Ask Jon Eakes

Last Updated: Friday, February 6th, 2004, Created: Friday, February 6th, 2004

Conceptual design tricks before starting your project

If you are not good at drawing sketches but you want to know what that new or extended deck might look like, just take a photo of the existing deck space from as far and as high up as you can get -- a neighbours house, a tree, a shed roof or even just a ladder. Then make many photocopies of that photo blown up to a regular copy paper size. Now with a few straight lines you can draw your deck in complete perspective together with all the details of your house.

In the first photo you can see that just a line parallel to the existing deck and back to the window makes a deck. Add some stairs and a couple of more rail lines and you are beginning to have a working drawing. Take a couple of dimensions, like the length, width and height and add them to the drawing. This is in fact enough for the guys as the renovation centre to make you full scale deck plans and materials lists. If it turns out to be too expensive, just sketch it a bit smaller and try again.

For those of you who know how to play a bit with computer graphics, you can get an idea of what that new bay window will look like before you even hire a contractor. Take a photo of your room and then cut out the window. You can then go outside just in front of the window and take a photo of the view. Then paste them together. You will have to reduce the size of the outdoor one to make up for the different camera positions.

Don't know how to do computer graphics. Go back to the first technique, simply take two photos, blow them up, with an exacto knife cut out the bay window and cut around any objects that are in front of the window. Place the outdoor photo behind the indoor photo and voila. You can reduce the size of the outdoor photo at the photocopy store until it comes into proper perspective compared to looking through the window at the real thing.

Keywords: Bay Window, Contractors, Decks, Design, Techniques, Tip, Windows

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