East elevation

It was clear we needed to take matters into our own hands. Matt reconceived the project to ensure we would finally be on budget. I provided Jimmy with our drawings, done in Photoshop, on September 25 and 30. Jimmy promised to get back to us with revised elevation and floor plan drawings by noon on Friday, October 12 (13 months into the project). Above is the lake side of the house.

• The four-season porch becomes a screen porch. The operable glass wall now separates the expanded dining area from the porch.


• The windows in the enlarged great room are no longer 14 foot high walls of glass. I never understood the scale of the drawings until Matt took out his tape measure and showed me. Yikes! These extra-tall windows facing the sun will not solve the glare problem this room currently suffers from.


• The lake-view bedroom doesn’t change in size; it just gets a door to the deck.


• The hot tub room is eliminated. The hot tub moves up to the deck and sits outside the lake-view bedroom.


• What I’m calling a lanai—because I like the word—now sits outside the expanded flex space, which will be designed for yoga and partying.


• The downstairs bedroom grows from a space without a closet and barely big enough for a nursery into a proper master bedroom.


• Here’s how it looked before.