Two Point Oh!

First off, we apologize in neglecting this blog for the past several months.  The promised new website has run into more roadblocks than expected.  However everything seems to be agreeing with one another now.  We still have a few multi-family and garage plans to add yet.  And we have a couple of new plans as well, as mentioned.

The biggest change has been moving away from GoDaddy's hosting service and revamping the plans catalog to be more searchable by feature.  Granted you can't pinpoint a plan that is 4000 square feet with 5 bathrooms (wouldn't be one of ours anyway).  But with the exclusive number of fine plans we offer a single search term will narrow the plans down to a reasonable number.  You might even find something unexpected!

Please take a few minutes and let us know what could be improved.  While the new site is highly functional, we are certainly open to more functionality and ease of operation.

Portland, Here We Come!

Maybe we're not physically traveling, but we've created some new plans in celebration of this amazing city.  Given the amount of land the planning commission has sway over, we saw the wisdom in customizing a plan to fit into an odd yet common scenario.  If you own a 50x100 corner lot that was originally platted as two 25x100 lots, you are allowed to reclaim those two lots and split it any way you like.  So long as each lot has at least 1800 square feet and each lot faces a different street.

A common result is to have the original house face forward and a brand new 36x50 lot facing a side street.  Setbacks and required outdoor spaces what they are, a slightly convoluted 26x35 footprint remains.  Restricted cantilevers over setbacks are allowed but we chose to start with the confines and see what would happen.  We ended up with 3 new plans.

The Portland and Portland A are both very similar plans with different facades.  Both have 1758 square feet, an attached garage (rare for us), 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, great room.  Essentially what you'd expect from a house these days.  The roof and upper floor has been configured such that you could have a livable attic if you so chose.

The Portland B is a slightly different beast that attempted to open up the main floor by adding a garage under.  Alongside the garage and integrated into the house is an accessory dwelling unit, also beloved by the Portland Planning Commission.  With the ADU it weighs in at 2046 square feet with 4 bedrooms and 3.5 baths.

We are currently in the process of creating a brand new website.  If you want a sneak peek you can click on the links above to see them in our new format.  When the site is active in the next few days or weeks we'll make a grand announcement.

In the meantime, please tell us how we could improve these new offerings!

Gained Some Girth, Have You?

Of all of our plans there are a few that stand out as stellar.  Maybe they don't have gorgeous granite countertops or three car garages.  Maybe they're not opulent McMansions.  But they do sell well.  The Montavilla 2532 has been our second best selling plan.  But it's not the plan itself that is always sold, it sometimes is the idea.  We've several times been asked to add two more feet into the width of the plan.  This is a great idea as it helps give some space to the garage and staircase.

In response to this we have released a cousin to the Montavilla called the Villamont (see what we did there?)  The Villamont and Villamont A are both 27' wide versions of the Montavilla plans.  We could have called these the Montavilla C and D but they are unique enough in their own right to get top billing.  Both plans add 306 more square feet as well to round out at 1674 square feet.

This is a great example of an Istockhouseplans offering adapting to customers' needs.  If you have any other changes you'd like to see in our plans, leave us a note in the comments or contact us directly.

Massive Influx of Plans

In what might be described as an heroic maneuver, we at Istockhouseplans just cleared out a bunch of backlog and loaded more than a handful of plans.  The final damage?  Seven in one blow!  Listed below is the latest additions to the lineup:

The Wilsada A 1416A joins her brother the Wilsada 1416.  This tiny house duo are each a whopping 200sf.  The bed is in its own nook, the rest of the space being open save for a bathroom.  Therein is the difference.  Wilsada has a narrow 4x6 bath while the A is a slightly more spacious 5x5.  Otherwise the plans are very similar with their multitude of windows.

The Cottage in the Grove C2042 was a joint project with our builder friend last year.  We finally got around to creating the artwork and writing the text for this one.  This was a narrow 1356sf house that has the most charm of any of our offerings yet.  Two suites each with bathrooms and a large open downstairs space.

The Houston A 2448A steps in with a slightly larger footprint than his predecessor.  The numbering belies his true width of 25'.  Other than an even 1200sf, not much changed from the prior version.  The roof line was modified to maintain the 16' roof plane.

