Found mainly in the peninsula area of Michigan, the Petoskey Stone is not actually stone, geologically speaking, but fossilized coral.  Long ago, during the Devonian Era when glaciers were moving in the Great Lakes Region, rock beds and coral heads were chipped off and moved around. Over the centuries, and under the pressure of the ice masses, the coral heads became fossilized. Eventually, they became these beautiful coral-embedded stones. 

How To Use Petosky Stones

There are many ways this stone can be displayed and utilized in your home.  It can become a beautiful fireplace surround or unique backsplash. Accent the cabinets in your kitchen with Petoskey cabinet pulls. Countertops and floors have also been made using the Petoskey stone. 

Artisans use the Petoskey stones to create jewelry, carvings, lamps, and furniture as well.  Check with your local tile dealer, or your interior designer if you might want to include this natural beauty in Your Perfect House. There will be no end to the comments you’ll hear from your family and friends. Plus, you get to enjoy looking at it every single day.

A Pebble Can Become a Pearl

This “pebble” will become a “pearl” in your home. If you read my book, The Well-Centered Home, you will understand what I mean by that. Click on the link below to get yourself a copy.

I hope this information is helpful to you. You might want to get yourself a copy of my best-seller, Designing Your Perfect House. It is chockfull of valuable tips and advice that will save you many times the cost of the book on your house building or remodeling project. You might also like The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where You Live. It will show you how to make your home a happy place.

The post Unique and Beautiful Petoskey Stone appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.

Microwave Ovens Get Placed at Awkward Heights

It is hard to find the perfect height for the microwave oven location. They are the most convenient to use when they are placed between the countertop and the upper cabinets. But that uses up precious countertop space. Sometimes people try placing the microwave in the base cabinets, below the countertop. This gets them out of the way. But when they are placed this low, it’s nearly impossible to see and use the controls without crouching down. And taking bowls and plates of hot food out of microwave ovens down this low is a recipe for getting burned or spilling the soup all over the floor.

If installing the microwave below the countertop doesn’t work, why not just put the microwave in the upper cabinets and just let it stick out? The bigger problem here is that now the bottom of the microwave is four and a half feet above the floor. That’s much too high for taking hot bowls of soup out of the microwave. It’s another accident waiting to happen. Creating a microwave oven location on a shelf lower than the upper cabinets makes the microwave easy to use. But it effectively makes the countertop below it unusable because there just is not enough space between the top of the countertop and the bottom of the microwave shelf to be useful.

A Combination Microwave and Range Hood Is Another Poor Solution

I really don’t like the combination microwave and range hood. On the face of it, this might seem like a good way to make the microwave less of a nuisance. But actually, it places the microwave even higher making it more difficult to use. With a microwave oven located this high, you won’t be able to see the food inside of it.

The Only Microwave Oven Location Options that Work

The only reasonable solutions are to either place the microwave oven right on the countertop or place it in a full-height cabinet with the wall oven, if you have one. If you put it on the countertop, you might be able create a recessed “niche” in the wall behind the microwave, giving you room to push the microwave back a few inches and get the door of the oven to align with the doors of the cabinets above it. This improves the appearance of the microwave and opens up about twelve inches of countertop space in front of the microwave that can be useful when taking food in and out of the microwave.

If you have a large enough kitchen and a wall oven, the microwave can be placed in the same tall cabinet as the wall oven. With a single wall oven, you should be able to place both the oven and the microwave at convenient heights, one above the other.

Built-in and Enclosed Microwaves

You can buy some nice looking microwaves that can be installed with a surrounding enclosure to give a built-in appearance. This will work nicely until the microwave breaks down and you need to replace it. Make sure your new microwave will fit within the enclosure you already have.

A Microwave Drawer

There is one other microwave oven location that is really quite nice. It is below the countertop but does not have the usual problems a typical microwave would have in that location. Consider a microwave “drawer.” These are specially designed microwaves that open and close like a drawer with a push of a button and a nudge of your hand. They open and close slowly and smoothly, so the food doesn’t spill off the plate or out of the bowls. And the controls are on the top edge of the drawer making them easy to see and operate. It is an elegant solution to a vexing problem.

No one has found the perfect way to handle the awkward microwave oven. Yet most of us cannot live without one. So, when planning your kitchen design, be sure to give a lot of thought to where you will place the microwave oven.

I hope this information is helpful to you. You might want to get yourself a copy of my best-seller, Designing Your Perfect House. It is chockfull of valuable tips and advice that will save you many times the cost of the book on your house building or remodeling project. You might also like The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where You Live. It will show you how to make your home a happy place.

The post What Is a Good Microwave Oven Location? appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.

What’s the Difference Between Factory Built Housing and Modular Housing?

Modular housing usually refers to houses that are standard plans and designs that are repeated, one unit after the next. Factory built housing, on the other hand, refers to any kind of house that is assembled in components manufactured in a factory and assembled on site. There are varying degrees of factory built house construction. The most efficient and customizable is a panelizing method where the walls and roofs are manufactured in panel section and assembled on site. Modular housing typical involves entire rooms or segments of the house being assembled in the factory and then shipped to the site.

