That is an important question.  For many years we at Stearns Design Build (Stearns Construction at the time) insisted on only remodeling, or, as we like to put it, recycling homes.  We have since justified designing and building new homes.  The justification is that new building stock is necessary.  The fact is that we just love designing and building new homes that save energy and create happiness. But we still love restoration and modernization of older homes too.

Here is a great blog post on this topic from Christopher Davis at the USGBC.

Building science looks at a house as a system, recognizing that it consists of parts that work together to make up the building enclosure. All of these parts, their connections, and their relations affect the envelope of the building, which in turn dictates performance, efficiency, and comfort.

One part of a building that people don’t automatically associate with building science is the occupant. In other words— you!

When you realize how your lifestyle and needs affect the way a building is designed and used, it makes sense to consider yourself a part of your home’s system. Take, for example, windows. Windows penetrate walls and create a potential for thermal leakage, but they are necessary for our health and happiness. As a result, techniques (like double and triple panes of glass, weather-stripping, air sealing, etc.) have been developed which increase the efficiency of windows as part of the building system. This is building science in problem-solving-action!

When building science is included in your home’s design, construction, remodeling, and even daily operation, it will help you create a long-lasting, enjoyable, and efficient sanctuary. So take some time to learn about building science, and how it can impact your home for the better. And if you encounter questions along the way, we’re happy to help answer them.

Front yards for most houses are leftover, almost unclaimed space. This is due to the lack of distinction between the public areas of the street and sidewalk and privately owned front lawn. Part of green building is to repurpose spaces. This can be applied to front yards which are a space connected to your home. One way to make your front yard more usable is to transform it into a forecourt or front garden that clearly defines the space as a semiprivate area separate from the street. Not only will this add functionality and interest, it will also encourage social and community connection in your neighborhood.

So, how can you turn your front yard into a forecourt? It all begins with a low wall which acts as a boundary between private and public spaces. Because it sets the tone for the rest of the forecourt, this wall and its material should complement the style of your home. It can be made of brick, stone, wood, wrought iron, etc. and should be kept at only a few feet so as to still allow transparency and visibility between the interior of the court, your home, and the public street. This low wall can have multiple openings or a single opening, depending on your preference and how the space is going to be used. You can emphasize the entrance to your home by aligning your forecourt entrance with it, or you can create a more informal approach by doing the opposite.

Paths and landscaping within the forecourt can be structured and ordered or more meandering and whimsical. Whatever approach you choose, it should again compliment and coincide with the style of your home, as it is an extension of your home. Balance hardscaping and landscaping, being careful that neither dominate the space. Landscaping can be purely ornamental or can incorporate vegetable plants or fruit trees. Try to select plants that are adaptable to the Brazos area as far as watering needs. If this isn’t the case for some plantings, collect and store rainwater to use during dry spells. Create a small seating area, be it a table and chairs or just a bench, which designates a place for you to enjoy and be a part of the space. This would be a great place to read the morning news, or chat to neighbors as they walk by. You can create semi covered areas with arbors or pergolas. But remember not to add anything too large that will compete with the appearance of your home.

There may be some restrictions in your neighborhood about what you can do in your front yard. So be sure to investigate this before taking action and creating a forecourt. For images of forecourt ideas for different styles of homes, refer to this article in Fine Homebuilding. Hopefully, this will inspire you to reclaim your front yard and make it into a usable, beautiful space.

So far this week we’ve discussed the need to tailor our rooms, our overall homes, and our communities. Here are some suggestions about ways to tailor, and the benefits of tailoring.

Tailoring Homes

Remember from Monday’s blog—tailoring includes focusing on creating smaller more intimate spaces and cutting down on rooms that are often unused in your home. You could repurpose these unused rooms to make them into functional, enjoyable spaces. Don’t be afraid of creating multipurpose spaces that may seem unconventional. This is all part of making your home unique, and making it perfectly fit your needs. Make use of extraneous spaces: put bookshelves in hallways, make under-stair areas accessible for storage, and utilize your entry way as a small office or library, even a mudroom of sorts. If flow is preventing your home from being functional, adjust the placement of doorways or even remove walls if needed. With a little creativity and vision, you can really make every nook of your home practical.

Go vertical – expanding upwards instead of outwards doesn’t change the foot print of your home and keeps the surrounding area free for outdoor gardens.  It may be possible for your attic space to be conditioned and used as additional living space. This has an added benefit of preventing your attic from becoming a heat trap and increasing cooling loads on spaces below in the summer.

Tailoring Communities

Communities can be entire city areas, centralized downtowns, and suburban or rural neighborhoods. All can benefit from tailoring and all should reflect your needs as a homeowner/renter, worker, and shopper. In urban city areas, infill is an important part of tailoring – this may be through the reuse of vacant buildings or by building new buildings in adjacent vacant lots. Having mixed use areas is a way to truly fully occupy buildings, with shops or business offices below and housing above. This also begins to create walkable communities, a big part of sustainable city planning. Infill can also be green infill – small public or even private gardens greatly increase the beauty and health of urban areas. Techniques for tailoring are visible in the Downtown Bryan area and in many other small & large city centers in Texas. City centers are a great community resource and truly increase our quality of life

Creating neighborhood centers can also help to tailor communities to our needs. These could contain a public park, business/shopping centers, or other public areas. This could be something you work towards as a neighborhood, discussing your specific needs or wants and then deciding how to meet those through a public center or plaza. This idea makes neighborhood communities more diverse and adaptable, and also increases convenience and functionality.  Imagine if the nearest doctor or grocery store was a 5 minute walk away instead of a 20 minute drive!

