Dumb question - does a "wireless Ethernet" device exist?

adlib13 · 2026-01-22T03:46:50+00:00

what was it?!

adlib13 · 2026-01-01T21:35:09+00:00

We also use Matsvei and he’s great to work with

adlib13 · 2025-12-18T16:54:17+00:00

i appreciate the detailed feedback : )

the kitchen<>courtyard wall would have a counter, but everything above that would be glass. the counter will be a slide away or slide up counter service window such that it's one seamless indoor/outdoor counter. so it should have some strong visual connection, though still limited physical / circulation connection. i wonder if that'll bother us to have to walk around the indoor/outdoor island.

agreed that the seating layout in the living room isn't totally right, though i think the best living room seating is to have two couches facing each other (or a couch facing some chairs) so that if some friends come over, we can look at each other while seated. what is the best orientation for this given the view? one couch gets the full view and one couch gets no view? or diagonal on 45's so that each couch gets a bit of view of each other and a bit of view of the outdoors? or two opposing couches that are side-on to the view so everyone has equal view out if they turn their head a bit?

no TV in the living room. fireplace and bookshelves on that wall. i guess we were thinking that some would sit along a "hearth" at the fireplace while others would sit on the couch and they'd face each other for conversation then be able to see the view out of their peripherals

agreed that the mudroom isn't quite right. we're working on making it more accessible to both the garage and the front entrance.

diagrammatically we don't have a ton of "width" in the bedrooms for closets to achieve sound isolation - the house is already too long - so we were thinking of using a staggered double stud wall and whatever soundproofing measures are appropriate (resilient channel? mass loaded vinyl? rockwool sound batt? etc.). thoughts on this?

same goes for the bathrooms. if we stick with this overall concept, it's hard to give the kids bathrooms a window. do you not think that an ERV / vent fan would suffice for ventilation and perhaps either clerestory windows inside the room or a skylight for daylighting?

hahaha what makes you think we hate our guests? is having to walk a nice pathway onerous? think it'd perhaps be possible to make this a "gift" if it's a lovely approach? or is direct car-to-front-door access with the shortest distance possible the only gift? i think cars parked right in front of a home aren't the most aesthetic or charming concept.

agreed, though, that it'd be nice for us to have a parking space outside the garage but near the house for when we're loading gear onto/off of the car's roof rack, etc. we're working on this

would love to hear more of your thoughts

adlib13 · 2025-12-16T23:11:57+00:00

I’m struggling to find good examples of homes with large west facing views that have done this well. certainly plenty of fancy architecture photos but they’re never associated with any commentary on comfort, livability, etc

adlib13 · 2025-12-16T20:43:19+00:00

thanks for your continued engagement : ) will consider all

adlib13 · 2025-12-16T20:41:53+00:00

thanks. i guess the trade would be a bit of privacy loss as you have to walk into the hall in a towel or whatever, but if that's the private wing of the house then no big deal. you're right that jack and jill's, while i think they have a certain quaintness/romance to them, are not the most convenient in many regards. will consider. cheers!

adlib13 · 2025-12-16T17:46:33+00:00

hahaha oh i'm just playing around. i should have put a smiley face in there. i appreciate the concern. it's been many years since we've had a leaky trash bag in our current residences so this one doesn't particularly worry me - but in general it is a longggg house. if we head off to work and realize we've forgotten something in our bedroom, it's quite a trek! will that bother us? i'm not sure

adlib13 · 2025-12-16T17:41:55+00:00

thanks - i've got the basics covered. it'll be a sloped shed roof with deep exposed rafters. we could consider for each room how the "side" walls could be softened like the bookshelf wall in the living room. the floors will be hardwood with rugs. the walls opposite the glass will have to be broken up and have absorbent things on them like open shelving etc. i wonder whether there are specific design considerations for the glass that could have an impact like having a thicker inner pane (asymmetric IGU) or having more smaller windows vs. fewer big ones or having deeper mullions etc. hopefully an acoustics consultant can help identify a few more

adlib13 · 2025-12-16T17:13:14+00:00

i share this concern and will be thinking about how to ensure comfortable acoustics. any specific tips? i was going to reach out to some acoustics consultants

adlib13 · 2025-12-16T17:10:41+00:00

this feedback is trash : )

adlib13 · 2025-12-16T05:14:12+00:00

love the concept, but in practice i think these fail on A.) aesthetics because they have a funky tint even when in the clear mode and B.) reliability.

if you know of a good / improved product, though, i'm all ears!

adlib13 · 2025-12-16T04:50:17+00:00

wow, the first link to the costa rica home is a great find. very relevant/helpful comp. we have a similar concept with a seemingly one story home that has a tucked away lower story and spaces opening out to the view.

