BEFORE THE ARCHITECT BACKGROUND
HOME DESIGNER CHRONICLES FROM THE GRANITE KNEE II
FUNNY & FAMOUS
QUOTES, FAMOUS QUOTES ABOUT LIFE AND HOME PLANS
Gottcha covered . . .
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NOTE THAT YOU MAY FREELY QUOTE THE AUTOCAD GRANDDAD ABOUT HOME PLANS WITH PROPER ATTRIBUTION.
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Home design is the superhighway to home building.
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When my lines go wrong, I am tempted to blame it on a senior moment, which more youth, fewer years would make my lines go right. But I've learned at life's granite knee that experience, like character, counts. I reckon that, younger, I would have screwed it up worse.
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Home design standards are what ought to be built, not what must be built.
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You'd think $75 an hour is a whole lot of money until you multiply it by the 600 hours it took us to do your project. Before The Architect is not a charity.
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Got this note from a client not too long after our first meet. He'd tried to suck me dry to confirm what he'd read about the building project he wanted to general contract. I even talked with him about a couple aspects of the job that'd save him time and money and do a whole lot better for him and his than the way he'd sort of planned it out.
So it's coming up time to begin the hard work - home designing and home drawing the job - and who writes but this guy to announce that I can kick back because the heat's off me: he'd picked up a copy of some store-bought home drawing software from the public library; found it pretty easy to get used to; just knew that he was born to home designing and home drawing and home building with the best of 'em.
Starting up, I reckoned him to be a bright fellow. I reckoned wrong.
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Counting on the other guy for the good idea is like counting on our utility for reliable electricity. Think for yourself; get a generator and a UPS.
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I get asked once in a while about the extent to which I subscribe to Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language. It takes two answers to answer.
If you mean "Am I a disciple of Alexander's?" then the answer is "No." Nobody on this planet walks on my life's waters. I think Christopher would have had that were not thus. That'd be too bad for him. His system is brittle as plate glass, closed to my world and yours, frozen in all its dimensions, unable to adapt.
Now I know that Christopher Alexander wadded intellectuals' shorts over what can be characterized as his structuralist approach, his Utopian philosophy, his cultural insensitivity, his monomaniacal schema, his elitist exclusivity, and some downright odd statements now and then. All true. In these respects, both those intellectuals and Christopher himself are blinded by their own light.
If you mean "Do you subscribe in your work to the precept that form follows function, to the association of homeowners and home builders in design, the development of very comfortable spaces, to easy flows of traffic and sight from room to room and from inside to outside, and to an abundance of natural light throughout?" Then, my answer is "Yes." I am also attracted to Christopher's notions of intimacy gradients, his inclinations to small spaces for sitting and semi-privacies, reckon his references to extended family cohabitation were prescient and are at least generally prescriptive, revel in his use of lightness and darkness throughout and particularly between larger spaces, and I enjoy his Hellenistic or Romanesque sense of interior leisure and, therefrom, leisurely interiors with my own precedent reservations as to both his ex cathedra pronouncements on structure and function. I wholly ascribe to the "quality without a name."
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Day to day, I am rarely comforted by the best and the brightest. Day to day, I am satisfied to my soul with the honest and honorable.
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They don't teach Tape Measure, Level, and Hammer The Nail in schools. It shows. They should.
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I object to banner exchanges in reciprocal links. Banners make for really slow load time when you've got a bunch of them, though they sure do look pretty. You see, it's like the camel's nose in the tent, say yes once to you and it's all but impossible to keep out the rest of the beast.
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You may not think that the sentence "Money's no object" rhymes with "big hat, no cattle", but I do.
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From time to time, people lie to me. Straight out lie. "I will send you . . ." "I will call you . . ." "I will write you . . ." I will pay you . . ." Or words to that effect, both written and spoken. And then they don't do what they wrote or spoke. I loathe and despise that behavior to my core. That behavior diminishes the fundamental value of society, degrades our human capability and potential, stains me for even bearing its witness let alone bearing its consequences.
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Estimates are not possible. You bring your common sense and can take as long as you like to study near 1000 pages of pics and text on this site to judge our character, competence, and capacity. If you're concerned about not having enough cash and commitment to start up with us, you're probably right . . . . sooner than later one or the other will run out. This is not Discount Dan, The Plan Man. (Limit the project, not us.)