Factory built housing does not automatically consist of inferior materials. Absolutely not. The quality of the materials and components can be at whatever level you specify. Factory-built houses can match anything you could have with a site-built house. But not merely match the quality, a factory-built house can exceed site-built houses in several ways.

Factory Built Housing Has Advantages

It mystifies me why more housing is not factory built. There are such clear advantages when compared to the traditional methods of “stick building” on site in all kinds of weather conditions. Here are some advantages to factory built housing.

First, factory-built housing is assembled in a controlled environment under roof.

Rain or snow can never sit on the wood. Temperatures never vary more than a degree or two so the materials don’t expand or contract. The construction personnel can work at peak efficiency. Building inside a controlled environment makes good sense. Just think about this. Would you want to buy a new BMW and have a crew show up in your driveway with cartons of parts and start assembling your car there? My guess is the rain, snow, and mud getting inside the car would be more than a little distressing.

Second, the work can be done more efficiently.

This is because the materials in a factory are moved to the worker. When building on-site, the workers have to move every piece of building material to the location where it is to be used. Nearly every piece of the house gets moved several times. There are no “rain days” in a factory. You never losing work days to weather. Even on days when work can be done, if it is raining, or freezing cold, or swelteringly hot, no one can work at their best. Working outdoors is simply less efficient. Work in a factory is always done efficiently. Optimum temperatures, optimum lighting, and safe conditions means you have a construction schedule that is predictable and faster.

Third, the cutting and fitting of materials will be better under factory conditions.

Lasers and jigs are used to ensure accurate measurements and the “squareness” of connections. Think of the BMW assembling in your driveway again if you want a disconcerting visual of skilled metalsmiths cutting and hammering the body of the car. No matter how good they were, their precision can never match what they could achieve in a workshop. The factory is their workshop.

Fourth is safety

Construction sites are always ranked among the most dangerous workplaces. Dangerous equipment, heavy materials moving around, and workers working high above the ground combine to create serious risks. Workplace safety is always a priority, but it is simply impossible to make an outdoor building site be as safe as a factory setting.

We Need More Factory Built Housing in the United States

We are strongly considering using a factory-built panelizing system for the construction of the house I am designing in Latvia. We’re talking to Ivars Reinhards and his company, WWL Houses. Now we just need a company like his to begin factory building houses in the United States.

Follow the Latvia house progress: 

• Architecture Traveling in Latvia
• Peteris Blum and the Wooden Architecture of Latvia
• Latvian Symbols in Art and Architecture
• The Hand Crafted Heritage in Latvia

I hope this information is helpful to you. You might want to get yourself a copy of my best-seller, Designing Your Perfect House. It is chockfull of valuable tips and advice that will save you many times the cost of the book on your house building or remodeling project. You might also like The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where You Live. It will show you how to make your home a happy place.

The post Factory-Built Housing Can Be Better than You Think appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.

Here’s a suggestion. Use the method one of my clients used. She took the house plans I printed for her on large sheets of paper and spread them on her breakfast table like a tablecloth.

Each morning she would have her coffee and eat her breakfast with the drawings right in front of her. It “forced” her to look at every nuance. Each day she would sit in a different chair and look at the plans from a different angle. She kept a red pencil on the table to make notes when she noticed something she wanted to change or if she thought of a question she wanted to ask me.

The result was that she knew her new house plans better than any client I have ever had. She knew every note and every abbreviation on the paper. This greatly reduced the surprises as the house was being built.

It’s Like a Game

Try it yourself. You’ll find yourself getting immersed in your new house in your mind. So many things will become clear to you. And don’t worry about spilling coffee or food on the drawings. These are only copies, not the original drawings. We can always print more.

I hope this information is helpful to you. You might want to get yourself a copy of my best-seller, Designing Your Perfect House. It is chockfull of valuable tips and advice that will save you many times the cost of the book on your house building or remodeling project. You might also like The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where You Live. It will show you how to make your home a happy place.

The post Understand Your House Plans (Karen’s Method) appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.

The fact there are millions of colors in the world with very subtle differences in hues actually makes the task of selecting among them harder. With so many paint color choices, but with a hundred times more color possibilities, it often feels like the perfect color lies somewhere between one color sample and the next. For greys and beiges, this is particularly true. And just yesterday, a client of mine said she had gotten large paint samples of all 26 tones of white a particular paint company offers. How hard is her decision going to be?

Here are Some Tips to Help with Choosing Paint Colors

1. Find Something to Match

Sometimes it is easier to pick a paint color when you are not standing in front of many, many color choices. So instead of starting your search while standing in front of the rack of a zillion colors, start by finding an object, such as a throw pillow, a dress, some curtains, or similar that has the color you love. Take that object to the home improvement store and find the color that matches. Automatically, this will narrow your choices and make the selection easier.

2. Follow Your First Reaction

Take note of which paint colors are your “first blush” choices. Often, the colors that catch your eye initially will end up being your best and final choice. Spending too long pondering your decision can lead to you questioning your own judgment.

3. Try It Out at Home

Don’t make your final decision in the store. Take a strip of color samples (or several strips) that might be candidates home to evaluate there. This way you will see the colors in the context of your home and under the lighting conditions in your home.

