When you mention wood floors to most people, they conjure up an image of a narrow board, red oak floor. But times have changed. Now there are many, many choices of board width and species. And many of these choices come at a modest cost increase. I’ve used white oak, antique chestnut oak, antique heart pine, santos mahogany, jatoba (aka Brazilian cherry), Australian cypress, cumaru, lyptus, and other species you may not have ever heard of. The range of color choices and grain patterns is impressive. (more…)

I happened to run across HGTV’s Dream House 2009. Here it is.

The outside looks nice, but the plans are pretty bad. (more…)

    Home security systems can be pretty sophisticated these days. We have sensors that detect the sound of breaking glass, pressure pads that are placed under carpets. and even tiny security cameras that can be tied to the internet so you can monitor your house from halfway around the world. We used the camera set-up on a house I designed in Hawaii. The Owners live in Hong Kong, but they can check in whenever they want to see if the local surfers are swimming in their swimming pool!

    But before the days of electronics, houses still needed some measure of security. I ran across this one in Old Town San Diego at the Casa de Estudillo. The adobe wall around a portion of the property was topped with shards of jagged terra cotta. (more…)

    I love well done Brick Masonry.

    “God is in the details.” So said Gustave Flaubert and later, and arguably more famously, said architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Regardless of the origin of the famous phrase, it is undeniably true.

    A good house, or any other structure for that matter, must have good “bones.” The overall composition, the proportions, and the massing must be right or no amount of detail can save it. I often joke with my clients that if their house looks good in Tyvek, when the whole thing is wrapped in white sheets of house wrap, it will look even better when it’s finished. That’s because the details bring the entire design to life. (more…)

    If you have wood floors in your kitchen and a natural wood finish on your kitchen cabinets, should the floors and cabinets be the same species of wood and the same color or should they contrast? And if they should contrast, which should be the darker color?

    I often discuss this issue with my clients. My feeling is that there needs to be some color distinction between the flooring and the cabinetry so that the cabinets don’t look like the floor is simply wrapping itself up the walls. After all, one is the floor and the other is essentially furniture and they should express themselves differently. I would suggest that there is no rule about which wood is the lighter or the darker. (more…)

    Here’s a photo from famous Torrey Pines Golf Course in San Diego, California. This was the site of this year’s U.S. Open golf championship, famously won by Tiger Woods who played on an injured knee. Not only did he have ligament damage in his left knee, Woods had stress fractures he had not mentioned. Still he played on and eventually won the biggest tournament of the year on a course that meant so much to him.

    His knee wasn’t the only thing that was out of whack at Torrey Pines. Check out the brickwork on the masonry posts around the first tee. It reminds me of Tiger’s pained follow through on some of his shots! (more…)

    Here is a little tip to keep in mind when you are selecting a tile floor for your shower. Make sure the tile is relatively small. The reason might not seem obvious at first. A shower floor needs to have a slope so the water will flow toward the drain. Puddles in a shower floor are a slipping hazard and mold will grow in the puddle quite quickly. Generally, the drain is placed in the center of the floor to create an even slope from each wall to the drain. (more…)

    Passive solar design, green and sustainable building are not new inventions. Who would have thought that we would be returning to the house design principles of more than a century and a half ago?

    I was in San Diego recently and visited the part of town they call Old Town San Diego. I don’t think the buildings are the actual original structures, but they are reproductions that are authentic to the mid 1800′s. One house La Casa de Estudillo, is built in the Spanish Colonial style of the early California settlers. You can see from the photographs that it is built in a “U” shape with a covered veranda wrapping the inside of the “U”. In the center is an outdoor space that is planted and has a water feature in the center. (more…)

    Have you given much thought to the shelves in your food pantry?

    I have a client who recently moved in to her new home. While chatting with her today, one of the items she mentioned as being particularly thoughtful in the design were the shelves in her food pantry. I was happy to hear her other comments about the livability of the entire design of the house, but I was struck that even a small item like pantry shelves held a high value in how the house felt and the overall comfort of living in it. (more…)

    Here’s the answer to yesterday’s Dream House Fumble question.

    House design mistakes are all around us. Unfortunately, we tend to look right by them. But I’m on a mission to point some of these out, just to raise the bar on what we “demand” of the marketplace in terms of house design. Often, the mistakes could have been easily avoided, if only someone bothered to think about what they were doing. Here’s the photo of DHF #2 again: (more…)