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Clients better served by others already know it all, reckon that what I do has to be had better be cheap and easy, already know from childhood what a home design and home drawing project ought to cost, have a perfect vision of exactly what something ought to look like way ahead of the first line drawn, and do not understand how everyone else can be so stoopid as to not share that vision, or they mistake me for a certified marriage counselor. Worse clients pass through here like cracked corn through the Christmas Goose.
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Home designing is a bag of air, until the dirt and sawdust start to fly. True home designers, the truly creative arrive in beat up vans and pickup trucks.
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I regret these weekend intrusions on your family life. And I regret not spotting these last two hang-ups sooner. The disruption even to my schedule is unwelcomed and disruptive. Such difficulties and others like them are standard fare in my business, and still they are very hard to accept gracefully. Not quite like self-generated personal insults, not quite. You take these moments well. I am not so understanding. I do not look forward to a next one anymore than the last. I am only pleased that it's not 2 months from now that these problems are suddenly disclosed.
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Darned near daily, I run into folks with heads full of home design mush and home building mush. Mush like
· Just bump out the wall.
· The best bid's the lowest bid.
· I don't think we need plans, but my fiancιe does.
· I know what this ought to cost before we even begin working with you.
· We don't care about the kitchen.
· Can you settle this argument between me and my husband?
· Draw just enough to get by the permit.
· My brother's the GC. He'll take care of everything.
· You gotta be cheap.
· I don't know what my addition should look like, do you?
· I've dragged my feet on this project for two years, and now I've got to have something in a hurry.
· Are you a licensed architect in New York?
· All I need help with is the roof.
· I'd draw this myself if I had the time.
· I'll pay you for your proposal once I accept it.
· Sure, it's a huge home, and I'll put a permanent roof on it someday.
· 20 rooms all tolled, but I only can afford to finish 3 for now.
. Don't design it that tough. The next blow, I'm not wanting to clean up a thing.
· Wha'd'ya mean about this emergency egress stuff? You sure about this?
· Well, I don't think I need a survey.
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Do you want to hear the bad news now or live it later?
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I get quite a kick out of folks who boldly talk with me about "bumping out" some wall or another, and wave their arms about as though it was all but already so. I know that they haven't the first foggy notion of what-all's involved. Prancing and preening and pointing this way and that with their finger and their imagination.
Eventually, the performance slows down, and they sneak a peak at my eyes. Some stare into them, trying to fathom a signal as to whether they're endorsed, supported, or how foolish they've have been, how far off the mark, betrayed, shamed.
They've nothing about which to fret. I respect them beyond their ken. I reckon this conceit I can bear happily.
I revel in the understanding that theirs is a reasonable, responsible ignorance. They needn't know the whys and hows of building. Because I do.
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We don't know anything about everything.
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Local applications and approvals of home design, home drawing, and related information required outside of home building permits are best handled by local mavens who do that, sometimes just that. We stay outside the permit-loop of approvals frequently and based on judgments from the granite knee; and have known most of them to range from community rights of passage to bald, political playgrounds, in any case having little or nothing at all to do with home design and home building ability, acumen, or achievement. Please be aware that if these adventures are about you at all, then they may be about your attitude and not that of our prospective home building - if you will, about the resident and not the home. You gotta go with the flow. Be of good cheer: nothing lasts forever, not even getting your home built.
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We don't know everything about anything.
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Rim
Board, eh?*
You make my point in spades: I'd be a lousy building inspector. I might hang my
laundry line off a particled rim board, but I wouldn't hang my deck on it, not
even my enemy's deck.
The UBC's low standards of performance are cold comfort to this old boy. If we
had to rely on a particled rim board for fastening our deck to our home, we
wouldn't build that deck on my watch. Similarly, if we had to rely on plywood
for fastening our deck to our home, we wouldn't build that deck on my watch,
either. (In due deference to ply, I note that for the performance stats I
reviewed in comparison between the two products, ply was times-greater than the
particle board.)
Now I know I overbuild everything. My plans take more time and more money than
most. Not often lots more, but some. I've reckoned that the extra time and money
was better spent doing it my way than that same time in the blue room and money
spent for parking fees and cafeteria food at the local hospital.
We will proceed in working up a substantial structure to which to fasten our
deck, if that's still ok with you and I figure that it is; however, if I'm not
right on this, please just say so.