4. Look at the Deeper Version of the Color

If you are choosing light colors, especially off-whites, look at the deeper colors, the paint colors with more color saturation, on the color strip that belong with the off-white color. This will show you the underlying tint of the off-white. Who hasn’t chosen a white paint color only to see it turn pink, or yellow, or greenish when the whole wall or room is painted with it. This is because the reflected light from one wall to the next will intensify the underlying tint or hue. By looking at the deeper versions of the off- white, you can more easily see the faint tones that are in it.

5. Eliminate the White Border

Cut the paint sample strip or fold it so that you can see only the paint color itself and none of the white backer card. Because our eyes gauge contrast, the bright white of the backer card will distort your perception of the actual paint color. You’ll get a better read on the true color without the influence of the white card.

6. Do a Small “Brush Out”

Finally, buy a small can of the paint color you choose, or a small can of a couple of possible colors. Then paint out a sample area (a brush out) of about two or three feet square on the wall at home. This small cost of the can of paint will be a worthwhile investment to get the color right before you spend a good deal of money on all the paint for the entire project, not to mention the time wasted if you have to repaint the room to correct a mistake.

Ultimately, It Might Be Worth the Cost of a Few Hours of Consultation with a Good Interior Designer.

One advantage an interior designer can have is they have used many of these colors on many projects. They have learned which colors they can “trust.” An experienced interior designer will have a dependable palette of colors they have used many times that won’t take on the wrong hue once the paint is on the wall and they will get the expected results. They will also know which colors can turn funky when painted in large areas.

Doing these things I suggest might take a bit more time than simply picking a paint color while standing in the store. But it will be worth it when the colors work out just as you had envisioned.

I hope this information is helpful to you. You might want to get yourself a copy of my best-seller, Designing Your Perfect House. It is chockfull of valuable tips and advice that will save you many times the cost of the book on your house building or remodeling project. You might also like The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where You Live. It will show you how to make your home a happy place.

The post Choosing Paint Colors Is Challenging appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.

In high-end houses, ten-foot high ceilings, and above, have gotten to be standard. High ceilings make rooms feel larger and more spacious. But in small rooms, such as a powder room, a room that might only be 6’x6’, a ten-foot ceiling or higher can make you look for the elevator “down button.” Did you know you can use mouldings and colors on a wall to make tall spaces appear more human sized? I recently received this question from a reader:

Question about High Ceilings in Small Spaces:

“We have a powder room with ceiling 12 feet high. What suggestions do you have so it doesn’t look like tunnel?”

My Answer: 

“Good question. You could use a trick people used in old houses with high ceilings in small spaces to make the room be more appropriately proportioned for people. These old houses, especially southern houses, had high ceilings to let the summer heat rise and make the rooms more comfortable. But often, the very high ceiling would make the room be too tall and “out of scale” for people.

But they devised a clever solution to the problem. What they did to limit the “visual height” was to place a piece of crown moulding with a small shelf on top, kind of plate rail arrangement, at the desired visual height of the room. The wall below this “cornice” was painted the wall color or wallpapered. They painted the wall above the cornice the ceiling color. There was no moulding placed where the wall eventually met the ceiling. This little trick would make your eye “stop” at the cornice and the uppermost portion of the wall would visually blend in with the ceiling thereby causing the viewer to perceive the room to be at a lower height than it actually was.”

Try this at Home

If you have an “elevator shaft” room with a high ceiling in a small space, in your house, you might want to try this tip to see if you can bring that elevator down a few feet into a more visually comfortable position.

I hope this information is helpful to you. You might want to get yourself a copy of my best-seller, Designing Your Perfect House. It is chockfull of valuable tips and advice that will save you many times the cost of the book on your house building or remodeling project. You might also like The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where You Live. It will show you how to make your home a happy place.

The post Dealing with High Ceilings in Small Spaces appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.

Plastic Laminate Countertops  

Plastic Laminate Countertops are by far the most economical option for kitchen countertops. They may not have the social status and market appeal of granite and solid surface countertops, but plastic laminates, like Formica, WilsonArt, and Nevamar are reasonably priced, very durable, easy to care for, and can look quite nice. Plastic laminate is available in many colors and patterns, including realistic stone and wood patterns.  

Premium laminates have special textured finishes and finishes that add visual depth, much like polished stone. You can even get patterns that are unique to laminates and give a special look you can’t find anywhere else. Of course, the special finish laminates come at an additional cost. But even the top of the price range of plastic laminate will be below the cost of solid surfaces or stone.

Plastic laminates are easy to clean and because they are non-porous, they will not stain under normal use. The shortcomings of plastic laminate kitchen countertops are that they can scratch and knives will cut them fairly easily. Their biggest shortcoming is they are not heat resistant. You cannot put a hot pan directly on them or you’ll damage them. One tip. The plastic laminate choices with matte finishes will hide day to day abrasions.

Glossy surfaces will show even minor scratches. If you put a very hot pot on a plastic laminate countertop, it will almost certainly be damaged. If the edges are not sealed properly and water can get to the substrate (the particle board or plywood below the surface) the countertop will swell and be ruined. However, these issues are easily managed with trivets and making sure edges are sealed. 

Improving the Appearance of Plastic Laminate Countertops

Plastic laminates can be constructed with special edge details to enhance their appearance. Standard square edges will show a dark line where the horizontal surface joins the vertical surface. This is not very noticeable in dark colors or patterns, but it can be disconcerting with light colors. Now, mitered edges are available that can hide the dark line. Rolled edges and edges that are slightly raised to prevent spills from running over the edge of the countertop can be molded in during fabrication.

