sketch your house in SketchUp!

SketchUp is a badass 3D modeling program initially developed by @last software, later bought and now maintained by Google. It’s badass because it’s (a) badass and (b) free. That’s right, FREE! And while free is oftentimes cheesy, especially in 3D modeling, this program is pretty sophisticated and, based on my review of various architectural blogs, it’s used quite a bit in the industry (there is a pay-for-pro version). The other badass aspects of SketchUp are that (c) it has a realtively short learning curve and (d) it’s available for both Windows and Mac platforms. Furthermore, 3D models of furniture, cars, people, and other stuff are crowdsourced, so there’s a lot of stuff out there already put together and ready to plop into designs.

I learned and used SketchUp when we were considering a lot in northwest Austin, a lot we called the “Cliff Lot”. The Cliff Lot had a great deal of topography, was fully tree’d, and was bounded on three sides by drainage. A jump off the edge of the lot combined with one to two days of exposure (depending on when the coyotes arrived) would fulfill your suicidal ambitions.

We were (probably) one counter offer from being under contract when the neighbor took a small bulldozer to the lot to cut a path through trees, into the hill side, and across a city-recognized drainage to get to his back yard (he was hauling a bunch of limestone block back there for a major landscaping project). The lot-owner was unusually (suspiciously?) calm when all this was revealed and tried to convince us that the unsilt-screened landmoving and tree removal shouldn’t be a problem for us or the city. When we said that was fine but we wanted to have the city come out to verify that there weren’t any code violations we would be inheriting, the owner said no, so bye-bye lot. Soon after I discovered SketchUp and thought “What the heck: I’ll design a house for that lot!”

Part of the purpose for doing this was to (1) learn SketchUp, (2) get an understanding of how much space we might need in a new home, and (3) get a more detailed appreciation for what it is that architects do. And I have to say, it was a hoot!

The first thing I did after I got serious was figure out the floorplan. Because of the topography (the lot falls off from the street) I knew the garage “had to be” off street level. After that, it was waterfalling the house down the grade of the lot. The middle part of the house, grade-wise, contains the public areas (kitchen-dining-living-0.5 bath); the upper part holds two bedrooms and an open office-library; and the bottom holds the master suite. I’ve also included an image of an earlier version that I put together without the benefit of a floorplan. I put that “gangplank” in there, suspended in air, to be able to literally walk out into the trees (10 to 20 feet up into the air). Saw later that Wright did something similar at Taliesan East (and here I thought I was being creative…).

I have to confess that I haven’t use the software since, in large part to let the expert do what the expert is supposed to do (The Architect had free reign on the floorplan and massing as dictated by the program on the current lot). Nonetheless, having danced with design on a lot we weren’t going to build on helped me understand and appreciate the symphony an architect has to direct to get all the pieces to effortlessly work together. I am, by no means, suggesting I succeeded in directing that symphony with this effort; if anything, my effort is a cacophony of kazoos! But it felt good to wave the wands and create something out of thin air…

options options

This post may be belated, or it may not. A build-blog pal noted the “hoping” in the “We are hoping to build a house in Allandale” I carefully blurted to another pal the other day. Although we are marching down a certain path at the moment, there are off ramps at every turn. So here’s a listing of where our options are at this point:

1. Design our own house and build it. I’ve had several friends (and a builder) say: Design your own house and build it! Although this is, indeed, tempting, I (fortunately) recognize my limitations. I did take a stab at designing a house for another lot we were looking at, but it wasn’t serious. I did it to learn SketchUp and get an understanding of how much space is needed for different rooms (I need to blog about this sometime…). And I realized that what I had put together was unrealistic (The Architect said it was “an unusual house”, and not in a good way). Furthermore, appreciating the art of architecture, I know that we need a real architect to make the magic happen.

2. Find a pre-designed house and build it. As it turns out, there are several places that have house plans for modern houses (for example, here, here, and here [but not here]). However, given the orientation of our lot and concern about thermal gain from south and west facing windows, we’re not really excited about taking this path. I’ve looked at the sites and not found a house that does it for us. Furthermore, it’s difficult to know what it might cost to build the houses on these sites. And if we need modifications, we still need to find an architect.

