Austin Porch House - Plat House comes into its own

Siding panels are going up on the Austin Porch House project and the big news is the progress of the Plat House. Last we saw a bunch of sticks going up - in the new set of photos from the owner it is now most certainly a house.



Across their courtyard you can see the Plat House facing the Porch House. This has been one of the most innovative uses of our house plans to date. With the usual household program spread between the two structures the owners have created their own "village". The variety of spaces they will have available for family life will be very rich indeed. More photos after the jump link below.



Here you can see the interesting pattern of siding they have chosen. It appears to be a smooth faced cement board siding panel, but laid up in varying exposures. This is a treatment you might often see on a traditional cedar shingle siding and its really great to see this reinterpreted in a contemporary material like cement siding and used here.




Check out the Flickr set for this house where you can see all of the photos to date. And these photos are also part of theLamiDesign House Plan photo pool.

Technorati Tags: house plans, modern design, modern house, Plat House, Porch House

Austin Porch House - roof's on, Plat House framing up

A big update from our customer in Austin. The Porch House is moving right along and is all sheathed in and under roof. The adjacent Plat House which they are also building - yes its a Camp House compound - is well under way with the framing going vertical. The Owner has over a dozen new photos for us which you can see in a photo browser after the jump.



Some of the adaptations the Owner is making are obvious in these photos. You'll see an additional wall of windows on the side of the living room which greatly expands their view. And the roof slope which they have added to simplify collecting their rainwater is also easy to spot as well. You'll also see that the Owner has been welding up his own framing connectors for the Porch level posts and beams. This is an awesome hands on effort by the owner.

Follow the link below to continue reading and more photos.



Check out the Flickr set for this house where you can see all of the photos to date. And the photos are also part of theLamiDesign House Plan photo pool.

Technorati Tags: house plans, modern design, modern house, Plat House, Porch House

Austin Porch House - framing going gang-busters

When we last saw the Austin Porch House it was a formation of piers in a clearing. Today its framed up to the second floor walls and it already looks like a Porch House through and through. We have over a dozen photos from the owner of the work in progress, a few which we have posted below, and the rest on a slide show.



The owners have added some additional windows to take advantage of views on their site. A careful comparison with the design images will make these easier to see, or you can simply watch the results as the house comes together.



The owner has explained some of the changes to me in their email. They have made the bathroom slightly larger with space taken from the master bedroom. This will even out the size of the two bedrooms which for them is fine as their masterbedroom will be in the adjacent Plat House. They are connecting both bedrooms to the hall as well so that there will no longer be access to the one bedroom at the kitchen.



You can also see at the top of the wall the sloping top plate which will allow them to gather all the rainwater at one side of the house. They say the work on the Plat House will also begin very soon, and I'll have to come up with a new title for this project!

We have a new Flickr set for this house which you can see here. And the photos are also part of the LamiDesign House Plan photo pool. Here is a photo viewer for the latest project photos:

Technorati Tags: house plans, modern design, modern house, Porch House

Austin, Tx Porch House - a brand new customer build

We are very pleased to introduce a new customer build, this time the first customer to follow up and show us the construction of their 0367 Porch House.

I won't spend time reviewing the design of the Porch House here on the blog. If you are not familiar with the house I'd encourage you to click through and look at the design as you review the construction photos. The house was intended as a weekend or vacation house, although there is no reason it could not be used for a full time residence or modified in any other personal way. The most unique feature of the house is the ground level screened living area. This really lets you transform the house during fair weather allowing you to move your life into the living and sleeping porches.



The owners have a great site nestled among a stand of live oaks and cedars. They are building the Porch House right between several of the trees which I think really reinforces that connection between the inside and outside. In the photos we can see their footing piers in process. The long footings in the center lie below the stair which should give you some orientation to the floor plan.



The owners are going to be using some interesting green tech in the house. They are planning on a composting toilet, and a small septic system that will deal only with grey water from the sinks and kitchen. They are also going to be collecting rainwater, and they have plans to modify the roof slope to simplify the collection of the run off on one side of the house. We'll have to watch and see how that plays out.



