|
Popular
websites and magazines offer a great variety of construction drawings for country homes. Remember that those
drawings are usually made to conform with national standards and
average climate conditions. They
may not be just right for your site. You might have to have them
adapted for your climate and for special requirements
of your state and local building codes and zoning laws.
In
all cases, you’ll need to have the house sited on your
property and a site plan prepared with proper provisions for
setbacks, utilities, septic system, drainage, drives and entrances,
landscaping and views. It’s always a good idea to consult with
a local construction engineer or architect and your building
department’s engineers before ordering plans.
If you can’t
find a mail-order plan that’s just right, if you find that you’re
selecting a house that’s larger than you need, if your
property is steeply sloped, if you have dramatic views that you
want to take advantage of or if you have special space or site
requirements (a darkroom, a pool, a greenhouse or access for
someone in a wheelchair, for example), you should consider
having a custom home designed. Plan on spending somewhere around
10% of the construction cost for the design fees, allow a few
months design time before building and follow some of the
advice, below, on how and why to select an architect.
It is an error to
suppose that the architect’s aid is needed only by those who
erect large and expensive houses. The man who in building is
compelled to a close economy has, perhaps, even greater occasion
for the best professional advice. The architect who is called to
plan such a house, and who would make it suitable and
satisfactory, must perform a very important duty before he
begins to make a drawing. He certainly cannot adapt his plan to
the requirements of his employer, until he has ascertained what
those requirements are. But so vague, often are the notions of
men, that this is no easy matter. They need help to understand
and define their own ideas and wishes. In such cases, the
architect must explain, and question, and suggest, until his
client, as well as himself, shall have a definite notion in
regard to the size, accommodation, style, and cost of the
proposed erection, and of those paramount considerations to
which every thing else must conform. In this matter of advising,
an honorable architect will feel his moral responsibility;
consulting not so much his own fancy, as the character and true
interest of those who are to occupy the dwelling. It will be his
aim so to adapt the house to the habits, needs, and
circumstances of the family; so to arrange the whole in respect
of economy, consistency, and architectural propriety, that the
result shall be not only pleasing at first, but from year to
year more and more satisfactory.
Henry W.
Cleaveland, Village & Farm Cottages, 1856
There is,
however, a growing taste among our people for amateur
architecture which should be encouraged, and many beautiful and
well-arranged plans. The pleasure experienced in building a
house of one’s own planning may more than counterbalance any
saving in material or labor that might result from a plan made
by a skilled architect.
Samuel T.
Maynard, Landscape Gardening, 1899
To
the selection of a proper architect must be devoted all the
experience of a lifetime of observation of men and works. That
large class of humble strivers after the right which, for
convenience, is broadly designated as the laity, feel their own
dependence and inferiority before the professional man, and
stand a little in awe of his knowledge, as well as of that
adjustable code known as professional etiquette. Throw away such
thoughts and regard him not as a superior, to be delicately
handled, but as a man whose duty and pleasure it is to serve
you.
It
is safe to assume that a woman who has kept house intelligently
for ten years knows more than any architect about the best
practical arrangement of rooms for her family. On that point she
should not be too self-effacing.
The
House & Home, 1897
|