Three Edgewoods were finally put on display.  A few years ago we spent alot of time with the original version creating several spin offs for our builder friend.  The Edgewood C C2552C and The Edgewood D C2552D offer variations on the 25'-28' wide 3 bed 2 bath story-and-a-half theme.  Rounding out the triad is the The Edgewood D2 C2552D-2 mashup.  Not only is it a lot of width, it's also a lot of characters in the numerical coding!

Finally is a brand new plan inspired from a century ago.  The Arleta 2850 adds a third true single story full size plan to our lineup (right behind the Houstons).  At only 1353sf, this little charmer is guaranteed to be a winner in the new downsized home movement.  Three beds, two baths, lots of closets, and both material and energy efficiency just enforce her future position in the marketplace.  We're very excited about this one and hope to see it built soon.

Check out our full catalog for all plans.

Istockhouseplans Gets Greener

As more and more companies are beginning to do a life cycle analysis of their products, Istockhouseplans feels that this is a worthwhile study to pursue.  Generally we will send you a half dozen sets of plans.  Most of those will go to the permitting jurisdiction for approval; some of those you will give out to subs to do their work.  What's left is a few sets around the jobsite that get muddy, or a couple extra sets that get stuck under the seat of your F-350.  We've compiled this list of how you can safely, humanely, and environmentally end the life of those plans.

• Recycle them in the paper bin.  Duh.
• Ship them back to us for proper disposal.
• Shred them for landscaping mulch.
• Shred them for attic insulation.
• Shred them for party confetti.
• Sweep up your wood dust and roll it up into a set of plans.  Smash the ends in and leave a few next to the woodstove or outdoor fireplace for the new homeowner to burn.
• If you have a nice set leftover, present them to the homeowner.  Possibly even in a frame.  Or take the time to mount them over the fireplace yourself.  Build the frame out of scrap wood from the site.
• If a set gets too muddy to use, wrinkle it up good, re-flatten it and set it in front of an exterior door for a shoe mat.
• Cut strips to use if you run out of drywall tape.
• Separate the sheets and fold them into origami for the children who are pressing their faces into your cyclone fence.
• Let your kids color the elevations.
• Use the backs as large blank sheets for your kids to color on.
• Make holiday cards for your subs/supers/suppliers using the elevations or details as the front picture.

Other ideas?  Please feel free to share in the comments.  Want to employ some of these ideas yourself?  Visit our plan catalog and purchase your own set.

Builder vs. Homeowner

In our final installment we bring you the Builder vs. the Homeowner.  Oh sure, we could bring in building officials, subcontractors, neighbors, bankers, etc.  But this series of three neatly sums up what we work with the most.  Hopefully the point has not been taken that everyone's an imbecile.  Rather you should understand that communication is the key to a successful home build where everyone is happy.

That or everyone learning to design and build their own homes (cf . http://www.homehumor.com/introduction.shtml).

Homeowner: "We'd like to have you build a house for us.  You come highly recommended and we've seen some of your other stuff.  We have a pretty specific list of things we would like for trim, cabinets, etc.  Other than that we'll leave it to you."

Builder: "I generally build to three different packages of trim.  If you'd like something else we can discuss that.  Do you have plans?"

H: "Well we had a designer draw up these..."

B: (perusing plans) "Hmmm...  You could save a lot of money if you installed slider windows instead of double-hungs.  And the roof will be cheaper if you drop it to a 5:12 pitch.  And what's this note?  24" o.c. studs?  Can't do that, the house will fall down.  Besides, it costs more."

H: "Wait, it costs more to install less wood?"

B: "Oh sure, there's all sorts of other things you have to do instead.  And I can't insulate the attic 'cuz your shingles will fail.  It's alright if the furnace is in a cold attic."

H: "Well, you're the professional..."

What then happens is that the homeowner moves into a house that they're never truly happy with.  They notice the little things.  And they live there for 5 years and then do a complete remodel.

Alternate ending!

H: "Well thanks for your opinions, we'll call you."  (we know what that line means)

Future homeowner interviews several other builders and finds one who is happy to build a home for the owners, the way they want.  Double hung windows, knotty pine trim, and walls with studs 24" o.c.  Builder also recommends a heat pump and the homeowners never look back.