Their long range plan is to add a 0242 Plat House to the site here and with a connection between them use both structures to house their growing family. This is a great plan and again is another great opportunity that the houses offer as they all share some common design themes.

So we would like to welcome them to the LamiDesign modern house plan family and thank them for sharing their project with us, and with you here on our blog. And its a good time to throw back thanks to materialicious who made a very appreciated appeal to see this very house built; and also to Land+Living who covered the Porch House in their blog several years ago, where it has continued to be one of the most commented entries on their site. Thanks for the support and I hope you all enjoy watching this as much as me.

Technorati Tags: house plans, modern design, modern house, Porch House

blogs are back up and running!

After a few weeks of downtime the LiveModern blog tools are back online!

We have been away from the blog for a few weeks so we have a number of loose ends to catch up on. We left off with the completion of the 0367 Porch House Construction Prints. It was completed in mid August and the status was set on our site to "Prints Available Now". The development of the 0380 Cube House will follow soon, and you will be able to track it here as before.

Technorati Tags: house plans, modern design, modern house, Porch House

Porch House Construction Prints detail view

3D details help make confusing connections simple and clear.

The Porch House Construction Prints will have a special structural sheet to document the ground floor timber frame. The frame is not complicated, but could be intimidating for a builder who has never done something like this before. These detail views are intended to clarify what might otherwise be confusing (and cause for a builder to inflate his price). The 0357 Steel Case House is the only other design that has required this so far.



This is a view of the same connection shown in my previous entry. A view like this can take the fear factor out of a detail.

Technorati Tags: house plans, modern design, modern house, Porch House

Porch House Construction Prints details

Working my way through some details.

When I detail for a stock plan one of my big priorities is making things straight forward to put together, using readily available products, and if something needs to me made special then making it a simple fabrication. So this week I have been working with a corner of the Porch House where everything comes together. At any corner of the house the porch perimeter beams sit on the foundation piers, the post comes down on top of them, and diagonal braces come in from two directions. Under other circumstances a steel connector would be designed which resolved all the connections, but with a stock plan destined to be built with varying budgets I have to try to detail to the lowest common denominator while still making a handsome connection.



What's going on here. The perimeter beams are anchored down to the pier using conventional anchor bolts. The beam is connecting to the post with an inverted post cap connector from Simpson - the same kind is being used up top of the post as well. This connector has two vertical legs on each side of the post bolted thru with two 3/4" bolts. We are going to overlay that plate with an angle trimmed to serve as an anchor for the cleavis of our diagonal brace. This allows us to used the same bolts to attach this additional hardware. To bring the other diagonal brace in at the corner we have to have another angle offset in height so the bolts can cross without interference. The diagonal ties must be offset to the inside of the posts to allow them to pass the horizontal frames. A similar detail will resolve all the connections at the top of the post, and hopefully it will all look easy, and be easy to put together.

Technorati Tags: house plans, modern design, modern house, Porch House

Porch House Construction Prints sections

This round of drawing development for the sections is done.

The section drawings do not carry as much notation as my other sheets. They still need reference marks which I will complete in my last round of notations. I am going to move on to the detailed wall sections now. These will take some time as there is a lot to show in this stage. I have some other details I will need to develop after those but I can see light at the end of the tunnel.



