Archive for the ‘floor plan’ Category
February 6th, 2010 | 
Author: People today are making home buying decisions with the help of the Internet. With most of home shopping done on the Web, sellers are vying to know what attracts them and how to sell their homes faster online.
If you are a home seller and want to sell your home faster, then you may want to include a floor plan in your marketing information. Home buyers are increasingly looking beyond the home pictures that buyers usually provide, and are keen on knowing more about the kind of home they are buying. This is because, unlike home photos that reveal only parts of a home, a floor plan gives the entire picture. There are several features that a floor plan reveals which a home buyer would like to ascertain before he decides on the house. A home buyer can check out if the home has the features he/she requires, whether it is split bedrooms, or a kitchen with a window, or its convenient location near the dining room.
So whether it is an apartment that goes on the market or a listing that is being placed online, home buyers need one important thing to decide – the home plan. According to one real estate agent, home buyers are so particular about seeing floor plans of the homes on the Internet that many request for the home plan to be faxed to them even at the initial stages of home buying process.
Home plans are popular requests from people who are downsizing too. These prospective home buyers would like to see how exactly their furniture would fit into a house with much smaller space.
By providing a home plan drawing to prospective home buyers, sellers can greatly reduce the time taken for deciding on the home. With the help of a home plan drawing, the home buyer can easily visualize the physical space of the home, especially with floor plans now being available in easy-to-understand three dimensional formats.
A floor plan goes in well with modern marketing tools and techniques. For instance, the Toll Brothers web site allows potential buyers to design their own homes by letting them experiment with the floor plan.
Imagine a prospective home buyer visiting 5 to 25 homes in a weekend. It can’t be said for sure that the person would remember each and every feature of the homes he had visited. For such a person, having a home plan in his/her hand would make it much easier to remember and help choose the home he wants. And home sellers who provide a home plan drawing to prospective home buyers have an edge over other home sellers.
Source: The New York Times
The notion of a Florida house floor plan brings to mind surf, sand and plenty of sunshine. Along with the sunshine are house plans designed with the warm, humid climate in mind. While you may see a multitude of architectural styles in florida, the most prevelant will be Mediterranean, Spanish and the European villa look of Italian Renaissance.
Though the styles may be multicutural and mostly Mediterranean in nature, the recurrent theme is a house plan designed to be comfortable and livable in the warm Florida climate. Stucco exteriors with clay tile roofs are common as are large living areas with plenty of open spaces. An open floor plan allows for air to circulate more freely throughout the home.
Design elements such as numerous arched doorways, cast stone columns and balustrades, mahogany trim and marble floors give the Florida house floor plan a definite feel of an Old World European villa that could have been constructed several hundred years ago. To further emphasize the Old World feel, particularly in the case of multi-story homes, arched windows, cathedral or domed ceilings and curved staircases with balcony overlooks are favorite additions.
The appearance of natural cut stone is another important element to consider when designing a Florida house floor plan. The cut stone look can be seen in Mediterranean, Spanish and Italian style homes and lends an elegant, upscale feel to the design. The look can be created with raised plaster work or cast stone.
Completely or partially shielding the main entry from view can be accomplished with a landscaped courtyard and archway. The courtyard serves a dual purpose in both adding privacy as well as affording attractive views from the homes front facing windows. This type of design element is both Spanish as well as Italian Renaissance in nature. The most important thing to remember when designing your Florida house floor plan is to execute all the various element details carefully and keep the Old World flavor in tact.
Found throughout the American South, the shotgun house floor plan has its roots in West Africa and the Caribbean. Fleeing the revolution in the 1800s, Hatians introduced the long, narrow houses to New Orleans and their popularity quickly spread to mill towns and cotten plantations all over the South.
The shotgun house floor plan may the the only African American house plan that exists. Although the name sounds as though it was dreamed up by the National Rifle Association, the shotgun house was so named because of the liner arrangement of its rooms. In theroy, you should be able to fire a bullet through the front door and it would go through the house and straight out the back door.
Long associated with poverty, the shotgun house floor plan is now becoming respectable and even chic in some cities older districts. Architects, artists and community groups are working hard to restore the old homes into designer homes as symbols of both black and local heritage and pride. The shotgun house floor plan is the latest cause in the fight to preserve and restore some inner city communities.
With their typical one room wide and 3 or 4 rooms deep design uninterrupted by hallways, shotgun house floor plans can be as simplistic as a child’s drawing while retaining the integrity than many other floor plans don’t possess. Raised on piers, shotgun house floor plans allow for air circulation both under the house and as a cross-ventilating breeze. This design is well suited for the Southern climate. Porches provide much needed shade from the sun and encourage interaction between neighbors.