Hey homeowner!  If you approach a builder about building a house, please remember one thing.  It's your house!  Don't let anybody change your mind about what you want.  The remodel 5 years down the road costs more than implementing all the things you want the first time around.  Istockhouseplans hopes your dream home gets built the way you like the first time around.

Designer vs. Homeowner

One day, sitting in the office playing solitaire, we were rudely interrupted by the phone ringing.  On the other end is a potential client who absolutely loves one of our plans and would like us to make a few minor modifications.  Since they live 15 minutes away, we are willing to take a look.  Generally we don't offer this service for out of towners because of the distance gap.  Strangely, communication gaps grow exponentially to distance gaps.  But being close by means we can meet in person and see the hand gestures that generally accommodate limited similar vocabularies.

We offer to meet the potential client at a local coffee shop, buy them a drink, and go over their ideas.

When we arrive we are hesitantly surprised to meet the client (a couple) and a mother of one of them.  Also in attendance is a friend or college roommate, or maybe it was a friend's college roommate.  In any event, they are the interior designer.

Things look stickier than raw honey already.

Also in attendance is a 3" notebook that appears to be full of photos, design ideas, and several copies of our plan with different colors of ink all across them.  After introductions are made, the first plan comes out.

"We thought about taking this one, removing the windows from the obvious locations, and putting in weirdly sized windows where they don't make sense.  Over here, we'd like to remove this entire bearing wall and not have any posts in the way.  The idea on this one was to expand the second floor by 800sf without touching the first floor.  How much can we cantilever?"

The mother-in-law chimes in about her room.  We end up arguing with the interior designer who knows nothing about shear and load-bearing.  Finally we say we'll make some adjustments and see how it goes.  Everybody leaves pretty sure that the job is not going to happen.  We're out about $12.

An open letter to potential homeowners:

Dear potential homeowner;

Thank you for choosing an Istockhouseplans design.  We are pleased that we could design a plan that meets your exacting eye for beauty and function.  However, if you would like some changes to the plan, we suggest a quiet meeting with just you and us so that we can figure out your basic needs.  If we end up spending more time modifying the plan than we did designing and drawing it, you're probably better off having a custom home designed from the start.  Please consider a design from scratch that uses one of our plans as inspiration.  We tend to be very strict about the homes we design and sell.  If your plan ends up being a 3 story neo-modern with a 4 car attached garage, we can recommend a couple of other designers that could help you out.  Having us design that style of house is akin to getting a taco at McDonald's.  It won't be what you expect and we will struggle to make it happen.

Thank you

Istockhouseplans

Luck of the Irish...

...Is about the only thing that allowed this post to go out today.

Here's a wee little number that might get your knickers straightened out.  Istockhouseplans finally released the flagship of flagships to our stock plan pile.  We mentioned a while ago that this monster was coming out and this represents the last of the behemoths.  Everything else we release from now on should be around 1500sf or smaller.

The Goose Hollow 3242 is larger than the motherland and comes with a neat twist.  Instead of the expected 2,688sf based on dimensions, it comes in at 2,332sf.  The footprint is virtually square.  But like a doughnut, there's a hole in the middle and it goes clear through.  We had this great idea for a courtyard home that would fit on a standard (nay even substandard lots).  At 32' wide it could fit in 42' of urban space.  Several iterations were tried but most became unwieldly.  This time around we took some prior inspiration and mingled it with our holy idea.  What results is a large house with 4 bedrooms, 3 baths and lots of conditioned space - plus a neat little outdoor space.

There's not much more to say other than to ask you to check the plan out online.  Give us your thoughts on this pierced plan.

Putting our designs where our thoughts are

Our last post explored some skinny homes that, while cute, may not be your idea of full time living comfort.  As a sort of compromise, we present to you our version of a skinnier home.  While we currently have a typical 15' wide home in our catalog, we pushed the envelope a little and came up with 12' wide.  The Fremont 1260-3 is actually a triplex that can fit on a standard 50x100' lot if your zoning allows.

This delightful little creation has actually been on our books for a year and a half.  We'd get frustrated with the little gem, then have new vigor, only to repeat the cycle over and over.  Even still we are trying to work out one more detail area.  But it is available for sale should you like to maximize the potential rent on your lot.