Its been an amazing week. I get worn down with this pace so the enthusiasm that reaches me keeps me fresh and motivated. At the beginning of this week late in the day I was looking on the web for some ariel photos for a project site when there was knock at the office door. Once in a blue moon the ups guy has a bad day and can come really late so I did not think much of it being 5:30. I open the door and there is a fellow there looking with much interest up and down the outdoor stairway. He introduces himself as one of the people whom I have corresponded with about the house plans, his wife actually. The are from Philadelphia and were driving by my town and said they just had to stop to take a look at our office and he figured he would just knock. Knock me out is what he did! He was very full of enthusiasm for the stock plan effort and I have to admit that it all just caught me completely off guard. I made sure I had them on the mail list and by the time my head cleared it was time for them to run. I don't meet you all out there in person often enough and experiencing the emotion of another person first hand is a charge - I mean here was somebody else right here in flesh and bone who gets it, just like me. And so later this week I get an email inquiry from somebody very interested in the 0380 Cube House and I reply, answer their questions as best I can, and we go back and forth a couple of times with emails. They are looking for a site and so I give them the down and dirty concern list for this design - height considerations as it is tall at 3 stories. I like to tell it like it is, not scare any one off but I want to enable people with good facts of what they may confront even though it can discourage some. Well they come back to me with obvious determination, and backed up with an order for Design Prints. Man - if they are willing to go out and really push for the kind of house they want, then I'm going to push like hell on my end too. The end of the week is coming up now, I get a call from Lauren, my wonderful ad rep from Dwell for my ads in the Marketplace section. She was talking to Bill, the guy who lays out the ad pages at Dwell - takes all my materials for the ad, corresponds with proofs, etc etc. Turns out the guy with the ad next to mine decided to pull out at the last minute, the issue was going to press in a matter of hours and Bill suggested to Lauren that they stretch my ad out to fill the vacant space, Lauren was calling to give me the good news. Hot diggity dog! I got a double-wide for the month. Thanks guys!

Technorati Tags: house plans, modern design, modern house, Porch House

Porch House Construction Prints elevations

This round of elevation drawing notations are done.

The drawing is not completely done as there are a good number of reference marks that still need to go down, but the bulk of the work is done on this sheet. Here is a greatly reduced shrinky-dink view of the whole sheet. I often wonder, people must want to see what the heck these drawings look like, but when you are selling House Plans you really can't just post them out there. But there is no harm in these reductions and gives you an idea of what the documents look like. The perimeter of the drawing area is indexed, much like a road map, to aid in locating referenced drawings.



The section drawing is next. When that is complete I will develop the detailed wall sections for the house which were blocked out earlier. I am getting more and more excited about completing this project every day. This has been one of my favorites and it will be nice to finally see it "have wings". Some strong inquiries on the 0380 Cube House today look like they will drive that one to completion as well.

Technorati Tags: house plans, modern design, modern house, Porch House

Porch House Construction Prints dimensions

Dimension lines go down on the plans.



There is a logic to the way the dimension graphics go down. Plan dimensions around the perimeter are in a hierarchy, outside to in. Overall dimensions, then major breaks in the massing, then openings in the exterior envelope, then interior partitions that intersect the exterior walls.

Technorati Tags: house plans, modern design, modern house, Porch House

Porch House Construction Prints sections drawn

Section drawings of the Porch House are complete.



Next the wall section drawings will be blocked out and the notations can begin following that.

Technorati Tags: house plans, modern design, modern house, Porch House

Porch House floor plans & elev's

Floor plans are developed and ready for notations and dimensions.

The elevations drawings are now being brought up to the same level. I'll show something of them soon.



And now the elevations are in a similar state.



on to the sections drawings

Technorati Tags: house plans, modern design, modern house, Porch House

Porch House Construction Prints blocked out

The basic drawings for the Porch House have been blocked out.

Plans, Elevations, and Section drawings for the house are laid out, or blocked out as I like to say. The next step will be to begin adding line-weight much as you saw with the Plat House previously. Rather than crops, here are overviews of the four drawing sheets underway.

Technorati Tags: house plans, modern design, modern house, Porch House

Porch House Construction Prints underway

The Construction Prints for the 0376 Porch House have begun.

As I promised, the Porch House is the next design to be completed. Several people have indicated that they are anxious for this house plan so I am going to try to complete it as fast as I can. Right now I am in the process of blocking out the remainder of the drawings - the foundation and roof plans are laid out, elevations too, and I am working on the building sections right now.

Technorati Tags: house plans, modern design, modern house, Porch House