Our first plans

So below is a link  to see our first attempt at house plans.  I used a free floor plan generator, so the dimensions and sizes are a bit off. It was also not as user friendly as I would have liked, or have many features, but it was free...

http://www.floorplanner.com/projects/19192995-my-first-project

Along the top of the house you see a small green house, literally a green house, which we put in because of a design we found on the web.  The design won an award for passive solar heating plans.  The theory is that the sun heats up the green house, (the five barrels are 55 gallon drums of water used as thermal mass) and then vents and windows in the house help heat it.  The vertical wall separating the first floor bedroom and the living room was to be made of concrete, as additional thermal mass and to help radiate the heat throughout. We also included a hot-tub and outdoor shower.  A woodstove in the great room was for supplementary heating.

I then showed my plans to my cousin Tom, who is an architect, who told me essentially "nice plans but it will take 6-12 months to convert these to real drawings."  He suggested that I visit  architectual house plans.com to see if there were any houses that were close to what we imagined.  So I did.  Wow, what a site.  I was thoroughly impressed with the house designs, and the philosophy of the site.  This wasn't a generic house plan site, these were real designs, with real houses built by them.  I then came to the house titled "Northern Sun" and fell in love.  It looked somewhat different then the one Teri and I had built but it felt the same.  Teri agreed, and we were off.
http://www.architecturalhouseplans.com/home_plans/72