Each unit is 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths and 1181 square feet.  We even managed to add a single car garage to each unit.  We tried to give some character with a tipout on either side and ended up creating a bit of a nightmare roof line.  After chasing our tails on that for a while, we tamed the beast and made it less Escherish.

This was a bit of an experiment in skinniness and our first attempt.  We are researching some other design ideas and working on another skinny mini.  Hopefully it will see the light of 2010.  If you are interested in skinny homes for skinny lots, contact Istockhouseplans for a custom job.  We are interested in some challenges for homes that are less than 15' wide.

Release the Houses!

In a flurry of activity and a flood of ink, we finished drafting up not one, not two, not five, but three new houseplans. All are live on our site as I type. "And what are these new, beautiful works of art" you may ask? Without further ado (okay, let's have some drum roll...)

The Richmond B. A longstanding gap has been filled. The Richmond A and C were separated by a void that is now filled. The C had been used to denote the Colonial version while the B had been reserved for the pronounced bay window version. The Richmond B is a reworking of the Richmond, but down to 18' wide and a full 24" deep bay in the dining room. Heck, the dining room IS the bay window. Due to the skinnying factor, minor modifications were made in the kitchen, flex room, and upstairs bedrooms. The upstairs auxiliary bath is no longer directly accessible from the hall but is now a private shared bath for the two bedrooms. The master suite dropped in size as well. Square footage went from 1606 down to 1470. All part of our master plan for minimalization. In fact, 2010 may be the year of all sub-1500sf plans.

The second plan to be released is the Hamblet. No, not a Shakespearean spelling error. The Hamblet is named for a short 5 block street in Northeast Portland, Oregon that is filled with at least a dozen examples of classic homes. We think the Hamblet would fit right in. The only problem we foresee is that the Hamblet is a mere 1374 square feet. Hamblet Street would be prone to double that. With 3 beds, bath and a half, formal dining and living, we think it would still appeal to the aesthetic.

Finally, in an odd turn of events, the Carver B entered the scene. First off, please be aware that if you have a building code in your jurisdiction, the Carver B version may not be for you. We attempted to take all the glory of the Carver and Carver A and make it into a 2 bedroom house - a 300sf 2 bedroom house. To accomplish this we had to ignore the 70sf bedroom rule. The "master" (sarcastic air quotes) bedroom is a whopping 63sf. Yes, you can shoehorn a queen bed in there. Maybe a highboy with 1' deep drawers underneath. The second "bedroom" is a 36sf (including closet) bunk room. There is enough space to walk in, turn around, get undressed, and climb into bed. On top of all that (quite literally) is a 70sf loft that can sleep another two folks adequately. We imagine the Carver B to be a bunkhouse where outdoor activities are more likely.

For all these plans and more, visit our website, drop us an email, or stalk us as we're out and about.

Free Green at Last, Free Green at Last!

Apologies for being absent for the last month. We were busy working on our entry for the FreeGreen Who's Next? design contest. The contest has 2 profiles, one for yuppies and one for retirees. We chose the yuppies and designed a house that could grow with them. Our design utilizes a 2 bed 1 bath home in 1000sf. There is an approximately 400sf finished attic that is ready for partitions (more bedrooms?). The most exciting feature of the home is the rear deck. It's built on a foundation that can support a future 336sf addition. Simply pull up the deck and build the house!



Competition is hot and heavy with 247 entries. Early voting shows us nowhere near winning but it is early. We're amazed by the number of houses that don't look like houses. If you think Istockhouseplans has got what it takes, show us your support by voting.

Thanks and we'll see you soon!

Open Contest at FreeGreen

The folks at FreeGreen are holding a design contest open to anyone. The premise is that they are looking for new talent to enter the marketplace. Contrary to most other contests, entries are not anonymous. Even if you don't win, you still get exposure on their website which is huge. The winning entries get to have their plans available for sale on the website.

Of course we are entering. Did you have to ask? Since the posting of the plan on their website is optional and also not proprietary, this will be another plan that we can add to our portfolio. This home (given the FreeGreen mission) is going to be designed to be a clear energy saver. That means the faint of heart should stay away. We are aiming for an R-50 or greater shell all around. The hope is that the energy use of the home can get to a point where only 2kWh or less of solar panels can be used to take care of the designed electricity load.