These rolled edges have no seam and therefore show no dark line. For a bit more money, you can have a wood edge added. This can elevate the aesthetics of ordinary plastic laminate and give a designer look to the kitchen countertop for a small additional cost. I find that integrated wood edges can look great with leather-look or stone-look plastic laminate.

Another limitation with plastic laminate kitchen countertops is they usually cannot have undermount sinks installed in them. A surface mount sink with a rim that sits on top of the countertop surface must be used to keep the exposed edge of the substrate beneath the plastic laminate from being exposed to water. But even with these limitations, plastic laminate kitchen countertops give you a lot for your money and will look good for a long time. 

Solid Surface Countertops

A big step up in cost from plastic laminate tops are Solid Surface Countertops. Solid surface materials such as Corian are made from acrylic polymers. The color you see on the top runs all the way through the countertop and is not simply a layer on the surface like in plastic laminate kitchen countertops.

For many years, Corian  was the only choice for solid surfaces. And the color options were essentially non-existent. But now that DuPont’s patents have run out and there are competitors in the marketplace, solid surfaces are available in many colors and patterns.

Solid surfaces have a distinct advantage over laminates in that seams are virtually invisible. Plus, small scratches can be sanded and buffed out. Sinks can be installed as surface mount units or undermounts. 

But one sink option that is unique to solid surfaces is a sink made of the very same polymer material as the countertop that can be “welded” to the countertop creating a seamless connection. This removes all crevices for dirt to accumulate and is an appealing feature. 

Solid Surface Countertops Can’t Stand the Heat

Solid surfaces are not heat resistant and hot pans can melt and burn them. The integral polymer sinks can crack if extremely hot water is poured into them. These are not extreme worries and a modicum of care will prevent these problems from occurring. But you will have to treat solid surface kitchen countertops differently than some of the other options.

As I said, solid surfaces are a significant step up in cost from laminates. An in between option is a plywood and solid surface composite. This type of countertop consists of a plywood backing with a moderately thick solid surface layer on top. By reducing the amount of polymer material needed because the solid polymer layer is thinner, the cost of the kitchen countertops can be reduced while still providing the look and feel of a thicker solid surface.  

Granite Countertops

Granite Countertops are the stylish and functional choice in high-end kitchens. You can get granite in a wide range of colors and patterns, all created by Mother Nature herself. Granite is virtually indestructible and will look good for a very long time with minimal care. 

Granite is available in two and three centimeter thicknesses, but three centimeter is the popular choice for kitchen countertops. Two centimeter is often used for bathroom vanity tops.

You may automatically think of a shiny, polished appearance when you visualize granite countertops. But granite is also available in a honed finish that is smooth, but not shiny, and it’s available in “flamed” and “leathered” finishes that have a textured surface. The flamed or leathered surfaces are still smooth enough to use for a kitchen countertop and can be cleaned easily. But they are irregular enough that it would be difficult to write your shopping list out neatly on a piece of paper on top of it. Because the honed and flamed surfaces are not yet widely used, i.e., seen everywhere, they can give your kitchen a very distinctive look.

Granite is non-porous. It will not stain under normal use, although I have seen a bottle of olive oil leave a ring after sitting in the same spot for several days. Granite does have minute voids in the surface and because of that, many people recommend sealing it to close these irregularities and keep food and bacteria out. Sealing a granite countertop is not hard. It is simply a matter of cleaning the top well and wiping on a liquid sealant. This takes just a few minutes and only needs to be done annually.

Granite Countertop Benefits

Benefits of granite kitchen countertops are that it is tough, heat resistant and beautiful. It can be fitted with undermount sinks and can also have integral drainage grooves cut into the surface to let the section of the countertop adjacent to the sink act as a drainboard.

Granite countertops are more expensive than plastic laminates, but the cost has gotten much better in recent years. The actual cost will depend on the color and pattern of the granite you select, not on the physical quality of the stone. Types of granite that are plentiful are competitively priced. Granites that are scarce are more expensive. But don’t overlook granite for your kitchen countertops just because you think it’s too expensive for you. Price out some of the more plentiful varieties and you might be surprised to find granite can fit your budget. If it does, the market value of your house will be enhanced and the small added cost may be worth it.

Some granites have patterns that are consistent throughout the slab. Others have “movement” or veining that can vary from one slab to another. If you select one of the granite types with movement, it is wise to preview and select the exact slabs for your kitchen at the granite slab supplier’s warehouse and work with the fabricator to determine how the countertop will be cut from the slab to get the veining and feature colors in the best place in your kitchen countertop.

Marble and Limestone 

Marble and Limestone Countertops  are other choices for stone tops. These are beautiful, but very hard to live with. They have many of the same virtues of granite, such as the ability to have undermount sinks and the continuous color through the thickness of the slab so edge details will not show seams.

But marble and limestone are very soft and porous stones. Mild acids like orange juice will etch the surface and dull the polished shine. Spilled liquids, like red wine, will soak in and stain the stone. Scratches will happen easily. I recommend against marble and limestone for kitchen countertops because of those shortcomings. You will be disappointed in them in a few short years.

