A family plot of just over nine hundred square feet, a brief of four bedrooms across three floors, and a first week spent entirely on constraints rather than on design.
That week found two things. The setback on the lane side was measured by the family to the wrong face of the boundary wall, which cost about two feet of width. And the staircase, drawn at full size with a legal rise and going and a landing, took up a hundred and fourteen square feet on every floor, which is thirteen per cent of the plot. Everything else was designed around that staircase.
The result was four bedrooms, two of them small and honestly described as small on the drawing rather than furnished with a bed that would not fit. The ground floor has a two metre wide entrance that doubles as a workspace, because there was no room for both.
The set went to permission with one comment back, about the bicycle space, and was approved on resubmission. The contractor priced it from the drawings without asking us a single question, which is the outcome a drawing set is for.
It is now built. The family added a rooftop washing area during construction, which we redrew for nothing because it was our suggestion.