Think you can compete with istockhouseplans? Join the fun!

Creston the Next Wave

We first mentioned our Creston plan in September of 2007 as part our courtyard housing entry. Then we promised to release it soon in October. Finally in January 2008 we made it a New Year's resolution to release the plan. Obviously we have little regard for resolutions. Here we are a year and a half later mentioning it again. It would begin to be a psychological nightmare were it not for...

The release of the Creston!

We finally sat our behinds back down and finished the darned thing up. You can see the plan here and order it at the bottom of the page. The Creston is a 3 bed, 2.5 bath home on two levels with 1500sf. When we started designing the home, there was a path 8 energy efficiency in Oregon's building code that allowed 2x4 wall construction. The caveat was that house size was limited to 1500sf and windows were limited to 12% of the heated floor area. You also needed to install R-49 insulation in the attic. Well our release took so long that path 8 was written out of the code. So our house is essentially a moot point. The other self-imposed restriction was based on the City of Portland, Oregon's minimum R-5 zone lot width of 36', resulting in a 26' wide plan.

Since the walls are of 2x4 construction, the house should follow code in most of the country. In the Northwest where R-21 walls are required, you can either bump them up on site or install R-15 batts with an inch of polyisocyanurate rigid foam on the outside, or an inch and a half of EPS foam. You could also fill the walls with r-6+ per inch spray foam.

The other drawback to the plan is the lack of front facing windows. We were going for a certain look, after all. We have another sketched version with an extra window on each level and we may release that one very shortly as the 'A' with a different facade. In any event we're finally happy to have it available to the public.

Check out the plan and give us your feedback. Remember, we're here for you!

Small Living, Big Impact

After long wait, please welcome the Albina to our lineup of houseplans. The Albina is a mere 16' wide and 32' deep. There is a large living area, small kitchen, small bathroom and one bedroom all within 512sf. But best of all is the 300sf loft. We see this as a great area to play games, put the kids, or store your consumerism. Designed as an accessory dwelling unit or weekend cabin, we would give you kudos if it were your main home. Not big enough for your primary residence? Try the new and improved Albina A! Now with 48 more square feet! Sure to meet all your needs! Is it a dining room? Sleeping nook? Office? Yes, yes, and yes.

As if you needed more incentive to build small, consider also that you could cram four of these gems onto a 50x100 city lot in most jurisdictions. If you buy three Albinas, we'll throw in the fourth one for free. Just like a tire sale. So come on down to Big Al's and see us today!

Where's all those new plans you promised?

Greetings once again from your friends at istockhouseplans. The question has been asked and we are guilty as charged. Over the past year we made some promises that we haven't kept. Yet. We won't say we're never going to release some of our plans, we just haven't done it. Yet. Part of it is the busyness of our day jobs and normal lives. Part of it is that the slowness of the market is discouraging us from putting much effort towards the new plans. You'd think we'd be trying to ramp up to get as much business as possible right now. But couple that with the prior point of day jobs and you'll see that istockhouseplans could fail miserably and we'd all still be okay. So there's no HUGE driving factor to get those new plans done.

That being said, we do not have a lax business approach. We are still very much interested in continuing to design plans and fulfill your orders. We still want to help you build the best house that you can. We still want to get those several plans done.

Alot of it has to do with desiring to design green houses and we are learning much right now about that. True, while our earlier designs were pretty spectacular as far as greenability goes, we want to continue to make our plans better. Our lead designer is the sort that won't do much of anything until they think they know close to everything. On the other hand, once they get moving, they are unstoppable. So we are learning about greening our plans even more and once we feel like we have a new holistic approach we'll start banging them out like they used to do in the good old days.

In the meantime, if you have some design ideas or need a particular house, drop us a line and we'll work with you on that. We are not above drawing someone else's designs.

General Update

As the King of England wrote in his diary on July 4th, 1776, "No news today".  This seems to be the case right now.  No news.  You may have noticed that there was no blog last week.  We forgot to inform you that we are going to an every other week schedule.