One solid stone that has similar visual characteristics to marble is quartzite. This is not to be confused with quartz solid-surface countertops that are made of stone chips bonded into a resin. Quartzite is a solid stone from a quarry. Quartzite is a hard stone and does not have the maintenance problems true marble has. It is a good choice if you are looking for a marble type of appearance.

Quartz Composite Countertops

Quartz Composites are another kitchen countertop option. These are a man-made product, like the other solid surfaces. But quartz composites are made of over 90% crushed quartz, a very hard stone and one of the minerals in granite. The quartz stones are bonded together with resins to form what is called an “engineered stone.” It is cut into slabs and polished. Quartz countertops will give you many of the same benefits of granite, such as heat and chemical resistance and the ability to install undermount sinks.

Quartz tops come in many colors and styles. The main visual difference between these and granite is the color and pattern in a quartz countertop is much more even and uniform than granite. This is either a benefit or shortcoming, depending on your tastes. Newer offerings from the quartz top manufacturers have more movement than they have in the past. In some cases, it is hard to know if a top is quarried stone or an engineered stone. 

My clients often think that quartz tops and even solid surface countertops will be less expensive than granite, but this is not true. Quartz and Corian can be more expensive than the more plentiful and better priced granites. So, don’t select these countertops for a cost savings. Select them if they are the look you want and if you like their functional advantages.

Porcelain

One other recently available countertop choice is porcelain. Porcelain had come to dominate the tile market due to its good looks, durability, and reasonable priding. Now, large slabs (effectively giant tiles) of porcelain are being produced. These have the realistic stone images printed into them like the porcelain tiles. They are not low priced but could become so as time goes by. They are extremely durable and actually harder on the Mohs Scale of Mineral Hardness than granite. And they are resistant to heat. Porcelain slabs, such as Dekton, can be mitered together at the edges allowing extra thick edges and waterfall ends to be made.

Edge Details

Edge Detail Choices for granite, marble, limestone, quartz tops and solid surface tops will be similar. You have the choice of square, slightly rounded, bull-nosed, and shaped or ogee edges with any of them.

Concrete Countertops  have grown in popularity. They are not like the concrete in your sidewalk. This kind of concrete is smooth and can be formed and colored in many different ways. Unique items like bits of glass and sea shells can be imbedded in the concrete to give the kitchen countertop a personal and distinctive appearance.

Concrete countertops are sealed and polished to give an attractive and easily maintained finish. But even though concrete is an inexpensive material, concrete countertops are not inexpensive. Because of the labor that goes into making and finishing a concrete top, the cost can quickly exceed the cost of even a high-priced granite top.

Wood Countertops

Wood Countertops are possible. These can be built from many different species of wood and will give an elegant, warm look to your kitchen. But they require more maintenance than stone or plastic laminates. Wood tops need to be oiled annually to keep them sealed and prevent splitting. This is not a hard task, just like sealing granite or other stones. But wood tops cannot be exposed to water without incurring damage. They also can be damaged by very high heat.

Incidentally, there is one manufacturer of wood countertops that has a proprietary finish that allows for contact with water without damage. Grothouse Lumber has a finish they call Durata that works well and will let you have wood kitchen countertops with an undermount sink without water damage problems. Wood tops cost about the same as the higher priced granite choices, but the distinctive and warm look of the wood may be worth it.

Tile Countertops

Tile Countertops can be a three-way compromise between cost, usefulness, and appearance. Granite, ceramic, and porcelain tiles can be used to construct a countertop. The stone tiles are much less expensive than full slabs and will give you the benefits of heat resistance and the appearance of granite for less money. Ceramic tile and porcelain tile will do the same.

Tile countertops have grout between the tiles and the grout can be a cleaning challenge. If you are planning on using tile for your kitchen countertop, look at large tiles to reduce the number of grout joints and then be sure to use an epoxy grout. These kinds of grouts are very resistant to stains.

There are other exotic choices, such as slate, soapstone, and slabs made from recycled content that can be used for kitchen countertops. Each one comes with benefits and shortcomings. No single one of these is the answer to everyone’s needs. So do a little research and get samples of your prime candidates. Be sure to choose the other parts of your kitchen at the same time. It’s important to select the complete palette of countertop, backsplash, cabinets, cabinet hardware, kitchen flooring, and paint simultaneously to make sure you have everything working in harmony.

 I hope this information is helpful to you. You might want to get yourself a copy of my best-seller, Designing Your Perfect House. It is chockfull of valuable tips and advice that will save you many times the cost of the book on your house building or remodeling project. You might also like The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where You Live. It will show you how to make your home a happy place.

The post Kitchen Countertops Can Make a Kitchen Beautiful appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.

We’re not just a website. We are a full-service architectural firm. We offer our services several ways. Let me show you.

Three-Hour Design Consultation

This is our most basic service. It works like this. You send us your sketches or plans, even at an early stage, along with questions and notes about your goals for your house design or remodeling project. We’ll review everything and then make a list of recommendations, answers, and suggestions. Then we will discuss our recommendations with you through a one-hour video conference. If you haven’t done a video conference before, don’t worry. It’s very easy.

