"Design Process"

Sometimes people ask "how do you visualize this?" And the answer is I don't really.  I am a visual learner through and through, so when we are "designing," I have to draw it. I have to see it physically with my eye balls.  And because I lack patience/time to learn proper design programs (I no longer have access to CAD programs at work), I draw it by hand on engineering paper first (I still have those leftover pads from career fairs 15 years ago! Future hoarding problem.  See also: napkins) and then I "draw" it in Excel.  Gross, I know.  These are terrible, but easy for me to do and get a general point of what I'm going for across to the builder who inexplicably does not have ESP yet.  I heart/hate Excel.

I'm pretty sure this kind of awkward approach makes true designers upchuck.  I do this for every single place where there is more than just walls, so bathrooms, built-ins, laundry room, you name it.  I even do it for areas where we anticipate future build out so we can visualize the right places to put electric, water connections, light switches, etc now so we don't have problems moving them in the future.

For clarification, the blue things are windows, and yes, I insist on big windows in kitchens.  Once upon a time we stayed in a condo in Puerto Rico that had this amazing window opening onto the patio with a bar counter outside so you could sit, eat and talk from outside to inside.  On the other side of the window on the north wall there will be just such a counter.  The layout of the kitchen is like this:

Hopefully one day there will be a small summer kitchen on that covered porch, but that falls in the bucket of future projects.  And yes, I already drew that up in Excel too.  And there you have it, my embarrassing process of "design" isn't elegant so fingers crossed it turns out more retro-modern and less train wreck.