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Designing a New Old Home: Part 1

304 points by stepstop 6y ago

WalterBright 6y ago
My house is a custom one. It's substantially different from the usual pacific northwest home design. For example, the eaves are about 2 feet deep. This keeps the walls dry & clean, keeps water from getting in the basement, and shades the house in summer. Almost no houses have substantial eaves. Also, I have too much experience with rotted wood decks, this one is concrete :-) and it ever so slightly slopes away from the house. All in an effort to keep the house naturally dry. A damp house is a terrible thing in the PNW. Don't ever buy a house where the driveway slopes towards the garage. You'll get a flooded garage/basement at some point guaranteed. Make sure your garage floor has a slight slope towards the door. It's the little things like this that count. (You can't even tell there is a slope on mine, except it's much easier to push the car out of the garage than in.) Houses around here on the north slope of a hill are cheaper than on the south slope. There's a good reason for that. Hello mildew!
- war1025 6y ago
  One thing I dislike about deep eaves is that they tend to come with a very shallow roofline that for some reason screams 1980s to me.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    The roof is about 45 degrees, which gives a very European look that I like a lot.
    - war1025 6y ago
      This [1] is an example of the type of buildings around here that tend to have extra wide eaves. I like the idea of a deep eaves, and I imagine if it was paired with a decent roofline it'd look really nice. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@42.0173646,-93.6163535,3a,75y,20.7h,92.7t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s9Oq0Es6VUiCRy7GS7oGUWQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@42.0173646,-93.6163535,3a,75y,2...
      - WalterBright 6y ago
        You can see how effective they are at shading the house!
    - contingencies 6y ago
      Many places have maximum height restrictions which limit the suburban viability of this approach.
- claydavisss 6y ago
  All competent deck installers grade down from the house. All competent home builders will make sure water drains instead of entering the garage.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    Yeah, well, a sensible home buyer or remodeller will check these himself. It's not that hard, just bring a marble.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  I still made mistakes. For example, the house isn't wheelchair friendly.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    It boggles my mind why all houses don’t have a bedroom and full bathroom on the first floor. Even if you’re young, you could get injured and not be able to climb stairs.
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      Yeah, I found this out when a relative got stuck in a wheelchair for a while. It was eye-opening. A lot of it is simple stuff like "make sure the bathroom door is big enough". At least I made sure there wasn't any nonsense like sunken living rooms.
    - cameldrv 6y ago
      Because for a typical 3 bedroom house, you want about half the space to be bedrooms and half living/dining/kitchen area. If you put a bedroom downstairs, that means you have to put the living room upstairs. This is a big hassle if you have people over. Also by putting the bedrooms upstairs, you have a private space upstairs where guests don't usually go, so it doesn't have to be perfectly tidy when they come over.
- viburnum 6y ago
  That’s so great. It’s bizarre when people skimp on something like eaves. It’s going to rain!
  - dylan604 6y ago
    Gutters help out tremendously with the rain coming off the roof line. Much cheaper than the extra material required for the deeper eaves. Plus, if you're the developer, you charge extra for the gutters anyways.
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      The deeper eaves cost almost nothing extra. The cheapest part of a house is the lumber. But I have gutters, too :-) The contractor complained that I was being ridiculous with all the myriad of things I wanted to keep the house dry. But I've lived in a damp house, and this house has been dry for 20 years. The extra money spent was cheap compared to dealing with a damp house. I love Seattle rain, but the house needs to be dry!
      - ponker 6y ago
        Just hearing the word damp house gives me the willies. Don’t know how the Seattle people do it.
        WalterBright 6y ago
        > Don’t know how the Seattle people do it. Just be wary when Seattlites brag about "green" construction :-)
        novok 6y ago
        The heater being on constantly keeps the house dry.
      - dylan604 6y ago
        It's more than just the lumber. Depending on the angle of the roof, a 1 foot extension all the way around the house equates to lots of extra square footage of roof. All of that requires more material as well.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  About the sloping driveway thing. Yes, I see a number of driveways sloping towards the house where the builder installed a gutter just before the garage door. This works most of the time, but then the leaves (or snow & slush) clog the gutter and the garage floods. Your garage is going to flood if the driveway slopes towards it. I've had a flood from a broken washing machine hose before. I had a lot of water damage to repair. This house has a floor drain under the washing machine, with (as usual) the floor sloping towards the drain. Ditto for under the water heater. In the new house, I've had two gushers in the laundry room and one leaking water heater. No flood damage! Usually, a leaking water heater is an emergency. Not here, it could wait until normal business hours. I have never, ever seen this feature in any other house, and it costs next to nothing.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    Is that a one story house? Here the basement floor is below the sewer drain and deeper eaves wouldn't do much of anything to keep the 1st floor siding clean.
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      2 stories. But the wind usually doesn't blow hard enough for the rain to hit the side. So it works. The contractor wanted to put in a sump pump, but I wanted a gravity drain instead which required a trench to put it in, which was well worth it. (The power around here goes out whenever it rains hard, so much for the sump pump.)
      - greedo 6y ago
        I replaced my electrical sump pump with one powered by water pressure. I figure that if both water AND electricity go out, I'm screwed anyway.
  - itronitron 6y ago
    I once owned a house where the hot water heater and AC units were both in the attic (of a 2 story home.) One nice feature is that they both had pans underneath with drain lines to an AC condensate overflow line outside the house.
- mohaine 6y ago
  I had a carport pad repoured recently and I told the guys doing the work that the only real way they could mess up was if it sloped toward the house and the door. The look on their faces, (and the rework on the just started forms) told me that these expeniced concrete workers never even thought of this. Luckily they got it right but this shouldn't have been something the homeowner should have to tell them but it was.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    There are so many details like this that it's best to form a checklist. The exterior siding here is Dryvit. When installed properly, it'll be perfect for decades. But it is normally not installed properly. I hired an independent Dryvit inspector, and the contract with the Dryvit installer was it would pass inspection. He had to tear it all off twice and do it again before it passed. Turns out the contractor's workers had never done Dryvit before, and had to be taught by the inspector. Paying the inspector turned out to be money very well spent. My neighbor had to have his Stucco-Flex (Dryvit competitor) all pulled off at great expense and redone about 10 years after his house was finished.
    - korethr 6y ago
      > There are so many details like this that it's best to form a checklist. I am interested in seeing your checklist. Though I am still far out from owning my home, I am nonetheless curious about these sorts of things, and the more I an can learn now, the less I have to crash course during trying to get a purchase or construction contract.
      - WalterBright 6y ago
        Sorry, I don't really have one. It's all in my head.
        blaser-waffle 6y ago
        Type it out brother! Not only a benefit for us, but putting thoughts into words might help you find interesting patterns you didn't see before.
- dylan604 6y ago
  Rotted wood can be replaced cheaply, and easily. Cracked/crumbling concrete is neither cheap nor easily repaired. The earth moves, and concrete tends to not like that. At some point, cracks will happen.
  - recuter 6y ago
    The cracks that always happen and are cosmetic not structural. There's plenty of inexpensive self levelling top layer compounds available - it is an easy and quick thing to repair. And a properly installed wooden deck doesn't need to rot either. All of these things can function properly when done right the real problem is the disappearing neccessary craftsmanship. In a race to the bottom everything becomes disposable and half assed.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    It's been 20 years and it's fine, I've spend $0 on it. Have to paint the wood ones every year or two. Ugh. The garage doors are wood and have basically rotted away. I hate exterior wood. The worst problem with wood decks, however, turned out to be carpenter ants. They eat the wood from the inside out, so it looks fine but has the strength of a loaf of bread. I was able to push a screwdriver right through it. When I finally realized the deck had to go, when I cut through the supports it collapsed into a pile of dust. I was astonished. Instead of picking the debris up into a truck, I shoveled it.
    - ekr 6y ago
      There are some wood gates at the place where my grandparents used to live, that are some 60-70 years old now and are still fine. And they've seen quite a bit of rain (though probably not quite as much as in PNW). The wood itself matters a lot too. Black locust wood has an enzyme in its grain that makes it extremely rot resistant. I've heard of black locust poles used as fence poles in the ground lasting for decades.
  - Spooky23 6y ago
    The secret to concrete is drainage. If it’s well drained, it will outlive you. Of course that’s a lot of work. But in most climates it’s worth it — a deck (or asphalt driveway) has to be sealed every few years — you save a lot of maintenance expense and hassle.
- roland35 6y ago
  Landscaping seems to be the biggest source of flooding! Here in the Midwest we don't have as much moisture as the northwest, but we do get frequent large storms in the summer which cause flooding. I'm grateful to be living on top of a large hill! It wasn't something that I thought would be too important buying this house, but if we ever buy another house I will absolutely look to make sure the landscaping is good to prevent flooding. Not much is more expensive to fix!
- getpost 6y ago
  >Also, I have too much experience with rotted wood decks, this one is concrete Aluminum decking is an excellent option. It never gets hot enough to burn your bare feet, doesn't rust, or smell like 'plastic' decking. e.g., http://www.nexaninc.com/products/decking http://www.nexaninc.com/products/decking EDIT: Also it doesn't burn. Aluminum structural members are expensive. It's possible to use pressure-treated lumber to support an aluminum deck, although, of course, it is a toxic material.
  - DubiousPusher 6y ago
    I believe modern pressure treated woods interact with aluminum as well as galvanized and zinc plated metals. I could be wrong but I'm under the impression that stainless steel is the only appropriate hardware for pressure treated lumbers.
    - xyzzyz 6y ago
      Stainless steel is appropriate for contact with pressure treated lumber, but so is hot dip galvanized steel. Cold galvanized steel is not appropriate. Hot dip galvanized is cheaper than stainless, but looks less nice.
  - jdhn 6y ago
    >It's possible to use pressure-treated lumber to support an aluminum deck, although, of course, it is a toxic material. I don't think pressure treated lumber involves arsenic anymore. It used to, but due to lawsuits and the EPA threatening to crack down on it, the industry moved away from it.
    - kls 6y ago
      IIRC it's uses copper and some other chemicals now.
  - kls 6y ago
