15 January 2012

Pinspiration: Home Basics

I have found a site that replaces Facebook in useless creative time consumption.

I've mentioned Pintrest before and my home design posts would be a loss without this fabulous discovery.  For those of you that have not joined the Pintrest craze, Pintrest is a virtual pin board that lets you save ideas in one easy to navigate location.  It's the clean, clutter free, organized, categorized rendition of cutting pictures from magazines and pinning them to a cork board.  Awesome for Type A personalities like myself.  See a living room you love on HGTV.com, Pin it.  See a cake recipe that would be perfect for your son'a birthday party in a few months, Pin it.  See a way to make a DIY version of the wreath you saw at Pottery Barn,  Pin it.  It saves a picture from the site and links you directly to the page where you found the amazing idea.  You can even follow friends ideas to enhance your creativity.  Pin it and refer back to it.

I have boards from Living Room to Bathrooms, Recipes to Kiddo.  I even got my husband on the bandwagon as he frequently finds items to Pin to my account.  It has made our anal-retentive power point presentation a cinch to organize and a way to share and criticize discuss ideas with one another.

Our trip to the design center in just over a week will consist of picking out the flooring, tiles, cabinetry, ect. Here are some examples we're using to show so that we can help narrow down our ideas and decide what we can do with what they have to offer.  Makes an otherwise overwhelming situation so simple!

Floors and Paint:
Still deciding on carpet for master and upstairs as well as tile for entry, kitchen, bathrooms, and utility
Floors from Lyptus.com, Color Pallet from Sherwin Williams, Bathroom with color example from HGTV.com

Kitchen

Clockswise from Upper Left: Kitchen with Vent Hood from HGTV.com, Kichen Layout by Beau Ellenbecker, Tile Selction from HGTV Green Home, Granite color idea from Google Images

Fun Accents

Stairwell concept from, you guessed it, HGTV Green Home.  Rock Wall Fireplace with Floating Mantel, houzz.com



Master Bath

Clockwise from Upper Left: HGTV Green Home Bathroom, Plush Hemisphere, HGTV Contemporary Bath, HGTV Remodels


Additional Bathrooms

Bathrooms Houzz.com


12 January 2012

Modern Nature vs Modern Texopean

Regardless of which part of the country you reside in, you usually have a preference for a particular style of home even if you would never see it in your town let alone your neighborhood.  A red brick colonial adorned with forest green shutters, a cozy cape cod retreat overlooking a quiet New England sea side, or minimalist Frank Lloyd Wright naturally tucked into its surroundings.  Reality sets in with home associations, materials available, architecture preference amongst other set backs.

I'm not "against" Texas architecture but I can tell you that the rustic stone and brick with messy mortar combo never made my top 10 list of dream homes.  However, while we get to pick our stone color and brick combination, we don't have too much control to alter the face of the home.  The homes aren't cookie cutter by any means and do have a variance of architecture with the three builders in the neighborhood but a stark modern with smooth concrete and large open windows wouldn't really flow even if we did have the luxury of building it.  Thus the challenge has been, how do we make our home unique, reflecting our style, but not stick out like a sore thumb?

Well, we came up with two completely different ideas that we will present to the architect and see what our options are.

Idea 1: Modern Nature
I shared with your before that I am convinced that the 2011 HGTV Green Home was made with me and my husband in mind.  Since I didn't win that home and am not moving to Stapleton, CO anytime soon, I'm using this an an influence for design ideas inside and out.


What I love about this home is how it is subtly modern.  Its warm and welcoming and is re-imagined from the Frank Lloyd Wright Prairie Style Home.  It uses natural materials that meld nicely into its environment.

This uses a black brick with dark grey mortar, Sherwin Williams "Warm Stone" siding, and a smooth cream stone.  Windows are outlined in the matching tan siding as well.  The design is simple and not too out there.

Of course, we can't change the shape of our home and not sure if an overhang will fit in with the home association codes.  While I love the black brick choice, it wouldn't be an energy efficient option in the Texas summers and it wouldn't be an eco friendly option as that color choice is not offered in the area.

So, we found this as another alternative to the Modern Nature Appeal




Again, warm color and a simple facade.  We still have the squared off roof line in this example but I thought this idea might be easier imagined than the HGTV one.  We would need to find a brick that matches the smooth concrete option and outline the windows and doors with a darker color.  Yes, it's a stretch but I can't break away from this look.

