Good things come to those who wait

Or is that early bird gets the worm? Never could rectify those two. Anyhow all apologies for missing our last blog post. We got super busy, forgot, were abducted by aliens, and then had to walk 5 miles uphill in the snow both ways without shoes. Actually we were chained to our computers, slaving away at creating more plans. We have not one, not two, but three new plans for you.

First is the Sunnyside. We happen to like our eggs that way too. The Sunnyside is designed in the tradition of an old farmhouse. A 2-car garage is detached from the main house by a 6' breezeway. An upper floor spans over the whole mass. With 3 beds, 2.5 baths, and bonus space you'll have plenty of room. The kitchen is big enough to hold a table full of egg eating farmers or get kitschy with a built-in cooking island. The flex room can double-duty as dining room.

The Wilshire is our step into the Tudor realm. Apparently we are riding the edge of a quiet wave of revival. The tudor was brought to America around the turn of the last century. It experienced a brief but disappointing revival in the 1960's and 1970's. This little 1673 odd square footer has all the comforts of home as well as an attached garage. We sure tried our darnedest to keep the true Tudor spirit alive. How to build a Tudor in three easy steps: First you may use any design, but please make sure that several full gridded windows in a row are a must. Second, siding can be anything on the first floor but should always be dark boards over stucco upstairs. And we don't mean little 1x4 boards. These look like toothpicks. Use full on 2x6 and 2x8 boards. Mix it up a little. Finally, cantilever the second floor in any way, shape, or form. With these basic hallmarks you should be off to a good start.

Finally, we added another Edgewood plan to the mix. Our builder friend decided he needed more variety so he came up with another round of houses. We ended up with four new designs, the first of which is live. Why are they still the Edgewood? The variety wasn't that much, quite frankly, and the outside looks about the same. Instead of 52' deep, round 2 houses are now 46' deep with cleaner lines and an even more cost-efficient build.

There you go, here we are, and that's that. Stay tuned for more istockhouseplans offerings in the near future.

Houston, we have lift-off!

"Discovery to mission control: we have lift-off, all systems are a go and- hey I can see my house from here!"

You might discover the same sort of excitement in your new home. The Houston houseplan is online and available. Why Houston you may ask? Well sit right back and hear a tale- wait that's another story...

The city of Houston, TX held a design contest to create an innovative house that was 1500sf or under, 3 beds, 2 baths max, garage optional and could be built for under $99,000 in Houston (land not included). We downloaded all the particulars, started designing, and then forgot about the entry deadline. Ah well. But as we looked at our plan a revelation came to us. With a few tugs and tweaks we ended up with what we believe is the cheapest house with the biggest bang to be built in Houston or anywhere in the Gulf region for that matter.

Our plan is 24' x 48'. Windows and doors were placed next to studs to eliminate extra framing. The roof is a 7.5:12 pitch which nets a perfect length of 16' from ridge to eave. The porch roof at 4:12 is exactly 8' from ridge to eave. All attempts have been made to avoid interior wall lengths such as 4'-2" or 12'-5". The main trusses have a heel of 8" which means that a 4'x9' sheet of sheathing will fit from sill to rafters without needing to cut. It also allows for a full thickness of insulation all the way up to the edge of the house. If you'd rather hand-frame the roof, we provide that too. The house has been spec'ed with a slab foundation though others are available. We are pretty darn sure that because of our design, you won't need more than your pickup to haul away the construction waste. That's assuming that Bubba measured twice and cut once.

Since this house was designed for the Gulf region and since it should be a snap to build, we are offering a special deal to folks who are building for Katrina victims. If you are building within 50 miles of the coast and would like to purchase for multiple buildings, we will give you much deeper discounts than would be available for our other plans. This offer is only for a limited time (meaning we will honor it until the Gulf region is built back up to a reasonable level and nobody buys this plan anymore).

That's one great house for man, one large rebuilding effort for mankind.

Non-profit donation opportunity

Time seems to fly quickly, checklists remain unchecked and the world goes crazier. If you tried using our search engine lately, you may have noticed the big 404 on your screen. This little inconvenience has been fixed. Apparently our database host changed the name of their URL. Don't you just hate change?

We would also like to announce a special deal through June. We are partnering with a church group that will be traveling to Mexico to work with a school for two weeks. The city of Morelia Mexico has donated land to the school and this group will be working on building projects. There is a tentative 50 people signed up and they need to purchase airfare, lodging, meals, etc for their trip. So for a limited time, istockhouseplans will donate 100% of its profits to send these folks to Mexico to build a school. Typo? No, that was one hundred percent of the profits. Are we crazy? Sometimes, but that's another story. All coupon codes are still applicable and we will still make deals on multi-plan orders. How can we afford 100%? If you remember, this is our moonlighting gig and our fun money for now. As it sprouts like a beanstalk we will work into making it our full-time jobs.