    In my area (the Florida Keys) they significantly increase the heat of the home. A good alternative to pressure treated lumber is IPE. If one actually does a little digging they can find it from sellers close to the source and get it for pennies on the dollar. I did 2000 sq ft of wrap around decking for right at 10K. That was with me installing it, but pressure treated would have been 8K with me installing it.
- Gatsky 6y ago
  Builders will just skimp where they can to improve their effective profit. Eg: - not painting the tops of doors - not grading slabs for drainage - not following basic instructions about hanging a door - carelessly filling the drainage channel with mortar when laying bricks - not cladding a wall properly because you can't easily see it (which then starts leaking water) I wouldn't undertake a large building project without being very well educated beforehand and allowing significant amounts of time to have your nose in things. Maybe you can get builders which will do a good job without lots of oversight, but there is no way to know this before you sign a contract. Buying something already built saves a lot of time and effort, and dramatically reduces cognitive load.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    Most of the doors were hung badly. At least that is not disastrous.
  - Spooky23 6y ago
    Well said. You really need to be a picky asshole to manage a construction project. I had to hold a kitchen contractor hostage over re-work and bullshit his guys did to skim a few hours.
- DubiousPusher 6y ago
  I moved to the PNW 10 years ago and thought the rotting decks everywhere were hilarious. Until I got my own of course. IDK why people keep building uncovered wooden decks here. It's like they can't see what's happening to their neighbors's house. I think a lot of what has gone wrong here is the midcentuey California housing boom & bust pushed Cali builders here. WA state finally adopted some sensible building codes in 1997 (I think it was 97) and 2017 but everything before then has massive issues with water. Bad or inadequate flashing jobs, unprotected windows, doors and decks, inappropriate grade along houses, inadequate sewer and irrigation drainage. I could go on.
  - elihu 6y ago
    I've heard a similar thing about what people who build houses on the Oregon coast think about the way people build houses further inland (or who move from inland and try to build on the coast). The coast gets more rain and stronger wind, so it's better if you think of it not as building a house but rather building a submarine. That's what I've heard, anyways. I also don't understand what the deal is with uncovered wooden decks in places that get significant rain. It seems like taunting nature to wreck your stuff.
    - mindslight 6y ago
      I think decks are DIY magnets, so people may be expending more effort than sense - Decks tie into the house in a single place, and you can build as much of a foundation as you'd like. They require no special tools, and the wind ties effectively work as jigs that guide you through joining wood. You can demo and build a new one, without impinging on your living situation. All of the work is outside. If it falls apart, there is no pressing need to replace it.
  - StillBored 6y ago
    I live in Austin, and there are plenty of rotting decks here too. But its mostly from three things, that incredibly shitty water based stain sealer which is 100% useless, the use of 1" deck boards, and/or the use of soft cedar. I replaced 2" rotten cedar which was resting on 20+ year old pressure treated (and sunk in concrete footers) decking where the structure looked like it was good for another 20+ years with 2x6 pressure treated structural lumber+yearly pressure wash+oil seal/stain put down at a gallon or so every 100 sqft with a roller. The wood is checked, but none of the checking has gone more than a 1/4 the way through and 15 years in (on the oldest version of this ive done), it looks about the same as it did at year 2. I don't see any indications it won't last another 15 years, there isn't a drop of rot anywhere. Its probably toxic as all get out, but I don't eat off it and outside of a week or two before the sun burns all the VOCs off I can't imagine its really out-gassing much. The biggest problem was that oil based stain/sealers were getting really hard to acquire for a few years, but even the big box places have it again if you look. Untreated pine (along with harder teak/mahogany/etc) was used in sailing ships for hundreds of years, in some of the worst enviroments. If you pay attention, a wood deck shouldn't really be any worse than wood siding on a house. Personally I think a large part of the problem has been those water based deck sealers/stains which despite claims of wood penetration are just thin coats on the top of the wood which don't flex/swell with the wood and quickly are doing absolutely nothing but creating a layer between the wood and the sealer for moisture/rot to form. Put another way, i've yet to see a case where the stuff won't peel off after a couple years. Its basically really bad exterior paint. OTOH, the oil based sealers are linseed/etc and soak in and bind with previous layers, so you can switch from a stain to a clear after a couple years to maintain a particular color.
- hinkley 6y ago
  What is it with the little PNW houses with no eaves at all? Who thought that was a good idea?
  - tadfisher 6y ago
    At least in Portland, outside of a few neighborhoods close-in, most houses are kit homes built with mail-order plans. The 40s and 50s were a huge growth period for the PNW and the houses from this era have decent materials but poor designs for the prevailing conditions.
  - pacaro 6y ago
    There appears to be little to no vernacular architecture in the PNW, nothing evolved here, it appears to all have been copied from the east coast and California. The upshot is that there isn't a common house type that really "works" here
- thomk 6y ago
  You have a concrete deck? I'd like to see a photo of that!
- donavanm 6y ago
  > For example, the eaves are about 2 feet deep. Eaves are supposed to vary based on the latitude. You want to exclude the sun from the windows ans doors during the summer. But they also need to be short enough to allow the daytime winter sun to hit those same openings. That passive warmth, and light, is very valuable during the PNWs 8 months of winter gloom.
- ssharp 6y ago
  > Don't ever buy a house where the driveway slopes towards the garage. If the rest of the house was on the same slope, I'd probably accept the garage and invest in mitigating water getting in. The natural drainage for the house will be so beneficial at naturally keeping water out. Our house is build on a slight slope and even though we have two sumps, they hardly need to do much work at all. One was actually out for several before I noticed and there were zero water issues. Our house garage is side-load so we don't have to deal with water there. I have a workshop garage that does sit on the same slope and we have a large channel drain in front that handles the drainage well.
war1025 6y ago
I don't really have anything to contribute to this, but I found the article super interesting. Perhaps a thing I could add is that Part 2 [1] is available, which wasn't immediately obvious to me. [1] https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/designing-a-new-old-home-part-2-2a5ea1a1b2b3 https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/designing-a-new-old-home-pa...
- claydavisss 6y ago
  Some very weird choices. No internal ducting for AC? Crazy, its a LOT cheaper to include that when building. Now in some heat-death future you end up with ACs hanging out the windows. Wood heating? Wow, thats incredibly polluting. Indeed, they may find it outlawed eventually, its already illegal in many places. Heating with wood also means making the room with the stove an inferno just to make the rest of the house acceptable. No closets? If that's what you're into...but its going to be hard to sell. Average home ownership duration is ten years. So yeah, you kinda have to make some considerations for the next person. No AC and wood heating are going to be a hard sell.
  - greesil 6y ago
    My idea of a new "old" home is to take the best of both. Cupolas? Great. Also ducts, a nice south-facing roof for solar, a garage with multiple 240V circuits so I can charge my EVs. Gigabit ethernet. Insulation.
    - bonzini 6y ago
      Out of curiosity why ducts and not floor pipes for heating? Especially in a climate where you can live without AC if: 1) you make your walls thicker and as you mentioned well insulated---which helps in the winter too! 2) you have "real" blinds on the outside of your windows.
      - war1025 6y ago
        I think heating choices are highly regional. Basically you are going to install something that you can easily get an HVAC person in your area to do maintenance on if it breaks.
everybodyknows 6y ago
> (or linoleum) has replaced the rest We wish. Linoleum is a natural, renewable product, made from linseed oil and plant fiber. Linoleum was replaced decades ago in commodity construction by vinyl tile, which is much cheaper to manufacture.
- sarcher 6y ago
  Ya, you won't find it in commodity construction, but just in case anyone is looking for real linoleum a currently available brand is 'Marmoleum'. It's nice stuff, I've used it on two projects but it's not every client's favorite. By the time a client is looking at sheet flooring it's usually due to cost pressure, and the client ends up going with a vinyl product. I thought I had notes on a second brand that was more commercially oriented (maybe started with an 'R'?) but I can't remember the name at the moment.
  - bitbckt 6y ago
    Marmoleum is a common floor replacement in the Eichlers throughout the Bay Area. It's a very nice product, and looks just right to me.
  - everybodyknows 6y ago
    Here you go. Tarkett -- linoleum is well hidden, under the "commercial" branch of their website only: https://commercial.tarkett.com/en_US/category-tna_C05010-lino-xf2 https://commercial.tarkett.com/en_US/category-tna_C05010-lin...
    - sarcher 6y ago
      Thanks! I was thinking of 'Roppe' which is the not the right brand at all.
- getpost 6y ago
  Linoleum is very eco, but highly flammable.
  - 6y ago
867-5309 6y ago
you should add "in America" to the title
- bonzini 6y ago
  Indeed. While some ideas are the same everywhere, the maximum size of a house in Europe will probably be under 2000 sqft, the fixtures will be very different (e.g. door knobs or handles?), the technologies will be different (heating for example: floor pipes vs. radiators vs. air ducts) and so on.
  - weego 6y ago
    Also: Plots of land with services and outline planning permission are super expensive if not just unavailable in most places. You can't get a mortgage on a self build so you best have a couple of hundred thousand lying around or risk taking a bridge loan from a bank which puts enormous pressure on you to finish as soon as possible as that interest is eating up your capital. You have to have somewhere else to live in the mean time, which combined with possible interest or just delays due to weather etc constantly puts cost pressures on you. It's an unbelievably impractical dream for mostly everyone.
    - bonzini 6y ago
      It's usually possible if you are in small towns to contact local construction companies, see what/where they are planning to build (usually semi-detached or row houses) and customize the inside (plan and fixtures) as much as possible. It's really hard to do it without an architect with so much less space available, but even then you still have a lot of freedom.
    - FireBeyond 6y ago
      > You can't get a mortgage on a self build so you best have a couple of hundred thousand lying around True, though there _are_ options. A family friend added 2000 sq ft to his family home (which had been 800 - and not excessive, they had three kids in a 2br home). He is a general contractor and works for a home construction company. Granted that was a "renovation" - well, almost all new construction. He planned on doing almost all of it himself, except for plumbing/electrical, so anticipated very little labor costs. The bank made them take a loan for the market value of the work including labor, on the guise of "if you get injured, you need to be able to pay to complete it", but allowed the setting of milestones where they could repay labor costs out of the loan.
rhaps0dy 6y ago
Isn't this a lot of work? I suppose it's perhaps worth it if you plan to live in a place for a long time, but surely there are specialists that do this for a living? Like, can't you just pay an architect to design the thing?
- lawn 6y ago
  That's part of the charm isn't it? I too have a silly dream of sometimes designing my own dream house.
  - rhaps0dy 6y ago
