BEFORE THE ARCHITECT – UNIQUE HOME DESIGN CONCEPT DRAWINGS

Characteristics of a Craftsman Style Home - Unique Home Design Tutorial

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You, too, can design your own house remodel, house renovation, house addition, or unique home design plan change with characteristic of Craftsman Style, especially Craftsman Style home exteriors.  Bob Vila and an army of others show you how to build.  Now, you're going to learn what to build and why, with our unique home design concepts drawings and text. 

Here comes your unique home design concept drawing guidance about characteristics of a Craftsman Style home.  Specifically, here comes your Craftsman Style unique home design for exterior design guidance.  This unique home design author knows of nothing else in print that encompasses, as the following does, a unique home design and unique home builder nitty-gritty views of a Craftsman style home.

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Today, we’ll work with the physical exterior, design characteristics of a Craftsman Style home from the Arts and Craft Movement in North America.

What is a house style?

Style is an identifiable house design.

What is an identifiable house design?

An identifiable house design forms and shape structures in space - in fact or expectation.  For us, it's the superhighway to custom home building.

The exterior?  Why not go inside, too? 

·         We have to start somewhere. 

·         Most characteristics of a Craftsman Style unique home design that you witness day to day, you witness from the outside.  It’s that with which you’re most familiar.  You'll see.

·         Craftsman Style interiors are not de rigueur — too dark overall, albeit that the style’s treatment of interior light in its limited, intensive pooling remains of interest contemporarily.

·         This old boy gets approached for Craftsman Style unique home design exteriors' looks; however, when you get in side, the design and decoration are modern-day.

·         Who’s story is this, anyway? 

Why in North America?

·       Well, it’s where I live and work. 

·       The European versions of the Arts and Craft Style involve materials some of which are not readily, economically available here in North America.  And the European Movement developed along design paths distinctively askew from those in North America.

Why the Craftsman Style? 

·       It’s an easy style to envision, draw, and construct.  Indeed, hands-on, handcrafted, individual labor is a fundamental precept of this style.

·       Its materials can be among the least pricey to buy and use. 

·       It’s everywhere.  You see it every day.  While it’s unusual to come across this unique home design style purely on its own in any given structure, it is widely represented in structures with other styles to complement it.  In my opinion, the Arts and Craft Movement was the single most influential North American building design style of the 20th century.  Particularly in its most common example, the Bungalow Style, you will soon come to realize from your life experience that you have seen characteristics of a Craftsman Style home  design in building structures virtually every day of your adult life.

How is it so easy to design? 

·      First of all, whose custom house is it, anyway?  You know your house better than anyone, because you live there and use it hour by hour, day by day.  Remember, structure follows function.  Figure out what you need and want the house to be to enable and encourage your living there, then design a structure (including ornamentation) to satisfy those needs and wants.

·      Assuming that you are not any more artistically gifted than I (and I am not so gifted), there are many inexpensive, off-the-shelf, retail drawing software packages from which to select to help you on your way.  Or, perish the thought, you can eschew modernity, and buy an inexpensive laptop drawing board and square.  (That’s what I used for most of my days as a unique home designer and unique home builder.) To begin drawing, you need to focus on plan views - looking straight down upon an area - and elevations  - looking straight across at an area - all in two dimensions, all in black line drawings called wireframe where only 2 lined dimensions count.   

·      The unique home design concepts of the Craftsman Style home exterior  need not be complicated; moreover, that’s an essence to the style: it should not be complicated.  Within it, fancy adornments are virtually nonexistent.  Almost always, you can draw in straight lines not curved.  Ceiling heights are not high and haughty.  Roof pitches are summarily shallow in order to moderate thrusts on walls hand-framed by carpenter novices.  Slopes need not be consistent – a blessing for the beginning framer.  The same goes for window placement.  Bigtime roof overhangs shed a lot of water from exterior walls that might not be tightly sealed to weather.  Stone columns of diminishing dimension on their rise make the masonry work a lot easier than strictly vertical configurations.  Symmetry is not an obsession, not even a watchword of this style; therewith, symmetry’s high-skill demands are set aside.

How is it so easy to build? 

Now as never before, you can purchase or rent the spectrum of superb, low-priced hand and power tools with which to work.  There are more materials virtually every day with which to make your work more attractive, safer, simpler, and more durable.  There is advice galore – and much of it pretty good - for free from TV shows, radio shows, books, counsel at retail sales outlets, the Internet.  The ceilings aren’t going to be high in most cases.  The roof pitches will be low by contemporary standards.  The outlines essentially are rectilinear.  No frills and fancy stuff.