Why do we like building in Mexico? It's cheap. It's warm year-round. Mexicans are quite ingenious. No OSHA. No lawsuits. Bribery is legal and encouraged. Tacos, Beer, etc, etc.

We look forward to your orders. So does Mexico. Adios Muchachos.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from your friends at istockhouseplans.com! We've been brainstorming and revamping here around the non-office and have some interesting new ideas for the new year. Stay tuned to subsequent posts for details. For the time being, here are our current projects:

• Add slab and basement foundations to as many plans as possible;
• Finish and release the Creston, inspiration for our courtyard project;
• Create 3-D renderings for our front elevations rather than flat CAD;
• Have a garage option for the Belmont series of plans;
• Fine tune and release half a dozen other plans in the hopper.

We'd like to tell you that we took the break to finish up some plans, but we can't. So we won't. Instead we all took a break and spent time with our friends and family. We started working with our builder friend again to develop three more versions of the Edgewood plan including a duplex. These should be done by the next update. Don't forget to try our search engine beta and give us feedback.

One last piece of info we picked up through the grapevine. Apparently home sales in the Northwest region where we are located have not been so drastic as the media would like us to believe. Talking to our builder friend and several real estate agents, we discovered that homes are still selling at a notable rate. Time on the market is only 2 weeks more than this time last year. The biggest factor contributing is that folks are uncertain as to whether they want to buy right now if it means trying to sell their home. The media has done a disservice to the populace by leading us to believe that the end of the world is near. In reality the housing decline is not affecting every corner of the country.

May your homes sell quickly and may your resolutions last into February. Istockhouseplans will see you in a couple of weeks.

All Quiet on the Design Front

Greetings in the name of istockhouseplans.com. It's been a quiet two weeks. So quiet in fact that we almost forgot we had a design upstart company. Actually, for as quiet as things have been here at istockhouseplans, they have been anything but on other fronts. Our dayjobs have been picking up a bit, the holiday season is here, and other generalities of life have made putting any time into plans almost impossible. We'd like to be able to offer you all of our plans with slab and basement by now, or have the original Creston ready, or any of other several projects that are on the drawing board. If you have been eyeing one of our plans but holding back because it didn't have the proper foundation, please shoot us an email and tell us what you're looking for. We're more than happy to oblige.

In other news, Buena Vista Homes of Lake Oswego, OR held their liquidation auction this last weekend. According to the news feed it was more like a circus than an auction. Many, though certainly not all, of the homes sold and some for a reasonable price. Kudos to Buena Vista for thinking outside of the box to keep themselves alive.

The question came to us recently: "Why don't you design more simple and basic homes? You might sell more of your designs." Apparently this came from a contractor's frame of mind. Just because our houses don't look like tract houses, doesn't mean they aren't economical to build. If you are asking why we don't design 1600 square foot dinger boxes with a garage, then maybe you should check out the Montavilla series. If the question needs to be further refined to why we are stuck designing classical re-creation homes, then we would like to talk about principles. Quite frankly, we will not prostitute our skills on something that we do not find to be beautiful. We will not crap out a plan just for the sake of turning a buck. We have some standards that we will not turn from, which is a good reason why we are debating about releasing the Creston series from the courtyard design contest. They don't look good to our eyes. What if we had won and they were built? We may have realized our mistake and been sorry we designed them as we did. In retrospect we would have made some changes but that's what happens when you find out about a contest halfway through. The point is that we will not spit out cheap homes in order to turn a profit. We would rather sell 2 plans a month of our unique and beautiful homes than a dozen crapshacks. And if you don't like what we design, we respect that and we don't expect you to buy from us. But if you realize that our plans are every bit if not more economical to build than many of the crapshacks, we think you might have a change of heart. Thank you for the question.

We will be all but shut down through this week and next for the Christmas holiday. Any orders you place will be attended to immediately but designing and emailing will be sporadic at best. We at istockhouseplans wish a you a Merry Christmas and hope that you will not be taken in by the hustle and bustle of the season. Slow down, realize what's important, and enjoy the people around you. We'll see you next year!