    Well, yes, for some people (maybe most). I don't dream of designing my living space, but I do like to live on a nice one. It's not like my bar is very high either.
- ip26 6y ago
  It definitely feels like there ought to be architects who can do this- with your input of course. Learning all the nuance and getting it all right the first time would be such a colossal job. I can spend a month or two per medium sized house project, learning all the details- forget about the whole house. Of course, all this comes very naturally & easily to some people. (Mainly, I've noticed, when their parents are in construction, remodeling, or real estate)
  - rhaps0dy 6y ago
    > It definitely feels like there ought to be architects who can do this- with your input of course. To be fair, the article does mention that: if you commission an architect to do this, you should show them your Pinterest boards. Or at least get an idea of what you like. > Learning all the nuance and getting it all right the first time would be such a colossal job. I imagine it's akin to getting to the level of a working architect yourself. Which is a huge time investment. The article mentions it taking years for them. > I can spend a month or two per medium sized house project, learning all the details- forget about the whole house. That's much less than I'd expect it to take me. I'm curious: are you an architect, or designer, yourself?
MilesTeg 6y ago
I just bought an old house(1920s) and so have been doing a lot of thinking about how much better the layout of surviving old houses are. 1. Natural lighting. I generally do not need artificial lights in the daytime in any room and it is amazing. 2. Ceiling height. Modern constructions have insanely high ceilings. Why? In my old apartment I had cabinetr y I couldn't reach even with my step ladder. 3. Old neighborhoods are much more pleasant to live in and are more much walk-able than post-war cul-de-sac filled developments. 4. House sizes were smaller back then. Since family sizes have been getting smaller I think this would be a good thing to return to. I am quite happy that I don't have to spend a lot extra on furniture just to fill the space. Or pay more to climate control the extra volume. 5. A matter of personal preference but I think the older houses are just prettier. I think it would be great if developers took a look at the older house designs and tweaked them for the modern world.
- unethical_ban 6y ago
  Can't ceiling height have a climate control aspect to it? Summertime in the south gets hot, air rises, have vents at the top of the room? I don't need 20ft ceilings, but aesthetically, I think 9-10ft feels a lot less claustrophobic.
- brendoelfrendo 6y ago
  >Old neighborhoods are much more pleasant to live in and are more much walk-able than post-war cul-de-sac filled developments. I'll say this for my post-war-but-still-old development, it's nice having trees and birds. Looking at new construction, you realize that there's very little shade or natural life because it all gets clear cut for construction. Any trees that get added back in have a long way to go before they actually provide shade (and a barrier to hide the ugly front facades that modern construction requires). >House sizes were smaller back then. Since family sizes have been getting smaller I think this would be a good thing to return to. I agree, and I like the size of my smaller house. That said, there are some ways that I think the space could be better utilized... for example, we have 4 bedrooms and 1.5 baths, all of which are smaller than you'd see in a modern home. It was definitely designed with a large, baby booming family in mind.
everybodyknows 6y ago
My go-to technical encyclopedia for getting a house right: www.finehomebuilding.com/
- sarcher 6y ago
  Journal of Light Construction is pretty good as well: https://www.jlconline.com/ https://www.jlconline.com/ And, online only, Green Building Advisor: https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/ https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/
TYPE_FASTER 6y ago
Downside in having an old (1890s for us) home: nothing is the same size, and none of them are the same. Upside in having an old home: you get to go to a restoration/recycling center, wander through the vast sections of hanging doors until you find the section that fits what you need, and find an interesting one you like. Our home was a hobby for a while. Now I have different priorities for time. But that was an awesome learning experience, and I feel lucky I went through it. My dad drafted a house at night at work (he was a mechanical engineer prior to retirement). Then he built it, subcontracting out parts like some of the framing, drywall, etc. My parents ended up with exactly the house they wanted. It was really cool to see happen, made anything seem possible.
- rustybelt 6y ago
  Don't forget settling foundations. I'd be amazed if someone could find a single perfect right angle anywhere in my 1880's victorian.
  - pantaloony 6y ago
    Don’t worry, every time we’ve had to or chosen to do anything to the newer houses we’ve owned it’s been a constant series of discoveries about how out-of-square everydamnthing is. We level something perfectly and... it’s nowhere near matching what’s already there. Even the doorways go out of alignment in a just a few years, if they don’t start that way.
    - FireBeyond 6y ago
      Don't even start me on the new construction (thankfully rental) that my last home was. The stairwell landing was so badly off that there was skirting running up the side, and on the landing, they actually had _two_ layers of skirting (one atop the other). It looked ... ridiculous. And within months, every door had squeaks and sticks, because the frame would be off by as much as 1/4 inch.
    - Gibbon1 6y ago
      When you realize the laser level and plum bobs aren't really very useful because anything made square looks off. As in reframing a closet door plumb and finding the floor isn't level. So now it looks crooked.
sarcher 6y ago
As someone who works in residential construction, this is one of the better looks at what a 'good' process looks like from the homeowner side of the equation. The only places where my advice would differ: - They finished the floors instead of having a subcontractor do it. Everyone's comfort for various home improvements tasks differs, but this is one that I typically see farmed out. The people who do it everyday are very fast and competent - as a first timer it's hard to avoid making mistakes. I also advise people to avoid floor stains. One advantage to a real wood floor is it's easy to repair and refinish in the future, but this gets a lot harder when you start needing to stain match. Floor stain also kind of violates the tenants of 'honest materials' that the author discusses. - To build on their point about veneer plaster walls, cost really comes down to subcontractor comfort with that detail. It's only 'slightly more expensive' if you have a contractor that does it all the time. If you live in an area with a lot of plaster homes, you'll have more luck finding someone who can do this work affordably. For example, I once had an architect specify a particular plaster finish ('venetian plaster') where we could not find someone comfortable doing the work within a two hour drive. - They discuss the slow drying of the floor finish they used as a negative (true). A good place to use slow-drying finishing techniques is the exterior, as you can leave it alone for a lot longer as compared to a floor you want to walk on immediately. For example, pine tar exterior finishing materials take weeks to dry, but you don't NEED to touch the siding during that period. - In the second part they show a north and south elevation of the finished home. The north elevation really doesn't reflect the historic character they succeeded so hard to emulate and/or build from in other aspects of their home. Comparing these two elevations is very instructive. I hope their next published section addresses energy efficiency and adjacent topics (like window selection). It's a huge part of building a modern home that doesn't always get the attention it should. I did appreciate the time spent discussing air flow in part 2. Building on their reading list, if you like older/vernacular homes start with: "House" by Tracy Kidder "A Field Guide to American Houses" by Virginia Savage McAlester "American Shelter" by Lester Walker "The American House" by Mary Mix Foley And maybe move on to: "A Concise History of American Architecture" by Leland Roth "American Vernacular: Buildings and Interiors, 1870-1960" by Herbert Gottfried "Norwegian Wood: The Thoughtful Architecture of Wenche Selmer" by Elisabeth Tostrup "Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn" by Thomas Hubka And then maybe: "The Well-Built House" by Jim Locke "The colonial House Then and Now" by Francis Underwood "Little House on a Small Planet" by Shay Salomon
evandev 6y ago
Another great book is "How to Build in the Country: Good Advice from the Past on how to Choose a Site, Plan, Design, Build, Decorate & Landscape Your Country Home"[0] 0: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0966307518/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_ImGfFb8DE7Z2S https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0966307518/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_...
CalRobert 6y ago
Thanks for sharing this - for people who like pictures, the instagram feed (linked at the bottom of the article) is well worth adding. "Homes are not built by people intending to live in them." - this really gets to the issue, I think. Somewhere along the line we took away most people's ability to construct their own home (or they just lost it), and of course if houses are viewed primarily as holding value for equity, you need to consider resale instead of your own preferences when making decisions.
everybodyknows 6y ago
>you should read two books. The first is Get Your House Right: Architectural Elements to Use & Avoid I own and have read a copy, excellent. Note however that it's entirely oriented toward traditional design: Deco, Streamline Moderne, and Mid-Mod are terra incognita. Eichler fans, you have been warned.
- earthscienceman 6y ago
  Do you have any suggestions for books that do cover these design styles?
  - everybodyknows 6y ago
    For light reading on 20th century style I like this site: https://retrorenovation.com/2017/06/23/59-midcentury-modern-historic-houses-visit-across-u-s/ https://retrorenovation.com/2017/06/23/59-midcentury-modern-... Only book I've found for Streamline Moderne: https://www.amazon.com/Streamline-Moderne-Style-Primer-Book-ebook/dp/B005Y7QXGY/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=rosalie+stafford&qid=1595304851&sr=8-4 https://www.amazon.com/Streamline-Moderne-Style-Primer-Book-...
- pstuart 6y ago
  Having lived in an Eichler house, I don't understand how there can be Eichler fans.
  - rusteh1 6y ago
    Curious about this comment? Why? I've never lived in one, nor even been in one. But they look beautiful. What are the draw backs?
    - pstuart 6y ago
      Cheaply made, nothing all that special except floor to ceiling windows.
  - codemac 6y ago
DanCarvajal 6y ago
We just bought out first house, it's a super basic 1930s "Traditional Minimal". Funny enough this home is actually the youngest of the twenty or so homes we looked at. We only passed on some 1880s homes because of location issues.
cactus2093 6y ago
This is wild to me, I can't follow the author's logic here really at all. It reads like a borderline-satirical example of nostalgia for nostalgia's sake. They make such obnoxious claims like "I think most people have an intuitive sense that older homes are often special, and newer ones are often not". Then they go on to list things that I associate much more with modern homes - not wasting floor space, and paying attention to the elements and light. A modern, open-concept design is optimizing much better for this than an old farmhouse where, for instance, the kitchen and formal dining room and living room are all closed off from each other. Modern homes often have floor to ceiling windows and sliding glass doors, old homes have tiny closed off windows. And old homes like the author uses as an example here are often just simple rectangles, so all the design decisions are constrained to be small square rooms. At least the "mcmansion" example in this post of a terrible new home has more interesting, non-perpendicular details and layout. Maybe I just have an anti-nostalgia for this type of home, and maybe that makes me just as biased as the author in the opposite direction. I've never lived in a home like this but have been inside of a few of them, and they're often dark and closed in and kind of creepy. But I don't think I'm completely alone in feeling this way, there must be a reason so many horror movies are set in old farmhouses. To each their own, I guess. (And on top of all this, I would argue that this kind of permeating attitude about new homes just not being special like old homes are plays a huge part in the current housing shortage crisis that much of the US faces, but I won't even go into that).
