Housing Design trends

Updated Ideas in New Home Design

By Ronnie Godfrey

Multi-generational Homes is a new term I’m hearing more often these days. It is driven by the need to combine different generations of a family into one home. This happens as adult sons and daughters provide housing for aging parents or where they have bounce-back children. Children whose careers have stalled or just not gotten started after their schooling has finished.

Some of the design trends in Multi-generational Homes are:

·        First floor master suites and dual master suites.

·        Living space above the garage or in an extra garage bay.

·        Separate entrances.

·        Second kitchens.

·        Private spaces for each generation.

·        Rental apartments either within the home or detached but on the same lot.

The current economic conditions are driving this as the retirement funds of many of the elderly have dwindled. Also, this happens as freshly graduated young folks are not finding work or have returned home for other reasons. Using home health care instead of nursing home care for the elderly is another. Additionally, we have more immigration from cultures where this is a common practice.

A similar occurrence is seen in many towns but for a different reason. Austin, Texas is one, where the city allows home owners to build, either attached or detached rental units on the same lot as their home. The benefit to the city is increased tax base, using existing infrastructure (no new sewer or water lines and no new streets). And it generates rental income for the property owners. I wonder if we could do that here.

Right sizing your home is another term getting a lot of play now. This doesn’t mean building a smaller home although you may after going through this process. It means thinking strategically about how you use each room and how big it needs to be.

Many homes today are being built without a seldom used formal living room or a formal dining room. The trade-off is a slightly smaller home with a larger family room and breakfast/dining area. If you pare 2-3% off the size of a new home it may save thousands on the purchase and continue to save on utility bills.

This process will help you to eliminate wasted square footage and make small spaces feel larger. As mentioned in a previous article, we have software to generate a floor plan and then digitally place your furniture in each room to see how well it fits. This will help you to decide just what size a room needs to be.

You can email or call me if you would like for me to go into more detail on the things we covered here. Reach me at 817 988 0149 or ronnie@rgodfreyhomes.com.

What’s New in Housing 4

What’s New in Housing 4

Mixed topic

By Ronnie Godfrey

While attending this year’s Builders Convention, we took in several seminars and visited every booth. This is part of the training we go through every year to try to stay on top of latest trends, construction methods, codes, and products. Herewith are some notes generated from that trip.

Paint Colors:

I wished that I could say that the new colors for the coming years will be red or blue or some well defined palette. Not so easy. Did you know that there is someone who makes a study of this and tells all of the designers what they should be using. This person’s name is Jackie Jordon, CMG. She works for the Sherwin-Williams Paint Company and is the Director of Color marketing.

During her presentation she gave us a brochure labeled COLORMIX two-thousand-eleven. I have it sitting here on my desk. There are four palettes on this, with the primary color of each palette and their supporting players. I’m not going to attempt to name them are tell you what emotions each is supposed to elicit, (really?) but recommend that you go to www.swcolorsamples.com and see for yourself.  Some look like the pastels of the 50’, while others look like the Mod colors of the 60’s, still others have an industrial look.

I’d hate to have the job of naming all the colors those folks sale. I can tell they have problems with that too as one of the blue paints #SW6800 is called Something Blue.

Energy Efficiency:

I will hit this topic again, maybe several times in fact, but for now let me tell you about the Solar Decathlon. This is a competition between universities to try to build extremely energy efficient homes. Better yet let me put it in U.S. Department of Energy’s words: “The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon challenges 20 collegiate teams to design, build, and operate solar-powered houses that are cost-effective, energy-efficient, and attractive. The winner of the competition is the team that best blends affordability, consumer appeal, and design excellence with optimal energy production and maximum efficiency.”

The competition will take place Friday, September 23 at 8:00am - October 2 at 6:00pm and will likely be on the Mall in Washington D.C... The various schools, including some from other countries, will build full-sized, operating houses on the grounds of the nation’s capital and will be opened to the public. You can preview these on the Decathlon’s web site: http://www.solardecathlon.gov/index.html

This competition drives technology, and educates both the participants and all who attend. Some of the ideas brought forth during this will be what we will be doing in our home building soon.