Foundational

Hello everybody! (Hello, Dr. Nick!) We missed our normal Tuesday blog due to sickness, but we're feeling well enough to make a go of it today. Whatever happened to the long expected Creston series based on our Courtyard Design? Well here's the deal. We just aren't thrilled with the look of the plans. They look fully like new homes doing an architectural nod. We could doll them up a bit, I suppose, but they just aren't striking us right now. Our goal before that is to finish the working plans for their predecessor, the original Creston. However, our first priority is to offer slab and basement foundations for as much of our existing stock as we can right now. We've begun in numerical order and the Lombard 1558 now has complete sets of plans for four foundation types. Lombard-2 shouldn't be far behind.


That's all the news from the past two weeks. To get the most recent updates you should mark istockhouseplans as your homepage and check it everyday. Or twice a day!

Happy Turkey

Happy Thanksgiving folks! We are thankful that we are in business despite the housing market. In celebration of the holiday we will be closed Wednesday through Sunday. Any orders placed in that time will be processed and shipped on Monday the 26th.

Finally, the long anticipated Richmond series is making its way online. The Richmond and Richmond A are available on our site. Still to come are three more versions including a rowhouse. Both Richmonds are similar at 1606sf, 3 beds, 2-1/2 baths. They also feature bay windows in the parlor and dining, a large kitchen, and flex space downstairs. The main difference between the two is that the Richmond A has been slightly reconfigured to have stairs going down to a garage. It is 3 stories tall and could be built as 3 above grade or with the garage buried. The facade of both plans is a little funky, but we also include a simpler alternate elevation with the plans. You could go for broke, be conservative, or mix and match. The soon to come Richmond C will feature an even different facade for your choosing pleasure.

As previously mentioned, we didn't place in Portland, Oregon's Courtyard Housing Design Competition. However you can vote for us in the People's Choice Award by visiting the competition website, clicking the 'vote for your favorite' link, and entering '125' in the Inner Portland Site box. Our design can be seen on the site as well at the top of page 3 of the inner Portland entries. Once you visit the page, click on entry 125 to bring up the pdfs. Though we didn't win, we commend the first place winner for their very similar design to ours. It makes us feel good to know that we had the 'right idea' (to be read as 'ability to figure out what the judges wanted'), even if our presentation was a little lacking. We're pretty proud of our LEGO construction, though!

Istockhouseplans wishes you a Happy Thanksgiving and a restful and pleasant holiday.

Portland Courtyard Competition

Wow, Tuesday came quickly this week! Okay, it didn't really, but we had to insert a quick note about Portland Oregon's Courtyard Housing Design Competition. We didn't win. Yeah, big frowny face. However we take consolation in the fact that the first place winner's design was a spitting image of ours. Six units, two stories, same relation of space, same use of space, but smaller units. They also used the same green concepts as we did such as onsite water rentention/use and solar panels. Not to be bitter by any means, but we certainly wouldn't want to live near the winner's units. Why? One reason only; they don't fit into the fabric of the old neighborhoods. The designer hails from Santa Barbara and his design reflects that. Quite frankly, flat roofs and carports are not the way to go in the rainy Rose City. That and the units are neo-modern boxes. (Second and third place winners went further and further down the box road. NIMBY anyone?) We tried to be sensitive to the older neighborhoods in matching design styles and scale.

But we still have a chance at national recognition. You can vote for us in the people's choice award by visiting the website, clicking the vote button, and entering 125 into the first box. If we do win, we will offer an ultra low price on purchasing the design to encourage its building.

See you on Tuesday!

Free Beer

Sorry, did we say beer? We meant free shipping. Just a reminder that we don't charge for shipping on orders and we haven't even jacked up the price of the plans to make up for it.

The good news is that the Edgewood now lives on istockhouseplans. There are three versions of said plan, one at 25' wide, the other two at 28' wide. The 25' is 1693 square feet, the 28' are 1850sf. Both 28 footers are essentially the same plan, but the 'B' has been enhanced with more period style windows and other slight modifications. All three plans are similar with four bedrooms, two and a half baths and a 1-car garage. Garage? You put a garage on a plan? Well, yes we did and it's all part of a story.

Not so long ago in our galaxy there was a poor young college student and a homebuilder in need of drafting skills. What fate brought them together we know not, but the poor young college student started drafting for the homebuilder. This turned out to be a winner of a relationship and lasted for years. As all good things must come to an end, the formerly poor young college student went on to start istockhouseplans. The student-cum-draftsman and homebuilder still have a good relationship and from time to time take on projects together. One such project brings us up to our current state of affairs, that of the Edgewood. Builder approached draftsman and said, "I've got this great design that I need drafted." Draftsman commenced his skills, made some minor modifications and the Edgewood was born.

