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It sounds like the garage/tunnel idea is fine by itself, but that it wouldn't legally count as the second exit. I still like the garage/tunnel idea, so I'm hoping we'll be able to use it anyways... and what's more symmetrical than having a door on both sides of the fireplace? One of them could go directly outside and one of them could go into the garage. That's my theory, at least.
In a few days, Rob and I'll have to start doing the "real" work: i.e., finding a site (we have one in mind that will probably work, but it's not anywhere close to official yet) and (the scary part) getting the building loan. We're hoping one set of our parents will co-sign the loan with us because it'll be pretty difficult for us to get this kind of loan by ourselves. I mean, we both have great credit, but we're living off of Rob's income only since I can't work (or can only work enough to make $200ish a month... which is really nothing) and I have no delusions about a bank being willing to give us this amount of money for a loan. My dad, fortunately, has been a banker for over 25 years and at the same bank for at least 20 of those years, so I'm hoping he'll, at the very least, be able to give us advice.
Yesterday we skimmed The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring, and The Return of the King for descriptions of hobbit holes. Apparently not all hobbits lived in hobbit holes and their only peculiar architecture was circular windows and doors. And they liked the colors yellow and green. I'm lucky enough to have a copy of The Hobbit with Tolkien's illustrations (including the cover) that includes a picture of the foyer of Bag End. We're probably going to try to imitate that picture as much as possible. If any of you happen to know of a book that has a picture of the outside of Bag End that Tolkien drew, please let us know.
But, all in all, I was hoping to find many more descriptions than I actually did. There's the first paragraph of The Hobbit (which we quote on our main page), but other than that there are only sporadic sentences. Anyways, enough updates for today.
-THH
Anonymous
January 1 2005, 23:11:49 UTC 7 years ago
Floor Plan Layout
The layout from a well researched book, The Atlas of Middle-Earth, by Karen Wynn Fonstad, (c) 1991, describes Bag End as follows: doors and windows all face south; porch and main door on the far east end and kitchen garden door on the far west end; main door leads to front hall (served as entry closet; turn left to walk down main hall (possibly 15 feet wide); the best rooms were on the left (with windows) were in order the parlour, dining room, study, sitting room, and the best bedroom; on the right they were the drawing room, kitchen, cellars and pantries, and finally bedrooms. Sources include Tolkien's pictures (I. and VI.), and the following passages: Hobbit pp. 9, 11, 315, 12, 21, 16, 19, 17, 22, 38, 26, 35, 37; FOTR pp. 30, 34, 45, 33, 40, 47, 48, 78; ROTK pp. 296; History of Middle-earth servies VI Lost Road pp. 20, 76, 235. All books and page numbers are in reference to Houghton Mifflin Co. editions.January 1 2005, 23:41:01 UTC 7 years ago
Re: Floor Plan Layout
We've actually already seen the picture from the Atlas after one of our readers emailed us about it. The layout for Bag End Tolkien had planned wouldn't really be practical for us to follow completely: for one, we don't need as many pantries. ;p Also, each bedroom has to have a window (or so my stepfather tells me), so we had to reorganize things quite a bit. We're still going to try to have the best side of the house facing south, but our needs are very different from Bilbo's.Thank you for the information, though. I'll take a look at the passages you included (well, in The Hobbit at least: our LOTR series is from England, so the page numbers would be messed up. If you can find out the chapters of the LOTR references, I'll try to find the passages you listed.). We're trying to use Tolkien for guidelines, but we don't want to just recreate Bag End. Ideally, we'll combine Tolkien's descriptions with our personal and practical needs, and the result should be very, well, beautiful.
-THH