Floor plan designs will be discussed in my next article.

I mentioned in a previous week’s newspaper article that I would have a URL for you to see our pictures from the Extreme Makeover Home Edition tour and in another article I talked about the walk-through feature of our floor plan software and how you could look at your home before it is even built. Go to:

rgodfreyhomes.blogspot.com/

And on the lower right hand side you will find a small picture of a floor plan. Just below that there is a link to click to view the short walk-through video. Then in the left hand, you will find the link to the Extreme Makeover tour under “links to our videos”. While at our blog you might want to look at some of our other videos as well.

Extreme Makeover Tour

by Ronnie Godfrey

I was like a kid in the candy store with a pocket full of change when I found out that the Redhead and I were going to get a VIP tour of an Extreme Makeover Home Edition jobsite. Wow! It was fantastic. We’ve met some of the celebrity designers before but never thought we would be getting a tour and watch them do what they do.

We’ve just returned from Florida and the International Builders’ Show (IBS), formerly known as the Builders’ Convention. We had a full slate of exhibits that we planned to see and seminars to attend. It would be a grueling 3 ½ days. However it didn’t open until the morning of January 12 and we were in Orlando on the 11^th because of the invitation we received.

We were told it was going to happen and when, but not where as they had not told the lucky folks who would be receiving the makeover. Late Monday the invitation confirmation email came through. The Jobsite was just a few miles east of Orlando. We drove to our designated starting point, signed releases, given official T-shirts, name tags, and then bused to the location.

They woke the lucky family Friday morning and tore down the old home on Saturday. By the time we arrived on Tuesday they had placed the foundation, framed the structure and were roofing and dry-walling. Like ants crawling oven a dropped jelly sandwich, workers covered the construction. There must have been at least a hundred workers at any one time on the site. And half that many eating lunch or building items to haul over to the home later. 

They worked 24 hours a day, rain or shine. Lights on extendable poles were set up to allow the workers to see and for the cameras to capture the progress. Several cameras were mounted in semi permanent locations to shoot time lapse, and then there were folks carrying cameras everywhere. I talked with Brady Connell, one of the producers, and was told that they would video 200 hours and then boil that down to 41 minutes for the TV show. I got to see inside the command center and saw the 14 monitors with live action being recorded constantly.

As we walked around the job site in our hard hats I noticed that there were a fair amount of folks who were helpers, toting boards and picking up trash, and then about as many skilled craftsmen. They had all sorts of heavy equipment, trailers, and trucks moving about no-stop. I guess it was to be expected as they were collapsing 4 or 5 months of normal construction activity into a week. The logistics to pull this off were phenomenal.

They have an advance man, Johnny Piccioni, who also served as our tour guide since he was more or less caught up with part that he plays. He hits the ground running a couple of weeks prior to the actual construction and works through getting the neighbors on board with what is about to happen, about how they are going to be invaded with an army of workers, security, show production staff, celebrities, and invitees like us.

We didn’t get to meet Ty Pennington, the team leader, as he was starting another makeover at another location. They overlap the makeovers so that they have 2 going at the same time. They split the celebrity designers between job sites. The site we toured had Eduardo Xol, Paige Hemmis and Michael Moloney adding their special touch. We did get to see Ed Sanders at the IBS. We’ve met him on a couple of occasions. He gave Suz a kiss on the cheek.

Celebrity designers get to express their style preferences as well as take on special projects. The special projects which might include exotic, one-of-a-kind furniture pieces or decorator items, are built in a tent dubbed Art World. This was set up in the celebrity motor home parking area in some neighbor’s backyard.

The show is produced by Endemol USA; and is a 2 time Emmy Award winner. They film 22-25 shows each year with an estimated USA TV audience of 16 million viewers. The shows are dubbed in various foreign languages and shown around the world with a total audience is about 1 billion.

