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.

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.

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.

The story of this house starts like many others: Retired executives Linda and Don Branch — well-traveled golfers — fall in love with Moore County, secure a lot in a gated community, build a showplace home, make friends and live happily ever after. 

Carefully integrated details set it apart.

Location, location, location: Linda drove through the gates of Forest Creek and said, “I’m done. I feel both elevated and relaxed. Don’t try to sell me on anything else.”

The architecture: faintly chateau, with pinkish bricks resulting from a white frosting, designed by an architect whose “find” was a fluke.

The foyer: a two-story atrium with balcony, adorned by stained glass panels that diffuse and tint sunlight.

The layout: upstairs, a private two-bedroom apartment for golfing guests.

Adaptations: a master kitchen with two cooking triangles bridged by a 14-foot granite island.

Unique: a high-walled private garden with shower protruding from the front — not back or side — façade…

Read the entire article on the Pinestraw Magazine website.

To learn more about how to design and build a house that is Perfect for you, check out Bill Hirsch’s bestseller, Designing Your Perfect House. His second book, The Well-Centered Home, will help you make your current home an oasis for rejuvenating your spirit and soothing the soul.

The post Hirsch Design Featured in Pinestraw Magazine appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.

I try to create a “graduated” degree of inside versus outside and a thoughtful transition from the public domain of the street to the private domain of your home with the entryways I design, regardless of house style. This is one of the key tenets in making a house “feel” right.

Unfortunately, many houses are designed and built where this transition occurs abruptly in one or two steps. I’m referring to houses where you simply walk up to the front door and step through right into the living room. I guarantee this feels uncomfortable to you even if you can’t explain why except to say that it seems to compromise the privacy of the living room. Actually, what is happening is there was no “middle place” to let your mind adjust from public to private. There is no place where the visitor, or you, can be inside the house, yet not be completely inside the house.

Front steps, porches, vestibules, and defined foyers are all part of a better entry transition from outside to in and public to private.

You really need at least two intermediate places to make an entryway feel right. First would be a front step and porch. These are still open to the public, but they have some private aspect to them since they “belong” to the house and the porch might even be covered, thus making it become a little bit of an indoor space. I consider this space to be 75% public and 25% private.

Next is your foyer.

It’s much more private because it is inside your house and beyond your front door, but it is not as private as your family room. It still carries some publicness because you greet guests there, visitors can see into it from the front door, and there is no sitting furniture indicating that people linger there. I consider this space to be 25% public and 75% private. 

Including these two semi-public and semi-private spaces as part of the entry experience, no matter how small they may be, will make your house feel more comfortable and the design will feel more “resolved.” Most people cannot verbalize why some entryways feel right and others feel wrong. I would suggest that the omission of proper transition spaces is usually the cause of things feeling wrong.

This idea about the entrance to a house and the concept of transitioning from public to private might not have been on you design radar screen. But it should be. It’s a concept I discuss in some detail in Designing Your Perfect House.

Our minds seek order. Our senses are uncomfortable with abrupt changes. We like gradual transitions. If you consider the sensation when you step from your dark bedroom in the middle of the night and turn on the light in the bathroom, you get a pretty good idea of how harsh a change can feel. Our psyche reacts to changes in spaces, albeit subconsciously, the same way. Sudden shifts from one type of space to another can be jarring and disconcerting. Transitions that feel nature and unforced are the key to designing your perfect house.

Happy Holidays!

Be sure to leave a comment. Tell us your story!

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 A Welcoming Holiday Entryway appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.

Adding an In-Law Suite Adds Family Happiness

I am asked from time to time whether we are seeing increased demand for multi-generational housing designs. Those are homes designed for children, parents, and parents of parents. I would have to say “yes” we are. With many boomers looking to care for aging parents, the addition of a potential in-law suite into some section of the house has broad appeal. 

There may come a time in your parents’ lives where it is not practical or economically feasible to maintain a separate household. Certainly, the cost of two households would be higher than the cost of maintaining one household, even one that can accommodate two generations living somewhat independently. The key is to maintain enough separation for mutual happiness. Beyond the financial costs, an in-law suite connected to your house can pay dividends by strengthening family bonds while allowing for care and companionship for the senior parents.

Some Common Scenarios for Adding an In-Law Suite:

Guest Suite Behind the Garage

The most common design theme for an in-law suite is simply adding a first floor bedroom with a private bath. A logical place for this is often behind the garage, separated from the living areas, but with potential direct access from the side of the house. This space has multiple potential uses as a home office, guest suite or bedroom in addition to an in-law suite.

With the bedroom, private bath, and closet in the base design, options can be added to make the in-law suite more appealing. These can include a small kitchenette as well as a direct door from outside into the suite.

A Larger In-Law Suite

For homeowners looking for a more dedicated in-law suite, some additional elements may be added. These might include an expanded kitchen, laundry and a spacious bath — with accessible fixtures. Wider doors and clearances between fixtures, along with some grab bars, flexible shower heads, and a seat in the tub or shower executed in a tasteful design, will allow comfortable aging in place.