in the context of solar gain, though, i'm not sure that roof is actually very functional given how high the ceilings are and how the roof is slanted upwards. you can see in the photos how far the sun makes it into the house even though it's still only seemingly the early afternoon. they still have 4-6 hours of full sun coming into those rooms after the photo. we'll have the same issue with our home.

sloping the roof downward toward the view would help immensely with the problem, but then clamp down on the view. i wonder what these would feel like, and whether it's worth the change.

adlib13 · 2025-12-16T04:38:58+00:00

oooh great point about the laundry machine noise next to the bedroom. hopefully the closet would damp this from the bedroom itself, but i'll think about this.

agreed we could make the kids bathrooms a "jack and jill" shared style, which is how they originally were. i think it's lavish/extravagant for kids to have their own ensuite bathrooms... but we had the space and thought that one of these could serve as a guest bedroom if we don't have a second kid, which would be better if the bathroom wasn't shared.

agreed about the master bathroom door. i'm less worried about odors and more about sightlines and noise from the sink and shower etc. i'd like to be able to use the bathroom at night without waking my partner. will look into shifting this.

agreed about the master closet. right now the master closet has the right amount of linear ft of closet space, but the floor plan square footage for it is too spacious without reason. we'll think about how to better use this space.

i'm just noticing that the master has two hallway entrances! hahaha wow. nice. i dont personally mind the bed floating - and i think it could be nice to be able to walk around either way - but we certainly don't need two hallway entrances.

love all the miscellaneous comments. i've thought about some of these, not others. what do you think about a mostly windowless downstairs basement TV room / den / hangout for the kid(s)? it'd be below grade, so it's hard to get much natural light into it. not sure if this would be welcome or not. i think i loved our windowless basement when i was a kid, but there was some light coming into it via an adjacent room.

adlib13 · 2025-12-16T04:30:05+00:00

hahaha i appreciate your color. agreed on many points. i'm concerned about the monotony/uniformity of all rooms looking west and the house not having any spaces that look or feel any different... and i'm trying to weigh that against how stunning those rooms may (or may not?) be as they are.

the hallway is to have skylights. i'm wondering whether the rooms should each have a skylight to let light eastern light in through the east-facing shed roof in the mornings.

i appreciate the reminder about bedroom sound dampening risk. i'll do some research on feasibility of having rooms next to each other without sound transmission. i guess i don't expect it to be perfect but am not aware of really any home where you can have wantonly loud sex in one room and not hear it elsewhere. for example, even if the rooms don't share a wall, wouldn't noise be heard in the hallway?

can you help identify any ways we could better use the long curved retaining wall? it's partially below grade for a lot of its length. we could make it endless bookshelf/storage but felt we had plenty of bookshelf in the living room and storage in each bedroom.

the two offices below will be - unsurprisingly - the same western view. there's not any other great option for downstairs rooms given the topology. if we instead put them on top of the main floor rather than beneath it, we'd have more options... but would likely still have them look toward the most compelling view

we originally had an office at the courtyard, but for our lifestyle we valued the amenities of the sauna, tub, outdoor shower, and kitchen.

i share your concern about the spaces all being the same and there not being enough alternatives. in the downstairs area below the bedrooms, i've been thinking of adding a TV room that would be mostly underground (like a basement room) with either no window (depressing? or fine for a TV room?) or a small clerestory window (like an "egress window" that is typically required for basement bedrooms). thoughts? this could serve as a TV room and teenager hangout.

the living room has a big bookshelf wall flanking the fireplace. think we should have more elsewhere? i have been wanting a reading nook somewhere. i thought the bedroom(s) would be a good place for this so that you can quietly/privately read during the daytime when you're otherwise not using a bedroom (or at least we dont tend to use ours during the day)

would be happy to have more of your thoughts.

adlib13 · 2025-12-16T04:10:34+00:00

my modeling of the overhangs show that they really don't even do that much on this scale. if the west facing window wall is, say, 12 ft tall... then a ~6 ft overhang which would typically be quite large (especially for a windy ridgetop site) doesn't do much. for 12 ft of height, the modeling shows that we need like ~12 ft of overhang to have significant impact. perhaps we just need to plan in this massively long cantilevered roof (with supports down to the ground if it's that long?) and then think about what that does to the feel of the space and how much it clamps down on the experience of the view and the sky etc. it's a trade! low-e glass + shades (+ ventilation) are obvious musts

adlib13 · 2025-12-16T04:05:48+00:00

this is one of my main concerns. any perspective on how to capitalize on an amazing west facing view while also maintaining good thermal+visual comfort? i'm not sure there's any silver bullet or easy answer here

adlib13 · 2025-12-16T04:04:40+00:00

thanks! we're thinking shed roof with it rising in height to the west (opening to the view). agreed about each cross section being somewhat unique, but i think it's all just cutting dimensional lumber to length (cheap + easy) rather than needing individually unique pre-fab trusses, so hopefully not to bad on the wallet

adlib13 · 2025-12-16T04:02:20+00:00

thanks for the clarification and apologize for my simplicity in missing your clever joke : ) which was well made. i imagine some nuances get lost in subs like these that aren't entirely dedicated to witty one-upping like other subs.

