7 Days to Die - Project Awesome House (Day 2)

It is day 2 and I have moved from drawing on paper to actually building the house in-game.  I'm going to give a relatively detailed account so if you'd like to replicate the process, you can do so with plenty of references.  Otherwise, I hope this could inspire you to begin your own awesome project.

LOCATION 

First things first, I had to first find an open field large enough to accommodate my house.  Furthermore, I wanted to have some natural elements such as trees and grass surrounding my house to give it a more organic feel.  After running around for a bit, I liked the land as shown in Figure 1.  Unfortunately, there were a few small hills next to it.  I decided to digging through them and clear off about half the hill to give more room to my building space.  I have to say, that was very very tedious.

Figure 1 - Map and Location

FOUNDATION

I wanted to put in 1 layer of foundation as a reference.  Furthermore, the foundation layer would also serve as the flooring for the first floor and thus be level with the ground.  This means digging out 1 layer in the dirt in the shape of the first floor (Figure 2).

Figure 2 - Foundation Dugout

I'd like to refer to my initial drawing for the next part.  Since I planned to have a super deep ditch around the house, I cannot use ladders directly inside the ditch to access the outside because the zombies can also use the ladders to avoid the fall damage.  The plan I came up with is to have a tunnel accessible from the house that goes all the way down to the bottom level of the ditch then tunnels out and up into an open field.  This is difficult to explain with words but it will become more clear later with illustrations.  Now, the tunnel access is indicated in Figure 3.

Figure 3 - Tunnel Access

During the foundation planning, I also dug down extra deep for the tunnel layer so that I can keep it in mind while building out the house.  This is shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4 - Tunnel Foundation

This more or less completes the initial zoning.  Next phase is digging that deep ditch.  This may be the most tedious phase of the project.  To speed it up, I decided to cheat a little bit and use the creative menu to access the auger to aid in my digging process.  Stay tuned for details.