To Build A Home.
In the summer of 2023, my wife and I bought our first home. A little house situated on top of a hill at the end of a dead-end. Quiet, peaceful, ours. We knew that we wanted to change some things from the start, but nothing extraordinary. A new coat of paint, take out a small wall or two, maybe even change the cabinet fronts in the kitchen. However, as is often the case, as we started on the simple fixes, we began to notice that small issues were purely symptomatic of some much larger problems. Some sense of dampness in the house was purely a reflection of poor insulation and a window that was leaking behind a wall - and notably, a lack of any ventilation system in the house. A plug that didn't work led me to discover a, let's say 'creative' interpretation of the electrical code. And sagging shelves led us to discover that our interior walls were actually made of cardboard. Luckily, growing up, my dad owned a construction company and taught me about electrical work, plumbing, carpentry, and a wide variety techniques for different aspects of construction. Even the thought of completely gutting the house and starting over didn't seem to break our spirits - although we had quite a few days feeling overwhelmed. As we lived in the house through the winter, we began to finalize the ideas in our heads about what we wanted our house to be. How we wanted to live in it. How we saw the layout changing. It was a constant process of iteration going between dreams, reality, and functionality. As the end of the year drew near, we set a date for the renovations to begin - March 1. An amazing opportunity to mix my professional skills of 3D rendering and modeling with my childhood memories of construction. My far off musings about being an architect or interior designer with my current proclivity for design. A new challenge that would encompass all of my skills, largely away from my usual post behind a keyboard and mouse.
The first steps.
The first step was conception. This involved 3D models, scale vector drawings, electrical plans, plumbing layouts, planning permission applications, and conceptual renders. More than just the documents and drawings I produced, it involved a lot of learning. Reading through the french electrical code, learning about standard building procedures in a new country, calculating and pricing out materials, and finding suppliers in a new place all involved a lot of time behind a screen, absorbing as much information as I could. I produced a lot of work during this time - proposals for design and color ideas to present to my wife, full PDFs of electrical plans to present and have approved by an electrician, renders of different rooms to workshop different color themes and materials, a full 3D scale build of the house to help calculate the amount of wiring and pipes that would be needed, and even a build in Unreal Engine of the house to work out placements of windows and where the light would fall at different times of day. Below, you can see some of the initial renders and 3D layouts I created.
Composite image for planning approval - Sliding glass door and VELUX windows
Initial rendered concept for kitchen - Day
Initial rendered concept for kitchen - Night
Top down view of kitchen to see clear space and layout
Initial rendered concept for bathroom - Day
Initial rendered concept for bathroom - Reverse
Into 3D - my comfort zone.
The first part of conception was the initial scale build of the house in 3D. I built the layout in Houdini, my 3D package of choice, and one built on procedural modeling. This allowed me to link different parameters together for walls and floors, windows and doors, giving me the freedom to move walls around dynamically as the layout automatically adjusted around my revisions. This kept the initial stage fluid and open. Adding walls, removing walls, shifting doors and windows to try out different concepts - all eventually fed into UE5 to have a live walk through and get a sense of the space we would eventually be building. After the floor plan was finalized, having the system built in Houdini allowed for extremely easy calculations of the area of different rooms, precise measurements of walls, and even the ability to draw out my electrical circuits in 3D and have the computer tell me the length of each gauge of wire I would eventually need to run the new circuits. From this scale 3D model, I was able to create realistic 3D renders, simulating different materials, different colors of tiles, and even testing out the conditions at different times of day. The only draw back from this approach was that after long periods of design, and deciding on a final direction, we found it somewhat difficult to find the exact type and color of tile that I had created in 3D. However much we struggled, we did eventually find hardwoods, paints, and tiles to match the concepts my wife and I had fallen in love with.
The initial floorplan created in Houdini allowing me to dynamically place and move walls, doors, and windows
Unreal Engine 5 house layout and walkthrough
The electrical wiring layout that calculates how many meters of each size wire needed
On to less flashy necessities.
The next step before beginning to swing the hammers was to have concrete building plans. I created a series of PDFs that laid out the electrical circuits, the wall builds, insulation layouts, and window placements. These served as valuable tools to both receive feedback and approval from professionals as well as a concrete guide for installation and purchase of materials. The insulation was calculated down to the meter. The metal studs and sheets of drywall all accounted for in a spreadsheet that made ordering the materials swift and confident. The amount of plugs and switches all accounted for. I will say that I ended up with two extra face plates for our outlets - I am not quite sure how that happened, but on the whole, we had little to no waste in the end. By creating all of the plans beforehand, once construction began and my head was in 100 different places at any given time, it removed any guesswork or room for error* from the actual building process.
* It must be said that in my electrical plans, I forgot to include the data runs. My initial plan of running wired Ethernet to every room was eventually scrapped because I had put up all of the walls before I remembered they were supposed to be in place behind them. With great struggle, I did run a CAT6 cable into my office after the walls were in place, but after that experience, I decided a mesh network was going to be the best way forward.
A sample of some of the electrical circuit layouts created for each breaker on the main panel
Window and wall layouts used to guide in installation and materials calculation
Time to break some stuff.
