Plans

So for those of you for whom plans are hard to read, I apologize in advance. These are really hard to read, being photocopies of original plans that are now tiny and pixelated. But, in the interest of explaining my demolition photographs, I think I better give a brief sense of the layout of the house. Since we are fortunate to have both Gutnayer's original design drawings and a quick set of as built drawings, I will show both.

 

original design, main floor J. M. Gutnayer, 1957

To orient you briefly: the bottom of the drawing is the front of the house: the little dots and dashes along the horizontal line represent the window mullions of the ribbon window. The circular stair is how you enter the house from the ground floor. The beds and baths are on the right side of the drawing, with the kitchen/living and dining on the left side. The elements highlighted in blue are the things that changed when the house was built. The only major change was the orientation and scale of the fireplace. His design oriented the fireplace towards the dining room and had a smaller footprint than what was built. Also, he designed a 'skydome' over the circular stair that was not installed.

 

as built plan, main floor, J.M. Gutnayer, 1958

Here you can see the different shape of the fireplace, and also the different orientation of the exterior stair. It was originally drawn to head back to the rear of the house, but was built to move to the front by the garage.  The elements in red are the elements we are removing from the house, the elements in blue are being added. We are removing the stair on the north side of the house (the left side of this drawing) and replacing it with a stair down to the backyard from the lanai. The bookshelf and maid's room walls that interrupted the continuous ribbon window from the inside are being removed to create a very open main room. 

 

from inside maid's room.

 

from the family room, seeing the continuous window.

What will go in the space in front the window? We expect it will be very sparsely furnished, if at all. This floor area is designated un-programmed, lying in the sun, reading the paper, doing a project space.