Blog - Page 12 of 123 - Handmade Houses with Noah Bradley

Three wonderful features

This little home offers three features that are well worth your consideration when building your next home.
(ok make that four features… if you count the wonderful gardens right out your front door)
1) a parged, or stucco, exterior… attractive, cost effective, historically common, low maintenance, air tight, easy for the do-it-yourselfer, and adaptable to many forms of construction.
2) a small addition off of the main structure providing visual interest (in this case timber framed… but log, stone, or brick would work just as well)
3) the well designed open shed on the other end of the house to keep the firewood dry and provide shelter for those who enter on that side. (I bet there are openings in the home designed for easy pass through into the house of that wood, perhaps even to a stove in the lower level of the house).

Originally posted 2015-09-14 18:12:40.

Three wonderful featuresNoah Bradley2019-06-29T10:21:11+00:00

Camp kitchen

Here we have a backwoods kitchen so commonly found in hunting cabins or “camps”. The woodstove keeps the room plenty warm and there is just enough room on top to heat water for coffee and to have a pot of something cooking… stew if the hunt was successful, beans if not. And, there is enough countertop nearby to make a few sandwiches on… ahhh the good life! lol What more do you need in a kitchen?

Originally posted 2015-09-14 14:39:22.

Camp kitchenNoah Bradley2019-06-29T10:21:10+00:00

Flemish bond

Fall will be here soon.
Do you have your fireplace ready for the coming season?

The only thing that I would change would be the brick pattern in the fireplace… which is all running bond, a modern pattern that masons use on everything from brick ranchers to office buildings. A nice Flemish bond would have looked so much better, one where every few course every other brick would have presented an end profile.

Originally posted 2015-09-14 14:27:42.

Flemish bondNoah Bradley2019-06-29T10:21:09+00:00

Where have all the chimneys gone?

Whenever I take a tour of a house under construction, most of them being in the 500k to 1M dollar range, I ask the builder why there is no masonry chimney. The response if often that buyers in this price range… upper middle class… can’t afford one.
I guess this country is getting poorer.
(I build my first home for $20k and I managed to budget in a chimney on it, similar to what you see here in this photo, so I don’t buy the line that people can’t afford them).

Originally posted 2015-09-14 14:17:51.

Where have all the chimneys gone?Noah Bradley2019-06-29T10:21:08+00:00

So nice

She fits into the landscape so well.

Originally posted 2015-09-13 18:40:06.

So niceNoah Bradley2019-06-29T10:21:07+00:00

What am I not seeing?

Please help me out here…
Which cabin would you choose?
The vintage design?
Or the modern design?
(assuming that both cost the same… which they likely would, if matching finishing details are applied)
I must admit that I was recently stunned when a large log cabin facebook page posted a photo of this orange cabin and then thousands of people chose to “like it” or make comments about how wonderful they thought it was.
I was… confused… at the response.
What am I not seeing?

Originally posted 2015-09-13 15:54:38.

What am I not seeing?Noah Bradley2019-06-29T10:21:06+00:00

What happened to good design?

Why is it that every home in Colonial Williamsburg is so attractive, more than 200 years after they were designed, yet every home in the new subdivisions in my area are so ugly?

Originally posted 2015-09-13 15:12:37.

What happened to good design?Noah Bradley2019-06-29T10:21:05+00:00

Hewn timber frame

I find that timber-framed buildings that are made of hewn timbers (those shaped with an axe, rather than a saw) are much more attractive than their more modern sawn counterparts. The same holds true of log cabins.
They look… handmade.

Originally posted 2015-09-13 14:54:51.

Hewn timber frameNoah Bradley2019-06-29T10:21:04+00:00

The perfect oven

I do so love that stove!

Originally posted 2015-09-12 17:34:45.

The perfect ovenNoah Bradley2019-06-29T10:21:03+00:00

Please, hire the right people

Such a nice log cabin.
It’s a shame that they hired a talented carpenter with no skill in historic aesthetics. (a very common mistake).
The cabin, overall, is wonderful.
But, my eye is quickly drawn to the pressure treated lattice applied under the porch (it would be a quick fix to pull that out), but then I nearly fell out of my chair when my eye caught a glimpse of the replacement “chimney”.
What were they thinking?
It would have been better to haven no chimney than this wooden box.

Originally posted 2015-09-12 15:30:41.

Please, hire the right peopleNoah Bradley2019-06-29T10:21:02+00:00