It’s all in the timing. Just as politicians approach a state of apoplexy in their courtship of the middle classes, along comes a house that aims to be a veritable contract with America, writ in bricks and mortar.
Designed and constructed to impress the hordes of attendees to the annual convention of the National Association of Home Builders this weekend, this New American Home, as it’s called, may be the quintessential family place. It’s comfy (3,144 square feet) and it’s thoughtfully designed, with a heaping dose of practicality. But it’s nothing extraordinary.
That’s the idea.
The “just folks” orientation of this 12th annual New American Home might surprise those who saw last year’s effort in Las Vegas-a million-dollar marvel with just about every geegaw the builders could provide. If last year’s house was a Ferrari, this one is a Ford Taurus.
The sponsors, which include the National Council of the Housing Industry (an arm of the NAHB), Builder, Ladies Home Journal and Popular Science/Home Mechanix magazines, try to vary the offerings at each convention. This year, move-ups are “the most active market for the new-home buyer for the rest of this century,” according to Susan Bradford, senior editor at Builder magazine.
“(The New American Home) is a house for a mainstream American family,” Bradford said, explaining that the sponsors are trying to offer visiting builders ideas for selling move-ups in their own communities. The operative word here was “value,” which in this case meant trying to design in as many “thoughtful features” as possible within the budget.
This could have proved intimidating, considering that the house (four bedrooms plus convertible game room) was intended to sell for around $186,000 and to be targeted to what’s known in the industry as a “first move-up buyer.” When you’re trying to show off for visitors, it’s hard to put some abracadabra into a house when the budget only allows for abra.
But each New American Home also comes with a heap of benefactors-manufacturers who furnish their products for its construction in return for ample credit. In this case, the 11,000 of the convention’s 65,000 attendees who will tread through the home will see advantageous uses of such products as factory-finished urethane hardwood flooring, simulated slate on the patio, “engineered wood” (laminated veneer headers, beams, roof framing, etc.) and dozens of others.
But the broader impression they will take away probably could be described with such warm words as “comfort” and “family” and “tradition.” Among its features:
– An ample front porch encourages sitting and schmoozing with the neighbors.
– Living room space that has been downsized into that euphemism of the ’90s, the “study.” Even if a whole lot of studying doesn’t go on in that 165-square-foot room, its adjoining full bath makes it easily convertible to a bedroom for live-in grandma.
– A family room (about 18 by 16 feet) that has a custom home theater and built-in cabinetry.
– Not one but two built-in desks designed to accommodate computers.
– A patio in the back and “garden court” on the side, which make maximum use of the limited lot size (65 by 125 feet-not much larger than many lots in the City of Chicago).
The architects, the Memphis firm of Looney Ricks Kiss, prevailed in their desire to build in some of their signature features. For example, the ceilings are nine feet high upstairs and down, and many of the interior doors are eight feet high instead of the usual six feet, eight inches. Windows also are tall in order to extend the view. The stairway has moved from the front of the house to the back.
“We felt the `Tara’ stairway was a waste of money,” said J. Carson Looney, principal architect. “Since all the children’s rooms were upstairs (the master suite is on the ground floor), and the space and budget didn’t allow for two stairways, why bring the kids through the formal living areas to go upstairs?”
So the stairway touches down just outside the kitchen area, a room that the architect purposely did not join dead-on to the family room, despite others’ trendy tendencies to do just that.
“We have gotten some feedback that tells us that (families) say they’d like to communicate easily (by having that connection to the kitchen), but once they have had their dinner and the kitchen is all messed up, they don’t want to look at it,” Looney said.
Instead, food preparation goes on in an area that’s at a right angle to the family room. There’s a breakfast room with a bay woindow, but the kitchen also has a small, built-in four-seater table that overlooks a patio.
“That table is probably where kids would have breakfast, and maybe do their homework,” Looney said of the unofficial breakfast area.
Stashed behind the official breakfast room is a small space that causes its designer to beam. One might conclude that only an architect could get all smiley about a utility room, but look closer: The room does double duty. At one end sit the laundry equipment, sink, freezer, coat hooks, shoe storage and recycling bins. In an alcove across the way is a desk/computer station intended to become the catch-all that plagues every home: The painful piles of bills, tax forms, car-pool schedules and canceled checks now have a built-in place to go in minimal space (the niche measures six by eight feet), and they don’t clog the more public areas of the house.
“It’s where you can drop all that junk,” he explains, simply.
Locating master suites on the ground floor is no longer a novelty in home building, and Looney has followed suit. But this master suite is designed with a bit of conjugal courtesy in mind. “The door to the bath is not directly off the master bedroom,” Looney said, explaining that it is reached through a small vestible that is nonetheless private from the rest of the house. “One partner can be in bed, and the other can shower, etc., without disturbing the other,” he said. “It’s a small element, but why not make the house work for you?”
Whether the house as a whole “works” is a question that will be on the minds of the 11,000 convention-goers as they peer into every nook. It had at least one resounding “yes” before it was even finished-a family bought the house while the drywall was still going up. More significantly, to its collaborative team, is that they matched the home’s targeted “buyer profile” almost perfectly.
A demographer’s dream, this Houston-area 40-ish couple with two teen-age kids will move into the house in February. Dad works in computers and Mom is a homemaker. The family previously was leasing a home.
Their 13-year-old son claimed the built-in computer desk near his room on the second floor, and he plans to link it electronically with Dad’s computer downstairs. The couple’s 16-year-old daughter will move into the comfy “bonus room” upstairs. (Usually bonus rooms are left unfinished in order to shave dollars from the price, and buyers complete them. In this case, the room has been finished in order to show it off.)
“Obviously, they were real intelligent,” says Brian Binash, executive vice president for Emerald Homes, which built the house at the Greatwood Glen at Greatwood subdivision in Sugarland, Texas. Of course, every home builder will tell you his clients are intelligent, but it’s hard to argue with the dollars-and-cents aspect of this $186,000 sale. Binash said that if the house were to be built again, and under more ordinary circumstances, the price would be considerably higher.
When the New American Home was being planned by a committee scattered around the country, Emerald had to face the prospect of being left to sell it, possibly long after the convention’s last window manufacturer and townhouse builder had packed up and gone home.
So the desire for abracadabra met the realities of the Houston market. Houston subdivisions in certain price ranges typically feature detached garages at the backs of the houses, which is perceived as making the streetscapes more attractive. But this house’s small lot precluded that, so Looney set back the attached garage, making it less prominent.
Also, Houston’s infamous soil conditions ruled out its having a basement, so the house’s game room landed on the upper floor in a configuration that easily could become a fourth bedroom for another buyer or another market.
“Overall, we came out with something that is mainstream,” said Binash, who intends to build the house again, with variations. (Both Looney’s firm and Builder magazine are marketing the floor plans.) “Someone could build it in different parts of the country and it still could be at home there.”
