BEFORE THE ARCHITECT – BACKGROUND
HOME DESIGNER CHRONICLES FROM THE GRANITE KNEE – I
>FUNNY & FAMOUS QUOTES, FAMOUS QUOTES ABOUT LIFE AND HOME PLANS
AG, is that you? . . .
· · · · · · ·
NOTE THAT YOU MAY FREELY QUOTE THE AUTOCAD GRANDDAD ABOUT HOME PLANS WITH PROPER ATTRIBUTION.
· · · · · · ·
· · · · · · ·
Home form follows home function. Home function is the result of life. Home form is the result of home design.
· · · · · · ·
Among my happiest moments, there is that rare instant when I understand that which has eluded me.
· · · · · · ·
Hard lessons from the crucible of life experience:
· As between instant gratification and deferred gratification, instant gratification always costs more — sometimes right away, sometimes later on.
· If you must cut corners in home design and home building, first cut those corners that blind you from home designing and home building within your means.
· Celebrate well-done home design and home plans with well-earned money and praise. Be thankful.
· Of physical safety, efficiency, convenience, durability, and aesthetics — safety rules.
· Each and every participant in home designing and home building — know this: nothing replaces knowledge, experience, impassioned and untiring vigilance.
· True masters of their realms make it look easy and they neither run nor hide from your inquiry.
· Gifted individuals inhabit every locale. They are not required to bear signs of public notice.
· In raised, vaulted, and cathedral ceilings, vent well. The same goes for crawl spaces.
· Working on an open frame, take as long as you like.
· Know and respect your tools, their means, and the methods with which you use them.
· · · · · · ·
Architecture is structured space.
· · · · · · ·
Rushing home design is like rushing growing up. You suffer mightily sooner or later or both.
· · · · · · ·
Good home design lets you, bad home design makes you.
· · · · · · ·
A home inspector is a person between several rocks and hard places, e.g., real estate brokers who do not want a deal-killing inspection or inspector (so you'd better not find something that'll kill the deal or you won't get hired again); buyers completely ignorant of home design and home building; numerous home building codes; overlapping home building codes; conflicting home building codes; poorly written home building codes; changing home building codes; pressures to do extensive physical discovery and analysis in a very brief time period; the threat of litigious owners; the threat of litigious insurance companies; the threat of revoked licenses; the threat of revoked insurance; natural human inability to see through roofs, ceilings, walls, floors, and foundations, the recognition of the differences between home design standards and home building codes; the trump of experience over the written word.
· · · · · · ·
My best clients have already been humbled by home designing, home drawing, and home building on their own before we ever cross paths.
· · · · · · ·
We enjoy working with clients. Home consulting. Home designing. Home drawing. We learn and we teach. We know that our clients are better off by a lot once we're finished with a project, probably better off than they'd be with most anyone else. We listen. We've been builders most of our adult lives. We talk about projects off-the-clock almost constantly. We work way longer hours than we book.
Down the years, a few things get clear even to us even in the bad times. Yep, even in the bad times. What's gotten clear in the bad times? Answer: Some few folks are just not worth working with. Simply, some people will be better served by others.
So, along our darkened way we made up a scoring system. Call it our self-defense lizard list. It used to be that you had to qualify under most of these to get the hook.
There you are then, if we in our sole opinion think that you qualify on ANY TWO of these criteria, forget about it. We know you're coming and you're not welcome. And if you know that you can qualify for any two of these criteria, go screw up someone else's business and leave us alone. We're not right for you. We call these the 19 DEADLY SINS ....... Here are some of them. (NB: These can be adapted as lyrics to be sung with gusto to the infamous "Dolorous Dirge of the Dastardly Deadbeat."
Show me some of your work [after not paying attention to over 200 pages of our website and 400-plus pics of all aspects of our work].
Gotta have a contract [or worse, we at Before The Architect would be reluctant to do business with you without one, and since we don't do contract work, we won't be working with you].
· · · · · · ·
Doing business with an honest client, you don't need a contract. Doing business with a dishonest client, a contract doesn't mean diddly-squat.
· · · · · · ·
We are experienced at the granite knee of been there, done that.
· · · · · · ·
From my perspective as home designer, home drawer, and home builder, a master carpenter has the toughest job of any tradesman on a site, being the one not only to lead in forming up a structure from two dimensions of lines to three dimensions of substance, but also to provide for, adapt to, or compensate for all the other trades at work from start to finish.
· · · · · · ·
Truth sets both of us free.
· · · · · · ·
Hallmarks of the business of home designing and home building – as with other life experiences – are the opportunities. I've heard it said that ‘To whom much is given, much is expected.’ The notion of reciprocity nestled in a guarded, communal threat wrinkles my brow. The notion that talent or skill or other worthy marble of character is unearned deeply furrows. I prefer to turn this coin over – ‘To whom little is given, much is still expected.’ People rise to occasions, not the other way around.