In summary, the Edgewood didn't result from our brainwave, but we were happy to work with our builder friend to make it reality. Hence, there are some differences from our usual plans. There is an attached front-load garage (a rarity for us) and you may also notice a standard water heater and furnace residing therein. Overall we are pleased with the plan, otherwise we would not have suggested mass-marketing it from our site. As soon as it is built we will be posting some pictures.

We also wish to announce our Courtyard Housing Project Entry. As we have told you, The City of Portland, OR launched a courtyard housing design competition and we were pleased to enter. You can now find our entry on our site as well as several 'photos' of the project done in LEGO CAD. The houses used in our entry will be available for sale in a month or so. Contest winners will be announced November 14th.

In the meantime we are finalizing up other plans. The Creston was our inspiration for the courtyard houses, the Richmond is a brownstone with three guises, and the Ash B garage is a hybrid design. Look for these plans and others coming soon to an istockhouseplans near you!

Architectural Nods

You may notice that this post is a day late. All apologies. We were at a supplier convention on our normal Tuesday blogging day. Don't ever tell us that there's no such thing as a free lunch because we sure found it!

In the meantime the website was fixed. Now you can enjoy trouble-free browsing of istockhouseplans.com. We know we promised also to have the Edgewood available, but the Portland courtyard housing project has kept us busy. We will get our masterpiece of an entry turned in today, and then all efforts will be back to the stock plans. (Okay, masterpiece may be an overstatement. Actually, it looks like a first year college student stayed up until 3am putting the presentation together. Our saving grace is that while presentation is important, the judges are reviewing every single entry. If this was for a client who based their decision to look at a project based on neatness, we would have stayed up until 4am). We will be putting pieces of our entry on the website in the next week or so including the LEGO renderings.

"Would you get to the architectural nods already", you ask? Fine, fine. Rather than our usual diatribe on how much we despise something, we will try to stay more composed this time. Architectural nods are about a 10% (usually less) effort to copy a traditional design style. For instance in an architectural nodding craftsman home you would find gridded windows, dormers, some stone veneer and some nice door and window trim. Sound good? Sure, but what's missing? Brick fireplace, 24" overhangs, gable end brackets, 2x12 barge boards, exposed rafter tails, different siding in the gable ends, deep covered porch, built up columns, 7-piece 1x4 window trim, non-vinyl windows, crown moulding, chair rail, wainscoting, 1x8 stained wood floor trim, and four steps from grade to floor. And don't forget paneled doors, exposed beam ceilings (real or not) and traditional colors.

"That sounds like a lot of extra money! Besides, my setbacks don't allow for 24" overhangs."

Then use thinbrick veneer on the fireplace, standard 1x pine for the moulding (found at rebuilding centers everywhere), and for goodness sake, stop maxing out your building footprint and use some of your side yard for beauty instead of dropping barkdust all over it. And since labor is so expensive do some of it (heck, all of it) yourself. It may take extra time, but you will have a superior product to Joe Builder down the street. Do you want folks to look at your house and say, "Yeah it fits into the neighborhood alright." or do you want them to say, "Wow, nice extensive remodel on that beautiful old established home!" Our experience tells us that the latter would fetch an extra 10-20% or more in price.

Architecturally, I can see you nodding right now.

Brick by Brick

Happy October.  This is your general istockhouseplans update.  Portland's Courtyard Housing competition ends in 2 weeks.  We have finished design for our entry and are now compiling the data in to required submittal formats.  We are attempting a medium that has never been attempted before above the 6th grade.  Our perspective drawings and layouts were created with MLCAD, also known as Mike's LEGO CAD.  Since 3-D elements are not allowed in the competition, we created our courtyard out of LEGO bricks in CAD and then saved out the pictures.  Images will be available after the competition is over.

 

As we mentioned before, this competition generated three new house plans for us (really just three variations of the same plan).  It was all inspired by the original design which was stuck on some drawing board underneath other concepts.  We will be releasing the Creston series of plans soon.  The Edgewood series is almost complete and will be up about the same time.  We are also finishing up another yet unnamed plan.

 

However, we first need to finish clearing up the bugs in the website before we get any further on adding to it.  We are hoping to have that done by the next update.  As if we didn't have too many irons in the fire already, we are also going back through our established plans and adding slab and basement foundations where appropriate.  Being stuck in the great Northwest, those foundations don't often get built here but we understand they are the majority in other places.  If there are other variations that you would like to have plans done in (stick frame roofs, 2x4 walls, etc.), let us know and we will try to accomodate.  We do mostly 2x6 walls for the Energy Path 1 requirements and trussed roofs for cost and efficiency.

 

Talk to you in two weeks.  Or visit us sooner.

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.