A 3D Model of Our New House
I’d like you to meet Goldie—the 3D model of the house we’re building. Doesn’t she look awesome? I spent all last week primping her and getting her ready for her debut. You’ll be seeing her regularly from now on.
Watch the video to see Goldie in action.
The house doesn’t even feel real right now. It’s all a dream. It’s been a month since we completed all the design choices for our new house, and we’re still waiting for our pre-construction meeting.
Our excitement about the house started waning during this waiting period. Don’t get me wrong, we cannot wait to build this house, but this period of waiting is frustrating.
Enter Goldie!
I thought what better way to enjoy this process and pass the time, then to create a 3D model of our house—something tangible to look at while we wait for the real thing. Something that would help us plan and visualize our future house.
I only wish I had created Goldie sooner. She would have been incredibly helpful during the design phase to see how all of our choices look together.
Going forward, Goldie will be our #1 planning tool. She can model all of the colors and finishes we picked for the house. We can walk through her and see what our house will look like. As we get closer to move in, she will help us visualize our furniture layout, wallpaper ideas, and lighting design.
Goldie will also help me show you what we’re planning for our house. I wanted to introduce you to her before I start sharing our interior design selections.
I built Goldie using the Home Designer Suite software by Chief Architect. It’s an amazing program that allowed me to recreate my builder’s floor plan and turn it into a 3D model. Now, I can change all the finishes in the model to reflect what we’re planning for our home. I can even add furniture and landscaping.
Goldie and I have spent a lot of time together lately. I’m having way too much fun dressing her up inside and out.
I’m not ready to show you inside yet, but I did want to give you a full exterior tour.
Goldie is sporting the exterior color scheme I revealed here. On the front, her brick is painted SW Evening Shadow. The trim and board and batten above the front door is SW Extra White. The front door is painted SW Mariner.
Goldie has white porch posts with horizontal black iron railing. She also has a charcoal gray standing-seam metal roof over the porch.
Now here’s the fun part, I can spin Goldie around and show you the entire exterior.
My favorite view is this angle where you can see the fun windows over the foyer. There’s a 3’ square window over the front door plus two 40”x20” rectangular windows on the side above the office roof.
Most of the windows for our home are on this side of the house, which overlooks our yard (we’re building a patio-style home with a side yard, not a backyard).
Here you can see the covered patio with a window from the office, patio doors to the dining room, and a window from the great room.
The four windows in a row are the great room windows. The two single windows at the end are the windows for the kids’ bedrooms.
Around the back, Goldie is showing off our upgraded flush panel garage door and modern exterior lights.
On the other side of the house, it’s a big wall of siding with a little glass block for natural light in the laundry room. Because this side of the house butts up to our neighbor’s yard, we’re not allowed to have any clear windows on this side of the house. This way everyone gets a private home and a private yard.
If we wanted to, we’d be able to keep all the windows on the other side of the house uncovered, because our neighbor doesn’t have any windows looking into our house either. We’ll probably use curtains or shades on the bedroom windows and leave the rest bare.
On this side, we also have two skylights over the kitchen. Since we can’t have windows in the kitchen, the skylights give us a natural light source.
While I was spinning Goldie around, you might have noticed you can see in the windows. That’s all I’m going to show you of the interior right now. As soon as I get Goldie updated with all of our design selections, I’ll show you around the inside of the house.
P.S. I used Home Designer Suite 2020 to create the 3D model of our house. Check out my review of Home Designer Suite 2020
Looks awesome..I get what you mean about waiting. You did an amazing job with Chief architect. I used the same program to draw up our house from a house plan I liked and our house was built from my drawings.
I love how they have all the paint colors like Sherwin Williams and Ben Moore, not to mention being able to add any kind of wallpaper you like to it’s library. So much fun for you!
Thanks, Danalee. Chief Architect is so amazing! I’ve already started playing with the custom materials to add our exact tile patterns. It’s so helpful to see what it will really look like.
Hi Jackie, sweet, I can remember how much fun. I have suite from 8 years ago and thinking of upgrading…which one did you get?
I’m using Home Designer Suite 2020. So far it has everything I need and plenty to learn and play with before I upgrade. My kids both want to learn how to use it too…so that will be fun this summer.
Ok good to know, thanks. Your skylights were impressive, so I thought maybe you had the architectural one. Maybe that’s all I need, since the big work is over. It’s a great tool for the kids, my 12 year old daughter loves it.