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This is my first entry of my first blog and I am hopeful to make it worth your while to log on and join me for observations about everything from what is (or has) happened in my Miracle Home Building day. I hope you will share your comments with me on any subject, whether it is a comment on a subject I am writing about or perhaps a comment on something realted OR entirely off the topic at hand. If you are interested in writing to me, I will try to return the favor.
It is nighttime and for me 7:30 is still early. If you are like me, I do most of my most creative thinking and designing long after Jacquie and the kids have gone to relax mode. About a week ago, I was at the World’s(?) Biggest Home Building show, The International Home Builder’s show . This year it was in Vegas, and like every year, there are literally 4 to 5 miles of isles to walk and see the latest things. My ambition is to see it all, but in the 4 days of the show runs each year, I have never been able to see it all. My overall idea is to find things that no other home builder has found so when folks visit a Miracle home and want the things they see in my homes, they just can’t find where to get the “stuff” I have found. The main thing is to differentiate my homes as being something special and different. A few years ago, I found an elegant wood formed archway that looked like something out of a very old house but was pretty reasonably priced. Any other builder who would want to immitate this, would need to pay an awful lot unless they know my “secret’ source. I only give this one example so you can see my show goals when I walk the isles. Last year, I found a great new rubber gasket material to put under the floor boards before screwing them down. This fantastic product has been so good that I have yet to have a call-back for a single squeaky floor when I have used it. I can (and will) be happy to share some of these awesome new product ideas with you as the blogs continue but this year the neatest thing to come out of the big show was not found in any isle but rather in my own private relaxation time in flight and in the hotel room.
That is what I want to share with you today.
I will start by sharing one of my core frustrations. I am addicted to attempting to design the “perfect” home. Every one of the thousands of homes we have built or the hundreds of homes I have designed(we build my designs but some are repeats), usually start with some wild concept that I have not seen done in a home. Many years ago, I observed that the favorite seat in our living room was the couch . I designed my own living room to have 2 couches and a love seat. Whenever I or my 2 boys are in the living room, we are usually laying down on a couch. When my Dad would come to visit us, we wanted to lay down, but since there would not be enough room for everyone to lay down, no one layed down. More accurately, once my Dad settled in, he was laying down and the 2 boys tried to both lay on the same , remaining couch. Sound familiar?
My answer was to realize that the ideal situation was to have 5 places in our living room to lay down. When I designed one of my first popular designs for the 1998 Menomonee Falls MBA Parade, I started with the furniture . I found a logical way to have 4 couch spots and a spot for a recliner all in the same “normal” sized great room. It was a huge hit! I know that most folks only have 1 or 2 couches but designing with 4 couch areas would give folks 4 different possibilities to place their 1 couch or a few combination areas to put their 2 couches. As long as I design for enough room to fit couches rather than love seats or chairs, I figure you can always fit a love seat , or 2 chairs into a couch spot but you can’t fit a couch into a spot that only fits a love seat or a chair. I hope I am making it clear that designing FOR furniture rather than just letting things “happen” is a wonderous thing that SHOULD separate my designs from any other normally designed home. But….I digress!
Just as the idea for the couch example was bourne out of a real ife observation that I saw in my own house, most of my concepts that make it into one of my designs have some core WILD idea that starts my creative juices flowing. Here’s where this year’s Home Show “best idea” came from, another VERY WILD idea. Like most such wild ideas , I know in my heart of hearts that this idea is something I have never seen before and what’s more, I firmly belive the time has come for me to be the first builder to introduce this off the wall concept, because it is just so “right”for our times( and budgets). Stay with me here because I am (slowly) getting to pay dirt. Let me introduce this idea by asking youto first see if you agree with my initial central premise.
PREMISE: People in today’s economy and generational times would just as soon stay where they are unless they have something I can offer to them that is substantially different or appealing enough to motivate them to build and move. New Generation Y (called New Millinials I would find out at the convention show design seminars) first time buyers and older “last house” buyers have one thing in common. They want a smaller house, are less concerned about glitz and opulance, but whatever IS in the house must be of high-end quality/design and just simply “work” to make life easlierfor them. To summarize, folks want small, quality homes but subdivisions and builders have not realized yet how to deliver that at the all important lower dollar. Not many subdivions are allowing smaller homes to be built PERIOD.
The bigger problem with this premise is that I know many buyers who want a small house but when I interview them, they want three bedrooms upstairs, a sufficient sized first floor master, a large kitchen, great room, laundry, maybe even a den and they think the <em>magic</em> answer is they ARE willing to give up the dining room or formal living room. (They also want a bonus room over the garage!). I don’t care if you want a ranch or two story, the demma is the same, folks SAY they want small(and they do) home but the description (did I mention they want all the secondary bedrooms at least 11 by 12′6″)just does not add up to a small home when you do the math. The result is the home buyer discovers they can not bring themselves to build their smaller home and therefore they end up living in a home that, when the shine is worn off the new home, they sadly admit is just <strong>too</strong> big.