- pantaloony 6y ago
  You’re thinking of expensive or maybe region-specific “designer” homes. If you just go look at most of the kinds of new houses being built, up to surprisingly high price points (as noted in TFA), it’s exactly as described. The waste of space especially drives me nuts and it’s everywhere in most new construction. Ditto shockingly bad and cheap-feeling fixtures and doors even in very expensive houses. When they do mimic huge “open” design spaces (incidentally, the Worst Thing Ever if you have kids) these kinds of builders usually do it because it’s cheaper, and then screw it up so the flow/layout, somehow, still sucks and wastes space—because all they care about is that the house looks impressive in photos on Zillow.
  - 6y ago
hoorayimhelping 6y ago
For the folks who check the comments first, this is worth reading: >But then something happened: the average knob with a lock has a fair amount of internal complexity, but the beauty has been completely stripped out. We no longer think of knobs, hinges, latches, or locks as things worth making beautiful, and we think this at a time when it should be easier and cheaper than ever to make such things beautiful. When they were difficult to make, iron latches and handles resembled hands, lions, flowers, gargoyles, etc. Now that a latch is easy to make, they look like nothing. It is worth carefully pondering this, I think, beyond the words of this article and well beyond door knobs. This is from part 2 https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/designing-a-new-old-home-part-2-2a5ea1a1b2b3 https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/designing-a-new-old-home-pa..., linked here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23901248 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23901248
brendoelfrendo 6y ago
> They seem designed primarily to maximize one thing: the square-footage number that will be on the listing when it’s sold. Say it again for the people in the back! This is probably my biggest complaint with modern suburban housing/McMansions. You can see it in the exterior design of the house; you see all kinds of horrendous roof lines, mismatched windows of all shapes and sizes, odd material choices, etc. The houses suffer because they're trying to build the most square footage on the smallest possible lot. I know density is the way to go in urban development, but... I feel like developers have lost the plot.
- wwweston 6y ago
  This is also worth noting not only on the level of aesthetics and experience of a given building, but worth underscoring for consideration, especially for the crowd that thinks that leveling obstacles to increased supply is The Answer™ to housing costs. Increased supply is one necessary component, but in the same way that developer incentives can more easily push them to substandard suburban construction, urban construction is likely enough to chase something other than your goals.
- diablerouge 6y ago
  > I know density is the way to go in urban development, but... I feel like developers have lost the plot. This is exactly true! A lot of the time, the increased size doesn't even result in increased density - most McMansions are single-family homes. Plus, because the extra space is weirdly proportioned and placed, it doesn't provide much benefit to the inhabitants - it only serves to inflate the listed price.
  - brendoelfrendo 6y ago
    You know, when I typed that I meant density in that the houses are much closer together than older developments, but honestly... they're probably not much "denser" on a human basis. The homes have just swelled to take up most of the lot.
    - deleted 6y ago
aimor 6y ago
> With some careful choices and by doing some of the finishing ourselves, we thought we could make it relatively inexpensively, too. What was the cost?
yingw787 6y ago
...do you have a GitHub repo for checklisting items for building a custom house like this? I'm nowhere near financially secure enough to even begin planning for something like this. But it'd be cool to look through the checklist and have people contribute things you might forget, and it might be useful for others.
zrail 6y ago
We just bought a mid-century modern house originally built in 1955 and completely redone in 2009. Some of the choices are extremely questionable and some of them are obviously dated, but in general I like living here much more than our 2004-vintage tract house. The light and layout are just so much better.
justicezyx 6y ago
That door knob is well crafted. A modern production with similar quality probably will take upwards to $400 based on my recent research on front door locks...
contingencies 6y ago
For anyone embarking on a similar project, check out http://osarch.org/ http://osarch.org/ I was amazed to come from no background in architecture to getting a land survey converted in to Blender 3D model and having accurate sun simulations running on architectural concepts within a week or two. Seems like Sketchup dying has gifted a lot of momentum to the open source space. Use it! It's pretty capable stuff. Also, plant trees. Trees last a long time (longer than many houses), cost nearly nothing and provide excellent psychological and physical features which built environment cannot match.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ykl 6y ago
Last year my wife and I bought out first house. Given our budget, we had the option of either buying a new big McMansion type home further out from the city, or buying a smaller older home closer to the city. We wound up buying a smaller house built in the 1940s and gutting/renovating/modernizing the interior, and on a whole I'm really happy with the result. The house itself feels like when it was originally built, more careful thought was put into where windows are, how rooms are lit, how rooms are ventilated, how spaces flow into each other, and so on and so forth. After our renovation work, we now also have all of the modern niceties like ethernet running through all of the walls and a shiny kitchen and shiny bathrooms and modern hardwood flooring and whatnot. Every part of the house now feels like it's the way it is specifically because we wanted it to be that way, and relatively speaking, it cost less than it would have to get a new cookie-cutter McMansion type monstrosity around here. As a bonus, the neighborhood feels cozier and friendlier and less empty compared to newer cookie-cutter type development tracts too. The only downside is that the square footage is considerably smaller, but I have no idea what people are supposed to do with all of the empty space in a giant house anyway. Oh, I guess another minor downside was discovering that no two doors in the entire house are exactly the same size, so we wound up having to get custom doors made. Of course, your mileage will vary depending on where you are, budget, contractors, etc; we lucked out and managed to find contractors that cared about their craft and put a lot of thought into things.
- thomk 6y ago
  > I have no idea what people are supposed to do with all of the empty space in a giant house They fill it with shit they don't need. Kudos to you.
  - m463 6y ago
    they're filled with "I might need..." or "maybe I will use..." (eventually becoming "I forgot I had...")
    - thomk 6y ago
      Yep I moved into a house that was over double the size of my last house and somehow I'm out of room again.
iramiller 6y ago
In all this discussion of the art of design in old houses I am surprised to see no one has mentioned “A Pattern Language” [1] yet. This is truly a must read book for anyone considering the design and building of their own house. Interesting topics such as the design of a front door viewed from a street have stuck with me and is something I reflect on when walking through an old neighborhood. Infallibly the most appealing houses match up well to the principals outlined in the book. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language
- pjmorris 6y ago
  The article's author mentions Alexanders 'Timeless Way of Building', the first book in the series of which 'A Pattern Language' is a part. I agree, it's a wonderful book.
- madhadron 6y ago
  I'll just toss in that his latest work, 'The Nature of Order' is really worth reading as well. Oh, and the book 'How Buildings Learn' is almost compulsory in this space as well.
j_m_b 6y ago
Living in the Chicago area suburbs (think John Hughes), I developed a fondness for the Frank Lloyd Wright prairie style homes. Is it possible to get blueprints for actual FLW homes that you could give to a builder... even perhaps yourself?
- madhadron 6y ago
  Except that FLW homes tend to have serious deficiencies as houses. Their roofs leak. Their interiors often use natural light poorly and are cavernous and dark. Admire them as works of sculpture, but don't live in one.
StillBored 6y ago
I agree with much of the general take of this article, but having remodeled, or helped remodel houses, or just plain lived in/repaired over the past couple decades I've got my own set of opinions about this. Starting with, never mistake style for long lasting quality. For example, wood floors are very poor flooring material unless you don't mind living in a house where the floors look like a barn after a decade or two. Tile, concrete, will unless abused, out last just about every other flooring choice while generally remaining quite nice if installed well. There is a reason the mosaics in high end roman houses are still in place two thousand years after they were built. Also, to add to the general take of the article. Nothing you buy from the big box home improvement stores will last more than 10 years. I would qualify this with their lumber/etc is fine, but I've seen cases where the lumber was incorrectly pressure treated(!) and they replaced it after it rotted in 5 years. Which is great, except for the fact that the lumber was like 1/100th of the job cost. Frankly, its not even the big box suppliers, its just about everything they sell seems to have declined in quality. Until a couple years ago, I had never seen a light switch fail, my current house (built in the early 2000's) has had about 1/2 of the light switches literally fall apart in the walls. So, while somethings are probably acceptable quality (indoor door handles/locks) for the most part, the exterior ones with their faux aged finishes and the like will despite their 30 year guarantees break, or the finishes will crack in the sun, or rust. And on and on... My general take is some of it might be ok, but keep the receipt for that $300 facet somewhere you will be able to find it in 8 years, because its quite likely something will go wrong. Pay the extra for the one from the plumbing/etc supply house, because the worthwhile plumbers/etc will offer matching labor guarantees and they don't like coming back to fix something under warantee. I could write a book about this... but one last thing. Ive spoken to a lot of people in the know, and the general take on appliances is that a good high end one from the mid 1990's will likely outlast anything built in the last 20 years. If you have an old fridge/dishwasher/etc take care of it, polish it up, treasure it. Most importantly, buy a part off ebay when it fails and fix it. Enjoy it for what it is, a quality piece of machinery that probably uses a bit more electricity, or water, but actually cleans your cloths/dishes/etc or the ice maker doesn't jam or clog, or need DRM'ed water filters. And if you really want filtered Ice buy a inline water filter and plug it into the ice line and enjoy the $5 filters and think about the fact that your saving $30+ dollars each time you change it.
MH15 6y ago
A lot of commenters are suffering from the bias we suffer from every time we discuss issues of the past: the "old homes" are good in party because they have passed the test of generations. The bad designs from those generations have largely been torn down. Just because something is old does not make it good. It is another question entirely why we continue to fall for the same poor designs.
vmurthy 6y ago
Love the amount of details that has gone into this. Truly is a work of passion. I am waiting for a part-3 which should hopefully cover some of the "techy" stuff that can be built into the home. For e.g., Ethernet cables all over? USB ports in the wall itself in addition to switches? Speaking of which, what tech stuff would you build into your homes?

