Cost overruns come in two forms. One type is due to insufficient planning before the project begins. Often people view hiring an architect or house designer as a luxury. But a good architect can help you define the project on paper before you sign a contract for construction. With many things undefined, there are ample opportunities for unexpected added costs to come up. Make you materials, finishes, and fixture selections early on so you don’t get unpleasant surprises later. Think through the entire project and try to anticipate as much as possible. Make sure your drawings and specifications describe the work to be done so there is little ambiguity. Unclear construction documents will open the door for extra charges from your builder. An experienced design professional can help you with this. It’s not just their skill you are buying when you hire them. You are also buying their experience.

The second type of cost overrun is actually more common and is self-inflicted. I’m talking about scope creep. By this I’m referring to the gradual addition of work to the project. We are all prone to this. It may seem like a good idea to add a built-in cabinet or refinish another room’s floor, or a multitude of other tasks ”while you’re at it.” And this is all well and good. Often doing some these other things while you are already dealing with the turmoil of construction makes sense. It often can cost less than doing it later since the craftsmen you need are already on the job for the original work. But be careful. You can add what seem like small things only to realize later that they add up quickly. You’ll look back and wonder how you managed to blow your budget so badly. You’ll feel like everyone wants to keep charging you more money. But in fact, you were the initiator of those changes and added costs.

Building a house or remodeling a house requires some good planning and budget discipline to keep costs under control. Don’t let yourself get into budget trouble. It’s a lot like dieting. You have to have the will power to push yourself away from the table before it’s too late.

Read more articles about home design and construction at my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

Dan’s blog is called Sometimes, Sometimes Not.

Dan has a Dave Barry-ish way of writing and looking at things. He writes about everything from Home Improvement to Goats (Not his goats. He doesn’t have any, thank goodness). And life with his two kids, Bella and Grey, and his lovely wife Melissa, give him plenty of material. Like any typical family, odd things happen, both funny and distressing. And you can count on Dan to give it a spin that keeps you reading.

Take a look and let him know what you think. I’ll bet you find your self bookmarking his blog or subscribing to it and coming back over and over to see what going on in the Dan Hirsch household.

I do know why manufacturers of pressed wood and synthetic wood doors favor the embossed wood grain.

It is hard to manufacture pressed wood or any other synthetic product that is perfectly smooth. Minor imperfections are hard to prevent. The embossing disquises the manufacturing irregularities and that helps hold down costs. But doors made of “barn board” quality wood is not what you would expect to see in a well built house. It might be okay for exterior siding, but not for a home’s interior.

Thankfully, more and more manufacturers are offering smooth faced pressed board doors and at reasonable costs. Do yourself a favor and make sure you specify a smooth finish on your interior doors. Your home’s appearance and value will be enhanced by doing so.

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

But another rule in laying wood flooring has to do with the aesthetics or look of the flooring. As a general rule, wood flooring looks best when running in the same direction as the longest dimension of the room. For instance, if the room is ten feet by sixteen feet, the wood flooring will look best when running in the sixteen foot direction. The narrower the room, the more important this is. So in a hallway that is only four feet wide, the wood flooring really needs to run the length of the hall and not crosswise, if at all possible. In rooms that are more square in shape, the direction of the wood flooring is not as critical.

Also consider the view you have of the floor when you enter the room. The wood flooring looks best if laid perpendicular to your view direction. This will disquise the cracks between the planks. If you are looking straight down the planks, the seams between the boards will be more obvious. And if the seams are not perfectly straight, you will more readily see that variation, too.

It’s not always practical to run the flooring in these optimal directions. But if you can do it, the benefits are real. If the floor joists below the wood flooring are running the wrong direction for the way you want the flooring to look in the room, ask your builder to install wood blocking beneath the floor from joist to joist to support a floor running parallel to the joists. This will cost a bit more, but it will be worth it in narrow spaces, like hallways.

Of course, selecting the right wood for your floor is very important. Consider the grain and color of the wood and how it will look with other wood items in the room, like kitchen cabinets and wood trim.

One other neat feature is to install flush thresholds between rooms. I show photos of this and describe it in detail in my book, Designing Your Perfect House.

