Friday, February 3, 2012 Virtual Living
Slow day? No - I just can’t help myself. I really need to be cleaning house, but instead I’m playing with my blog and a cool online software program.
First the blog — I pulled in an old header that Tom helped me create in 2008. I figure - it’s an election year so why not? It fits. Plus I’m too lazy to create a new toon header. Maybe someday, just not today. :-)
Second — The coolest software program e.v.e.r. is called Floorplanner and it’s free. OK well at least the first few floor plans are free. If you need lots of floors you need to signup for the “pay version”. But not me.. I’m not building an apartment complex. :-)
I found this tool last summer thru Google and it was a lifesaver. I did not make a trip to Illinois to checkout our rentals options - I simply relied on pictures and room dimensions from Tom and then I created a virtual floor plan. Since I was born and raised in Peoria, I had no need to verify the neighborhoods, the location, blah, blah, blah. I knew how to get from point A to B in my sleep - what shopping was up the road and the most important thing - where all the quilt stores reside. [Insert Cheesy Grin]
You can see one of the layouts I created for our rental in this blog post. In the end, we only had 2 pieces of furniture that did not work anywhere and I knew about one of them beforehand. Once we got to Peoria, we looked at the space together and made one last tweak as they were bringing things in the house. And it worked. Without this tool I’m not sure we would have survived that day.
Now I’m using the same tool to plan furniture placement in our retirement home. Although it is several years away, we have a definite plan. We have a location and specific home picked out. I’m not going to talk about all of that just yet, but this is how all the stuff will fit.
;)
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Only 1 car in the garage.. that’s part of the plan. Plus no excercise room and one less dining room. Now don’t tell Tom, but I added in some pieces we don’t own. Some of it in the sewing room. A girl can dream eh?
Cool eh? And you can also look at it in 3D. Twirl it around - zoom in. You can turn shadows on or off. It’s amazing.
;)
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;)
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And of course, no virtual dollars were spared for the patio/garden area. Tom looked at this and said…. Are you going back to work? That Tom!
Reader Comments (2)
Where is the RV PORT. It should be attached to the home.. :)
No need to store RV elsewhere when you can store at home in it's own heated garage area.
Ha Ha.. No can do in this community. Which is OK with us. We did consider moving to an RV port community, but in the end we decided against it. Eventually the day will come when we'll need an exit strategy from the RV life and we don't want to be living in an RV port home when we get to that age, nor trying to sell one. This should be the last "big" move.