Before I knew it, March 1 had come around and it was time to break some things. We are lucky enough to have a great circle of friends here that were more than happy to come and help us destroy our house. Sledgehammers, saws, drills, and sheer power of will helped to rip out every wall and piece of insulation from our house in a single day. The cleanup would last for a few days following our grand kick off, but after the first week, we were left with a clean slate. A flat concrete floor, and four concrete walls. After a month of planning and designing in my domain of comfort, it was time to actually see if I could put it all back together. My wife and my dad were two of my greatest sources of encouragement. Both of them never doubting for a second that I could build everything that we wanted to build - create the home we had always dreamed of.
Starting over.
After the first week, we had taped out the floor plan, ran the electrical along the structural walls, and began to insulate the inside of the exterior walls. Working around the clock, with the help of my wife, we managed to put up the first wall of drywall by March 16, barely two weeks after swinging the first hammer. From that point, things began to accelerate as my confidence grew and things began to take shape. Only three days later, I had framed out all of the interior walls and mounted the five internal doors. I had a trip to London planned for the final weekend in March with some friends to celebrate my birthday, and by the time the plane took off, all of the drywall, framing, plumbing, and electrical conduit was finished. My first rest days in a month, to go and celebrate with close friends, to recharge ready to come back and start the final push.
Falling into place.
Coming back after that weekend, I had the immense joy of my dad coming over from the states to help me for a few days. A long journey, and quite a big sacrifice on his part, but it turned into some of the most productive and enjoyable moments from the whole project. In a matter of a few days, we installed the two new VELUX windows, put in over 100m2 of hardwood flooring, and finalized all of the drywall. More than just the surface level advancements on the house, having my dad around helped to cement my confidence in the work I had been doing as well as helping to re-center my view on the project as a whole. At this point, I had been working for over a month without pause, save for two days away in London, and I was exhausted. Having someone more experienced come in with a new view of the project helped me to find the joy in what I was working on, rather than just the sheer weight of the work I had undertaken.
Renewed in a sense of purpose and energy after my dad left, I moved on to the first coats of paint and the installation of the kitchen. The kitchen came from a fabricant in Denmark called Vermland. They make beautiful oak kitchen cabinets, and Phoebe and I had been following their work since our days of living in Copenhagen. Receiving all of the pieces provided an additional burst of joy as I got to step away from the heavy lifting and power tools for a few days as I tackled the puzzle of putting together the hundreds of pieces of wood that had arrived from the north of Europe. A few dust free days were greatly appreciated as I watched the first room of the house fully start to take shape.
All the final details.
Much as in animation, the finishing touches of a renovation really do take up a disproportionate amount of time. The tiling, skirting boards, sanding, painting, sanding, caulking and more sanding all felt like I was making big strides and standing still at the same time. At the beginning of the project, I was able to frame out all of the walls in the house in three days. Now, I was spending a week in one small bathroom cursing in frustration at the small mosaic tiles we had chosen. No matter how much it felt like the pace had slowed, we were still right on schedule. As the second month of renovation came to an end, the electricity was turned on, the water opened up again, and the coverings pulled off of the floors. As May 1st hit, we brought our suitcases of clothes back into our bedroom for the first time in two months, made our bed, and sat down on the couch, taking in the new house that we now were able to enjoy. There were still plenty of small finishes to take care of - installing a vent hood over the cooktop, small areas of skirting board to install, and a few wooded doors to stain and seal, but the heavy work was done, and our home was livable again and exactly as we had hoped it would be.
At the end of it all.
As I woke up the first morning after sleeping in our own house again, I was overwhelmed by a sense of relief. Looking around me, the mix of pride and disbelief was overwhelming. Prior to starting this project, I was overcome by doubt in myself, doubt from others who told us not to attempt the work ourselves, and feeling completely dwarfed by the sheer scale of what we were trying to do. But through the unwavering support of my wife, the constant encouragement from my dad, and the gracious help of friends and professionals alike who offered advice, guidance, and words of encouragement, we arrived at the end.
The simplest realization about our home is that it is a perfect reflection of us. A mix of design styles from all of the different places that we have lived together. A mix of materials and techniques that bridge the US and France. Much like my approach to photography, I think there is immense value in imperfection. Let's take the dovetail joint for the bathroom separation as an example. It functions as it should, but a trained carpenter could have done a cleaner job - of course. But when I see that joint, I will forever remember spending 30 minutes sawing slowly through the exotic hardwood with a handsaw. I will always remember that it was the first dovetail joint I cut in my life. As imperfect as it may be, that joint is a small memory - a memory built into the very DNA of the house itself. Everywhere I look in our house, I see memories. Memories of putting up drywall in our bedroom with my wife. Memories of our dog rolling around in the insulation that fell from the attic as we ripped out large sections of the ceiling. Every time I take a shower, I am reminded of the purest frustration I have ever experienced putting up those small mosaic tiles.
Putting down the tools for now.
This project challenged me as a designer, as an artist, and as a craftsman. It allowed me to learn new skills, to apply them, and to see where my life as a 3D artist can expand into a wide variety of different domains from interior design to electrical work. As cliché as it is, we really did start with a house and end with a home. This place is a reflection of Phoebe and I. It is a concrete building with four walls, but within those walls are a million little memories and lessons. Failures and successes. Beauty and joy.