3. Go pre-fab. An offshoot of finding a pre-designed home and building it is going modular, such as here, here, and here. However, modern prefab often goes for $200 a square foot. If you’re paying that much, you might as well hire an architect and build a custom home. ma modular, an offshoot of Austin’s KRDB, produces modern mods in the $150 a square range. So this is a possibility…

4. Sell the lot and buy downtown. We’ve really been enjoying living downtown in our mid-rise apartment. The industrial, cold modern vibe, the city views, the walkability to restaurants, music, and various happenings: it’s a rather awesome way to live. The primary issues about living downtown are (a) cost [price per square to live down here seems to start at $500), (b) it’s a pain in the patootie to bar-b-que (no bbq’ing on the balcony, and the community cues are nasty…), and (c) no place for or to work on the Isettas (my little cars). We initially worried about not having a garden, but we’re over it (I think…).

5. Sell the lot and buy an existing home. A possibility. In fact, if we were cashed out now, I would be real tempted to buy M.J. Neal’s Ramp House in south Austin, which was recently (still?) on the market. Years ago, when we considered building modern, an architect friend suggested buying instead of building (he’s turning out to be a wise man…).

6. Sell the lot and move to Iceland. Don’t laugh: we’ve actually talked about it! We both love Iceland, and I have a semi-delusional, long-term, post-retirement plan of trying to be the ambassador to that frigid little island (nobody wants to be the ambassador to Iceland, so it might actually be possible...).

7. One word: doublewide. I’ve got the junk cars and a tattooed ole lady who wants chickens, so I could just go back to my roots and make it official! And at $30 a square, it’s affordable (to us)! Downside: I would have to learn to like Bud Lite. That, my friends, may be a dealbreaker…

panhandling for modern

A friend recently noted, after I was blathering and lathering on and on about affordable modern, that affordable modern or, more accurately, any kind of custom construction, is not really affordable, at least to the “masses”, however you define masses (am I blathering again?). It’s a good point. The long and short of it is that any kind of custom construction is expensive relative to conventional (read suburban) construction. “Affordable” is a relative term depending on how much dough you keep in the oven. Surveys have shown, perception wise, that the guy (or gal [or hermaphrodite]) that is rich is the guy (or gal [or hermaphrodite]) that has more money than you. It’s that simple.

Suburban tract-home type construction can easily come in under 100 bucks a square (how the cool kids refer to “square foot”). Our first architect convinced us that the going rate for affordable modern was 125 a square (a price a former boss responded to with “You’re getting ripped off!”) This was based on the build cost of a spec house the architect designed. However, I’m convinced he forgot about the builder’s fee (add 20 percent…), which in a spec house if the difference between the build cost and what the home sells for. Including the builder’s fee for a non-spec home (20 percent) brings the price up to $150 a square. One of the architects I interviewed, noting the general expectations of a modern homebuyer in terms of indoor and outdoor finishes, placed the floor for modern at $175. He also noted that the average price per square on the AIA homes tour is probably about $350 with none below $300. Gulp (although we’ve known all along that we couldn’t possibly afford AIA home tour modern).

On an unrelated (but related) note, somewhat disturbing is what insurance companies will typically insure your home for. As I recall, back in our home-owning days, the default compensation was something like $80 a square. Try and get a custom home built for $80 a square, especially if your home was something special. Back in the old hood, one of the stately homes burned down some 10 years ago, and the homeowners realized that the insurance would only pay half of what it would take to build the home back. That lot still sits empty as a result...

So instead of yammering on and on about affordable modern, I’ll try to be more specific and accurate and state in the future that we are seeking modern that WE can afford.

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(photo by mwah!)

my Schindler list

As promised in my review of Schindler by David Gebhard, here's a visual list of Rudolph Schindler's homes/projects that resonate with me.

1921-1922, Schindler Chace House

1925, Howe House:

1922-1926, Lovell Beach House: (love the old car and trike in there for date perspective; and is that a Tuff Shed over there on the left!!!)

1930, Braxton House (unbuilt):

1933, Locke House (unbuilt):

1933, Oliver House:

1934, Leimert Park House:

1944, Church: