Designing and Building Your Own Home Archives - Page 7 of 28

29 06, 2019

Inquiries like this keep flowing in faster and faster

Noah Bradley2019-06-29T10:25:58+00:00

Here’s a cabin that I built years ago.

And below, is one of two messages that I received just this morning, both of which asked similar questions. (I’ve edited it a bit for privacy sake, but I thought everyone might benefit from my response)…

Dear sir, I am in Central xxxxxxx. After doing some research I have not been able to find any builders of the style cabins you are recommending. Most, if not all of the ones I have found here are building kit homes. I am seriously interested in the style cabin that you advocate. Are there any source materials you would recommend to help me in that direction? Do you know of any builders in my area you would recommend? Lastly, I would be interested in possibly purchasing one of your floor-plans. If I have missed obvious answers to these questions on the website, then forgive me. I thank you in advance for any of your time and correspondence back that I receive.

Handmade Houses with Noah Bradley

Dec 17th, 2:37pm

Thank you for getting in touch. Congratulations on making the decision to move forward on building an authentic log cabin. You are going to love your new/old log home!

I’m afraid that I don’t know of any builders in your area that I can recommend… in fact I’m sorry to say that I don’t know of any other builders anywhere that I can recommend… It’s not that there aren’t any… I’ve seen cabins built by others that I felt were done well and that were attractive… but, I have no names to go with the finished homes. I’ve searched online for handcraft builders… in fact my main focus a year ago when I started posting online was to put together a community of builders who created handmade houses, but is seems that they are either all gone, or are keeping themselves well hidden.

Be aware that you are not alone in your situation. I get several similar emails per week from all over the country. The membership list is steadily growing on my website and here on Facebook the community has grown to 50,000 in only a year’s time. Clearly there is hunger by many to have special handcrafted place of their own.

So, here are my recommendations for you that I feel will help you achieve the cabin of your dreams… Continue following along here on Facebook and consider visiting my website handmadehouses and go through as many postings that I’ve made there as you can (over a 1,000 to sort through)

On that site you will learn a little something with each photo commentary while you begin the process of narrowing down exactly what you want in your own cabin. Make sure and sign up at handmadehouses.com in order to get any updates that I might send out. I’m not a spammy kind of guy, so no worries about getting a bunch of junk in your email box.

I am in the process of scanning my favorite dozen or so sets of plans that I have drawn and built over my career, and will be offering them for sale at a very reasonable price in the near future. All were hand drawn by me, were approved for permitting, and have been built, lived-in and cherished. Your particular building department might like more details on these plans, and if so, that should be easy and inexpensive for you or a local architect to amend.

I would also encourage you to consider being your own builder. It’s easier than you think, you will save a good bit of money (how much depends upon the amount of hands-on work that you do), and to top it off, you’ll have a great time doing it. I built my first two houses in my early 20’s with no experience and I did a great job. After completing those projects I decided to make building handmade homes my career. I’ve now spent several decades perfecting the craft and have kept what I learned as a trade secret. But I’ve now reached that point that it’s time to share what I know and I’ve been doing a lot of just that here on Facebook and on my website.

I’m also finishing up an online course that will encourage and guide attendees step-by-step through the process of building a truly handcrafted home. The course is called the Handmade House Academy and it will start sometime in January… you really ought to sign on when it becomes available (more details to be released soon)

And finally, once you get your land, you figure out exactly what you want to build, you’ve taken the Handmade House Academy course, and have taken care of starting the process of building (permitting, foundation work, a floor system in place) I’d be happy to help you find a great old cabin and a crew to set the logs in place… from there it’s just one step at a time… carpentry, roofing, plumbing… etc

If you’d like to know more don’t hesitate to shoot me an email at noah@handmadehouses.com

Originally posted 2015-12-17 19:52:38.

Inquiries like this keep flowing in faster and fasterNoah Bradley2019-06-29T10:25:58+00:00

29 06, 2019

Small and tall

Noah Bradley2019-06-29T10:25:51+00:00

Small and Tall.

“Nine over Nine” windows… each nearly as large as the front door.

This little house appears to have ten foot ceilings, a steep pitched roof, and a proud chimney.

Sweet huh?

Originally posted 2015-12-14 18:31:49.

Small and tallNoah Bradley2019-06-29T10:25:51+00:00

29 06, 2019

Do you have a favorite window?

Noah Bradley2019-06-29T10:25:48+00:00

Imagine if you were challenged to come up with the best window that you could imagine… what would it be like?

And then, when the comes time to build your next home… make sure that dream comes true!

Originally posted 2015-12-13 22:38:38.

Do you have a favorite window?Noah Bradley2019-06-29T10:25:48+00:00

29 06, 2019

A log and stone home

Noah Bradley2019-06-29T10:25:47+00:00

Log and stone.

What a great home!

If I may be so bold as to suggest a “if I had built this” comment…

I just can’t help myself…

It’s the way I am… lol…

It’s challenging to find a more attractive house than the ones that feature the combination of log and stone.

I would have made one little adjustment on this home that I feel would have made it much more appealing… I would have built the stone addition a different size than the log section, rather than having it as a continuation of the existing log structure.

Here I would have made the stone section one-and-a-half story tall and I would have recessed it a foot or two back from the front of the log section. This subtle change would have made each section “pop” and celebrated each section’s uniqueness.

And, of course, (while I’m making changes), I’d have added a welcoming porch across the front of the cabin.

Originally posted 2015-12-13 17:57:58.

A log and stone homeNoah Bradley2019-06-29T10:25:47+00:00

29 06, 2019

The width of a porch

Noah Bradley2019-06-29T10:25:46+00:00

This attractive log home fascinates me.

One of the many design “rules” in building an attractive log home is to properly size the front porch of a cabin.

Through decades of observing old log homes, and in building traditionally designed new ones, I have observed that…

A six foot porch, which is common on many new homes built today, is unheard of and impractical on a country cabin because it is simply too small to be useful.

Whereas, an eight foot porch is ideal, being visually appealing and offering plenty of room for rocking chairs, porch swings, and guests to stand on.

A wide ten foot porch is rare and often too large, appearing somewhat awkward and overbearing on any cabin other than the very largest of ones (20 feet or wider). These oversized “ten-footers” do offer the benefit of abundant exterior space, enough that a picnic table or even sleeping cots can be set up, and thus an outdoor space can practically become an exterior room.

As useful as these wider porches are I have often encouraged people to stick with the traditional eight-foot porches.

But here on this cabin we have what appears to be a unheard of fourteen-foot porch!

I can think of no other cabin like it.

If someone had told me of such a thing without seeing this image I’d probably have chuckled at the idea of how odd it must look.

But I would have been wrong… this cabin looks great!

Perhaps, rules are meant to be broken.

And, that when one breaks the rules, they need to be bold about it!

Originally posted 2015-12-12 16:40:32.

The width of a porchNoah Bradley2019-06-29T10:25:46+00:00

29 06, 2019

Siting a home on a property

Noah Bradley2019-06-29T10:25:45+00:00

I believe that more than half of the parcels of land that I have built on over the years have been half wooded and half cleared… these are easy properties to pick the house site as a cabin looks best when it is nestled close to the tree line where field and woods meet, much like you see here in this image.

Here we have “His” and “Hers” cabins.

But, which is which? 🙂

Originally posted 2015-12-12 15:17:06.

Siting a home on a propertyNoah Bradley2019-06-29T10:25:45+00:00

29 06, 2019

Two houses, two extremes

Noah Bradley2019-06-29T10:25:39+00:00

Today I’d like to focus on the second floor windows of these two homes.

Actually, the windows themselves are fine, but there is a problem with the second floor profiles of these structures.. An oversight has been made that visually detracts from the potential charm that these two houses could have offered.

The first home, an old frame structure appears odd in it’s presentation, doesn’t it? This oddness comes from the second floor area. But exactly what is the problem? And how could it have been built differently?

The second home (a newer log cabin built using antique logs) appears to have a visually overpowering porch roof. And yet this roof is not inappropriately too large. So again, what’s the problem?

It turns out that both houses suffer from the same aesthetic design “issue”, each displaying opposite extremes of the same problem.

I have found that the front profiles of houses look best when there is about an eight inch space between the second floor windows and the roofs above and below… any wider of a space and the house looks odd, as if the windows are floating above the porch roof… and any less of a space and windows look “crunched” and the porch roof below becomes visually overpowering.

It’s a simple design consideration, it doesn’t cost any extra money to implement, but one that makes a big difference.

Originally posted 2015-12-10 13:52:49.

Two houses, two extremesNoah Bradley2019-06-29T10:25:39+00:00

29 06, 2019

Old vs. New

Noah Bradley2019-06-29T10:25:36+00:00

Can you guess which chimney is the newer one?

Houses, as the years have gone by, have grown more comfortable with the addition of modern plumbing, wiring, temperature controlled interiors, but the quality of design and materials has severely dropped off as illustrated in these two chimneys.

Originally posted 2015-12-10 12:30:11.

Old vs. NewNoah Bradley2019-06-29T10:25:36+00:00

29 06, 2019

The length of a porch

Noah Bradley2019-06-29T10:25:30+00:00

What a nice log cabin… (even though I didn’t build it)… lol

If I had to guess I would say this cabin is likely about 20 years old and was built using antique logs. The growth of the shrubs, the mix of early 1800’s strap hinges on the door with 20th century z-bracing on the window shutters, and a chimney without any crowning at the top, are all clues.

I’ve spent my career building cabins… I admire anyone that does the same… and I especially admire anyone that can build a cabin and leave no clues as to it’s age (almost impossible to do).

But here the one clue that cries the most to it’s age is the front porch roof… see how it extends beyond the log cabin where the two come together? I’ve never seen one like that on an old cabin… it draws the eye and once spotted distracts the viewer from fully appreciating what would have been a nearly perfect project. The builder/designer of this cabin was focusing on the porch floor, not the larger porch roof that would be built above it.

The solution to this problem would have been to build the porch floor system shorter than the length of the cabin, much like you see in how the back addition to this cabin was built. I generally build the front porch two feet shorter than the cabin (a foot or so shy of the each end).

Originally posted 2015-12-08 17:12:18.

The length of a porchNoah Bradley2019-06-29T10:25:30+00:00

29 06, 2019

A home should blend into the environment

Noah Bradley2019-06-29T10:25:27+00:00

I have yet to build a hobbit style home… I so hope to do so… one day.

But hoping won’t make it happen, I need to start planning towards it, so that is what I’m now doing.

Now, will my wife want to live in hobbit home?… likely not. But fortunately one of the keys to building a handmade house is the freedom to combine several types of construction formats… build a home that is part this, and part that… perhaps have a log cabin den, a post-and-beam kitchen and maybe a hobbit guest room?

Originally posted 2015-12-08 15:46:02.

A home should blend into the environmentNoah Bradley2019-06-29T10:25:27+00:00