· · · · · · ·
If you're to design and build a fine home, then finely design and build it in every detail.
· · · · · · ·
I'll tell you why we put together, continually revise, and apply "Home Design Standards-Home Building Standards." For starters, there aren't a lot of contractors who'll right away work for somebody using somebody else's way of doing things. You need to be the big dog on the porch. You must grasp and respect the complexity of home building from plot plan to punch list. You must understand matters of home design and home building sufficient to realize that you have myriad options about which you are to this moment blind, deaf, and dumb. You must learn a language – the language of home building – that you rarely if ever spoke, or wrote, let alone dreamed in. "Home Design Standards-Home Building Standards" won't make you an expert, it's no roadmap to home building glory. It does cover ground bigtime on subjects only you will likely be caring about for your own benefit. And it can ring a bell for you to hear, big dog, to get up on that porch and really get ready for a new, life experience, and not lay there as ignorant and inarticulate as a whining puppy before it’s too late and the building’s begun.
· · · · · · ·
It's your dream home; it's their business deal.
· · · · · · ·
Here are some of my personal business and behavioral characteristics that disqualify me from architecthood.
 | I don't charge too much. |
| Albeit I am slow in my work progress, I am not that slow. |
| I know that down all the years some have openly, honestly praised my achievements to third parties - an act which, on behalf of any architect, would for me be a novel experience. |
| I haven't embraced a monopoly guild, choking the life out of both competitors and clients. |
| I take the needs and wants of my clients very seriously, write them down, consider them constantly, incorporate them in my home building plans line by line. |
| I actually know a lot about actually building because I am an actual builder. |
| My beloved wife does the difficult home design thinking, because she is gifted at it and I am not. |
| It is not my self-concept that clients darken my doorstep for salvation. |
| It is not my world view that all would benefit by doing it my way. |
| I don't own a pair of khakis, a Polo shirt, or chichi shoes. |
| Brie and Chablis are prohibited ingestibles hereabouts. |
| I drink the cheapest vodka and drive a pickup truck. |
· · · · · · ·
Setting aside a few, almost always irrelevant exceptions, water does, indeed, run downhill.
· · · · · · ·
You've struck a hypersensitive chord with me about computers and people. I think we are in the midst of a great confluence of new realities wherein it will become break-through recognition that people are not as smart as technologists think and computers are smarter than they appear. I operate frequently in contact with technotalkers who haven't a clue what I'm really after or of that of which I am in need. In my business, the gap between technology supplied and need unsatisfied is chasmic.
· · · · · · ·
Felt paper is not flashing. Flashing is flashing.
· · · · · · ·
I spent an hour today at the granite knee of another - Tess Haygood - at Georgia Lighting. She's the big dog on the porch nationally for builders and even guys like me to layout lighting for homes and light commercial. Among the trades with which Mrs. AG and I have worked over all these years, no trade has had more changes, more development than lighting. You want to risk value, take a fast pass on lighting. You want to boost value and comfort and convenience, lean on a lighting pro. They do not abound on the fruited plain. Stick around a lighting shop floor of size, and you'll spot one to a site - they're the go-to guru on the deck in any big-time lighting wholesaler and retailer if that wholesaler or retailer is attentive enough to hold onto them. Without 20 or 30 or more years before the mast, they haven't been there, done that. What an honor for me to work with a consummate professional. No hassle. No rancor. No ill will. No unanswered questions. No waffle. No detail not worth addressing forthrightly and fully. Can't wait to show you the nub of what you need to know. May not tell you twice and the one time they tell you is fast and even near to furtive and furious, because their bar is high and their time is taught. Passion about her work oozed all over our conversation. Masterly competence and confidence prevailed. When you are with the best, you know it - it all looks so easy and you know somewhere deep inside that what you witness is special, sifted and sorted down all the years, selected just for this one occasion with you, not what you're going to get again down the road. I know those nuggets of time-tested truth. Roll them out daily. Some fundamentals of a practice are not in books, they're in scar tissue, and wrinkles, and regrets of paths not taken or cares not given or assumptions unmet or expectations unexpected, and memories of witness to failures not forgotten. I am humbled in the presence of virtually unequivocal ability and capacity. I glory in the presence of excellence expected as the norm, and excellence delivered seemingly without extra effort because that extra effort is the norm.
· · · · · · ·
House wrap is not flashing. Flashing is flashing.