Though in the past shotgun house floor plans have been equated with slum areas, community groups in Houston, Texas are working hard to rennovate the remaining shotguns houses in the inner city areas of the Fourth, Fifth & Sixth Ward. The largest concentration of shotgun house floor plans were in a historic section of the Fourth Ward between downtown Houston and River Oaks called “Freedman’s Town”. The first preservation ordinance was passed a mere five years ago to preserve the 30 remaining shotgun houses in the area. Most had already been torn down and replaced with larger homes.
Many people living in the area want to see the old shotgun houses refurbished though there is some dispute as to the true historic value of these old homes. The shotgun house floor plan is an important part of African American history and should be preserved as a symbol of pride and survival.
Nowdays the computer age is making software for a dazzling array of uses. One such genre is house floor plan software. With this type of program, you can quite literally be your own architect! Whether you’re a home hobbyist or a trained professional, anyone can now use software to do everything from create house floor plans to landscaping the back yard of your dreams. Home design software ideas can go from dreams to reality with the touch of a button.
Creating house floor plans from home design software can be accomplished in just a few easy steps. Most programs have a number of notable features.
1. Design, publish and print completed designs in 3D for yourself, family and customers.
2. Customize the home’s exterior by adding dormer windows, skylights, sun decks, balconies, terraces, and patios. Door styles and window types can also be customized.
3. Calculate and manage the cost of materials. This feature makes it easy to keep your house floor plan design withing you housing budget.
4. Lighting effects and shifting patterns of sunlight and moonlight can be created in order to see what effect the placement of windows will have on a room via 3D movies.
5. A built-in interior design program and furniture gallery can be used to create different themes before money is spent on interior decor.
6. Some software programs offer an optional landscape and garden program which allows the user to create a detailed design of yard desired right down to the flowers and ornaments. The landscape created can then be viewed through the change of seasons in order to create a colorful landscape year round. Most programs offer drag-and-drop capabilities that make designing your dream yard easy and fun.
Because most house floor plan design software runs on the local hard drive of your computer, you should keep the software system requirements in mind when making a selection. The system capabilities of your home computer should always meet or exceed the system requirements of the software you intend to purchase in order to properly execute the program. Knowing these facts will save time and frustration.
The ranch house floor plan is a shining example of the American Dream in its purest form. It was then, and remains today, the most widely built housing style ever seen in America. This house plan style had its heyday from 1949 to 1965 for several reasons.
Prevailing loan programs of the day made getting a home loan with no money down easier than it ever had been in previous years. Soldiers returning from World War II wanted to settle down and begin raising families. With the demand for homes at an all time high, the simple form and lack of detail made the ranch house floor plan much faster to build than a stately Tudor style home. Formal foyers and spiral staircases were discarded and replaced by level entries and single story plans.
The availability and increasing popularity of the automobile also defined the heyday of the ranch house floor plan. For the first time, the garage was moved to the front of the home. This was the first generation of home owners to have a highly prized freedom and mobility to work and shop in the city and then retreat to the suburbs to live. Because the suburbs removed the need to build houses close together, lots became increasingly larger and the square footage of the average house floor plan expanded accordingly. Ranch house floor plans generally accentuated the width of the lot.
The informal lifestyle of California became popular as early as the late 1940s and magazines began to promote casual living as the ideal. Influences such as courtyards, patios and other Spanish colonial architectural details were embraced and played upon. What was known as the front porch or veranda, was moved from the front to the back of the house and heralded the arrival of a significant lifestyle change. Families now preferred the privacy of their back yard rather than sitting on the front porch watching traffic.
Americans believed that technological advances helped win the Second World War and launch was was to become known as the Space Age. Innovative designs such as the all electric home were supposed to make housework a thing of the past. Realizing the dream of space travel was on the horizon as well and home owners wanted a housing style that was reflective of the new modern era. Synthesized versions of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie style ranch house floor plan became very popular in more well to do areas.
The ranch house floor plan was the American Dream in a box from the late 1940s to the mid 1960s. Sliding glass doors, kidney shaped swimming pools and back yard patios created a new informal way of entertaining guests. Though the ranch house floor plan was the embodiment of casual living, most homes of that era lacked architectural details that would make them memorable. By the 1970s, the ranch style house was replaced by the split level home with Colonial or English details.
The 1980s saw a reversal of the ranch house floor plan formula that included showy front entries with grand staircases and vaulted ceilings while the back of the house was left almost naked. The only remains of the ranch house floor plan today are the open floor plans, great rooms and hearth kitchens and the current popular trend of an outdoor room. All leftovers from the original ranch style housing era.