We sometimes do Three-Hour Design Consultations several times for folks as they develop their projects. Our suggestions often solve problems, suggest better ways to do things, and provide a valuable second opinion that might confirm what the builder, architect, or house designer is saying. We can give you some confidence and ammunition to push back on things you feel just aren’t right and need to be altered before accepting the design. Geography is no object. We have consulted on houses throughout the US and Canada, as well as, in Europe and Asia. Click here to get the full description and fees for our Three-Hour Design Consultation service.

“Design Only” Architectural Services

This is the next step up in our services and involves many, many hours of consultation and design services. Here, we will start with your Wish List, site information and a conference call and ultimately end with a complete custom house design for you. The entire process is interactive and will involve several web conferences to review and critique the house design as it progresses. If you wish, you can come to our offices in South Carolina or Delaware for in-person meetings instead of the web conferences. Or we can include one or more site visits, if you choose. We’ll provide floor plans, elevations, preliminary building sections, a site plan, three-dimensional images of the exterior of the house and other drawings to fully describe the design as we develop it.

You will be involved throughout the process in the same way you would be with our Comprehensive Architectural Services. This work can take several weeks or even a month or two, depending on the complexity of the project. When these services are complete, you will have full design concept drawings and three-dimensional views of the exterior of the house. From this point, you can retain a builder, draftsperson or local architect to prepare the actual construction documents and structural design.

Comprehensive Architectural Services

This is our full-service package and includes everything that’s in our Design Only Architectural services plus we prepare all the construction documents, structural design, specifications, and we assist you with the selection of the builder, bidding, construction contract review, periodic on-site construction meetings, on-line meetings, and construction administration services. With our Comprehensive Architectural Services, we are with you from start to finish. Usually, these services include monthly site visits during construction, even for projects that are distant to us. We have provided these services for projects from Maine to Hawaii and Florida to Wisconsin.

With our Comprehensive Services, we strive to be your guides and advisors in addition to being the designers of your house, even including helping with fixture and finish selections, review of builder’s payments, periodic site visits to review the construction, and final review of the completed project. Our goal is to be your “best buddy” and professional eyes and ears from start to finish.

We want to provide you with services you feel are highly valuable and we do not want you to feel you were obligated for services you did not need or were not valuable to you. For this reason, every service we provide is customized to the needs and desires of our clients. When it’s all done, we want you to feel we were well worth the cost and that we added value and quality to your perfect house.

If you are interested in finding out more about our design services, please drop us a note. We look forward to discussing your project with you.

The post We Can Help You with House Design Services appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.

A typical double car garage is about twenty-two feet by twenty-two feet in size. That is larger than most great rooms, and certainly larger than most dining rooms, kitchens and bedrooms. As such. The garage can have a great influence on the layout of the house and the appearance of the house.

I Start a House Design with the Garage Location

The reason the garage influences the layout of a house is due to the interaction of the garage with other functions in the house. The Garage Location must be in a convenient position in the House Plan. It should be near the kitchen for convenience in bringing in the groceries. Of course, the garage must be accessible by car from the street. It requires flat ground. It requires additional level space outside of it for backing the car out and maneuvering it around. 

The total area footprint of the garage, the necessary area to back the car out, and the driveway is often larger than the footprint of the rest of the house. Add to that the fact that we come and go from our houses through the garage on a daily basis. It’s easy to see that the garage is one of the most frequently used rooms in a house. The garage is actually the “front door” of the house for you, the homeowners. Think about that for a moment. When was the last time you entered your house through the front door? If you are like most people, you probably can’t remember. Your primary entry point is through the garage. Give the garage design the attention it deserves. 

Garage Size

Where do you start with garage designs? I say this over and over. Every design should start with a Program. A program is a list of requirements for whatever it is you are designing. The list becomes your goal and every good design should achieve specific goals. For your garage, you probably start with the need to house your car or cars. How much space does that take? A typical car is about six to six and a half feet wide and fifteen to seventeen feet long. A minimally sized one car garage can be as little as twenty feet deep and as narrow as eleven feet wide. A minimally sized two car garage can be twenty feet by twenty feet.

But these sizes are very snug. These are the sizes you often see in tract-built houses. Garages this size require your passengers to get out of the car before you pull the car into the garage because there is barely enough room to open the car door once the car is inside. I recommend at least a twenty-two by twenty-two foot space for the car parking, excluding storage space. If you are selecting from standard House Plans or standard Garage Plans, be sure to check the sizes and don’t skimp. A foot or two can make a big difference while not adding a lot of additional construction cost. 

There Is More in a Garage than Just the Cars

Do you plan on having any storage or a work bench in your garage? If so, you should plan on expanding the size of the garage by two feet in each direction where you plan to have storage. A work bench with some working space in front of it may require additional space. Think through what you’ll need and add it to your program. If you want to park a lawn mower or bicycles, you should allocate additional space for them. A golf cart will require even more space and probably its own small door.

Think through the Activities and Storage Functions the Garage Must Accommodate

Good garage designs must accommodate all the uses you can think of. Your garage should be a comfortable and pleasant place for you to be in, since you will be using and passing through this space daily. It should not be an afterthought in your planning. And since it is effectively your “front door,” your entrance to your own house, shouldn’t your garage and the path from the garage to the house be pleasing and welcoming?

