Simply Elegant Home Designs

It's Time to Build! Almost every day I ask myself why more people are not taking advantage of this crazy building market. By crazy I mean this is a ridiculous buyers market. The answer seems to be fear. We can't seem to get away from all the bad news. Just turn on your tv or your computer and you get nailed with it. I cannot say if the fear is justified or not. Each persons

Simply Elegant Home Designs

It's Time to Build! Almost every day I ask myself why more people are not taking advantage of this crazy building market. By crazy I mean this is a ridiculous buyers market. The answer seems to be fear. We can't seem to get away from all the bad news. Just turn on your tv or your computer and you get nailed with it. I cannot say if the fear is justified or not. Each persons

Cookie Cutter House Plans

I live in the Twin Cities area of Minneapolis / St.Paul, where we have one of the largest Parade of Home tours in the country. Every year I look through all of the Parade offerings to see if I can identify any new trends.A couple of things have struck me; 1) how very similar many of these houses are and 2) this economy can not be a great environment for many home builders. The question

Cookie Cutter House Plans

I live in the Twin Cities area of Minneapolis / St.Paul, where we have one of the largest Parade of Home tours in the country. Every year I look through all of the Parade offerings to see if I can identify any new trends.A couple of things have struck me; 1) how very similar many of these houses are and 2) this economy can not be a great environment for many home builders. The question

Home Design Ideas - Split the Garage!

At Larson Brenner Architects I am currently working a client on a new home design to be constructed in Rochester, MN.  Here we have run into a very common dilemma.  What to do with 3 1/2 cars worth of garage?   

If you put all of that garage to the side of the house you get one very wide plan.  If you put all of that garage forward of the house you get one very deep plan.  Many lots cannot accommodate either one of those plan arrangements.  So what I have proposed to do here is to split the garages into two separate structures.  The main two car garage is directly connected to the house via the mudroom zone.  The additional 1 1/2 car garage is placed on the opposite side of the lot; resulting in a nifty little entry court.  See sketches below.

Here you can see a birds eye view of the layout.  Notice the roof between the garage and house is low.  This helps to reduce the mass of the house.  Pulling the garages a bit forward of the front porch creates a nifty little courtyard.

view from street

view approaching courtyard

nice little composition

So when you develop your next house plan - please think about the impact of that garage and look for creative solutions.

House Plans - Build it yourself

In the "old days" people used to build their own houses. Many would buy a set of house plans and the construction materials from the Sears & Roebuck Catalog; the pieces would get shipped to there home site and they would build it. Today there are Architect Designed Sears homes all over the country that were built in the early part of the 20th century. Here are a few examples.

This trend went away after world war II when the baby boom began. There was an enormous demand for housing and as a result developers began mass producing houses. One cookie cutter house after another.

Times are sure different now and I wonder if it is time to learn a bit from our past. The economy is tight and people don't have as much money to spend, but everyone still wants a nice home to live in. So why not start building our homes ourselves again?

I would never recommend that you literally go out and start framing your house. You would have to be very skilled and knowledgeable to take on that kind of effort. But depending on how handy you are and your level of confidence there are many ways that you can save money. Here are a few thoughts on things that you might consider tackling yourself:

1. Be your own general contractor
2. Build your own decks
3. Install your own cabinets
4. Install your own counter tops
5. Perform all of your own painting (exterior and interior)
6. Install your fireplace surround
7. Do your own landscaping
8. Install your own appliances
9. Install your own patio or sidewalk pavers
10. Install your own music system
11. Build your own special interior staircase
12. Install your own light fixtures
13. Install your own bathroom accessories

On my own home I did at least some work in each of the above categories. My strategy was to let the professionals perform all of the critical work (foundations, framing, roofing, siding, etc.); but I would do the work that I was confident I could handle. I saved a bundle of money, which made my home affordable. Be warned however that this is a crazy amount of work for you to take on yourself. Many times you have to be available during normal work hours. And forget about having any kind of a life during construction. You will be at your job site every single night and weekend.

If you think you want to take on this kind of an effort you might start by finding a great architect designed house plan at Simply Elegant Home Designs.