2800 in the foothills outside Seattle.
2300 above grade (2 stories)
500 finished walkout basement
2/3s of an acre - all veritcal - we are hanging off a mountainside.
Dinsdale, I really like the jello idea, but I haven’t had a chance to try it yet. I’m not sure how it will work around the stairs. Given that, the numbers in my post above came from more conventional means.
I used the numbers from the realtor sheet on my house (which are also the numbers in the official sales (HUD) documents when needed). I think they’re pretty accurate (at least, for my house), and I’ll tell you why.
When we moved into our house, we liked everything about the house except the interior decor. Almost every room was some godawful shade of pink, mauve, or covered in loud wallpaper. That’s fine, my wife likes to decorate anyway, and this way she had no qualms about starting from scratch her way. (As opposed to one room which is just painted white, has a nice carpet, and is in good condition: her reaction is, “well, I would do something, because I have ideas here, but there’s nothing really wrong with this room, so I can’t really justify it.” But I digress.)
Anyway, before we moved in, we measured all the room interiors and stuck the results in Visio so we could play with furniture locations, talk about what to do with the rooms, plan buying the paint and wallpaper and so forth. We found that:
- the room sizes were pretty good in our listing
- the rooms on the main floor do seem to add up (if you throw in interior wall thicknesses) to the footprint size of the main floor, and
- if you add up the finished areas in the house, it is pretty much what is shown in our paperwork.
So that’s the number I used.
I also know that, when we looked for a house, there were some houses where we looked at it and thought “There is no freakin’ way this house has the floor space this realtor page says it does”. So I don’t think you can trust all of them, but I’ve checked ours, and it’s pretty good.
Going back to the volume idea - that’s where the jello idea would really be good, but you’d have to make sure your windows and drains were closed. I guess you could add it from the roof. If anyone is up to trying this, I’ve got a few boxes of jello I’ll contribute - you’ll need a lot.
Maybe we could defray the costs by calling it “performance art” and living in it with scuba equipment?
Hell, federal grants have undoubtedly been awarded for less!
Or make it reality TV, with the prize going to the first person to eat their way out.
For me, I measured up my house for all the works I needed to do, and I drew it up in AutoCAD just so I’d have it for furure works. Handy for buying new skirting boards or carpet etc…
This enabled me to just throw a Polyline around the rooms to obtain the Sq Footage. (So that’s how I did it anyhow.)
I think I might fill my house with jello this weekend, just to see. What flavour is the best to live in? 
Dammit, Aro. That has all the markings of a sig.
The Little Prince would be jealous.
Unfortunately, this idea would always result in infinite square footage. Because there’s always room for jello.
Hehehe <snort>. Damn, you’re right. Back to the kitch… - er, back to the drawing board.
2200 sq. ft.
log house (full log)
15 acres
1000’ gravel driveway