Idea 2: Modern Texopean


While walking the streets of Paris with Beau in October, I couldn't help but admire the beautiful architecture.  The wrought iron balconies, coining on the sides, outlined windows in thick scalloped cement, and bright colored doors welcoming it's visitors.  This is where we really set off on our brain storming.  We considered a Mediterranean style before but not this elegant Parisian look.  Is there away to incorporate a European essence into our Texas home but still have my modern appeal to it?  On our last day we were touring the Montmartre District and came across this building


A modernized version of European architecture at it's finest.  The coloring was perfect as well.  Still wouldn't fit into our neighborhood so we were trying to figure out a way to Texanize it.

Once we got home, I found this picture in a real estate guide utilizing the architecture idea with a Texas spin,  Instead of smooth concrete coining, it uses rough stone.  Of course this is too traditional for my taste (the pool would be nice,).


Using the site from another builder we were thinking of going with, Meritage Homes, I found this example using the window balcony and the white stone lining the bottom of the home and adding an accent pillar in the middle column.



Using these three examples, my husband coined the phrase Modern Texopean and rendered the house plan exterior to look like this.



 In black is the where the white stone would be.  The bright blue would be a smooth concrete surround, and the door in a cobalt blue because how awesome would it be to have a bright blue door.  We did have a rough stone coining along the sides in our first sketch but we both were drawn to the middle pillar adorned in stone instead.

We plan on using a white stone and a grey brick with a dark trim.  Using Acme Brick's website we found this idea that we'll share with the architect.  Bonus is the brick choice is made in the area so adding to our Greenish concept.



Both very different ideas that would be amazing come home to, but then again, even if we don't have much control over the exterior, the interior is where we can get fun.  More on that to come.  

10 January 2012

Dream House Countdown

Have you ever been so excited about something that it was difficult to focus on anything else.  Since August, my husband and I have been trying to take years of brainstorming, idea sharing, and plain old day dreaming and narrow it down into a concise Power Point Presentation so that we can begin building our dream home.

The last time I wrote about this in Going Green...ish we were about to head to Texas and pick out a lot to build on.  Well, what we thought we be as simple as putting down a non refundable deposit to secure until we could start construction in February, it turned out to be a whirlwind, anxiety ridden, head ache of a situation.  Here is a simple synopsis of a not so simple situation. 

We already had a home design picked out through Drees Homes called the Jacobson.  We found a lot that we loved that happened to be on a small lake (morning cup of coffee with a view anyone?).  Lake lot had a premium making the combination of the lot and home more than we budgeted for (still affordable but more than we wanted to spend).  We decided to put in an offer anyway and bid low.  During the negotiation process, our Market Manager discovered that the floor plan we wanted to build was no longer available unbeknownst to him.  We could still build on that lot but with a different floor plan (I was learning all of this while Beau was touring a clinic and unreachable, major stress factor).  Got a call 10 minutes later and learned that they will make an exception, build the Jacobson on that lot but it would be at a non negotiable price which was lower than the full price but still higher than we wanted to spend.  Because we were leaving the country the following day (that a normal situation, right), we needed to make the decision relatively soon, like in the next few hours.  Fast forward through a quick reevaluation of our options, looking at another builder, ruining my nieces cupcakes, and experiencing full fledged anxiety, we ended up negotiating on the non negotiable price because what did we have to lose.  They agreed on our price if we added a 90 day Contingency agreement that essentially said if anyone wanted to buy our lot (even with the sold sign on it) we would get our deposit back and be back to square one.  

Yes, that was the simplified version.  Because of the 90 day contingency agreement, I was superstitious to write about designing the house until we were certain what house it would be.  Then the holidays rolled around and my SimplyE3Design took a little vacation.  Regardless, I'm excited to get back to blogging and share with you the process.

In two weeks we will be heading back to good ol' Roanoke to meet at the design center to pick out the brick and stone, cabinetry, floors, tiles, as well as our few modifications.  I thought I would spend the time leading up sharing with you some of our ideas.   Thank you Pinterest for hours spent searching your site for the perfect examples.  I would also love feedback for a few of the rooms but we'll get to that later.  

For now, here is our "clean slate" home elevation and floor plan.  Can't you just see the potential?!

Jacobson By Drees Homes

Elevation A

1st Floor

2nd Floor