· · · · · · ·
Some get set on edge when I tell them that my partner does the really serious home designing. Well, she does. I think they think that all home designing is serious - which it is. It's just that there's serious home designing and really serious home designing. I do the serious, she does the really serious. What is the difference? I can home design safe, durable, convenient. She can home design artful. I cannot explain my home designing well without home drawing it. She can explain her home designing any way you want. It takes me a while, sometimes a long while, to get the feel for a structure, its layout, its look. As for her, it's as though she knew all about it a long time ago. I don't remember many if any specifics about something I've seen more than days or maybe weeks. I'll remember the story, just not much about the thing. She can instantly recall, describe, retrieve pictures she's seen of facades, room lighting, a window treatment, a cabinet years - really, years and years - after she once looks at it. So I call the objective shots - spans, supports, travel patterns, physical accessibility, nuances of material application, etc. She calls the subjective shots - perspective, proportion, propriety, possibility. I never have the best ideas. I never see her options. After 40 years, I am still getting to know her. I don't just let her do the really serious home designing. She's earned it hereabouts, she owns it. Clients have little to no clue how well off they are when she's on their case.
· · · · · · ·
Home designing and home drawing are intensely thoughtful processes, and your thoughts count for a great deal in the making.
· · · · · · ·
There was a time when I'd considered, in lieu of Before The Architect, a handle that was a wee bit more aggressive, e.g., In Spite of the Architect or Up The Architect or ....well, enough of that dark side. Reckoned it'd be better to keep peace in family. You know, "See the big dog on the porch. See him sleep. Let the sleeping dog lie."
· · · · · · ·
There is this Confucius-say sort of metaphor, more or less "Every journey starts with but one step." Where do I fit into this one? I book passage and pack the bags.
· · · · · · ·
You
may see me working alone in a room. But I am never alone, there's always plenty
of company with me. Raucous. Irreverent. Mirthful. Pushy. Virtuous. Intentioned.
There's the home drawing, the thing itself. It performs for me line by line — shape
and size, length and ends, being, doing. Lines form my space. We work together,
lines and I. They have meaning and purpose: boundaries, sensate interdependence,
permission and allowance, real facts and forces and feelings with which to be
reckoned.
There's the client both in needs and wants. These matters are spoken and
unspoken and mute. I testify to an almost palpable expectation of function and
the goal of its fulfillment; I bear witness to a void of the unexpected and the
goad of the foreseeable, the imaginable.
Then there are all the lines not drawn. How would they have performed? What
needs and wants would they have satisfied? Myriad moments of chaos and
causality, concern and conflict rattle and clatter about, and shatter the
peaceful time I seem to be having sitting still at my worktable, silently
stroking a line here and a line there.
· · · · · · ·
You want it really cheap and easy and right away? You want it somewhere else.
· · · · · · ·
I think it unwise to tantalize with notions of success as being in the right place at the right time. In the everyday swirl of events, who's to know the rightness of either time or place. Action's another thing. Faithful participation matters most. I think success is borne of not underestimating the value of the opportunities before you and not overestimating your value in their prosperity.
· · · · · · ·
Personally, I've never been too keen on flat rates - they play all too fast in the hands and heads of desperate sellers and dumb buyers each of whom from his own vantage reckons that lowest bids are best bids, that cheap is better than dear, something to beat the other guys, something to brag about. Cheap is neither good nor better nor best, it's just cheap. Gotta look way past cheap if you're looking for work that's good, better, or best.
· · · · · · ·
In this business of home designing and home building, would that I could wave a wand and, thereby, secure you safe passage and harbor. That is no more your destiny than it is mine.
· · · · · · ·
It is written that if ever there would be a Ph.D. in carpentry, a requisite must be roof planning and building along with home stair design and construction. And you just have to put up a beautiful, twisty-turny, drop-dead expensive, hardwood handrail up a flight or two. It is wisely written.
· · · · · · ·
In the animal kingdom it'd be mighty unusual for me to come across critters with two heads. That's so. Well, that's so until I get up to the top of the food chain, and consider folks I meet with remarkable regularity. Even our language makes plenty of 'em with words like duplicitous, ambiguous, double-talker, two-faced, forked tongue, of two minds. I call 'em unclients.
· · · · · · ·
I am convinced that government is both an unavoidable constituent to and unmistakable enemy of small business. I can recall only 1 genuine exception to this conviction, and that was 1500 miles from here 20 years ago and the uplifting experience involved a man who died shortly thereafter.
What's more, the enemy's savagery - to open markets, to dreams pursued, to capital formation, to time, to prosperity, to velocity of money, to community well-being, to expectations - varies directly with the enemy's size. That is to say, the bigger the government tentacle around your throat, the bigger the hurt it can put on you.
· · · · · · ·
About Us ◊ jrp2h2000@yahoo.com ◊ 770-889-6964 ◊ Site Map • Privacy Policy
· · · · · · ·
(If this is your first visit to Before The Architect, please consider spending a few moments looking over the Site Map, in order to get a feel for the website design. Before The Architect E-mail: jrp2h2000@yahoo.com.)