304 points by stepstop 6y ago

My house is a custom one. It's substantially different from the usual pacific northwest home design. For example, the eaves are about 2 feet deep. This keeps the walls dry & clean, keeps water from getting in the basement, and shades the house in summer. Almost no houses have substantial eaves. Also, I have too much experience with rotted wood decks, this one is concrete :-) and it ever so slightly slopes away from the house. All in an effort to keep the house naturally dry. A damp house is a terrible thing in the PNW. Don't ever buy a house where the driveway slopes towards the garage. You'll get a flooded garage/basement at some point guaranteed. Make sure your garage floor has a slight slope towards the door. It's the little things like this that count. (You can't even tell there is a slope on mine, except it's much easier to push the car out of the garage than in.) Houses around here on the north slope of a hill are cheaper than on the south slope. There's a good reason for that. Hello mildew!

war1025 6y ago
One thing I dislike about deep eaves is that they tend to come with a very shallow roofline that for some reason screams 1980s to me.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  The roof is about 45 degrees, which gives a very European look that I like a lot.
  - war1025 6y ago
    This [1] is an example of the type of buildings around here that tend to have extra wide eaves. I like the idea of a deep eaves, and I imagine if it was paired with a decent roofline it'd look really nice. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@42.0173646,-93.6163535,3a,75y,20.7h,92.7t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s9Oq0Es6VUiCRy7GS7oGUWQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@42.0173646,-93.6163535,3a,75y,2...
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      You can see how effective they are at shading the house!
  - contingencies 6y ago
    Many places have maximum height restrictions which limit the suburban viability of this approach.
claydavisss 6y ago
All competent deck installers grade down from the house. All competent home builders will make sure water drains instead of entering the garage.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  Yeah, well, a sensible home buyer or remodeller will check these himself. It's not that hard, just bring a marble.
WalterBright 6y ago
I still made mistakes. For example, the house isn't wheelchair friendly.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  It boggles my mind why all houses don’t have a bedroom and full bathroom on the first floor. Even if you’re young, you could get injured and not be able to climb stairs.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    Yeah, I found this out when a relative got stuck in a wheelchair for a while. It was eye-opening. A lot of it is simple stuff like "make sure the bathroom door is big enough". At least I made sure there wasn't any nonsense like sunken living rooms.
  - cameldrv 6y ago
    Because for a typical 3 bedroom house, you want about half the space to be bedrooms and half living/dining/kitchen area. If you put a bedroom downstairs, that means you have to put the living room upstairs. This is a big hassle if you have people over. Also by putting the bedrooms upstairs, you have a private space upstairs where guests don't usually go, so it doesn't have to be perfectly tidy when they come over.
viburnum 6y ago
That’s so great. It’s bizarre when people skimp on something like eaves. It’s going to rain!
- dylan604 6y ago
  Gutters help out tremendously with the rain coming off the roof line. Much cheaper than the extra material required for the deeper eaves. Plus, if you're the developer, you charge extra for the gutters anyways.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    The deeper eaves cost almost nothing extra. The cheapest part of a house is the lumber. But I have gutters, too :-) The contractor complained that I was being ridiculous with all the myriad of things I wanted to keep the house dry. But I've lived in a damp house, and this house has been dry for 20 years. The extra money spent was cheap compared to dealing with a damp house. I love Seattle rain, but the house needs to be dry!
    - ponker 6y ago
      Just hearing the word damp house gives me the willies. Don’t know how the Seattle people do it.
      - WalterBright 6y ago
        > Don’t know how the Seattle people do it. Just be wary when Seattlites brag about "green" construction :-)
      - novok 6y ago
        The heater being on constantly keeps the house dry.
    - dylan604 6y ago
      It's more than just the lumber. Depending on the angle of the roof, a 1 foot extension all the way around the house equates to lots of extra square footage of roof. All of that requires more material as well.
WalterBright 6y ago
About the sloping driveway thing. Yes, I see a number of driveways sloping towards the house where the builder installed a gutter just before the garage door. This works most of the time, but then the leaves (or snow & slush) clog the gutter and the garage floods. Your garage is going to flood if the driveway slopes towards it. I've had a flood from a broken washing machine hose before. I had a lot of water damage to repair. This house has a floor drain under the washing machine, with (as usual) the floor sloping towards the drain. Ditto for under the water heater. In the new house, I've had two gushers in the laundry room and one leaking water heater. No flood damage! Usually, a leaking water heater is an emergency. Not here, it could wait until normal business hours. I have never, ever seen this feature in any other house, and it costs next to nothing.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  Is that a one story house? Here the basement floor is below the sewer drain and deeper eaves wouldn't do much of anything to keep the 1st floor siding clean.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    2 stories. But the wind usually doesn't blow hard enough for the rain to hit the side. So it works. The contractor wanted to put in a sump pump, but I wanted a gravity drain instead which required a trench to put it in, which was well worth it. (The power around here goes out whenever it rains hard, so much for the sump pump.)
    - greedo 6y ago
      I replaced my electrical sump pump with one powered by water pressure. I figure that if both water AND electricity go out, I'm screwed anyway.
- itronitron 6y ago
  I once owned a house where the hot water heater and AC units were both in the attic (of a 2 story home.) One nice feature is that they both had pans underneath with drain lines to an AC condensate overflow line outside the house.
mohaine 6y ago
I had a carport pad repoured recently and I told the guys doing the work that the only real way they could mess up was if it sloped toward the house and the door. The look on their faces, (and the rework on the just started forms) told me that these expeniced concrete workers never even thought of this. Luckily they got it right but this shouldn't have been something the homeowner should have to tell them but it was.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  There are so many details like this that it's best to form a checklist. The exterior siding here is Dryvit. When installed properly, it'll be perfect for decades. But it is normally not installed properly. I hired an independent Dryvit inspector, and the contract with the Dryvit installer was it would pass inspection. He had to tear it all off twice and do it again before it passed. Turns out the contractor's workers had never done Dryvit before, and had to be taught by the inspector. Paying the inspector turned out to be money very well spent. My neighbor had to have his Stucco-Flex (Dryvit competitor) all pulled off at great expense and redone about 10 years after his house was finished.
  - korethr 6y ago
    > There are so many details like this that it's best to form a checklist. I am interested in seeing your checklist. Though I am still far out from owning my home, I am nonetheless curious about these sorts of things, and the more I an can learn now, the less I have to crash course during trying to get a purchase or construction contract.
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      Sorry, I don't really have one. It's all in my head.
      - blaser-waffle 6y ago
        Type it out brother! Not only a benefit for us, but putting thoughts into words might help you find interesting patterns you didn't see before.
dylan604 6y ago
Rotted wood can be replaced cheaply, and easily. Cracked/crumbling concrete is neither cheap nor easily repaired. The earth moves, and concrete tends to not like that. At some point, cracks will happen.
- recuter 6y ago
  The cracks that always happen and are cosmetic not structural. There's plenty of inexpensive self levelling top layer compounds available - it is an easy and quick thing to repair. And a properly installed wooden deck doesn't need to rot either. All of these things can function properly when done right the real problem is the disappearing neccessary craftsmanship. In a race to the bottom everything becomes disposable and half assed.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  It's been 20 years and it's fine, I've spend $0 on it. Have to paint the wood ones every year or two. Ugh. The garage doors are wood and have basically rotted away. I hate exterior wood. The worst problem with wood decks, however, turned out to be carpenter ants. They eat the wood from the inside out, so it looks fine but has the strength of a loaf of bread. I was able to push a screwdriver right through it. When I finally realized the deck had to go, when I cut through the supports it collapsed into a pile of dust. I was astonished. Instead of picking the debris up into a truck, I shoveled it.
  - ekr 6y ago
    There are some wood gates at the place where my grandparents used to live, that are some 60-70 years old now and are still fine. And they've seen quite a bit of rain (though probably not quite as much as in PNW). The wood itself matters a lot too. Black locust wood has an enzyme in its grain that makes it extremely rot resistant. I've heard of black locust poles used as fence poles in the ground lasting for decades.
- Spooky23 6y ago
  The secret to concrete is drainage. If it’s well drained, it will outlive you. Of course that’s a lot of work. But in most climates it’s worth it — a deck (or asphalt driveway) has to be sealed every few years — you save a lot of maintenance expense and hassle.
roland35 6y ago
Landscaping seems to be the biggest source of flooding! Here in the Midwest we don't have as much moisture as the northwest, but we do get frequent large storms in the summer which cause flooding. I'm grateful to be living on top of a large hill! It wasn't something that I thought would be too important buying this house, but if we ever buy another house I will absolutely look to make sure the landscaping is good to prevent flooding. Not much is more expensive to fix!
getpost 6y ago
>Also, I have too much experience with rotted wood decks, this one is concrete Aluminum decking is an excellent option. It never gets hot enough to burn your bare feet, doesn't rust, or smell like 'plastic' decking. e.g., http://www.nexaninc.com/products/decking http://www.nexaninc.com/products/decking EDIT: Also it doesn't burn. Aluminum structural members are expensive. It's possible to use pressure-treated lumber to support an aluminum deck, although, of course, it is a toxic material.
- DubiousPusher 6y ago
  I believe modern pressure treated woods interact with aluminum as well as galvanized and zinc plated metals. I could be wrong but I'm under the impression that stainless steel is the only appropriate hardware for pressure treated lumbers.
  - xyzzyz 6y ago
    Stainless steel is appropriate for contact with pressure treated lumber, but so is hot dip galvanized steel. Cold galvanized steel is not appropriate. Hot dip galvanized is cheaper than stainless, but looks less nice.
- jdhn 6y ago
  >It's possible to use pressure-treated lumber to support an aluminum deck, although, of course, it is a toxic material. I don't think pressure treated lumber involves arsenic anymore. It used to, but due to lawsuits and the EPA threatening to crack down on it, the industry moved away from it.
  - kls 6y ago
    IIRC it's uses copper and some other chemicals now.
- kls 6y ago
  In my area (the Florida Keys) they significantly increase the heat of the home. A good alternative to pressure treated lumber is IPE. If one actually does a little digging they can find it from sellers close to the source and get it for pennies on the dollar. I did 2000 sq ft of wrap around decking for right at 10K. That was with me installing it, but pressure treated would have been 8K with me installing it.
Gatsky 6y ago
Builders will just skimp where they can to improve their effective profit. Eg: - not painting the tops of doors - not grading slabs for drainage - not following basic instructions about hanging a door - carelessly filling the drainage channel with mortar when laying bricks - not cladding a wall properly because you can't easily see it (which then starts leaking water) I wouldn't undertake a large building project without being very well educated beforehand and allowing significant amounts of time to have your nose in things. Maybe you can get builders which will do a good job without lots of oversight, but there is no way to know this before you sign a contract. Buying something already built saves a lot of time and effort, and dramatically reduces cognitive load.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  Most of the doors were hung badly. At least that is not disastrous.
- Spooky23 6y ago
  Well said. You really need to be a picky asshole to manage a construction project. I had to hold a kitchen contractor hostage over re-work and bullshit his guys did to skim a few hours.
DubiousPusher 6y ago
I moved to the PNW 10 years ago and thought the rotting decks everywhere were hilarious. Until I got my own of course. IDK why people keep building uncovered wooden decks here. It's like they can't see what's happening to their neighbors's house. I think a lot of what has gone wrong here is the midcentuey California housing boom & bust pushed Cali builders here. WA state finally adopted some sensible building codes in 1997 (I think it was 97) and 2017 but everything before then has massive issues with water. Bad or inadequate flashing jobs, unprotected windows, doors and decks, inappropriate grade along houses, inadequate sewer and irrigation drainage. I could go on.
- elihu 6y ago
  I've heard a similar thing about what people who build houses on the Oregon coast think about the way people build houses further inland (or who move from inland and try to build on the coast). The coast gets more rain and stronger wind, so it's better if you think of it not as building a house but rather building a submarine. That's what I've heard, anyways. I also don't understand what the deal is with uncovered wooden decks in places that get significant rain. It seems like taunting nature to wreck your stuff.
  - mindslight 6y ago
    I think decks are DIY magnets, so people may be expending more effort than sense - Decks tie into the house in a single place, and you can build as much of a foundation as you'd like. They require no special tools, and the wind ties effectively work as jigs that guide you through joining wood. You can demo and build a new one, without impinging on your living situation. All of the work is outside. If it falls apart, there is no pressing need to replace it.
- StillBored 6y ago
  I live in Austin, and there are plenty of rotting decks here too. But its mostly from three things, that incredibly shitty water based stain sealer which is 100% useless, the use of 1" deck boards, and/or the use of soft cedar. I replaced 2" rotten cedar which was resting on 20+ year old pressure treated (and sunk in concrete footers) decking where the structure looked like it was good for another 20+ years with 2x6 pressure treated structural lumber+yearly pressure wash+oil seal/stain put down at a gallon or so every 100 sqft with a roller. The wood is checked, but none of the checking has gone more than a 1/4 the way through and 15 years in (on the oldest version of this ive done), it looks about the same as it did at year 2. I don't see any indications it won't last another 15 years, there isn't a drop of rot anywhere. Its probably toxic as all get out, but I don't eat off it and outside of a week or two before the sun burns all the VOCs off I can't imagine its really out-gassing much. The biggest problem was that oil based stain/sealers were getting really hard to acquire for a few years, but even the big box places have it again if you look. Untreated pine (along with harder teak/mahogany/etc) was used in sailing ships for hundreds of years, in some of the worst enviroments. If you pay attention, a wood deck shouldn't really be any worse than wood siding on a house. Personally I think a large part of the problem has been those water based deck sealers/stains which despite claims of wood penetration are just thin coats on the top of the wood which don't flex/swell with the wood and quickly are doing absolutely nothing but creating a layer between the wood and the sealer for moisture/rot to form. Put another way, i've yet to see a case where the stuff won't peel off after a couple years. Its basically really bad exterior paint. OTOH, the oil based sealers are linseed/etc and soak in and bind with previous layers, so you can switch from a stain to a clear after a couple years to maintain a particular color.
hinkley 6y ago
What is it with the little PNW houses with no eaves at all? Who thought that was a good idea?
- tadfisher 6y ago
  At least in Portland, outside of a few neighborhoods close-in, most houses are kit homes built with mail-order plans. The 40s and 50s were a huge growth period for the PNW and the houses from this era have decent materials but poor designs for the prevailing conditions.
- pacaro 6y ago
  There appears to be little to no vernacular architecture in the PNW, nothing evolved here, it appears to all have been copied from the east coast and California. The upshot is that there isn't a common house type that really "works" here
thomk 6y ago
You have a concrete deck? I'd like to see a photo of that!
donavanm 6y ago
> For example, the eaves are about 2 feet deep. Eaves are supposed to vary based on the latitude. You want to exclude the sun from the windows ans doors during the summer. But they also need to be short enough to allow the daytime winter sun to hit those same openings. That passive warmth, and light, is very valuable during the PNWs 8 months of winter gloom.
ssharp 6y ago
> Don't ever buy a house where the driveway slopes towards the garage. If the rest of the house was on the same slope, I'd probably accept the garage and invest in mitigating water getting in. The natural drainage for the house will be so beneficial at naturally keeping water out. Our house is build on a slight slope and even though we have two sumps, they hardly need to do much work at all. One was actually out for several before I noticed and there were zero water issues. Our house garage is side-load so we don't have to deal with water there. I have a workshop garage that does sit on the same slope and we have a large channel drain in front that handles the drainage well.