Adding a Garage and Living Room

Sometimes adding some more amenities to an in-law suite will make it more comfortable and feel less “invasive” for the parents. They won’t feel as though they are “moving in” with the adult kids. Rather, they are moving “alongside” their grown Children and their families. Here, the addition of a garage, living room, along with a front door with foyer and island kitchen, adds to the privacy of the in-law quarters.

Second Floor Suites

In some cases, a second-floor in-law suite can be incorporated into the design. For many house designs on smaller lots, a second-floor suite may be necessary since the first-floor space is limited. For some households, mobility may not be an issue. However, if that issue does arise, stair lifts can be added to most staircases at a later time. A small sitting room separate from the bedroom might be a desirable space to add into an in-law suite. No one wants to spend all of their waking hours in their bedroom.

Accessibility, Privacy, and Independence

With any in-law suite design, accessibility, privacy and independence are all primary objectives. At the same time, access to the main part of the house is equally important. Multi-generational living was historically very common and the trend returning to that lifestyle now has broad appeal to many households.

Many thanks to James Wentling, today’s guest blogger. You can visit his website here.

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 Adding an In-Law Suite to Your Home appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.

The key characteristics that we are emulating and “borrowing” are the steep roofs, the details in wood, large roof overhangs, corbels (also called brackets) supporting the roof overhangs, a solid base in the form of the brick foundation, and casement windows with dividing muntins (grids) producing vertical rectangular panes.

The building site is not large and we have setback restrictions to deal with. There are nice trees to the left that need to be saved. The owners asked for some overhang for the front door, a necessity in the Latvian climate. We also needed to handle access to the garage in a way that made it easy when there is ice and snow everywhere. This was one of the major deficiencies in the design by the previous architect. She had set the garage a half-story below grade. That made us question just how much ice was going to build up in front of the garage door and if rain would likely pool there and possibly flood into the garage.

All of these elements need to be brought together in a building that encloses the required spaces and arrangements this family needs and wants. And of course, it all must look beautiful in the end. Making that all work is the “trick” or “magic” of good architecture. And just like when a top athlete or performer does what they do, it all should look easy even though we know it was anything but easy.

We have much to do as we continue to develop with this design. But we are all pleased with the direction the design is going.

You can follow along with the journey by reading the past blogs:

• The Traveling Architect In Latvia
• Peteris Blums and the Wooden Architecture of Latvia
• Mezaparks in Riga, Latvia
• Modernist Houses in Historic Neighborhoods
• Latvian Symbols in Art and Architecture
• The Memorial for Deported Children in Riga, Latvia
• The Dark Time of Latvian Architecture
• Decorative Wood Trim in Latvian Houses
• The Handcrafted Heritage in Latvia
• Factory-Built Housing Can Be Better than You Think
• Sun Charts Helps Determine a House’s Orientation

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 New Old House in Latvia, a Preliminary Look at the Design appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.

If your property slopes and a portion of your basement is not underground, you probably have an opportunity to add a window in at least one wall. It’s even better if you can add windows on two walls, even if one of the windows must be high on the wall to be above the soil on the outside. In my opinion, rooms with windows on two walls always feel best. If the land slopes enough, you might be able to create a true walk-out basement. Making those doors be glass will give you the benefits of both a door and a window.

Windows in New Basements or Existing Basements

Of course, it is easiest to put windows in a basement wall during new construction. But it is not as difficult as you might think to add windows to an existing basement. Cutting through a concrete block wall or even a poured concrete wall is frequently done, provided you have the right tools. They make great saws just for cutting concrete. I’ve done this numerous times. The job requires a special saw to cut the holes. Even if you are an accomplished handyman, you may want to hire someone to cut the hole in the basement wall for you. Then you can do the rest of the work yourself. Or you could save yourself some trouble and hire a contractor for the entire job. It is safer and easier to simply write a check, sometimes.

Windows in Fully Underground Basements

If your basement is fully underground and you don’t have a sloping yard to work with, windows can still be placed high in basement walls and a window well can be created on the exterior to lower the ground down outside the window. You can build the well yourself out of concrete block or bricks. But there are prefabricated window wells made specifically for this purpose that make the job much easier. Just be sure to provide good drainage around and out of the bottom of this well so you can avoid any flooding potential. Placing a clear cover over the well will help keep water, leaves, and snow out of the well. Adding basement windows even below grade in a window well will still provide your basement with a good deal of natural light and alleviate the “cave effect.”

Windows in Bedrooms

The Building Code requires operable windows as a means of egress (and escape route) from all bedrooms. Egress windows must open to a clear opening of certain dimensions for escape. If you are adding basement windows to create a bedroom, be sure to confirm that the window you add meets these egress opening requirements. The building code also has a requirement for natural light and ventilation in bedrooms. Your egress window should satisfy that requirement, as well.

If your basement window needs to be an egress window and is below grade, you will need to use a window well that also meets the building code requirement for egress. There are approved covers for these window wells that allow approved egress.

Adding a window to your basement will dramatically change the feel and usefulness of your basement. For more useful tips and ideas about basement design click here.

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 Add a Basement Window to Gain Livable Space appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.