Now is a great time to build! Builders are hungry, prices of many construction materials are low, and the vendors are making deals to get business. If you have the resources, don’t wait. Build now and capture the savings. Right now, Warren Buffett is buying U.S. stocks because he sees them as a low-priced opportunity. Construction costs represent the very same opportunity. You can cash in big time if you act now. 

    I got a note from a prospective client recently asking for my advice on what construction costs might be for a new house. They were in the early stages of planning and wanted to get an idea of how much their new house might cost. Here is my answer:

    I have recently had a house price out at $170 per foot and another as high as $275 per s.f. There are a lot of variable that can affect the cost, as you can imagine. The formula I use is to include all of the “heated” square feet. I do not count the garage and/or porches. This formula is sort of the industry standard. For budgeting purposes, I would suggest using $200 per s.f. as the low end and $250 as the higher end. Of course, it is possible to go considerably higher. The variability of cost is due to different exterior materials, the shape of the house, the appointments within the house, and the site considerations. But above $250 per s.f., the added cost is attributed to particular items, like very expensive cabinetry or particular site conditions, and things like that. It’s hard to get more definitive than that until the house is designed and those numerous variables are known.

    My suggestion for calculating your square footage is to list out the rooms and spaces you want, including staircases, closets and hallways, if you can. Then assign target sizes to those spaces. It can help to use your current house and its rooms as guidelines for the target room sizes. Then multiply out the areas of each room, total it up, and then add ten or fifteen percent to the total. That added percentage is to account for the area used up by the walls themselves. Three running feet of a typical interior wall takes up one square foot! And the percentage accounts for inefficiencies in the actual house layout. Not every room will end up exactly at the target size. Then multiply the total by $200 and also by $250. That should give you a high and low number and a feel for where your construction cost will be.

    Incidentally, when stating these costs of construction, I am including all of the sitework, like landscaping, driveway, irrigation, etc. These costs estimates also anticipate a three car garage, a front porch, a screened porch, and things like that. The figures also include all permits and inspection fees. They include everything that would be in you contract with the builder.

    I will say that right now is a terrific time to build because the marketplace is hungry and prices are good. Lumber is very low, vendors are anxious to make deals, and even the builders are trimming their markup to get projects signed up. I think that in a couple of years we will look back at today and say, “Wasn’t that a great time to build? Everything was such a bargain.” Once the economy improves, the prices will surely go up quickly. Now that oil prices are going back down, some of the materials that went up due to the very high oil prices, like shingles, will likely go down sometime soon because of the slowdown in demand for construction products.

    Take advantage of this Golden Opportunity to get your dream house built at a price you will never see again. The woes of Wall Street can be a bonanza for you.

Bill Hirsch

www.designingyourperfecthouse.com

www.williamhirsch.com

    Garage doors are often one of the ugliest features on the exterior of a house. There are now quite a few “carriage house” type doors to choose from that look much better than the traditional flat or raised panel doors. But those special doors come at a significant cost increase. There are other solutions you might want to consider.

    Garage doors are often an unsightly feature simply because of their scale. We human beings tend to prefer objects that are an appropriate size or scale to our own size. The doors and windows of your house will be most appealing when they are size-appropriate to the people who will occupy the house. They will “express” an interaction with other people. On a subconscious level, we can emotionally connect with architectural features like that. Garage doors must, by their very nature, be sized and scaled to the automobiles that must pass through them. Garage doors end up being the largest doors on your house. We find them unattractive for that very reason.

    Being true to his sardonic nature, Frank Lloyd Wright once said, “Doctors can bury their mistakes. Architects can only plant vines.” It’s a clever line, but vines can serve a greater purpose for architects than simply camouflaging errors. They can be useful elements that can be integrated into the architecture. Here is an example of vines used to soften the visual impact of three, blank garage doors in an otherwise featureless portion of a house.

Pergola with Vines above Garage Doors

    It’s almost impossible to discuss composition and architectural proportion without referring to the golden mean, also called the golden section. Readers of Dan Brown’s mega-bestseller The Da Vinci Code may recall the description of that formula in the book. As a brief refresher, the golden mean is the original organizing and proportioning method or formula for art and architecture. Its theory tells us that human beings are most pleased when things are in a proportion of 1 to 1.618. In other words, if a window is one unit wide, it should be 1.618 units tall in order to be the most appealing to human eyes. The golden mean was used prominently in Greek and Roman architecture and is just as useful in today’s world. Indeed, the same ratio that was applied to the design of the Parthenon is likely to aid your architect in the design of your new home.

    The golden mean offers a comfortable proportion with which to work, but it’s not the only comfortable proportion, so you don’t have to feel locked into it. The intriguing thing about the golden mean, about placing things at this scale, is that it just about always works. Consider it a safety net for proportions.

