH=shower. While this sketch seems hastily drawn, it is actually very accurate. The kitchens were little more than appliances in rooms, with some mismatched cabinetry. The bathrooms were shower units, toilets, and small vanities. Whomever divided this house was Cheap (notice the capital C) and Quick.

The sketch on the right is paired with the sketch on the left so you can see the doorways I found during demo, that show how the house USED to be connected. The 'hidden doors' are all circled. Please note that the bathroom for Apartment A was built out ONTO the back porch and that Apartment A's HALL was at one point an open side porch to the yard (covered breezeway, if you will).

What might've been...

As for the 'original' sketch... I know that the front porch is original, as are all the rooms, which have 10 foot ceilings. Nothing has been added onto the house, even porches, but some porches have been closed in and built into. There are five original closets, all small, seemingly 'coal closets'. There was one chimney, two separate fireplaces. The chimney had been terminated below the roof line at some point, so I made the choice early on to remove the structure completely and tear down that wall, even though I would like to put some kind of fireplace back into the house. Apartment B's bathroom seems most likely to have been a hallway to the side porch, but the evidence suggests that there was a bathroom there, or at least a sink or something, at some point (cast iron drain pipes).

The rooms still remain choppy and a little illogical at this point. There's no real evidence to point out where the kitchen was, or I haven't found it yet. I'm not sure when the big shift from outhouses to bathrooms was. There is no woodwork evidence, either, to clearly state where a dining room or living room was. Everything is Plain Jane and neutral. I would think that a bedroom would have a fireplace in it, but following that logic, you'd think a living room and/or dining room would, too. Since there is a back porch, and the sides are high, I would imagine this was used as a sleeping porch, so maybe the bedrooms were off or near it.

Maybe another sketch to come, showing the rooms' dimensions. And what my probable new floor plan will be...

Care to hazard a guess to the house's original layout?