cakesmith handyman posted:

If that's that style then fair enough.


The only mcmansion hell I read is what's posted here. Yes I like some Victorian and Georgian style elements. I'm well aware my house isn't pretty, I think extending the eaves and decorative stone window lintels/sills would have made it look nicer without being tacky or compromising what makes the house a great home (space, light, comfort).

Do you think the following are "good examples of multiple rooflines"?


What is gained with that extra bit? Is that useable space? It looks like it's tacked on after the fact. Only the bottom half of that window appears to open, maybe the other half can't be reached.


There is an estate of houses with this roof structure near me (minus the columns). They were all built this way but still manage to look like a too-small house was shoddily extended.


I want to joke about three different houses clipping through each other but I'm worried I'll just be regurgitating memes. Instead rotate the main roof structure direction 90° and you can accommodate all the rooms within the house with a single simpler roof structure that'll be less likely to leak or collect ice dams or rotting leaf piles or rodents.

cakesmith handyman posted:

I'm going to come clean, I'm an engineer so all I'm seeing is extra failure modes.

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

Your ideal home is milled out of a single solid block of aluminum, isn't it?

cakesmith handyman posted:

If that's that style then fair enough.


The only mcmansion hell I read is what's posted here. Yes I like some Victorian and Georgian style elements. I'm well aware my house isn't pretty, I think extending the eaves and decorative stone window lintels/sills would have made it look nicer without being tacky or compromising what makes the house a great home (space, light, comfort).

Do you think the following are "good examples of multiple rooflines"?


What is gained with that extra bit? Is that useable space? It looks like it's tacked on after the fact. Only the bottom half of that window appears to open, maybe the other half can't be reached.

Platystemon posted:

Having a house milled from a solid block of metal would provide a good reason to insulate your stairs.

I wouldn’t want to be inside it if an earthquake hits, though.

Suspect Bucket posted:

I'm probably alone in this, but I like those simple concrete block ranch style homes you see all over Florida. Weather-proof and keeps the A/C in. A lick of paint and a bit of nice landscaping is all you need to keep those bad boys looking stylish.

Whenever I need inspiration, I just look at this blog, and all the pretty ideas. http://vintagehomeplans.tumblr.com/

This right here is also my jam. Except that bedroom on the left would probably just be turned into a living/dining great room, and then have a second floor with a big loft master. But drat do I love a back porch off the kitchen.

Pigsfeet on Rye posted:

Yeah, Queen Victorian, I can agree that Bungalow Company has tried to merge some nice designs with the open kitchen / family room thing (which I'm not a fan of), but generally I think that they do OK. For people that think that multi-rooflines look bad, there are some that look like poo poo, and some - like this from 1910 - that are strikingly handsome imo, though I acknowledge that it wouldn't work in all climates. I think that the internal layout of this one could use some TLC, but overall it works. ed: Ive been to the Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms and should probably go again when the weather clears up, it's a really handsome house and estate.
https://www.stickleymuseum.org/

schmug posted:

I'm not gonna hotlink or upload to imgur because I think they are still "non profit" and charge for this poo poo, but here are a couple links:

http://gamblehouse.org/interior/

http://gamblehouse.org/exterior/

Pretty sweet place. I highly recommend a tour if you're ever in SoCal.

Suspect Bucket posted:

Whenever I need inspiration, I just look at this blog, and all the pretty ideas. http://vintagehomeplans.tumblr.com/

Klyith posted:

It's not difficult, you just have to spend McMansion money on a very small house.

My sister lives in Raleigh, and there's a small district of historic houses that are pre-1900. The edges of that neighborhood got kinda eaten away by "urban blight" when the white flight happened in the 60s, but now it's back to super-expensive. There are some plots where an old house got torn town and people have built new, with period appropriate style & exterior -- though I'm sure the materials are all modern.

n0tqu1tesane posted:

Thanks, just lost an hour to that blog.

Bad Munki posted:

Tangentially related to all this: a friend and I were at an estate sale, huge house built in the early 1900s, multiple generations had lived there, awesome walnut floors cut from the trees that were where the house is now, etc. Four floors if you count the attic and basement, massive 12" timbers in the attic, awesome floor plan, carriage house garage, all that stuff. In the library, my friend found a section of the wall paneling that could open, it was clearly designed to be a storage cupboard type thing, but also was made to not be visible. Well, apparently nobody had noticed that space in decades, and certainly not as part of the estate sale, and inside we found all the original blue prints, surveys, everything. The people running the sale had no personal connection to the family, and so they didn't complain when I bought them for $20. Hope to some day base my own build off of them, it was such an awesome house, and find.

Same guy also found some old poetry and a recipe used by one of the older, more historic hotels here stuck behind the drawers of an old desk in the basement, as well as a mountain of old bank statements trapped in a desk who's drawers wouldn't unlock until we got involved. He's a lot of fun to go to these sorts of events with.

The library was a treasure trove of old (>100 years old) books. Good times.