So what are the basic elements with which to design with characteristics of the Craftsman Style home? 

Several elements are almost exclusively the indicia of the Craftsman Style.  The list of design elements to follow is based largely on personal observations as a unique home designer and unique  home builder.  Attune your mind's eye to these design elements as you move around your neighborhood or travel here or there, and you will see this style all over the place in residential, commercial, and even industrial buildings.  Most often, when you find one of these elements, others will almost sure follow.

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We will now express our understanding of the Craftsman Style home exteriors through variations on a residential streetside facade that recently crossed my desk.  This residential streetside facade begs to be changed in the design direction from whence significant parts of it cometh.  You'll see a Craftsman Style bone or two in its design with plenty more to come.  The area with which we'll be working is a 23' gable end story-and-a-half, facing east to the streetside.

In the genre of the Arts and Crafts Style Movement, this structure is a Craftsman Style-influenced farmhouse that has been altered here and there over the years.  Some design points attract our attention to the custom house design type of the moment — mixed exterior materials (for size and orientation, and widths within wood alone), big overhang at the eaves and gables, triangulated roof brackets (viewed face-on), mixed slopes wherein each is symmetrical but between them they are different.

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Here are the design elements with which we'll work Craftsman Style home exterior magic today —

We draw them out and discuss them one by one, and then we'll mix and match.

Note well that none of these elements in any expressed option is beyond the weekend warrior.  All these changes are not only relatively inexpensive to do, but also almost all of them do not alter the existing, main structure.  In other words, good design does not have to mean great gobs of demolition; to ice a cake is design, too.

Plan views follow  of what is, what  stays, and what's added.

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To the roofing.

The house rooflines are already overhung considerably, and they are bracketed.  On the streetside facade, we'll make a clipped gable (a/k/a half-hipped, hip-on-gable, hipped-on-gable, jerkin gable, jerkin-head, jerkin-headed gable, hip return,  shred head, truncated gable, dog ear gable, and Dutch gable) on the drawing board, to see what we can see.

The jerkin gable visually pulls down the facade as would a tipped-down brim on a hat, relaxed, welcoming.  Practically, this is the one modification that would cost you some time and money reworking existing, main house structure.  The roof would be opened for a while, and you'd be working high above ground level.  As a design feature among the others, this is the physically riskiest and, possibly, the most financially rapacious.

This is a plan view of what is.   The front face is vertically planar overall, except for a small, enclosed vestibule, or enclosed passage, or double-door entry.  This is north country where it gets mighty cold.  Steps lead to a small landing before the initial exterior doorway.

So as to make room for our new front face, we'll demolish the enclosed passage and steps, leaving the entire front face on one vertical plane.  This the plan view of what's left after the haul-away is hauled away.

This is not a big demo deal.  It should take a small dumpster and a couple of demo-hogs a morning.

Now, we've wiped the slate clean to start anew.

From this last plan view, take with you the concept that we're adding 6' of porch along the total length of the front wall.  That's all you really need in order to move along.  The details are coming up once we switch to a 2D elevation and work on optional designs.   This is a plan view of what will be, regardless of the alternative designs details chosen to further substantiate front wall changes.

The reason that this is looking so simple in the drawings?  It is simple.  The AG has eschewed complexity and expense in the totality of this design.  Because of the specific functional demands to be made of this space, the structural modifications and add-ons need not be either categorically numerous nor financially draining.  But simple and cheap does not have to mean thinly marginal alterations and an ugly construct.

See for yourself.

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Here are the elevations.  Several.  This first one is more or less that with which we started, before demo.

Told you so.  Simple farmhouse face.  Shed dormered on the south side to loose the confines of the rafter lines.  Mixed vertical and horizontal siding (likely not in the original, but in keeping with the style).  Note the unadorned roof brackets, and the humongous overhangs.  Missing from these views are the exposed rafter tails – either real or faux – that run the eaves.

We already know that the entry is going away, leaving only one front-facing door, not two.  And we know that the client is partial to a porch; however, it's not so much for using, rather for seeing.  That plays well to the land available (not much, forward) and the gable-end constraints to roof structure upon which we touch in a moment.