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

Trim is known as “casing” and “crown molding” in the business of construction and architecture. It includes the pieces of wood around windows and doors, baseboards, chair-rails, and crown molding. Modern style houses usually have a minimum of casing or trim. But more traditional style homes might have quite a lot of casing and crown molding. Sooner or later, you will have to select and/or approve these items.

When it comes time to choose the design of the casing, your architect and/or builder may show you a catalog of trim shapes. These are usually a cross section view, or profile, of the piece of wood. And unless you’ve ever installed this material, you probably have never looked at a baseboard or window casing from this viewpoint and the section drawing looks unlike anything you have seen before.

It’s much easier to choose from real physical samples. Your builder may roll his eyes when you ask for samples, but be firm and tell him it’s essential for you. He, or his millwork supplier, can bring samples to the jobsite. They may show you installed samples in his office or in a showroom, but I think it’s better to see mockup samples in your new house. that way you can see the choices in context. Have them nail up a couple of pieces around a door or window opening. Put up a few feet of the crown molding and baseboard.

But don’t stop there. Here’s my “trick” to help you. Don’t leave the wood bare. The grain of the wood can be distracting and keep you from seeing the true shape of the trim profile. Have them paint or stain the trim in a color close to the color you will have in your finished house. This will give you a true look at the trim and you’ll understand what the finished product will look like.

Doing mockups and reviewing several choices may take a little time. But it is worth it. After all, you’ll be living with your choice of trim and casing for many years to come.

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

Your guests won’t tell you if you have a problem. They’re too polite. Your kids probably have their door open when they are small and don’t have a problem.  Your teenagers probably don’t talk to you much anyway. How can you know if there’s a problem? It’s a good idea to spend a night in each of the other bedrooms in your house, particularly the guest room, if you have one, to see how the temperature goes with the door closed for eight hours. And do this on a cold night and a hot night. You might be surprised at what you find.

Why do these rooms tend to get off temperature? The answer is they are starved for air. A poorly design heating, ventilating, and air conditioning system, know as the HVAC system in the trade, often does not provide a method for the air to return to the heater or air conditioner except through the open door.

Take a look at your bedrooms. There will be a supply air register or two. But, is there a return air grill? The supply air coming to the room must displace the air that is already in the room.  And that air has to go somewhere. When the door is open, the displaced air exits through the door and is sucked up by the return air register in the hallway. Everything is fine with the door open.

But when the door is closed, the air that should be displaced is trapped. When this happens, no new air can get into the room. The “log jam” of air causes a pressure build up at the supply air register and the air in the duct takes the path of least resistance and heads to other parts of the house where there is no resisting air pressure. So the room with the closed door gets no conditioned air and gradually becomes too hot or too cold.

The cure for this problem is to install return air grills in the bedroom. This can be done best by connecting the grill to the return air ductwork so air is taken directly back to the HVAC unit and cooled or heated. If this can not be done due to physical restrictions, a transfer grill can be installed. This can be a simple grill cut in a wall that adjoins the hallway, thus letting the air escape, even when the door is closed. But a direct grill like this will allow sound through, too. It’s better to install a transfer grill in the ceiling and connect it to a piece of flexible ductwork with a bend or two that connects to another grill in the hall. That way the sound can not travel in a straight line and much less sound will be transmitted through the passageway.

Remember, to get the air you want in, you need to let the air you don’t want out. Return air grills or transfer grills are the way to do this. Getting your air conditioning and heating system working optimally is the first major step toward good energy efficiency in a home.

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

I have designed many houses that included a sauna. It can be an important part of a complete home spa experience. The easiest way to build one is to buy one of the prefabricated units, such as those offered by Finlandia Sauna or Cedarbrook Sauna. These are easily assembled and can sit in the corner of an existing room. They are great to have in your exercise room or as part of a nice luxury bathroom.

If you want one that is more “built in,” you can still gain the benefits of a prefabricated unit by purchasing a pre-cut unit. Both of these options take the guess work out of the equation. The manufacturers recommend the sizes, depending on the number of people you want to accommodate. And the heater, stones, and light are included, too. Assembly is easy.

If you want your sauna to be more customized than the styles the kits will give you, building one from scratch is pretty simple. Just use the right wood, insulate it properly and then buy the heating unit that matches the size of your sauna. A good finish carpenter can do the job.

