Happy Earth Day

We here at Istockhouseplans believe that every day is Earth Day. That's why we design energy efficiency into all of our plans. And to make up for our length of silence, we'll be releasing several new plans with our next update. Our average square footage has been slowly reducing since our inception. Smaller square footage means less material use which means less of an impact on the earth. All of the plans we'll be releasing are under 1500sf and one of them is only 300sf.

What are YOU doing for Earth Day?

Parlez tu Deutschish?

We at istockhouseplans wish to be as accommodating as possible. After all, you are our guest. To that end, we have added language tools to our site. Can't read English? (irony realized). Simply scroll to the bottom and click on the flag of your country or language of origin. Since we have had interest in our plans from several different countries, we figured we would not be so haughty as to assume that everyone can speak a modicum of English. So we humbly submit to you our page, available in seven common languages. Missed you? Please feel free to visit Google's translation page to see what we're talking about.

Elsewise we're creating some more tiny houses. Inspired by the Small House Movement, we are adding more house plans in the less than 600sf range, even aiming for 300sf and less. Cramming everything you need in a small space isn't so hard; it's the lipstick factor. Our larger house plans look great because there's so much to work with. The smaller ones will end up looking like playhouses due to scaled down elements. 4x4 porch posts with wrap are just too large. 8' ceilings tend to take things out of proportion. Egress windows overpower the cute appearance.

Since it's been a while since we posted new plans, we're sure you're looking forward to something. Stay tuned.

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.

What's inside?

You may not have had a chance to view the website yet, so we'll give you a quick overview. There are currently 24 plans available. Twelve are single family homes, 4 are multi-family, 2 are mini accessory dwellings (ADU), 6 are garages. Of the single family homes, only 3 have attached garages. Two of the multi-family are garaged. Two of the garage plans have bonus space, one of which is a 500sf apartment.

Plans are varied between 2 full stories and 1-1/2 stories. One and a half stories tend to have a lower street profile. Most plans are in the 1800-2000 square foot range, though there are some that duck down to 1368. The ADU units are in the 500-600 square foot range.

Most of the plans have classic external features. These include large barge boards on gable ends, generous overhangs (18-24" is typical), interesting use of materials, exposed rafter tails, full chimneys (even if they are false) and wrapped porch columns.

Inside we have made use of several classic examples. Represented are exposed beam ceilings, tapered columns, built-ins (benches, shelves and a vanity), arched openings, and even a secret passageway or two.

For all their throwback appearance, most plans are modern in their flow. We have used a general formula, that is: front entry porch; bedroom and bath on the first floor; formal dining next to the kitchen; bedroom and bath upstairs (formal master); laundry upstairs.

Why the statistics? Hopefully they'll interest you enough to check out the site. Or they'll bore you to death and you'll just go straight to our site in order to avoid another second of excruciating numbers and facts.

Either way, we all win.