Anyhow that's my story: found a secret stash of original blueprints for a >100 year old mansion and snagged them for basically nothing.

cakesmith handyman posted:

xwing posted:

The real problem, in my career, I have yet to have a client pay me to do the job that would get you a well built home. They poo poo on the price to design it properly. I've designed multi-million dollar homes on the water and they balk at paying me to come out on the job site to supervise progress.

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

Your ideal home is milled out of a single solid block of aluminum, isn't it?

Youth Decay posted:

http://antiquehomestyle.com is my go-to for cute little old house plans.

I found their inspiration for this particular model.

Facebook Aunt posted:

The missing thing is that it includes the contents. You get the cars, the art, the memorabilia, and the furniture. Just bring your clothes and you are ready to go.

All this could be yours.

FCKGW posted:

DID SOMEBODY SAY ROOFLINES ?!?!?!?!

FCKGW posted:

DID SOMEBODY SAY ROOFLINES ?!?!?!?!

StormDrain posted:

You need to return those blueprints to that house!

FCKGW posted:

DID SOMEBODY SAY ROOFLINES ?!?!?!?!

Bees on Wheat posted:

You know, there's so much going on here it almost works. Like someone took a maximalist approach to roofing.

big dyke energy posted:

You mean....the window in the middle of the second floor? That's not the bottom of the top/attic window, it's a separate room. The top floor may be for storage or have some usable space, or they might just have a house fan up there.

Queen Victorian posted:

I think the way to go with a good 1200 sq ft bungalow is to pull some authentic architectural plans for a Craftsman bungalow out of the public domain and hire an architect to make slight adjustments and bring the design up to code.

Here are some: http://www.antiquehomestyle.com/styles/craftsmanplan-index.htm

If you compare these to the Bungalow Company plans, you can see some important differences in the designs and the finishes. The authentic houses generally have simpler footprints and rooflines - the architects of yore were well-versed in the now-lost art of making all the rooms fit into a rectangle - and the details and finishes have a sense of dimensionality that the contemporary ones lack (i.e. old designs utilize true divided light widows with real mullions that look so much better fake-mullion vinyl windows it's not even funny, more detailed trim/millwork, etc).

The Bungalow Company has some nice designs for small cottages, but the worst of their bigger houses just look like lumpy tract houses with superficial Craftsman details glued on. If you take a design from them for one of their smaller houses, which seem quite nice, you could spiff it up with better details and finishes. However, it is my personal opinion that the new plans have inferior interior layouts, mostly because dining space gets deemphasized in favor of bigger/open kitchens and sometimes "great room" space. But my opinion is that formal dining rooms are the best and "open concept" kitchens are the worst, so take that as you may. Old plans could use slightly larger bathrooms and closets, but other than that, I think they are highly optimal and make very efficient use of the square footage.

Aside from a few of those terrible lumpy tract house designs, I don't think the Bungalow Company designs are all that bad, more so that it goes to show how much our priorities have evolved in terms of living space and how the house presents. Nice footprint and cohesive exterior form takes a backseat to interior layout, things like that.

n0tqu1tesane posted:

Thanks, just lost an hour to that blog.

rndmnmbr posted:

Is the cost of dumpster rental so I can toss all their tacky bullshit included in the price?

cakesmith handyman posted:

Do you think the following are "good examples of multiple rooflines"?

cakesmith handyman posted:

I went back and looked at the plans, the lower middle window is the bathroom, there's no stairs access to the attic so that extra window and roof piece is for cosmetic purposes only. I stand by my original assessment that it's dumb.

glynnenstein posted:

It is the most engineer thing in the world that you are offended by things that exist merely to make stuff look nice.

PainterofCrap posted:

While not listed on that site, this Sears Winona is nearly identical to my house. My neighborhood is rumoured to have been a lowest-bidder WPA project, built starting in the late 1920s to get squatters off of the nearby river. It's possible that the builder grabbed a set of Sears plans and simplified them down. The floor plan is very close; we don't have the closets shown; ours were built into the pushouts and are only 2' wide and about a foot deep. I had to build out a large closet in the rear bedroom after we moved in.

cakesmith handyman posted:

If that's that style then fair enough.


The only mcmansion hell I read is what's posted here. Yes I like some Victorian and Georgian style elements. I'm well aware my house isn't pretty, I think extending the eaves and decorative stone window lintels/sills would have made it look nicer without being tacky or compromising what makes the house a great home (space, light, comfort).

Do you think the following are "good examples of multiple rooflines"?


What is gained with that extra bit? Is that useable space? It looks like it's tacked on after the fact. Only the bottom half of that window appears to open, maybe the other half can't be reached.


There is an estate of houses with this roof structure near me (minus the columns). They were all built this way but still manage to look like a too-small house was shoddily

cakesmith handyman posted:

I went back and looked at the plans, the lower middle window is the bathroom, there's no stairs access to the attic so that extra window and roof piece is for cosmetic purposes only. I stand by my original assessment that it's dumb.

GotLag posted:

Procedurally-generated architecture?