How about using a photocopier instead of a computer? The old trick of drawing the outline once, carefully to scale, and making copies to use for sketching out ideas has always worked for me. If you need a digital file, you can scan it. The more programs they come out with, the more I appreciate pencil, graph paper, and ruler! KarinL

There are a lot of factors that can play into whether or not it is a good idea and those factors can change over time. Right now, the commute is only an hour. If the area grows/increases in population, that amount of time could increase a little or a lot. How one feels also depends on if that hour is spent actually driving or just sitting in traffic most of the time. My DH does commute. We have a home on acreage that we enjoy and it is in a good location between 2 cities that have government work (which is who his employer is). A house like ours closer to Santa Fe would be double the price (on a city lot), perhaps triple with acreage. I work at home so I am close to the kids needs for school and socializing. I think it is important to have one parent close to the kids. There are times when the commute does get to him but when he hand the opportunity to apply for a job with a pay raise and shorter commute, he chose not to. There are downsides. He cannot invite his co-workers over for dinner and if we are invited to something, it takes a considerable amount of time. We could sell and buy something closer, but that would be a major disruption to the kids and our life outside of work is here. When the kids move out, he will only be about 4 years away from retirement so our lives will have changed again. If you do buy a house that far out, like most house purchases, it is best to have enough equity in it that if you decide to sell, for whatever reason (in this case shortening your commute), you can afford to do so.

Just read this article on 2016 home design trends in our local newspaper archive: The Oregonian on 2016 home design trends Japanese-style design and simplicity are definitely becoming more popular around here. Several of my neighbors already have Japanese-influenced landscaping. Decluttering is big here. My church has had a series of seminars on decluttering and simpler living. The turnout was way higher than for Bible studies. Haven't seen beer taps in kitchens and bidets yet. What about the trends in your area?

I worked on a house with similar problems where the solution was to install buried conduit(they used PVC Schedule 40 pipe) at a slight downward angle(like sewer piping) terminating in an area away from the house. In this case that area was the street gutter. Since this area freezes in winter, a freeze joint was used. A freeze joint is simply a gap in the piping which allows water to escape to the outside if the underground pipe freezes. One corner of our house has a downspout which is connected to an underground pipe which is U shaped, the termination is about 10 feet away on a down hill section of the yard. The effect is exactly the same as a long down spout extension, but is invisible. The first solution was done by a crew with a trencher, but the second could be done with a shovel, since the depth of the underground section is only a foot or so deep. I included a Google page on the subject.Google downspout extensions