For months now the kids have been complaining about the Wii. The remotes wouldn't control the cursor on the start up screen. they'd developed this interesting technique where you'd stand facing the TV and hold the remote out sideways from your body (pointing 90 degrees away from the TV). Then you'd swing your arm in these huge circles trying to get the cursor to appear. They were successful maybe 50% of the time. Once you got the cursor on the screen you could direct it to the place you needed to start up Super Mario. Once started, the game worked fine. It was somewhat entertaining to watch them try and get it going. Well, I finally found some time to try and see what was going on. I figured the remotes were having issues, so I reset and re-synced them all - no luck. I went to Nintendo's website, and they had a troubleshooting section that dealt with this very issue. They suggested removing batteries, unplugging the console, and 'smacking' the remote against your palm. All proved fruitless. There last suggestion was that the sensor bar was broken and needed repair. So, I went to take the sensor bar off, and lo and behold, the thing wasn't even plugged in. How it had been working at all I have no idea. Plugged it in, and viola, started working perfectly.
Now, let me preface the next part of this post by letting everyone know that we have no plans to actually do anything at the moment. Land in Albuquerque is pretty much either a postage stamp or 1 acre. 1 acre is too expensive (~230K), and a postage stamp is too small. We have no real prospects at the moment to move either. Still, it's been fun to plan. I've been drawing up different house plans for many months now. Here's the current version. I post it here to get comments, concerns, and suggestions. I'm hoping to get a sort of Wikipedia thing going here, where the group can come up with a better solution than just the individual. I've been working with Google Sketch-up (free). Here is the layout. You should be able to click on the pictures to get a version you can actually see details in. The furniture is just to help get some idea of scale. Every time the kids see these plans they just want to know, "When do we get the big brown couch, or the piano?"
So, some comments to at least start some discussion. The dining room is probably too big. the table drawn in is 7.5' long (our table with a leaf in). The rectangle above the table is a 6' x 18" china cabinet. But I'm not sure it makes much sense to just cut two feet off each wall. I doubt it would save much in construction costs.
I'm not sure about the utility of the closet in the hallway. There's a spot to hang coats right in the mud room, but I didn't know what else to put where the closet is. Without the closet the bathroom could have a tub, but why have a tub? I've thought of putting a built in display area there (like a painting cut out).
The fact that one has to walk sort of through the kitchen to get to the great room is something else to think about. That part of the kitchen is just the entry to the pantry, and a desk, so maybe it's no big deal Speaking of the kitchen, here are a couple of perspective views. The circle is a 4 foot diameter table. The white rectangle in the pantry(visible in the previous picture) is a chest freezer, the one Mom got us for Christmas a few years ago.
One thing not on the plan that we know we want is a deck or patio in the back, probably at least partially covered. That would be between the breakfast area and the dining room. Also there will be a covered porch.
I've also got a few plans for upstairs, but every time I changed the 1st floor, the upstairs has to be reworked, so I want to get this finalized first, then I'll put up the 2nd floor.
