Of Floor Plans and Hobbit House Elevations.

I think our cat is related to the Romans somehow. I guess over the years people have brought cats and pets from all over the world with them to their new homes in foreign lands. Our cat Tuco is definitely related to the Romans somehow.(Tuco…a strange name for a cat you say? ….Tuco was named after the ugly guy from the movie “The Good the Bad and the Ugly” starring Clint Eastwood. One of my all time favorite movies.) You  remember the Romans and who they were at the height of their prominence back in the day. I hope your high school history senses are tingling. Anyhoo we all know the Romans got a little to full  of themselves at one point and would have these huge parties where they would just eat and eat and eat and eat. And when they could not eat anymore they would ….well…you know what they would do. This is what our cat does every day. It’s fun having pets isn’t it? This cat is going to drive me to drink.

Do Hobbits have pets?

Well back to building a Hobbit house. I wasn’t able to do any work this weekend. For good reasons of course. My son Terence got confirmed in the church this Saturday. We were pretty busy all morning getting ready. After confirmation ( which was a really wonderful ceremony) we had my mother and that battle ax of a mother in law of mine  over to the house for lunch. Jude had a football game after that and then we had a little dinner get together after the game with family. It was fun.I don’t have Columbus day off either like I usually have so that was a bust. Everybody at work was depressed when we found out we had to work Monday. Including yours truly.

So fortunately I had a comment from a woman named Sally who would like to see what the Hobbit house floor plans are like. So I thought that this would be a good weekend to do something a little different. Check it out.

Hobbit house floor plans.
Hobbit house floor plans.

Hmmm. Not really sure how in depth I should go. To begin with this is what we call  an architectural floor plan. It is a cut away section of the floor showing the rooms and their wall locations etcetera…from a bird’s eye view. Just the basic rundown. Living and dining rooms are in the front of the house, galley kitchen to the right. Through the kitchen we come to a hallway with a desk next to the kitchen. Walking from the desk down the hall we have our mechanical room with a common bath next to it. (For visiting Hobbits) The back of the house has two bedrooms one with its own bath and one which uses the common bath outside its door. The architect who did this drawing mislabeled the center hall. ( I did all of the original drawings and in order for them to sign off on them they wanted to redo them with their CAD program) Anyway that label is supposed to say circular hallway not center hall. We all know that Hobbits love their circular halls and I really want to put one in here. If you look at the floor plan you can see that the circular hall seems to be taking up quite a bit of space. And it does. You  have to keep in mind in order to get the right feel to the hallway you have to use quite a large radius to make a hallway this size. Although it’s not in stone yet I figured I’m going to need a hallway with a diameter of at least 8 feet in order to get the right height and feel I want for this house. So obviously one of the drawbacks to this is that we lose valuble floor space for either closets or the kitchen in this particular design. Just so you know a typical hallway is about 3 feet wide.

A few other things to note. The rectangles with the triangles in them are skylights. There is one in the living room, kitchen, and the back hallway. I wanted the interior of the house to be fairly bright with natural light. I’m not sure these are the final locations. I might add one over the desk area. I know quite a few people have seen the movie “The Hobbit” and will undoubtedly say that Bag End (The hobbits home in the movie) has no skylights and so on.  If only I had an unlimited budget to work with. But alas I do not. Therefore we must make a few adjustments to make a real Hobbit house work for big folk. A lot of the things that are in the movies are done with especial effects and the like. We all know this. So some of the aspects we really like in Bilbo’s house aren’t really do-able or practical for that matter. Like I said all of the circular hallways in the movie house were unbelieveable but there was no real practical way for me to add another circular hallway.

 Another matter of practicality are the windows of a Hobbit house. I know…..Hobbit houses have round windows. The only problem with round windows is you have to be Bill Gates to afford them,,,,and I’m not Bill Gates I’m Hobbit Hollow Jim. But really the round window thing looks good in the movies but as far as letting light into a house and so on they really aren’t what you are looking for. I’m still not one hundred percent sure what I’m going to do with the windows. I drew about 8 million sketches to come up with something that would look good and still be kind of Hobbitesque. This next picture is an elevation view of the Hobbit house. It kind of gives you an idea of where we are going. Check it out.

Elevation drawing of Hobbit House.
Elevation drawing of Hobbit House.

I actually have changed this drawing a couple of times since I originally drew it but this is the nuts and bolts of where we are heading. I didn’t think the door looked right. I have a rough sketch of what I’m going to do. I actually made the door larger and changed the curvature of the windows. And I don’t think the circular window is going to work either. (Sorry round window fans.) The other problem from a passive house standpoint is that passive house windows are really expensive to begin with so I’m a little nervous about pricing out arched windows that are passive house certified. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Well I hope this post was informative at the very least. The Jets just lost and I think Tuco threw up again. I gotta go.

Enjoy your week!

Jim

 

 

3 thoughts on “Of Floor Plans and Hobbit House Elevations.”

  1. Maybe you could do something to “round” the walls inside the house once it is up. Add bendable sheet rock, especially in the corners — things like that. Since none of the internal walls are load-bearing, you could change your mind up to the last minute.

    Reply
    • Dear Sally: Thanks for writing back again! You are correct. This is one of the aspects of this project that lends itself to a lot of creativity. The center hall will be round and I’m hoping to do an arched ceiling in the hall that is running from the desk to the mechanical room. The entry and exits for the kitchen will be arched as well. As you’ve noted I plan on making adjustments as I deem fit. I hope all is well and thank you for taking an interest in my project!

      Take care!
      Jim

      Reply

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