The March Madness Guide to Spring Home Improvement

I don’t know what I was thinking back in March.

Maybe it was the longer, warmer days; maybe it was the tulips poking up through the mulch.

Spring was coming quickly and I jumped at the chance to get outside and start on a long list of spring clean-up projects. Painting, weeding, cleaning out the garage – I attacked them all with gusto every weekend for the whole month.

I had total focus on my DIY list…and completely overlooked the entire “March Madness” NCAA basketball tournament. Forgot to fill out my brackets. Missed my team making it almost all the way to the final four.

Sigh. At least the house looked great.

If You Can Write A Story, You Can Design Your House

Very few people ever have more than one custom home or major remodeling project designed for them.

Very, very few.

Which means that almost every time an Architect works with a homeowner, it’s the first time for at least half of the people in the room.

And as you (that “other half”) head into that first meeting with your Architect, you’re likely a little foggy on what’s supposed to happen next.

• Should I bring pictures of houses I like?
• Should I sketch out a floor plan?
• Should I make a “wish list”?
• What’s this “design process” all about, anyway?

Your Home - Silver Linings and Proof Of Concept

"I was wondering if you had any house pictures from your session last fall that you could share? We are relocating for work and have to put the house on the market. I am sure your pictures will be nicer than anything a real estate agent can take."

So began an unexpected email conversation with a client of mine a few weeks back.

His mention of "relocating for work" was casual, but it had to be breaking their hearts. The time and energy this couple had put into renovating their modest ranch was enormous, and they'd just finished their last major project.

Some Basic House Construction Vocabulary, Part I

One of the smartest things Residential Architects have done in recent years is to stop talking to their clients like Architects. We've gotten a lot better at conversing like regular people instead of like college professors.

Even so, we sometimes lapse into saying silly things like:

“Communicative inheritance, remembered as the true conveyance of cultural integrity, fosters an exchange of the sacred geometrical building blocks.”

Supposedly, that’s about “the future of residential architecture”.  Mmm-hmm.  (If you have any idea what that means, please let me know).

I don’t relate well to that kind of “archi-speak” and I bet you don’t either.  I do relate to quotes like this one:

“In the same way that music inspires us to certain feelings, space can do the same thing…”

That’s a simple truth from Sarah Susanka, author of “The Not So Big House” books.  Refreshing, stimulating, and understandable.  Thanks Sarah.

The “language” of Architecture – especially when we’re talking about home design – doesn’t have to be difficult to understand; after all, if we’re not communicating clearly, how do we know when our designs are successful?

The "Charlie Brown Christmas Tree" of Homes

My wife and I found our second home watching one of the Sunday-morning real estate shows. We weren’t actively searching for a new home, although we’d been talking about it for a while; we didn’t even know what part of town we wanted to move to.

But there we were, on a Sunday morning, sipping coffee and flipping through the channels. We stopped on a real estate showcase for a minute, watching the seemingly endless parade of beige and vinyl and “soft contemporary design”.

And then, just as we were about to turn the TV off, something caught our eye. A weird little home on the other side of town hidden behind overgrown bushes. A “fixer-upper” with brown paint and brown tile floors and a gravel driveway and a carport.

It had been on the market for six months with no offers; it was the house no one wanted - the Charlie Brown Christmas Tree of homes.

How To Quiet Those Noisy Neighbors

It’s a common complaint among city-dwellers that the walls and floors separating one apartment from another allow sounds from one side to pass too easily through to the other.

It's one of the reasons people move away from the city.

But acoustical privacy is becoming a problem in some suburban areas too - as land prices increase, lots are getting smaller and houses are getting closer together. Houses are also getting closer to the street and its associated noise pollution. And attached condominiums are being built at a rapid pace – your next-door neighbor may be just on the other side of the wall.

It’s more critical now because so many of us have powerful multi-media centers in our homes, and we like to enjoy our movies with the sound turned up high.

The closer you live to your neighbor, the greater the opportunities for a loss of acoustical privacy. How can you keep the sounds of your daily life from bothering your neighbors and theirs from bothering you?

How To Burn Down Your House (and why)

It was late in the day when it finally happened.  A puff of smoke appeared just over the rooftop at the far right side of the house; then another appeared, near the chimney.

Within moments smoke was pouring from the entire roof and flickers of orange flame began appearing in the windows.

A cheer went up from the assembled crowd as the flames grew; soon the roof weakened and began to collapse.  A dozen firefighters stood by, cheering along with the crowd.

Huh?