 

A couple of tidbits:

 

The courtyard housing project is going splendidly.  We have gained a new houseplan with 3 variations from it.  This should be showing up in our portfolio soon, right after the promised Edgewood.  The Creston is a 3 bed, 2 bath, 1 car garage 1320sf +/- townhouse.  Variations are made with different facades and bumpouts.  They are free standing units, but could certainly be attached without losing their personal charm.  We hope to eventually offer a 2 and 3 unit variation.

 

We are undertaking some small building projects in order to better understand how framing works in a real world setting.  These are by no means houses, but we are planning on an 8x12 shed and an outdoor kitchen.

 

Craftsman features are sucking us in further and further.  We hope to have a photo gallery soon of some great fixtures and craftsmanship that display this style.

 

We realize that there is a small problem with the website.  If you hadn't noticed, individual plan pages seem to scroll to the bottom of the page as soon as you click on their link.  The problem has been isolated, but fixing it may take a little time.  Please bear with us in the meantime.

 

We built a good neighbor style fence with our neighbors this past weekend.  The project went great, but we started brainstorming about other fence styles that would meet both the good neighbor and craftsman ideals.  A good neighbor fence is one that looks pleasant from both sides.  It may not make your grass look greener however.  We are contemplating fence and handrail designs that are beautiful but simple (a must in the craftsman genre).  We will post these on the website in the near future and have an idea page that you can glean from.

 

 

Until next time, istockhouseplans.

New plan alert

The good Professor has the week off. Instead we'd like to introduce you to a couple of our newest members.

The Concord is a 3 bedroom, 2-1/2 bath story and a half with large open spaces for entertaining. The concept of a great room has been utilized, combining the parlor, kitchen, and dining room into one open space. This entry has the potential for five bedrooms by converting the designated office downstairs and the bonus room upstairs. The bonus room is big enough for a pool table. As if this beast weren't big enough at 2279sf, the potential for a basement exists. We are working on a version that allows for a staircase under the existing one to access an extra 1400sf as an apartment or bomb shelter. Honestly, we really do feel that 3700sf is a bit large for a house. I suppose if your land sloped, you could access part of it as a garage from the side or back with a killer workshop.

The Brentwood is a 4 bedroom, 2 bath, 2094sf story and a half residence with formal spaces and built ins. The front bedroom is versatile as an office or media room. The foyer has a built in bench and the parlor has a built in inglenook. False dropped beam ceilings give age and warmth to the parlor. A butler's pantry leads to the dining room and a built in eating nook sits at one end of the kitchen. Upstairs are two more bedrooms including the master suite and the laundry facilities. The master bedroom has a unique feature; certainly the built in bookcases, but one of them is hinged to give you secret access to the attic space. The wall height is close to 7' tall allowing for adequate storage or even a panic room if you decide to build on the other side of the tracks. A basement option is possible on this one as well.

We have also updated the FAQ for your reading pleasure. Join us next week when Professor Istockhouseplans gives his lecture on home automation.

Unavoidable - Death, taxes, and blogs

It seems inevitable that some things should happen. I never thought I'd get a blog. Too trendy and popular, which is the way I choose NOT to go. Buck the trend!

But all good things must come to an end, including my shunning of the blog world. If you need to market a product or a world-class idea, go where the folks are. Folks seem to be on blogs.

Right, so what product or idea do I have to sell to you? House plans. Yes, houseplans, formerly known as blueprints. This post marks the opening of istockhouseplans.com, a private little company doing business in a big public way. There are hundreds of house plan companies out there, why get in the fray? One reason: diversity. No, not acceptance of everybody else's cookie cutters, but to show folks that you don't have to buy a carbon copy house in an endless sprawling subdivision. If you like this sort of stuff then more power to you, go after it. Some folks don't know they have a choice. Some folks know they have a choice, but don't know how to find it. We are dedicated to you.

Our houses are designed with several goals in mind:

• Less construction waste to keep costs and landfills down.
• Energy efficiency for cheaper bills and less strain on the utilities
• Style, flair, attitude. We believe in six colors of paint, large overhangs, etc.
• Have fun! Sometimes tiny little nooks can be huge selling features.

Most of the plans we release could fit right into a 1920's era neighborhood. We love Bungalows, Victorians, Tudors, and the Craftsman styling. Gustav Stickley and the Greene Brothers are our heroes.

Thanks for reading our first post. Stop by and see us. We love to hear your comments, especially as it relates to making us a better company.