war1025 6y ago

I don't really have anything to contribute to this, but I found the article super interesting. Perhaps a thing I could add is that Part 2 [1] is available, which wasn't immediately obvious to me. [1] https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/designing-a-new-old-home-part-2-2a5ea1a1b2b3 https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/designing-a-new-old-home-pa...

claydavisss 6y ago
Some very weird choices. No internal ducting for AC? Crazy, its a LOT cheaper to include that when building. Now in some heat-death future you end up with ACs hanging out the windows. Wood heating? Wow, thats incredibly polluting. Indeed, they may find it outlawed eventually, its already illegal in many places. Heating with wood also means making the room with the stove an inferno just to make the rest of the house acceptable. No closets? If that's what you're into...but its going to be hard to sell. Average home ownership duration is ten years. So yeah, you kinda have to make some considerations for the next person. No AC and wood heating are going to be a hard sell.
- greesil 6y ago
  My idea of a new "old" home is to take the best of both. Cupolas? Great. Also ducts, a nice south-facing roof for solar, a garage with multiple 240V circuits so I can charge my EVs. Gigabit ethernet. Insulation.
  - bonzini 6y ago
    Out of curiosity why ducts and not floor pipes for heating? Especially in a climate where you can live without AC if: 1) you make your walls thicker and as you mentioned well insulated---which helps in the winter too! 2) you have "real" blinds on the outside of your windows.
    - war1025 6y ago
      I think heating choices are highly regional. Basically you are going to install something that you can easily get an HVAC person in your area to do maintenance on if it breaks.

everybodyknows 6y ago

> (or linoleum) has replaced the rest We wish. Linoleum is a natural, renewable product, made from linseed oil and plant fiber. Linoleum was replaced decades ago in commodity construction by vinyl tile, which is much cheaper to manufacture.

sarcher 6y ago
Ya, you won't find it in commodity construction, but just in case anyone is looking for real linoleum a currently available brand is 'Marmoleum'. It's nice stuff, I've used it on two projects but it's not every client's favorite. By the time a client is looking at sheet flooring it's usually due to cost pressure, and the client ends up going with a vinyl product. I thought I had notes on a second brand that was more commercially oriented (maybe started with an 'R'?) but I can't remember the name at the moment.
- bitbckt 6y ago
  Marmoleum is a common floor replacement in the Eichlers throughout the Bay Area. It's a very nice product, and looks just right to me.
- everybodyknows 6y ago
  Here you go. Tarkett -- linoleum is well hidden, under the "commercial" branch of their website only: https://commercial.tarkett.com/en_US/category-tna_C05010-lino-xf2 https://commercial.tarkett.com/en_US/category-tna_C05010-lin...
  - sarcher 6y ago
    Thanks! I was thinking of 'Roppe' which is the not the right brand at all.
getpost 6y ago
Linoleum is very eco, but highly flammable.
- 6y ago

867-5309 6y ago

you should add "in America" to the title

bonzini 6y ago
Indeed. While some ideas are the same everywhere, the maximum size of a house in Europe will probably be under 2000 sqft, the fixtures will be very different (e.g. door knobs or handles?), the technologies will be different (heating for example: floor pipes vs. radiators vs. air ducts) and so on.
- weego 6y ago
  Also: Plots of land with services and outline planning permission are super expensive if not just unavailable in most places. You can't get a mortgage on a self build so you best have a couple of hundred thousand lying around or risk taking a bridge loan from a bank which puts enormous pressure on you to finish as soon as possible as that interest is eating up your capital. You have to have somewhere else to live in the mean time, which combined with possible interest or just delays due to weather etc constantly puts cost pressures on you. It's an unbelievably impractical dream for mostly everyone.
  - bonzini 6y ago
    It's usually possible if you are in small towns to contact local construction companies, see what/where they are planning to build (usually semi-detached or row houses) and customize the inside (plan and fixtures) as much as possible. It's really hard to do it without an architect with so much less space available, but even then you still have a lot of freedom.
  - FireBeyond 6y ago
    > You can't get a mortgage on a self build so you best have a couple of hundred thousand lying around True, though there _are_ options. A family friend added 2000 sq ft to his family home (which had been 800 - and not excessive, they had three kids in a 2br home). He is a general contractor and works for a home construction company. Granted that was a "renovation" - well, almost all new construction. He planned on doing almost all of it himself, except for plumbing/electrical, so anticipated very little labor costs. The bank made them take a loan for the market value of the work including labor, on the guise of "if you get injured, you need to be able to pay to complete it", but allowed the setting of milestones where they could repay labor costs out of the loan.

rhaps0dy 6y ago

Isn't this a lot of work? I suppose it's perhaps worth it if you plan to live in a place for a long time, but surely there are specialists that do this for a living? Like, can't you just pay an architect to design the thing?

lawn 6y ago
That's part of the charm isn't it? I too have a silly dream of sometimes designing my own dream house.
- rhaps0dy 6y ago
  Well, yes, for some people (maybe most). I don't dream of designing my living space, but I do like to live on a nice one. It's not like my bar is very high either.
ip26 6y ago
It definitely feels like there ought to be architects who can do this- with your input of course. Learning all the nuance and getting it all right the first time would be such a colossal job. I can spend a month or two per medium sized house project, learning all the details- forget about the whole house. Of course, all this comes very naturally & easily to some people. (Mainly, I've noticed, when their parents are in construction, remodeling, or real estate)
- rhaps0dy 6y ago
  > It definitely feels like there ought to be architects who can do this- with your input of course. To be fair, the article does mention that: if you commission an architect to do this, you should show them your Pinterest boards. Or at least get an idea of what you like. > Learning all the nuance and getting it all right the first time would be such a colossal job. I imagine it's akin to getting to the level of a working architect yourself. Which is a huge time investment. The article mentions it taking years for them. > I can spend a month or two per medium sized house project, learning all the details- forget about the whole house. That's much less than I'd expect it to take me. I'm curious: are you an architect, or designer, yourself?

