Finished house design in 3D

We hope the finished house will look something like this 3-D drawing shows.



We worked with an architect who also happened to be the son of the guy in charge of the construction. In the end it was a difficult working relationship we had with him but the fact he was the builder's son made communication between them and the process of transferring plans much easier.

Part of the problem in the design / planning process was probably the lack of time - we started working with the architect in December and began building at the beginning of February. In these six weeks Caro and I spent a long time looking at pictures and talking about ideas but it took a lot longer than we imagined to be sure about basic things like number and size of rooms. Windows got left for later...

We paid the architect what we thought seemed like a lot of money to help us draw up the plans and get the permissions we needed to build. Architects will often seek to charge at least 10.5% of the value of the construction, which is the minimum specified by a Costa Rican Engineering and Architectural Institution (CFIA in Spanish - el Colegio Federado de Ingenieros y Arcitectos). This seems high and often they will accept less, though possibly this is less true of the better ones?