I wish that I could pass on to you the atmosphere of the place and the attitude of the folks there. All of the staff that I met was friendly and eager to answer questions and show us their piece of the activity. Our guide said “they create the spark and the community does it. What happens is a mini miracle; it affects everyone who works with it.”

We have posted a short slide presentation to show a little of what we took in. Take a look at the link in the side bar: labeled Extreme Makeover Home Edition.

Xanadu

Never say Never, Maybe

By Ronnie Godfrey, CGB, CGP, president, R Godfrey Homes

Do you remember when World War II ended and builders got busy building small, frame homes 700-1,000 square feet in size. Neither do I. I was only one year old after all. A lot has changed since then. The national average home in the last few years has been over 2,500 square feet. Now a change is occurring across the country. Builders and buyers are rethinking their housing needs.

Just when folks were saying build it bigger the trend changes. What’s more it is happening to Suz and I. We sense the need to downsize. When I found our lot on the Brazos and showed it to Suz, she said we would die here, that we would never live anywhere else. And I thought that we would be watching red, sunburned folks drift by on the river for the rest of our lives.

Here’s the thing, we don’t have to sell; we want to sell. Why would anyone want to move from the river? In our case there are multiple reasons. We have livestock and we keep them on land not far away, but we have to go there twice a day. It would be mighty nice to walk out the back door and take care of the herd. Our needs are such that we could make do with a little smaller home. It’s easier to keep, the utilities are less, insurance, taxes…Well you get the picture.

We’ll sell our Xanadu (that’s what we called it before we built it) and find some land to build our new home on the range with room for horses, goats, and chickens. Perhaps 15-50 acres will do. Maybe you could help us if you know of some land like that.   

My fondest hope is that someone with teens in the home will buy here and enjoy all that the river would offer them. Spend some time watching the eagles, peregrines and osprey cruise by in early winter. Keep the bluebird nest boxes clean after every fledgling and bird seed out for the cardinals.

How Many Miles Per Gallon Does Your Home Get?

What’s New in Housing 3: Or How Many Miles Per Gallon Does Your Home Get

By Ronnie Godfrey

In making the purchase decision of buying a new car, one of the questions you might typically ask is, how many miles per gallon does it get. Seems that should be part of the overall cost consideration. Yet often I hear of folks purchasing a new home with no regard to its total cost of operation. Too bad, as the costs of operating homes of similar size can vary widely depending on how it’s built and what technologies are used in its construction.

We, of course don’t use miles per gallon. Instead the best way to measure one home against another is its Home Energy Rating System ( HERS score). The base score of 100 assumes a home is built to current codes. That home is probably better than a home built some time back to current codes of another era. If you incorporate energy saving into a new home then the score is lower. It’s like a golf score the lower the number the better.

For example, to be and Energy Star Home the score must be 85 or lower. Oh, and by the way that is about to change as EPA is rolling out Energy Star 2.5 in April of this year and the new score will need to be lower. The lower the score the more energy you can save on heating and cooling. The best score, it was thought, was 0, called net 0. Now we hear of homes that make more energy than they use. They are -0 (the building industry is struggling to come up with a good name for these homes).

For now, the best thing in the way of payback is a home with the lowest HERS score that you can afford. I mention “afford” as some of the things you might do to make your home energy efficient can have a significant cost, photovoltaic (PV) panels for example. I built a home a little over a year ago and the homeowner calls me every few weeks to tell me he just had an electric bill of $28 or so. He has solar water heating and PV panels.

The first $1,500- 2,000 spent on energy efficiency is the best and has the greatest/fastest payback. The way the home is oriented, insulated, the windows used, the HVAC system, most important the tightness of the home, these are the things that cost the least but deliver the most miles per gallon. These are the things that will cause the home to have a HERS score in the 50’s are 60’s. The other things like PV’s can be added later as a retro-fit. Of course as mentioned that afford thing comes up. Here’s my take; do those things that get you to a 60 HERS score initially, then as you can afford to add those other more costly add-ons, do so.