MilesTeg 6y ago

I just bought an old house(1920s) and so have been doing a lot of thinking about how much better the layout of surviving old houses are. 1. Natural lighting. I generally do not need artificial lights in the daytime in any room and it is amazing. 2. Ceiling height. Modern constructions have insanely high ceilings. Why? In my old apartment I had cabinetr y I couldn't reach even with my step ladder. 3. Old neighborhoods are much more pleasant to live in and are more much walk-able than post-war cul-de-sac filled developments. 4. House sizes were smaller back then. Since family sizes have been getting smaller I think this would be a good thing to return to. I am quite happy that I don't have to spend a lot extra on furniture just to fill the space. Or pay more to climate control the extra volume. 5. A matter of personal preference but I think the older houses are just prettier. I think it would be great if developers took a look at the older house designs and tweaked them for the modern world.

unethical_ban 6y ago
Can't ceiling height have a climate control aspect to it? Summertime in the south gets hot, air rises, have vents at the top of the room? I don't need 20ft ceilings, but aesthetically, I think 9-10ft feels a lot less claustrophobic.
brendoelfrendo 6y ago
>Old neighborhoods are much more pleasant to live in and are more much walk-able than post-war cul-de-sac filled developments. I'll say this for my post-war-but-still-old development, it's nice having trees and birds. Looking at new construction, you realize that there's very little shade or natural life because it all gets clear cut for construction. Any trees that get added back in have a long way to go before they actually provide shade (and a barrier to hide the ugly front facades that modern construction requires). >House sizes were smaller back then. Since family sizes have been getting smaller I think this would be a good thing to return to. I agree, and I like the size of my smaller house. That said, there are some ways that I think the space could be better utilized... for example, we have 4 bedrooms and 1.5 baths, all of which are smaller than you'd see in a modern home. It was definitely designed with a large, baby booming family in mind.

everybodyknows 6y ago

My go-to technical encyclopedia for getting a house right: www.finehomebuilding.com/

sarcher 6y ago
Journal of Light Construction is pretty good as well: https://www.jlconline.com/ https://www.jlconline.com/ And, online only, Green Building Advisor: https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/ https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/

TYPE_FASTER 6y ago

Downside in having an old (1890s for us) home: nothing is the same size, and none of them are the same. Upside in having an old home: you get to go to a restoration/recycling center, wander through the vast sections of hanging doors until you find the section that fits what you need, and find an interesting one you like. Our home was a hobby for a while. Now I have different priorities for time. But that was an awesome learning experience, and I feel lucky I went through it. My dad drafted a house at night at work (he was a mechanical engineer prior to retirement). Then he built it, subcontracting out parts like some of the framing, drywall, etc. My parents ended up with exactly the house they wanted. It was really cool to see happen, made anything seem possible.

rustybelt 6y ago
Don't forget settling foundations. I'd be amazed if someone could find a single perfect right angle anywhere in my 1880's victorian.
- pantaloony 6y ago
  Don’t worry, every time we’ve had to or chosen to do anything to the newer houses we’ve owned it’s been a constant series of discoveries about how out-of-square everydamnthing is. We level something perfectly and... it’s nowhere near matching what’s already there. Even the doorways go out of alignment in a just a few years, if they don’t start that way.
  - FireBeyond 6y ago
    Don't even start me on the new construction (thankfully rental) that my last home was. The stairwell landing was so badly off that there was skirting running up the side, and on the landing, they actually had _two_ layers of skirting (one atop the other). It looked ... ridiculous. And within months, every door had squeaks and sticks, because the frame would be off by as much as 1/4 inch.
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    When you realize the laser level and plum bobs aren't really very useful because anything made square looks off. As in reframing a closet door plumb and finding the floor isn't level. So now it looks crooked.

sarcher 6y ago

As someone who works in residential construction, this is one of the better looks at what a 'good' process looks like from the homeowner side of the equation. The only places where my advice would differ: - They finished the floors instead of having a subcontractor do it. Everyone's comfort for various home improvements tasks differs, but this is one that I typically see farmed out. The people who do it everyday are very fast and competent - as a first timer it's hard to avoid making mistakes. I also advise people to avoid floor stains. One advantage to a real wood floor is it's easy to repair and refinish in the future, but this gets a lot harder when you start needing to stain match. Floor stain also kind of violates the tenants of 'honest materials' that the author discusses. - To build on their point about veneer plaster walls, cost really comes down to subcontractor comfort with that detail. It's only 'slightly more expensive' if you have a contractor that does it all the time. If you live in an area with a lot of plaster homes, you'll have more luck finding someone who can do this work affordably. For example, I once had an architect specify a particular plaster finish ('venetian plaster') where we could not find someone comfortable doing the work within a two hour drive. - They discuss the slow drying of the floor finish they used as a negative (true). A good place to use slow-drying finishing techniques is the exterior, as you can leave it alone for a lot longer as compared to a floor you want to walk on immediately. For example, pine tar exterior finishing materials take weeks to dry, but you don't NEED to touch the siding during that period. - In the second part they show a north and south elevation of the finished home. The north elevation really doesn't reflect the historic character they succeeded so hard to emulate and/or build from in other aspects of their home. Comparing these two elevations is very instructive. I hope their next published section addresses energy efficiency and adjacent topics (like window selection). It's a huge part of building a modern home that doesn't always get the attention it should. I did appreciate the time spent discussing air flow in part 2. Building on their reading list, if you like older/vernacular homes start with: "House" by Tracy Kidder "A Field Guide to American Houses" by Virginia Savage McAlester "American Shelter" by Lester Walker "The American House" by Mary Mix Foley And maybe move on to: "A Concise History of American Architecture" by Leland Roth "American Vernacular: Buildings and Interiors, 1870-1960" by Herbert Gottfried "Norwegian Wood: The Thoughtful Architecture of Wenche Selmer" by Elisabeth Tostrup "Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn" by Thomas Hubka And then maybe: "The Well-Built House" by Jim Locke "The colonial House Then and Now" by Francis Underwood "Little House on a Small Planet" by Shay Salomon

evandev 6y ago

Another great book is "How to Build in the Country: Good Advice from the Past on how to Choose a Site, Plan, Design, Build, Decorate & Landscape Your Country Home"[0] 0: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0966307518/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_ImGfFb8DE7Z2S https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0966307518/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_...

CalRobert 6y ago

Thanks for sharing this - for people who like pictures, the instagram feed (linked at the bottom of the article) is well worth adding. "Homes are not built by people intending to live in them." - this really gets to the issue, I think. Somewhere along the line we took away most people's ability to construct their own home (or they just lost it), and of course if houses are viewed primarily as holding value for equity, you need to consider resale instead of your own preferences when making decisions.

everybodyknows 6y ago

>you should read two books. The first is Get Your House Right: Architectural Elements to Use & Avoid I own and have read a copy, excellent. Note however that it's entirely oriented toward traditional design: Deco, Streamline Moderne, and Mid-Mod are terra incognita. Eichler fans, you have been warned.

earthscienceman 6y ago
Do you have any suggestions for books that do cover these design styles?
- everybodyknows 6y ago
  For light reading on 20th century style I like this site: https://retrorenovation.com/2017/06/23/59-midcentury-modern-historic-houses-visit-across-u-s/ https://retrorenovation.com/2017/06/23/59-midcentury-modern-... Only book I've found for Streamline Moderne: https://www.amazon.com/Streamline-Moderne-Style-Primer-Book-ebook/dp/B005Y7QXGY/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=rosalie+stafford&qid=1595304851&sr=8-4 https://www.amazon.com/Streamline-Moderne-Style-Primer-Book-...
pstuart 6y ago
Having lived in an Eichler house, I don't understand how there can be Eichler fans.
- rusteh1 6y ago
  Curious about this comment? Why? I've never lived in one, nor even been in one. But they look beautiful. What are the draw backs?
  - pstuart 6y ago
    Cheaply made, nothing all that special except floor to ceiling windows.
- codemac 6y ago

DanCarvajal 6y ago

We just bought out first house, it's a super basic 1930s "Traditional Minimal". Funny enough this home is actually the youngest of the twenty or so homes we looked at. We only passed on some 1880s homes because of location issues.

cactus2093 6y ago

This is wild to me, I can't follow the author's logic here really at all. It reads like a borderline-satirical example of nostalgia for nostalgia's sake. They make such obnoxious claims like "I think most people have an intuitive sense that older homes are often special, and newer ones are often not". Then they go on to list things that I associate much more with modern homes - not wasting floor space, and paying attention to the elements and light. A modern, open-concept design is optimizing much better for this than an old farmhouse where, for instance, the kitchen and formal dining room and living room are all closed off from each other. Modern homes often have floor to ceiling windows and sliding glass doors, old homes have tiny closed off windows. And old homes like the author uses as an example here are often just simple rectangles, so all the design decisions are constrained to be small square rooms. At least the "mcmansion" example in this post of a terrible new home has more interesting, non-perpendicular details and layout. Maybe I just have an anti-nostalgia for this type of home, and maybe that makes me just as biased as the author in the opposite direction. I've never lived in a home like this but have been inside of a few of them, and they're often dark and closed in and kind of creepy. But I don't think I'm completely alone in feeling this way, there must be a reason so many horror movies are set in old farmhouses. To each their own, I guess. (And on top of all this, I would argue that this kind of permeating attitude about new homes just not being special like old homes are plays a huge part in the current housing shortage crisis that much of the US faces, but I won't even go into that).