The passageway in from the garage to the house is actually your main entrance. This is where you come and go daily. I call it the “Owners’ Entrance.” It should be well lit and more than simply a door into a cluttered laundry room. How a garage design connects with the house is an important consideration. Maybe the door from the garage should lead to a nice back entrance hall with a window for daylight. A bench near the coat closet or even some cubbies with hooks would make your coming and going experience happier and more pleasant.

Easy Access

Do you want to climb steps every day? Most people do not. As the years go by, steps can become an inconvenience for most of us. Builders often want to place the garage floor a couple of steps down from the house floor as a matter of convenience for them. But it can be an inconvenience for you every day you live there. It is a little bit easier for the builder to build a garage floor down a couple of steps from the level of the house floor because the concrete of the garage floor must be isolated from the edge of the wood framing of the house. However, there are easy ways to achieve this “isolation” without dropping the floor and having those pesky steps in garage designs. 

If your builder objects to your request to eliminate the steps, suggest that he can raise his foundation wall at the point where the house joins the garage or install metal sheets between the wood frame and the concrete slab to achieve the isolation of materials he needs. Press this issue a little bit and you’ll be forever thankful that you no longer have a bunch of steps to deal with. 

As much as we want to eliminate steps in garage designs, there still must be one small step at the door to the house. This can be as short as four inches tall, in most cases. The Residential Building Code requires this step-up for a reason. This step prevents flammable liquids, such as gasoline, or fumes, such as carbon monoxide, from seeping under the door and running into your house. 

Handicapped Accessibility

If you don’t want the single small step or need your house and garage that is handicapped accessible, a small ramp that rises four inches can be installed instead of the step. Additionally, the concrete floor of the garage must slope toward the garage doors, not toward the door to the house. This is for the same reason as the required step. It keeps liquids from running into the house. But this slope serves another practical purpose. It lets rain and melting snow that might be on your car run out and not form puddles on your garage floor. 

One other Residential Building Code issue you should check is whether the garage needs to have a fire separation from the house. Most Building Codes require a solid door to the house and fire code drywall on the walls that adjoin the house.  

Your builder should know about these regulations, but you might want to check them for yourself. Even if the Building Code does not require this separation in your jurisdiction, it is a good idea to have. It will make you safer. Many house fires start in the garage.

Make the Garage Doors Wide Enough to be Convenient to Use 

In the garage designs I do, I always try to make the Garage Doors large enough to be convenient to use. Many single garage doors are only eight feet wide. If your car is six and a half feet wide, that only leaves you nine inches of leeway on each side, and that’s not counting the mirrors. Consider nine-foot wide doors so you don’t knock off your mirrors when you back out. The cost difference between eight-foot and nine-foot wide doors is not much.

This applies to double-width garage doors, as well. Many double-width garage doors are sixteen feet wide. While they are not that hard to get through, this width door forces you to park your two cars close together. This can lead to you dinging one car when you get in and out of the other. It’s bad enough this damage happens in parking lots. But it’s even more painful if you dent and chip your own car. Consider an eighteen-foot wide door. It will give you a bit more elbow room for parking. 

And Tall Enough

Don’t forget to specify the height of the doors. A typical door is only seven feet high. This can be too low for utility vehicles, vans, or roof racks. It is a small price increase to get eight-foot-tall doors. Sometimes if your ceiling height is tight, the door can be installed with low-rise tracks to allow for the taller door in a low ceiling. 

Other Garage Design Considerations

Other features you may want in your garage would be automatic Garage Door Openers, special Garage Flooring, and organized Garage Storage Units that make good use of space by using some interesting Garage Storage Ideas.

Garages are good places for a utility sink for potting plants or cleaning the paintbrushes. Any plumbing in a garage should be placed on the wall that adjoins the house and it should have frost-proof shut offs for wintertime, especially if you live in a cold climate. 

The faucet on your garage utility sink can have a threaded spout. That would be a spout that allows you to screw on a hose. The nice thing about this is you can wash your car or your dog with hot water, if you like. The sloped floor we mentioned earlier comes in handy here by directing the water run-off toward the doors and out of the garage.

Floor Drains

My clients often ask me about installing floor drains in the garage. This can be a good idea in very cold climates since melting snow on the parked cars, if allowed to run out under the overhead garage doors, would probably freeze at the bottom of the door causing an ice slick immediately outside the door and potentially freezing the weatherstripping on the bottom of the door down to pavement. If that happens, the weatherstripping will get torn off the next time you open the doors. 

If you choose to install a floor drain, you will want a “trap primer” on the drain line. This is a device that will automatically refill the water in the trap (the U-shaped bend in the pipe below the drain) as it evaporates out. The trap is there to prevent sewer gasses from coming back into the building through the drain pipe. It needs to remain full of water to do that or your garage will smell like something died in it.

Garage designs might include an extra refrigerator or freezer. If you plan on having an appliance like this in your garage, be sure to install a dedicated electrical outlet for it. The National Electric Code requires many electrical outlets to be GFCI (ground fault circuit interrupter) or AFCI (arc fault circuit interrupter) type of outlets. There are special requirements for garages.

Always Check the Local Codes Before Doing Any Electrical Work.