     A bit of architectural trivia: A classic and pervasive curved shape used to this day in crown moldings, wood trims, and other architectural details is the “ogee” curve. The “ogee” is a direct derivative of the golden mean. This curve originates with the Greeks and shows up in the columns we place on our front porches, crown moldings we place in our living rooms, and even the curves that are shaped into the aluminum gutters outside our houses. Who knew that ancient Greek classical design would eventually create aluminum gutters?

Bill Hirsch

www.designingyourperfecthouse.com

www.williamhirsch.com

    In homebuilding, picking out the right materials can be a little tricky.

    I talked yesterday about the value of painting out larger samples of your wall and trim paint selections to verify that the colors were right. The same principles applies to the other materials you plan to use. Don’t pick bricks from a photo or even from a brick sample card with several thin bricks on it. Without mortar, the bricks will look different than they will on your house. Stone is even tougher. I can’t imagine being confident in a stone selection from a handful of loose stones. Stones come in a very wide range of colors, textures, and sizes. And there is no good way to describe stone in words. Photos of other walls help, but you need to be sure your builder can reproduce the wall you want.

    Insist that your builder construct a sample wall where you can see the “real” finished product.

Homebuilding Stone Samples

    In this photo, the stone mason has laid up three sample panels with several mortar joint options. You cans see two of them in this closer view.

Mortar Joints in a Stone Wall

    The top joint is called a “raked” joint. The mortar has been scraped back to let the edges of the stones show more. The lower joint is a brushed joint where the mortar is flush with the face of the stone and brushed somewhat smooth with a bristle brush. You can see that the effects are remarkably different.

    Simply picking the brick or stone for your house is not enough information for you to give your builder. It leaves too much to the imagination. You need to decide upon the color of the mortar, the way the mortar is “struck” or “tooled,” and you need to be sure you, your architect, the builder, and the mason all have the same image in mind for the final wall. The only sure-fire way to do this is to lay up a sample wall and create a physical sample. If the first samples don’t capture the look you want, pull it down and try again. The small cost of doing this will save you thousands in unnecessary cost, not to mention the aggravation and angst of getting the wall wrong.

Bill Hirsch

www.designingyourperfecthouse.com

www.williamhirsch.com

    In a high-end community where I have designed nearly one hundred houses, there are fairly strict house design guidelines. Covenants and restrictions are a necessary element in maintaining a level of quality, and thus, maintaining property values. No one is happy if a lime green house ends up next door. Design restrictions offer some limits, and as Martha Stewart says, that is a good thing.

    But some restrictions can go too far. One rule this community has is that every house must have a clearly displayed house number. That, in and of itself, is fine. Emergency vehicles need to be able to find the correct house, so I have no objection to that. But our Architectural Review Board has gone further and determined that only one style of house number is permitted. It is a bronze, somewhat traditional plaque with only one available font for the numerals.

    My objection has always been that the style of the house numbers should be compatible with the style of the house. A contemporary house would look odd with colonial numbers and vice versa. Today, the Chicago Tribune has an article on exactly this issue. It’s entitled Your house, by the numbers and was written by Mary G. Pepitone.

    I could not have expressed it better myself.

Bill Hirsch

www.designingyourperfecthouse.com

www.williamhirsch.com

    By now, we are all familiar with the term, McMansion. Last year, work took me to Sedona, Arizona. While there, my clients escorted my wife and I on a tour of the local sights. Sedona is wonderfully beautiful. It is home of some of the most spectacular rock formations in the world. Many movies have been shot there and the existentialists gather frequently to experience the vortexes. I have to admit to a large amount of skepticism on those vortexes. Or is it vortecii? It’s been long time since high school Latin.

    One of our stops on the tour was the Chapel of the Holy Cross

Chapel of the Holy Cross, Sedona, Arizona

     You can see how this interesting piece of architecture is designed to be integral to the rocks. It’s simplicity of form is inspiring. The architecture is minimal making its impact grand.

    But when you stand next to the Chapel of the Holy Cross and look out to the distant rock formations, this is what you see.

A McMansion in Sedona, Arizona

    Yes, it is the poster child for McMansions. Were they trying to mimic the rock formation? I just find this to be inexplicable. By the way, the dome in the center is an observatory that opens to let you view the night sky. But I might be wrong on that. It could actually be a vortex catcher!

    I’ll file this one away in the “more dollars than sense” department.

Bill Hirsch

www.designingyourperfecthouse.com

www.williamhirsch.com

    Here is the answer to yesterday’s Dream House Fumble question. I asked if you saw what was wrong with the brickwork. Here’s the photo, again, just to refresh your memory.

Dream House Fumble #3

    Does the brick look “glued on” to you? It does to me. Brick is a heavy, solid material that is the actual structure of thousands and thousands of buildings that date back to the Romans. It is a material that should express its strength and it should not be used as a “detail” material or a wall facing, like vinyl siding.