pantaloony 6y ago
You’re thinking of expensive or maybe region-specific “designer” homes. If you just go look at most of the kinds of new houses being built, up to surprisingly high price points (as noted in TFA), it’s exactly as described. The waste of space especially drives me nuts and it’s everywhere in most new construction. Ditto shockingly bad and cheap-feeling fixtures and doors even in very expensive houses. When they do mimic huge “open” design spaces (incidentally, the Worst Thing Ever if you have kids) these kinds of builders usually do it because it’s cheaper, and then screw it up so the flow/layout, somehow, still sucks and wastes space—because all they care about is that the house looks impressive in photos on Zillow.
- 6y ago

hoorayimhelping 6y ago

For the folks who check the comments first, this is worth reading: >But then something happened: the average knob with a lock has a fair amount of internal complexity, but the beauty has been completely stripped out. We no longer think of knobs, hinges, latches, or locks as things worth making beautiful, and we think this at a time when it should be easier and cheaper than ever to make such things beautiful. When they were difficult to make, iron latches and handles resembled hands, lions, flowers, gargoyles, etc. Now that a latch is easy to make, they look like nothing. It is worth carefully pondering this, I think, beyond the words of this article and well beyond door knobs. This is from part 2 https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/designing-a-new-old-home-part-2-2a5ea1a1b2b3 https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/designing-a-new-old-home-pa..., linked here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23901248 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23901248

brendoelfrendo 6y ago

> They seem designed primarily to maximize one thing: the square-footage number that will be on the listing when it’s sold. Say it again for the people in the back! This is probably my biggest complaint with modern suburban housing/McMansions. You can see it in the exterior design of the house; you see all kinds of horrendous roof lines, mismatched windows of all shapes and sizes, odd material choices, etc. The houses suffer because they're trying to build the most square footage on the smallest possible lot. I know density is the way to go in urban development, but... I feel like developers have lost the plot.

wwweston 6y ago
This is also worth noting not only on the level of aesthetics and experience of a given building, but worth underscoring for consideration, especially for the crowd that thinks that leveling obstacles to increased supply is The Answer™ to housing costs. Increased supply is one necessary component, but in the same way that developer incentives can more easily push them to substandard suburban construction, urban construction is likely enough to chase something other than your goals.
diablerouge 6y ago
> I know density is the way to go in urban development, but... I feel like developers have lost the plot. This is exactly true! A lot of the time, the increased size doesn't even result in increased density - most McMansions are single-family homes. Plus, because the extra space is weirdly proportioned and placed, it doesn't provide much benefit to the inhabitants - it only serves to inflate the listed price.
- brendoelfrendo 6y ago
  You know, when I typed that I meant density in that the houses are much closer together than older developments, but honestly... they're probably not much "denser" on a human basis. The homes have just swelled to take up most of the lot.
  - deleted 6y ago

aimor 6y ago

> With some careful choices and by doing some of the finishing ourselves, we thought we could make it relatively inexpensively, too. What was the cost?

yingw787 6y ago

...do you have a GitHub repo for checklisting items for building a custom house like this? I'm nowhere near financially secure enough to even begin planning for something like this. But it'd be cool to look through the checklist and have people contribute things you might forget, and it might be useful for others.

zrail 6y ago

We just bought a mid-century modern house originally built in 1955 and completely redone in 2009. Some of the choices are extremely questionable and some of them are obviously dated, but in general I like living here much more than our 2004-vintage tract house. The light and layout are just so much better.

justicezyx 6y ago

That door knob is well crafted. A modern production with similar quality probably will take upwards to $400 based on my recent research on front door locks...

contingencies 6y ago

For anyone embarking on a similar project, check out http://osarch.org/ http://osarch.org/ I was amazed to come from no background in architecture to getting a land survey converted in to Blender 3D model and having accurate sun simulations running on architectural concepts within a week or two. Seems like Sketchup dying has gifted a lot of momentum to the open source space. Use it! It's pretty capable stuff. Also, plant trees. Trees last a long time (longer than many houses), cost nearly nothing and provide excellent psychological and physical features which built environment cannot match.

deleted 6y ago
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ykl 6y ago

Last year my wife and I bought out first house. Given our budget, we had the option of either buying a new big McMansion type home further out from the city, or buying a smaller older home closer to the city. We wound up buying a smaller house built in the 1940s and gutting/renovating/modernizing the interior, and on a whole I'm really happy with the result. The house itself feels like when it was originally built, more careful thought was put into where windows are, how rooms are lit, how rooms are ventilated, how spaces flow into each other, and so on and so forth. After our renovation work, we now also have all of the modern niceties like ethernet running through all of the walls and a shiny kitchen and shiny bathrooms and modern hardwood flooring and whatnot. Every part of the house now feels like it's the way it is specifically because we wanted it to be that way, and relatively speaking, it cost less than it would have to get a new cookie-cutter McMansion type monstrosity around here. As a bonus, the neighborhood feels cozier and friendlier and less empty compared to newer cookie-cutter type development tracts too. The only downside is that the square footage is considerably smaller, but I have no idea what people are supposed to do with all of the empty space in a giant house anyway. Oh, I guess another minor downside was discovering that no two doors in the entire house are exactly the same size, so we wound up having to get custom doors made. Of course, your mileage will vary depending on where you are, budget, contractors, etc; we lucked out and managed to find contractors that cared about their craft and put a lot of thought into things.

thomk 6y ago
> I have no idea what people are supposed to do with all of the empty space in a giant house They fill it with shit they don't need. Kudos to you.
- m463 6y ago
  they're filled with "I might need..." or "maybe I will use..." (eventually becoming "I forgot I had...")
  - thomk 6y ago
    Yep I moved into a house that was over double the size of my last house and somehow I'm out of room again.

iramiller 6y ago

In all this discussion of the art of design in old houses I am surprised to see no one has mentioned “A Pattern Language” [1] yet. This is truly a must read book for anyone considering the design and building of their own house. Interesting topics such as the design of a front door viewed from a street have stuck with me and is something I reflect on when walking through an old neighborhood. Infallibly the most appealing houses match up well to the principals outlined in the book. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language

pjmorris 6y ago
The article's author mentions Alexanders 'Timeless Way of Building', the first book in the series of which 'A Pattern Language' is a part. I agree, it's a wonderful book.
madhadron 6y ago
I'll just toss in that his latest work, 'The Nature of Order' is really worth reading as well. Oh, and the book 'How Buildings Learn' is almost compulsory in this space as well.

j_m_b 6y ago

Living in the Chicago area suburbs (think John Hughes), I developed a fondness for the Frank Lloyd Wright prairie style homes. Is it possible to get blueprints for actual FLW homes that you could give to a builder... even perhaps yourself?

madhadron 6y ago
Except that FLW homes tend to have serious deficiencies as houses. Their roofs leak. Their interiors often use natural light poorly and are cavernous and dark. Admire them as works of sculpture, but don't live in one.

StillBored 6y ago

I agree with much of the general take of this article, but having remodeled, or helped remodel houses, or just plain lived in/repaired over the past couple decades I've got my own set of opinions about this. Starting with, never mistake style for long lasting quality. For example, wood floors are very poor flooring material unless you don't mind living in a house where the floors look like a barn after a decade or two. Tile, concrete, will unless abused, out last just about every other flooring choice while generally remaining quite nice if installed well. There is a reason the mosaics in high end roman houses are still in place two thousand years after they were built. Also, to add to the general take of the article. Nothing you buy from the big box home improvement stores will last more than 10 years. I would qualify this with their lumber/etc is fine, but I've seen cases where the lumber was incorrectly pressure treated(!) and they replaced it after it rotted in 5 years. Which is great, except for the fact that the lumber was like 1/100th of the job cost. Frankly, its not even the big box suppliers, its just about everything they sell seems to have declined in quality. Until a couple years ago, I had never seen a light switch fail, my current house (built in the early 2000's) has had about 1/2 of the light switches literally fall apart in the walls. So, while somethings are probably acceptable quality (indoor door handles/locks) for the most part, the exterior ones with their faux aged finishes and the like will despite their 30 year guarantees break, or the finishes will crack in the sun, or rust. And on and on... My general take is some of it might be ok, but keep the receipt for that $300 facet somewhere you will be able to find it in 8 years, because its quite likely something will go wrong. Pay the extra for the one from the plumbing/etc supply house, because the worthwhile plumbers/etc will offer matching labor guarantees and they don't like coming back to fix something under warantee. I could write a book about this... but one last thing. Ive spoken to a lot of people in the know, and the general take on appliances is that a good high end one from the mid 1990's will likely outlast anything built in the last 20 years. If you have an old fridge/dishwasher/etc take care of it, polish it up, treasure it. Most importantly, buy a part off ebay when it fails and fix it. Enjoy it for what it is, a quality piece of machinery that probably uses a bit more electricity, or water, but actually cleans your cloths/dishes/etc or the ice maker doesn't jam or clog, or need DRM'ed water filters. And if you really want filtered Ice buy a inline water filter and plug it into the ice line and enjoy the $5 filters and think about the fact that your saving $30+ dollars each time you change it.

MH15 6y ago

A lot of commenters are suffering from the bias we suffer from every time we discuss issues of the past: the "old homes" are good in party because they have passed the test of generations. The bad designs from those generations have largely been torn down. Just because something is old does not make it good. It is another question entirely why we continue to fall for the same poor designs.

vmurthy 6y ago

Love the amount of details that has gone into this. Truly is a work of passion. I am waiting for a part-3 which should hopefully cover some of the "techy" stuff that can be built into the home. For e.g., Ethernet cables all over? USB ports in the wall itself in addition to switches? Speaking of which, what tech stuff would you build into your homes?