GFCI and AFCI electrical outlets are designed to prevent fires and electrical shock if there is a malfunction in the wiring or if water gets into the outlet. But these can trip very easily and cut off the power. If your freezer is plugged into one of these on a circuit that trips, you may not know the power is out until it’s too late and all your stored food has thawed and been ruined. Check with a local electrician to find out if and how you can get an outlet that won’t trip too easily and will keep your refrigerator or freezer running. 

I hope this information is helpful to you. You might want to get yourself a copy of my best-seller, Designing Your Perfect House. It is chockfull of valuable tips and advice that will save you many times the cost of the book on your house building or remodeling project. You might also like The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where You Live. It will show you how to make your home a happy place.

The post Garage Design: Planning the Largest Room in Your House appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.

Gym and fitness club memberships are expensive, and it takes time to travel to and from the gym. With time and opportunity at a premium, often these options that take you out of your home can be impractical and time consuming. The exercise solution for people with a busy lifestyle or who live in an unforgiving climate can often be to create a room in your home devoted to exercise.

Creating a Home Gym in New or Existing Homes Takes Some Planning.

It is not a simple matter of plopping some exercise equipment into a spare room. At least it isn’t if you want it to turn out right. There are many factors to consider when designing an in-home gym.

How big should the room be? A good Home Gym Layout must provide the appropriate space for the equipment plus space for floor exercise. Make a list of the machines you want in your gym, their dimensions, and the open floor area you will need for floor exercise.

You’ll need to consider what Flooring material is best, what Lighting provides both utility and function, and how to control Sound and Acoustics. Good Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning are very important in a room where you’ll be working up a sweat. You might want to consider adding a ceiling fan or even a separate mini-split air-conditioning and heating system just for that room. If you enjoy hot yoga, you’ll want to be able to heat up that room without heating up the rest of the house. A gym is a great place, but you certainly don’t want your house smelling like one all the time. You might also want to cut off the home gym from the main house HVAC system and only heat, cool, and ventilate it with it’s own HVAC system.

Your Home Gym Should Be a Nice Place to Be

An important consideration in the design and planning of a home gym is the issue of aesthetics. Home gyms need to be pleasant places to be or you’ll gradually stop using it. Full wall mirrors make any room feel bigger than it actually is. Mirrors also let you check your form while exercising so you will be able to maximize the benefit of your exercises. If your home gym is in your basement and has no windows, mirrors can brighten it up and become surrogate windows in window-less rooms.

A home gym should have calming and relaxing colors, especially if you intend on using it for yoga or other meditative activities. The better your home gym looks and feels, the more often you will use it. A home gym can also become your sanctuary.

Planning Your Home Gym

Home Gym Design starts with determining the positioning of the gym within the house. Do you want it near the bedroom and master bath? Exercise equipment can be noisy and vibrate the floor it is sitting on. A home gym is often best located in a basement or lower level where the equipment can sit on a concrete slab and not vibrate the entire house. 

Should your home gym be a part of a home spa and not merely a room full of exercise equipment? More elaborate arrangements might include a bathroom with a shower and changing area. Maybe a sauna is something you want to include. Asking yourself questions like these will help you determine what kind of home gym is right for your needs, desires, and budget.

What Is the Best Home Gym for You?

There are many different kinds of gyms. What’s best for you is determined by the level of use desired and how you want it to feel. Some people may simply want a place to put a treadmill and a TV. Others will seek out equipment for the full body workout, complete with muscle training, cardio, free weights and full-length mirrored walls. Listing the equipment you want and the spaces each piece needs is the next step in any Home Gym Design.

The exact equipment and machines that will be utilized largely dictates the dimensions required for your gym. Be sure to take into account not only the length and width of the room, but the ceiling clearance height and the size of the entry ways if you have large, bulky equipment to move in and out. 

The floors need to be strong, since some of the equipment, and certainly free weights, can be quite heavy. The Floor Structure  must be able to hold this weight and also be stiff enough to suppress the vibrations from treadmills or stationary bikes. An architect or engineer can help you with your structural needs. 

Also consider the amount of free space that will be needed to perform your desired exercises. If you leave just enough space for your Bow-flex, and you intend to also do yoga and Pilates, you could find yourself stuck between a wall and a hard place.

Bonus Tip – If you plan on doing floor exercises or yoga, avoid putting recessed “downlights” in the ceiling above the exercise area. There is nothing worse than going to all the trouble and expense to create a wonderful home gym and find out later that when you are lying on the floor doing crunches, you are looking right up into bright lights on the ceiling.

Remember, Your Gym is a Part of Your Home.

You should decorate and coordinate accordingly. While function is a key component of the gym, it also must be inviting space and fit with the rest of your house design. So, the third step in designing home gyms is to decide on the look and feel of the space. 

Will it be a basic room, or will it be your luxury spa resort at home? However simple or sophisticated your gym might be, planning out your design and considering all the criteria will ensure a perfect end product. The more time you spend thinking about all aspects of your perfect home gym, the better the outcome will be.

I hope this information is helpful to you. You might want to get yourself a copy of my best-seller, Designing Your Perfect House. It is chockfull of valuable tips and advice that will save you many times the cost of the book on your house building or remodeling project. You might also like The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where You Live. It will show you how to make your home a happy place.

The post Home Gyms – A Luxury and a Necessity appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.