Remember our recent blog about three why’s behind green building — Heath, Functionality, & Longevity. As tailoring is a sustainable idea, these reasons apply to it as well! So start brainstorming and thinking about ways to tailor your home into a happier, more comfortable, and lovable place.

Yesterday’s blog highlighted the importance of tailoring our homes to our needs. Part of this involves focusing on the quality not quantity of space for all aspects of a home, including its site and its community. Sarah Susanka, an architect and writer, exemplifies this in her most recent Not So Big Showhouse. Here are some of her thoughts about working on this project–

“With all the challenges in the housing market, it’s clear we need a new vision for the way we design our homes, our communities—and even our lives. This is the first time I’ve designed a showhouse that’s located within an existing small town and in a new walkable community that’s just off the town’s main street. In many ways this combination reflects the heart of what Not So Big is all about . . . The [Showhouse demonstrates] how Not So Big can apply to every level of design—from the smallest detail inside the house, to the street, neighborhood and community as a whole. When all these ingredients are mixed together, the experience is truly more than the sum of its parts.”

I think that we can learn from this idea in College Station and Bryan by continuing to focus on quality over quantity and by fully utilizing spaces in our homes and out communities. This will require some creative thinking and in some situations a willingness to change, but will result in homes, neighborhoods, and cities that suit our needs and improve our lives.

We’ll continue tomorrow with some ideas about how our homes and communities can be tailored. We encourage you to share thoughts with us as well!

When designing a custom home or an addition, bigger isn’t always better. This is also true for home remodeling that involves reconfiguring spaces. When your home is tailored to your needs, it can be space conscientious, functional, and comfortable.

Big spaces are useful for large gatherings, but when used for one or two people they aren’t comfortable. If you entertain very often, more adaptable spaces could facilitate your need to fit a large number of people into a space while still making it functional and usable after they leave. This could be accomplished through movable partitions, the insightful arrangement of the kitchen-eating-living areas, or by incorporating an outdoor area that could used as added living space. Even with large gatherings, people tend to clump into smaller groups for conversation purposes. More intimate, smaller spaces suit this need and don’t leave people feeling like they’re in a cold art gallery instead of your home.

We live in a very informal society with the kitchen and family room making the heart of our homes. This means formal dining and formal living rooms are pretty much obsolete. Eliminating these rooms is one way to reduce your square footage. As you think about your needs, try to identify your priorities.

What rooms or spaces do you use most?

What could be made smaller or adapted for better functionality?

Think about the places you most enjoy–

What characteristics draw you to them? Is it the ceiling height? The type of lighting? Or maybe the windows and walls that define the space? What details make it feel homey?

These are all important consideration that will shape rooms that are meaningful and useful to you, while being intimate and space efficient.

Rethinking the size of your home to better create functionality is a sustainable, green building practice. It conserves materials and reduces the impact on your home’s site. It also reduces the waste of space inside your home which impacts your energy use from lighting and HVAC needs.

Your home is a reflection of you and your lifestyle, and with careful planning and design it can fit your needs like a glove, not a floppy mitten.

A light shelf is a horizontal shelf-like light reflector, which can be mounted inside or outside of a window. It helps reflect daylight into areas that are farther away from a window, and also helps to make this daylight less direct and more diffuse. Although mostly used for commercial buildings, light shelves could potentially be suitable for homes, especially for large spaces like family rooms.

Light shelves are placed at least seven feet above the ground. This is to prevent having light reflected right into your eyes, and to make sure you don’t bump your head. Light shelves can be used with regular windows, but are also useful below skylights and clerestories. By diffusing the light they reflect, light shelves help to reduce glare. Although the shelves are normally a metal material like aluminum, the rougher and less mirror-like the surface of the shelf, the more diffuse and pleasant the light becomes. Experimentation with other light shelf material has included frosted glass, which helps bounce the light while allowing some light through it.

If made from metal, light shelves are thermal conductors, and could possibly aid in transferring heat and cold through windows into your home. This is a problem for our climate where most of the year’s weather is extremely hot. But with more experimentation and innovative thinking, light shelves may become a great feature for bringing in daylight into your home.

Another way to bring more natural light into a space is through skylights located in the roof of your home. If you have rooms with vaulted ceilings or no attic space, you can have skylights that light the rooms directly from the roof. If this is not the case, you can also have part of your ceiling recessed to allow for these skylights. When this recess is painted white or a light color, it aids the skylight by helping to reflect daylight into your space.

Skylights can be fixed or operable — they are normally only operable if they are within reach. Operable skylights can remove heat that rises towards the ceiling when other lower windows are opened for breezes, passively cooling your home.

Solar tubes or light tubes are an interesting developing version of a skylight. These are comprised of a glass dome that collects light and a rigid or flexible tube that reflects the light. Tubes are best for spaces with no direct roof access, as they are designed to fit through your attic. Solar tubes end up looking like large pocket lights in your ceiling, but instead of being electrically powered, they are sunlight powered. However, solar tubes are uninsulated and their metal tube is a thermal conductor of  hot or cold, potentially affecting the comfort and heating/cooling loads of interior spaces. As a result, the product needs a little more development before being an efficient day-lighting option!

Because skylights are directly inserted into the roof plane, there is a danger of leakage. Depending on placement they are also more likely than regular windows to receive direct sunlight (and thus heat gain). Skylights that are made with efficient material methods like double pane glass and low-e coatings can help combat this negative effect, but it is best if possible to restrict them to North facing areas. Remember that adding skylights to your existing home requires making holes in your roof. This can be a tricky process, but when done correctly and carefully can result in spaces with more beautiful daylight that you can enjoy.