If you are still with me, pay dirt is now very close. If you agree with me that this is often the scenario, I had the brainstorm to introduce what I am calling a Hybrid Ranch concept. If that sounds fancy, the best way to explain it is to explain that if you were buying a mid-sized ranch or a 2 story with the master bedroom on the first floor, this concept is for you. A mid-sized ranch that meets many of the wish list demands is typically 1800 to 2,000 square feet. The normal sized two story/first floor master-3 beds upstairs is about 2300 to 2700 square feet, with about 1300 on the first floor.
Remembering that if I were to tell you that I was going to design your family a 2400 square foot ,story and a half home with 1300 on the first floor, you would have no issue with this. NOW, what if I were to tell you that I was going to design your family a 1,300 square foot ranch and (here it is) put the balance of those bedrooms in the “basement”, your immediate response might be to slam the door shut on the idea., but I ask you to ask yourself …WHY? Let’s assume, like many folks, you intend to finish off the basement and don’t want to loose the room with bedroom space. The answer is that instead of building the 1,300 first floor you would have built with the story and a half, you can build a 1500 square foot first floor and use that extra square footage not only to have a bigger first floor than you WERE going to build, but the basement, if done right, would still be close to the same available rec-room area you desired in the original 1300 square foot design.
You may say, you don’t want your kids to stay in the basement. I say, so long as you build with the same amount of windows you would have had upstairs with second floor common bedrooms, what makes this a basement other than verbiage? You say, I will never go in my basement except to store items. I say, if you have bedrooms upstairs, you would need to be going up those stairs to clean those rooms and there is no difference if you are taking stairs to the basement or to the second floor.
Let’s say you are intending to build a 1800 or 2000 square foot ranch. Once again, if you do the math and subtract the first floor guest bedrooms from a typical split bedroom ranch, you are in reality building a 1300 or 1500 square foot ranch plus two bedrooms. Your effective living spaces, kitchen, dining, master bedrooms, etc, will be exactly the same as in a larger ranch but you will have used a small portion of the basement for the bedrooms with plenty of other space to do a large rec-room.
NEED MORE? Think bathrooms! I a typical mid-sized ranch, or master first floor two story, you need a full bath upstairs for the guest bedrooms, a half bath for guests on the main floor, and a full bath for the master. Baths cost bucks and are a cleaning chore. When you finsh off the basement rec-room, you will likely add another bathroom. Make the count and you will see that your proposed “small” house now has 4 bathrooms. Putting the bedrooms in the basement eliminates one of those baths by having the basement bath double as the guest bathroom. This saves construction costs and square footage.
I contend, that I can design a 1500 square foot , master first floor Hybrid ranch with room sizes you would have only previously found in 2500 to 2700 square foot (very large)homes!
To those who are still having issues with having guests live in the basement(or kids) ask any kid who has had their bedroom downstairs and they will be quick to say how much they love it. If you are building a split bedroom ranch for better privacy, this concept beats that idea by far for privacy. Now When you do get around to finishing the rec-room, those guests and your kids have their own home -sized apartment downstairs.
When it comes to building costs,when it comes to taxes for square footage, when it comes to not waking up after you have built the home and the luster is worn off, or when it comes to seeing the kids grow up and leave,with buyer’s remorse for building too big , this is the answer.
I have thought long and hard before I put my pencil to paper and one thing that can’t be ignored is that while this Hybrid ranch would be not trouble to permit on a country type lot, building what equates to a 1300 or 1500 square foot ranch in most subdivisions will not fly. Restrictions usually require (not always) ranches to have a minimum size of 1800 or 2000 or even 2400 square feet. For a two story, you would need typically 2000 square feet with at least 1000 square feet on the first floor or 2200 square feet with at least 1200 on the first floor, or even a 2500 square foot two story with at least 1250 square feet on the first floor.
THINK about this. If you were to build a Hybrid ranch with, say, 1250 square feet on the first floor and add a small staircase going up to a finished loft over the garage, you would then likely be judged to be conforming to the literal description of being a two story! That loft could be nothing more than storage space.
The last big issue is the previously mentioned issue of finding a way to put lots of windows in the basement. This would not be an issue at all if you had a sloping walk-out or look-out exposure. A flat lot would require another WILD idea. You won’t believe the creative idea(simple yet bold) for accomplishing having abundant windows without using window wells. or worrying about snow or rain. I have saved the best part of this wild idea for my blog entry number 2 but until then …this idea has merit. It could change the way America see s home s and the way home designers approach home designs. If you want to see just how much space is possible WITH ALL bedrooms on the SAME floor, check out the photo gallery on the miracle-homes.com website(little-Big House 2009 Parade Model). If you want to see my new Hybrid Ranch that I am passionately working on to introduce in a few months, let me know. Is this a fantastic concept or am I alone in seeing the “light”?
Thanks for reading.
Blessings,
Tom
