Have you ever been walking or driving along and had your attention grabbed by a house? It happens to me a lot. Maybe that’s because I’m an architect. But I think it happens to everyone. There is something about a good house form that can really catch your eye.

You might not know exactly what I mean by a “good house form.” We architects often use the word “massing.” This refers to the overall shape and bulk of a building. It’s the shape of the structure and roof line in its gross form. It ignores the finer details. It relates to composition, balance, visual flow and a lot of other artistic terms that even professionals have trouble expressing in words. But a good house form is one we know when we see it. One way to evaluate a house form is to stand back and squint at it. This will keep the details from confusing your mind. A good house starts with a good house form. The details will further enhance it, making it even better. But it’s hard to save a bad form with expensive materials and details. A house has to have “good bones.” (more…)

Today, we awoke to a freak snowstorm here in Raleigh, North Carolina. I say “freak” because any snow is a rare occurrence in this part of the country. Snow in January is a novel concept in the southeast. Everything, and I mean everything was closed. We were crippled by Mother Nature.

 When the flakes stopped falling, we had about six inches of nice, clean snow on the ground. I put on my tennis shoes (I don’t have boots anymore since I moved south) and found my gloves (they were in my golf bag where I left them following a chillier than usual round a few weeks ago) and set out to clear the snow. I don’t use a snow shovel any more. I’m not sure I still have one. I use my leaf blower, instead. It works surprisingly well. It fluffs up the snow and blows it away almost without a trace. I cleared my sizeable driveway in a little over an hour. The best part is my back doesn’t hurt! 

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    Designing stairs is more intricate task than many people realize. And it’s not just about how the stairs look. Proper proportioning is critical to comfort and safety. Set the tread and riser sizes carefully. For  I recommend 10″ treads with a one inch nosing. The nosing is the projection forward of the tread beyond the riser below. The riser is the vertical portion of the step. I try to keep the riser height under 7 1/2“, preferring to end up with about 7 1/4″ if I can. We’re all getting a bit older and the fraction of an inch can really make a difference in how a staircase feels. On a house with the now fairly common ten foot ceilings, 18 risers will give you risers of about 7 1/3″. If you have a situation where you want to further reduce the riser height to fit a particular situation or if you have bad knees, you can go by the old “Rule of Thumb” that said the riser and tread dimensions, when added together, should equal 17.  So 6 1/2″ risers would be combined with 10 1/2″ treads for maximum comfort. But there are always exceptions to Rules of Thumb, of course. (more…)

    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. (more…)

    Make sure the bathroom tiles you select come with the special shapes you’ll need to create a complete, quality installation.

    Most people don’t think about how their bathroom tile will be installed. They make their selections based on the color and style of the tile and what decorative tiles or accents are available and compatible with the primary tile. But not all tiles are available with bull-nosed edges or other special shapes you may need.

    A bull-nose edge is a slightly rounded over edge that has the finished surface of the tile wrapping all the way around the edge so that when it is adhered to the wall, nothing but a finished surface will be seen. (more…)

    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. (more…)

    When designing your home, it is nearly impossible to make a reasonable judgment about colors of materials for your new house by simply looking at tiny color chips or samples. They will fool your eye every time.

    If you don’t believe me, try this little test. Go to the paint store, or your local Home Depot, and pick up a few color chips of paint. Be sure to get two of each color. When you get home, cut out the colors so that no white edges show. All you should have left is is small piece of paper with the color on it. Then place one of the chips on a white piece of paper and the other chip on some other color paper. Stand back and look at them. Do the colors look the same? I’ll bet they don’t. (more…)

    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. (more…)

    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. (more…)

    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. (more…)