Country French Home Design - Chateau Style

• This article is about a Country French chateau style home design for which we were commissioned. It was to be a newly built - private, single owner-occupied, detached, story-and-a-half residence. 
  • Now some of you may not reckon these plans could be aptly identified as Country French Home Plans in a cottage style; however, "cottage" is the term to which our beloved client-contact referred several times when describing this style. 
  • Of course, this was for fun; whose house will it be anyway? 
  • 9464 square feet total, about half habitable.  Some cottage.
• The Country French home designs at the original time of this writing were 34 sheets in draft form and just at the end of preparation for letting to construction bids by 4 dream home builders of considerable reputation. We were about 15 months into this project. 

1. Our clients have actively participated throughout our work together with good-humor, keen intellect, attention to both major and minor items, and patience born of maturity and wisdom
2. We've never met them, don't have a clue what they look like, never once spoke with them on the telephone or even communicated with them through an intermediary. We've interacted by email and, minimally, by USPS. 

• The custom house design style is Country French ... Cottage Style if you ask our wonderful clients, Chateau Style if you ask us.  It - French Country - is a residential style that ranges in appearance from just more than a boxy farmhouse to just less than an ambassador's haute château.
• Our unique house plans settle about midway in that range
• There are among the characteristic custom house design exterior elements:
  • Rooflines of different pitches, some low and some quite steep
  • Roof forms mixed, e.g., hips and gables and round tops (including dormer roofs)
  • At least one prodigious chimney
  • Dormers (owing to its most often story-and-a half structure)
  • Windows of different sizes and heights on a wall line (similar to Craftsman style)
  • Masonry clad with decorative highlights of quoins, pediments, etc.
  • Decorative ironwork
  • A turret somewhere
• In all that, we only lacked the turret.

• Aesthetically, Country French home plans define a house that is warm and welcoming, understated, elegant, and relaxed

• • Steeper roof planes – gable, hip, and shed - set a tone of haute that lower roof planes in this style cannot convey
  • 2 bold, front-facing gables
  • A sense of cottage in the informality of the lesser pitch to the left wing roof, the peek-a-boo fenestration at L2, the facing chimney, several shed roof planes
  • The Tuscan columns at the entry, below an arched portico, welcome for their clear identification of the main entrance, anchor to the dormers on L2 by force of an on-center regulating line, introduce a surprising propriety, and support a distinctive and inviting curve to the portico roof
  • Whimsy in the Goth-roofed dormer on L2 at the right
  • A permitted observation that this structure has been around a while, built in sections, organic

• The footprint is, largely by force of roof design, a modified H with a extremely deep crossing element

Floor Plan - L1, Plan View

•  On the left, a commodious garage and a utility shed.  His and Hers Masters Closets back His and Hers Masters Baths.  A collective hall to all these Masters spaces connects the Masters Bed, as well.  Interestingly the Masters, via His Bath, can access a bigtime Laundry Room with chute, complimented by a more public access of the central hall to L2, Garage and all the L1 community spaces including the Foyer and Office space forward.
• The portico opens to a Foyer that lets to a big office space on the left, Family with fireplace on the right and, straight ahead, that wonderful central hall area for traffic exchange to everywhere, including a well-sited half-bath.
• Family itself opens to Foyer, Kitchen and Courtyard with fountain.  The Kitchen has functional spaces for baking, non-adult beverage and quickly-cooked foods, plus a big center island for sitting, food prep and cleanup.  To Kitchen’s left is a Pantry and Wet Bar.  To the right is Dining.  To the rear of Kitchen and Dining, are covered and open porches.
• To this home designer’s way of thinking, centering Kitchen at the backside of the crossing element (however deep) makes this layout functionally most convenient.

• L2 in this story-and-a-half is complex. 

Floor Plan - L2, Plan View 

• Let’s start from the left with one large walk-in closet opening to a large bath on the left and large bedroom on the right. 
• The central hall concept on L1 carries to L2, opening to: stairs and upper hall forward; exercise with attic access; guest bath and large bedroom in back; laundry chute in the hall itself, and dance studio. 
• The latter – the dance studio – opens to a large storage area on the right and shares a frontside library and overlook with the forward bedroom.  Both the dance studio and attic storage are drawn separately (not shown) for division into one or two more bedrooms and one (shown) or two (the second not shown, drawn in quite late) baths, still leaving some attic storage as well. 
• These latter baths – the one shown in grayscale and the one not shown – are identified as to-be-concealed after inspection by building authorities having jurisdiction.
• Of note, the darkened boxes throughout L2 indicate skylights set at Back Of House to the primary and secondary roof ridges. 
  • Such setting is to keep them out of line of sight in frontal approach. 
  • The skylights are needed to bring up daylighting surface area to surface area of the space below. 
    • There are two motives herewith:
      • In a story-and-a-half structure, perimeter walls aren’t really walls (from which one can build down for interior walls), they’re rooflines, unless one applies either a roof dormer, wall dormer or gable. 
      • Dormer and gable application have limits, too – space to set ‘em and style of structure. 

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