When you think of buying a new home be sure to ask to see the document that shows what the HERS score is for that home.

In keeping with the theme of What’s New, here is a website you can look at that incorporates several new colors, finishes, etc… in a home that was designed by Martha Stewart and built in Florida. Watch for the electric outlet in the garage for charging your electric car.

http://www.builderconcepthome2011.com/

What's New in Housing? Part 2

What’s New in Housing?  Part 2

By Ronnie Godfrey

As mentioned in my last article, I will now take up the various suggested subjects of the newer aspects of the housing industry. I promised a review of the proliferation of computer usage and how the buyer could benefit from these. I’ll start with computer generated floor plans.

I mentioned that for several years we have generated floor plans on our computers. Now we can do more than just draw flat lines showing the floor plan on the monitor. We can show the exterior of the home in simulated 3D. We’re able to spin the home around globally so that it can be seen from every angle:

·        Looking down at it

·        Looking up at it

·        A top view

·        A top view with no roof

·        Cross sections

·        Etc…

We can load your home with your furniture so that you are able to see how it would fit in the various rooms. Measure what you have and tell us what room you want to place it and on which wall and then you can see these results from a simple floor plan view or from a 3D camera view.

A fun thing to do is a walk through or actually more of a fly through of your home. We can place the furniture as mentioned, place scenery outside of your home (mountains, snow scenes, prairie etc…), vehicles in the garage and trees, shrubs, and flowers. Then we map out the route that we want the camera to take and record this for viewing in my office or record it on a disk to mail to your friends or relatives.

More and more manufacturers are submitting to our software supplier, catalogs of their merchandise .We can download these and they can be used in the views spelled out in the previous paragraph. I now have catalogs of:

·        Brick and stone

·        Carpets and rugs

·        Multiple brands of paint choices

·        Appliances

·        Flowers and shrubs

·        Doors and windows

·        And more

The estimating process is faster due to improvements in software. The same can be said of scheduling and record keeping, and all of these can be linked to each other. You have right to know when your home should be completed and what the final cost will be.

You can email or call me if you would like for me to go into more detail on the things we covered here. Reach me 817 988 0149 or

What's New in Housing

What’s New in Housing?  

By Ronnie Godfrey

There have been more changes in the housing industry in the past three years than in the previous thirty-three years. That’s how long I have been building houses and developing land. I thought we might explore some of these in a few articles over the next month or so. And then discuss how they might apply, should you or someone you know, be in the market for a new home.

You could probably guess that the proliferation of computer usage would be one of the changes. For several years we have generated floor plans on our computers. That’s no surprise. However the software gets more sophisticated almost daily. We will dedicate a whole article to this and you will see what I mean. I think you may be amazed. Additionally, more and better software is available to estimate, schedule, and record keep, to make the construction job and number crunching go better. You could ask these questions and reasonably expect to get good answers:

·        How much have I spent to date?

·        How much more will I need to spend to completion?

·        How long should it take to complete?

Construction materials and methods is another topic that will require an article or more to just scratch the surface. Again some materials and their uses have been with us, but improvements and new ways to use them are coming to the forefront. Cementious siding (exterior siding made from cement), steel framing members, concrete additives and finishes, modular construction, concrete filled foam blocks called ICFs, to name a few.

Of course design options are greater now. There is more of everything. Paint, flooring, plumbing fixtures many with built-in electronic controls, light fixtures including more LEDs, appliances, etc...

Then there are the energy efficiency features to talk about. There are more HVAC options, solar collectors- both heated water and photovoltaic, and insulation improvements.

And then, there are the new requirements to acquire the coveted Energy Star label. EPA is rolling out version 2.5 now and getting ready to implement version 3.0 by the first of next year. Some of us already meet those new standards and have for quite some time.

This is an exciting time to build a home with all of these things to consider. But remember; Unless the LORD builds the house,
They labor in vain who build it; Psalms 127:1a.