Yes, let's take a look at what's behind some of the insulation. The surprises in
this project can wear a guy down. A couple more pics could be outrightly
inspirational.
*For those not familiar with either the product or its application, let me enlighten you. Rim Board is a name for a wood particled and glued together boardlike building element that measures about 1-1/4" thick and as tall as the lousy wood i-beams to which the rim boards are attached on the perpendicular as false end joints - they are in my opinion among the cheap seats of home building . . . not as big a waste as, say, Dell's Technical Service, or Frigidaire Ice Makers or buck-sucking vote vultures [read: politicians] . . . but those are no blue ribbons. To insult us some more, these boards were used in this application by a builder as the sole basis for hanging a deck ledger with a few nails and lag screws.
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If it hasn't been in the building marketplace 20 years bigger and better, it isn't worth your time or ours. Most likely.
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So, you want a bad day down the road for someone special, do ya? Here's a recipe: Load up a 4" CONC pad with lotsa weight.
How do you do that AG? Easy, pilgrim. Inset L2. Layout a staircase. A chimney. A big, fat hearth.
Then wait. That bad day is on the way. Compliments of Mother Nature. The pad will tell you when it can't take anymore.
Please file this under "Mistakes that keep on costing."
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There is a righteous certitude of plumbers. It just has to be genetic; I think plumbers are born, not raised.
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We reckon in home plan design programs and home building that preparation is of two orders: over-prepared; under-prepared. Choose wisely.
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There is no perfect home, no more than there are those perfect to build it or, before them, to design it. Include me in.
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I called it a complexly designed home. The design was what the clients needed and wanted. I called it tight. My clients asked me what that meant. I told them that once the slab on grade cured, they should be at the building site every morning early to make sure that the master carpenter showed up well slept and sober, or there'd be several homes built on that slab before he got the one we'd drawn.
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If you're interested in interactive planning wherein your own thoughts, questions, and decisions are not only welcomed but expected, then you're where you ought to be. If not, not.
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Practical, applied, thoughtful advice on accessible bathrooms is very hard come-by. What's out there? Piles of platitudes, principles, and policies. Plus you can scrounge around to find a couple handfuls of well-intentioned suggestions, however superficial, scattered like seashells on a seashore. This subject of accessible bathrooms is reminiscent of that Shakespeare line in paraphrase, 'sound and fury signifying not too much.' Like a toothless, barking dog. Our first-time ever work on Accessible Bathrooms aims to put some teeth in that dog's maw.
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How did I get started? When I was young enough to go down the street alone, I'd go down the street and visit home and commercial building sites. The older I got, the farther down the street I went.
I observed, thought, asked, listened, learned, did, shared. Still am hard at it. Experience tracks and targets meaning, forms a community of itself; the greater the experience, the greater the community. Now that's entertainment.
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I witness power's corruption all the time. Power's corruption isn't a perverse pervasion particularly of national government and borne of monopoly and ignorance. The caldron's of corruption simmer in guilds and authorities having jurisdiction right on down to your own neighborhood.
There's more good than evil in code enforcement and more good folks than bad in those roles. As a builder, I didn't mind stoopid inspectors and irrational specs so long as I was sure that my treatment was the norm, that everybody in my boots had to bear the burden of that stoopidity and irrationality. The inability to adapt. Government is, after all, government. You cannot underestimate it enough. So fair is fair in this odd sort of way. But inconsistency takes away expectation, graft takes away public trust, power's corruption takes away the ties that bind us socially, civilly.
Architects and engineers have, to my mind, honorable roles in building things. Life-threatening, property-threatening forces of compression, thrust, and the like need serious countermeasures. Major complexities of home design and home building in humongous projects - dams, malls, tract development, and the like - beg for knowledge and skill above and beyond my pay grade. But when an architect is the only resort by law for 60 square feet of family room addition, when an engineer is the only course of action to validate an existing code (and therewith shift liability), when it takes $4500 to draw up conversion of a one-car garage to a bedroom and an estimated $75000 to make it happen, that's when I witness power's corruption. We are diminished by such guilds of greed - the individual, family and group celebrations of change and moving on in life, wealth, time, value of self, economies of labor. It may take a water cannon to put down an insurrection, but not to take a shower.
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About Us ◊ jrp2h2000@yahoo.com ◊ 770-889-6964 ◊ Site Map
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(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.)