    In this house, the item that really caught my eye and drove me to snap this picture and show it to you is the “key”, or “keystone” at the top of the half-round. A key is the wedge shaped block at the 12:00 o’clock position. Originally, in masonry arches, the key was the last stone set. It secured the arch structurally, making it capable of supporting considerable loads across an open span. In classic detailing, the key in an arch often was mimicked when the arch was built of wood. It retained it’s psychological quality of “locking” the structure together.

    In our example here, the arch is made of brick, the key is made of wood, and there is no key at all in the brickwork! The brick absolutely denies its structural properties. If it were structural, it would collapse. As a result, the brick appears as simply an applied material that serves as mere siding. The entire look is visually abrasive and dissonant. This window would have been much more successful if the wooden key had been omitted and a brick or cast stone key had been installed in the brickwork.

    While we’re at it, I could point out other strange details, like the excessive width of the window trim and the awful half-round fan detail above the center window. I suppose that was put there to replace a more expensive true fan window. A real window would have made a great difference for only a couple of hundred dollars. Wouldn’t it be worth it right on the front of the house? I will give them credit for placing the downspouts around the corner and not running them right on top of the brick quoins. Ironically, the quoins are costly and enhance the expression of strength in the masonry. Better to have ditched the quoins and done the window and arch properly.

   You may think this is a little picky. But this is what separates a good house from a marginal house. The details make the difference.

    In today’s quiz on house design bloopers, I offer up this photo.

     My question to you, dear reader, is do you see what’s wrong with this brickwork?

     I’ll tell you what struck my eye in tomorrow’s post.

Bill Hirsch

www.designingyourperfecthouse.com

www.williamhirsch.com

    You already know that fluorescent lights save energy. You know that they burn cool and don’t add heat to the room. This reduces the air conditioning load in your house and also reduces the risk of fire when used in tight spaces like closets. But you hate the cold, blue light they give off. You don’t like the sickly color your skin has when seen under fluorescent lights. Your clothes don’t look right. Do the greys look like the tans? You’ve tried the “warm white” fluorescents and they make everything look too pink.

    You’re in luck. There is now a solution. Replace those old-fashioned fluorescents with “full spectrum” fluorescents.

    These lights mimic the spectrum of light that the sun emits. Colors look right. They are accurate enough that designers are using them to illuminate color samples, just to make sure they can see the correct hues.

    As you may know from an earlier post, I am not a fan of the compact fluorescent bulbs due to the mercury they contain and the as-yet disposal issue. But for standard fluorescents, the long tube type, try replacing them with full spectrum bulbs and see if you agree that there is a noticeable difference.

Bill Hirsch

www.williamhirsch.com

www.designingyourperfecthouse.com

    I have been engaged in a discussion on an on-line forum of residential architects in which we are debating what good design is and what our profession should do about it. It has been my contention that we have negatively influenced public opinion about architects be creating an elitist image of ourselves. I would like to see this change. I would like to see more architects designing more houses and becoming a positive influence on good house design.

    Here’s what I posted today. I thought you might be interested.

   ”I have no problem with modern design done well. It is not about a style preference. It is about who we are as a profession.

    I like modern design. I’ve designed, built, and lived in two of my own. And I’ve designed many others for my clients. But I don’t think that much of what wins awards (Residential Architect magazine) and is therefore held out to the public as the “best of our profession’s work” is very good, at all. Because of that, our mission of improving residential design is crippled by this negative public opinion that we are creating. We are praising a very narrow sliver of residential architecture that is appealling to a very narrow sliver of the population. And in many cases, the leaders of the profession come across as disparaging anything that comes closer to matching the public’s image of “home.” Couldn’t we at least find good examples of modern architecture? What we feature doesn’t even have furniture in it, for goodness sake. It’s often merely a metal and glass museum box with a Barcelona chair. Where are the people supposed to go?

    So my point is that by doing this, we are actively alienating the public, except for a very small segment, and our opinions about what good design is are losing credibility. All of this hurts us in the marketplace. It distresses me that we remove ourselves from the game and then complain about how the game is being played. Wouldn’t it be better if we embraced all styles, regained a voice (not just a voice to the elite) and then spoke out to make a difference?

    What is truly disturbing are the reactions that come from within the profession. If you dare accept that anything even a little bit traditional might be “good design,” then the cognoscenti will ostracize you as a heathen who can’t comprehend the intellectual superiority of modern. I find the modernists to be unyielding and, frankly, close-minded. Shouldn’t the profession be more multi-cultural? Shouldn’t we have a bigger tent?

    So although this may sound like an endorsement of traditional, it isn’t. It is an endorsement of all styles and a call to the profession to open its arms and embrace all styles. Let’s not continue to marginalize ourselves. If we do, good design will be the loser.”

    I would love to hear your comments on this topic.

Bill Hirsch

www.designingyourperfecthouse.com

www.williamhirsch.com