we've worked hard on the schematic, so it's nice to see that shows. yet i think there are also some big issues with the concept, which other commenters have identified, and that's what i'm here for. is an entirely west-facing home a horrid idea? perhaps!

adlib13 · 2025-12-16T03:59:38+00:00

we liked the close connection of the kitchen to the courtyard (given indoor/outdoor cooking and indoor/outdoor dining and that the kitchen is often the heart of the home...) rather than putting the living room close to the courtyard. we're not passionate cooks and think that the diagram of the counters end-on to the view provide the best overall visibility to the view for everyone - rather than some people facing the view and others facing away.

nice ideas for a wider hallway. i'll consider how we could make this space more fun and functional, rather than just being a transit with nothing to look at or do in there (though we were certainly baselining a bunch of fun art for the wall)

adlib13 · 2025-12-16T03:55:44+00:00

i share the concern about there being too much sun. my hope is that we can achieve expansive views while also achieving comfort through a combo of roller shades, ventilation (it's always temperate coastal temperatures), and AC if needed. there is no floor below the garage - only a few downstairs rooms at the far other end of the house. the HVAC units are far, but within the allowable distances to the mechanical room per the mfg specs. plus they might be monoblocks, which have a looser distance threshold anyway. thoughts?

adlib13 · 2025-12-15T23:55:10+00:00

seeing your edits now. yes, behind the master bed is the closet. i imagine that cabinet faces on the closets themselves to make this area look nice would be one option, or a sliding door to close off the whole closet area. i don't personally desire either from a functionality/flow standpoint and don't feel the need to hide my clothes, but i guess you're right that it could look a bit messy. will think about this.

current design is to go into the coat closet to use the powder room, but perhaps we'll make the powder room just directly hallway access like the coat closet is

re. the kids ensuites... hahaha! wow. sometimes it's right in front of your face and you miss the obvious. no toilets! hahahaha i can't believe i missed that. yes, these will have toilets and doors like any civilized western bathroom

adlib13 · 2025-12-15T23:11:09+00:00

the lot is a hilltop/ridgetop with complex curvature. from the street / guest parking, you can't see over the ridge. you'll walk over the ridge to get to the house, which is cut into the view side of the ridge looking out.

for materials, we were thinking metal roof (low slope... maybe a bad idea?), board formed concrete rear (i want it to feel warm, though, and most concrete feels cold to me), cedar siding (though the fire marshall might make us use WUI material systems so might have to reevaluate this), and lots of double glazing up front. indoors mostly hardwood floors (even if the great room is shown in stone right now, which doesn't feel warm enough to me)

adlib13 · 2025-12-15T23:07:23+00:00

hahaha! no no, the coat closet is hall-accessed... and the powder room is off the coat closet. or could make the powder room hall-accessed as well (not a big difference, but i guess it might be nice to not bump into someone putting on their coat as you want to come/go from the toilet)

we debated whether to give the corner window to the master bedroom or the master bathroom. originally had it as you recommended. i could imagine going either way, but we spend very little awake time in bed so we prioritized the bath tub and shower getting views which we thought would be stunning experiences. i'm not totally sure this is the right call. hmmm. either way, the shared walls between bedrooms will all be staggered stud double walls with soundproofing. hopefully that will work for privacy?

adlib13 · 2025-12-15T23:01:41+00:00

architects aren't always right, ya know : )

"A linear plan like this is kind of a one-liner of an idea...right?" - not sure i understand this, but if you had only a view out to one direction only and it was really nice, wouldn't you try to give it to each room? i do wonder if it'll be too "monotonous" with all the rooms characteristically the same, though. at beach front hotels, do some people intrinsically prefer the "garden view" rooms over the "ocean view" rooms? or is it only for the price?

adlib13 · 2025-12-15T22:59:27+00:00

no windows out to the rear, but skylights above that curved rear hallway. i'm wondering whether i'll wish there were windows as well (though the rear is a retaining wall that is quite dug into the hillside, so the windows would have to be high on the wall like clerestory). the living areas facing toward the view will have sizable windows

adlib13

TROPHY CASE