Let's see the elevation with a porch consistent with the style.  We'll reside the front, horizontal clad with a 4" exposure in accord with the likely intentions of the client.  This is the elevation with the big diff; the other elevations to follow work off this basic look.

The old boy forgot to say anything about the windows.  They're the same windows as before, but don't look it.  It's that style thing again.  Craftsman windows almost always have muntins (often with smallish glazes) over and open glaze under.  In this instance, the geez split that 50/50.  He cuts it closer to 25/75 in a later pic.  Muntins of one sort or another can be retrofitted to virtually any window on earth by a competent carpenter.  They're an inexpensive way to make anybody take a second look at the visual difference.

Of course, the entry door can stay, or it can go to be replaced with one better insulated.  And it will be covered 6' forward.

Starting from grade level, the stairs are the same width as before, in the same orientation to the residential structure as before, just a little farther out.   They can be built of any suitable material.  The rise drawn is 7", equal to existing.  While not drawn, the stair width alone would generally require a handrail on both sides, most appropriately carpentered consistent with the porch railing. 

The post, rails, and balusters are all to be squared, not rounded.  No curves, arcs, and curving arches.  The handrail is drawn at 36" over plank top of face.   The balusters are drawn as 1"x1" (nominal) at no greater than 6" on center.  The finished porch floor elevation is about 21" over grade, and can be adjusted in the field.  Posts, rails, balusters, and all framing up through to and including the porch planks must be pressure-treated lumber overall, and their fasteners must be of an exterior grade.  Space the planks at 1/16".  Limit plank overhang to no greater than 3" unsupported. 

This pic has a fascia, as do most others to follow, except one.  In keeping with the style, it would be more representative of the design type to let the rafters exposed, and, in the case you cannot resist a fascia, then fake exposed rafter tails.

The roof is pitched just a tad over 4-in-12.  This is where the bind would have come had the client wanted a deep porch on which to party.  We've only so much elevation on the front face house-wide,  and this drawing supposes to use it all.  As the AG reckons it, that's about 2' up and 6' out, or 4-in-12.  Please sheath and finish this low slope accordingly. 

A wider porch would require a higher lift to the roof-to-existing wall joint.  On site, there may be a bit more height with which to play.  And there's nothing to keep you from running the porch roofline in from the north and south wall lines.  Just be cognizant that in so doing, there's not a lot of custom house design style authority behind you; Craftsman style porch gables simply do not run those lines, not that the AG's ever seen.  Having cut you off at the pass, let's lay out an escape route:  if you went up that wall farther with the roof joint, say for a bigger porch or you couldn't help yourself, and the roof joint line started to shrink up, you could hip the ends.  Hip roofs are friends of this style.  Call it an elaboration.  Astound your family and friends.

One last point about the gable roofline of the new porch.  Gustav Stickley himself would likely have been first to tell you, "Pick a slope, any slope.  Simply be symmetrical."  It just so happens that the slope of this gable end roofline is dictated by the rise of the porch roof and the width of the stairs from grade. 

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Let's see what a difference a window configuration makes.  Here's the exact same elevation as that with which we worked just now, except the windows are stylized another, style-consistent way.  The glazes seem to appear smaller and higher; the open glaze is much larger.

Again, please note that we only altered the retrofitted muntins to make this difference in look, still staying within the house design style.

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Our last two shots are of design details as simple as that change in muntin arrangement, and just as remarkable in how appearances alter with even slight modifications using details.

Here's the same elevation (larger panes over), this time with the more stylish rafter ends exposed at the eves.

And, finally, the same elevation with shutters.  Now shutters are not exactly au courant with Stickley and Greene.  Then again, shutters are not exactly wrong, either.  You just don't see much of them in this custom house design genre.  Once in a while, not often.  The AG put them on because the client is partial to them, and because he could. 

The drift with these shutters from a design viewpoint is to keep them fairly narrow, in order to accentuate some height, or really stump them out boldly.  Nothing average, thank you.  The AG notes that there isn't a fawning move in this design concept.  Say you want to overstate the posts?  Go ahead.  Beef the rail?  Go ahead.  Expand the rake's width quite a bit?  Go ahead.  Got some stone you want to add here and there.  No problem.

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Well, there you have it.  Something for everyone on this lean list.  Pick and choose.  None of it's pricey for labor or materials.  You can do some now, some later.  Aided by powerful design and building savvy going in, you can come out with most of your bank account and a house that really doesn't look the same.  It looks better.  And it's got a story of style to inspire.

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