You usually think of saunas as being a closed box. But I once designed one with a window. The homeowner wanted to be able to look out at his terrific view. We made the window fairly small to control the heat, but positioned it so when he sat in the sauna the window was in the perfect position to capture the full view.

Home saunas are reasonably priced luxuries. Go ahead and pamper yourself.

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

Traditionally, fireplaces were placed in the center of the wall. The furniture was then grouped around it. When television first entered the American home, the screens were small and the television was simply another piece of furniture. Today, television screens are large and arguably the most prominent feature in the room. Usually the television is placed on another wall, so it has enough space. But this means your furniture arrangement must “aim” at both the fireplace and television at the same time. This is pretty hard to do. One poor solution that often is presented is to place the television above the fireplace. This helps with the furniture arrangement, but placing the television at this height only works if you are lying in bed while watching. If you are seated in a sofa or a chair, this is too high and puts an uncomfortable strain on your neck. Are there any other solutions to this dilemma?

Here's One Way to Solve the Television and Fireplace Location Dilemma. The Television Is Behind the Cabinet Doors.

One way to get the fireplace and television on the same wall is to not put either one in the exact center of the room and to think of them as a combined element.

In one house I designed recently, we built one wide ”pillar” of stone from floor to ceiling and put the fireplace opening in the right half and the television in a cabinet recessed into the stone on the left half. Then we centered the entire stone element in the room. Neither the television nor the fireplace was exactly centered in the room, but both ended up in good positions for seeing them while seated in the furniture grouping. Your eye reads the combined assembly and sees it as “centered” in the room and on the wall. You could do the very same thing without the stone and instead creating with a projecting drywalled element. Or, the grouping of the fireplace and television could be built into a paneled, cabinet-like assembly that would achieve the same goal.

Thinking of the television and the fireplace opening as being parts of a larger, unitized element will make the arrangement easier to handle and much more successful. You’ll be able to arrange your furniture around this combined architectural element and have perfect viewing positions for both the television and the fireplace.

UPDATE – I’ve gotten several requests for a photo that describes the fireplace and television cabinet combination I am describing. I’ve inserted it above. Hope it helps explain the concept. 

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

I know that in our house, with four adult children and their family and friends visiting, we often have a packed house. We wanted a house that was not too big, but would be able to adapt to different needs. We wanted a house that was flexible.

Consider holiday dinners. How will you fit all of those people at one table? Or will some folks have to sit in the kitchen? One way to keep everyone together is to be sure your dining space is expandable in one direction. In our house, we have a dining room that opens to the foyer area. Normally the dining room furniture sits appropriately within the dining room space that is defined by a tray ceiling and to widely spaced columns that denote the end of the dining room and the beginning of the foyer. The opening between the columns is wide enough so that when we extend the table by setting an additional table at the end of the regular dining room table, our temporary banquet table simply stretches into the foyer space. As a result, we can seat twenty people at one sitting.

Other things to consider in making your house flexible are where additional living room type seating might occur, where everyone might sleep, and how multiple people might work in your kitchen at the same time. If you can do these things while maintaining the intimate, comfortable aspect of the house when just you and your fellow full-time residents are there, you’ll have a flexible house that is not overly large.

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

We are starting to select the different materials around the house.  Your beautiful pictures have been a great inspiration…  I particularly like your wooden floors on pages 114

Page 114 Photo from "Designing Your Perfect House"

and 194. 

Page 194 Photo from "Designing Your Perfect House"

Do you happen to remember/can you recognize the kind of wood they are made of?

Here’s my answer.

The wood floor on page 114 is Santos Mahogany. You can see another view of that flooring on page 150. It looks a bit different from one photo to another depending on the direction of the light. Santos Mahogany is one of the few woods that actually gets lighter when exposed to light. The wood you see in the photos has been in place since 2002. So it has already lightened.

The wood flooring on page 194 can be seen again on page 226. This wood floor is Jatoba. It is also known as Brazilian Cherry. But keep in mind that what is often sold as Brazilian Cherry is actually an assortment of pieces of three different species. Jatoba is one of them and I do not know what the other two species are. But some of the pieces of the other species can tend to look a bit greenish. So if you want the redder color, specify that all of the wood must be Jatoba without any other species included.

I always welcome questions and comments concerning anything related to house design, homebuilding, and remodeling. if they are questions i think other reader might like to hear, I’ll post them in my blog.

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.