Design snapshot: Tale of two garage doors

Rarely will you find a better side-by-side garage-door comparison than the one contained on this simple two-stall garage.

The left-hand door befits a typical suburban home, and the right-hand door a more rural outbuilding. Hard to know how these two doors came to be side by side, but I suspect that both openings once sported doors like those in the right-hand opening, but that the door in the left-hand opening was ultimately replaced with an updated overhead door for ease of use. 

It will come as no surprise to fellow House Enthusiasts, that in the case of informal, more rural, or more traditional outbuildings serving as garages, I'm partial to the door style -- which I would describe as carriage-style doors -- in the right-hand opening. Such doors often swing open, or in this case, slide open. Both types of operation are seen as somewhat laborious today, so many current manufacturers, such as Designer Doors, create carriage-style doors that are built in sections (like the more suburban-style door in the left-hand opening), so they, too, can open overhead for convenience.

I'd love to see a new overhead door in the left-hand opening designed to match the carriage-style doors in the right-hand opening. It would be win-win in terms of the look and function. Now if only one would materialize.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast

Design snapshot: Grounding exterior stairs

At first, I was a bit surprised to discover this image from my Houzz page finding its way into Houzzers ideabooks with great frequency. Then I began to see that perhaps the very feature we had considered a design liability was actually a design asset.

We originally designed this studio over a garage to have a single entrance via the French door in the shed dormer at the top of the rear stairs that climb from the deck. In an effort to make the stairs more integral to the building, we specified that the stair stringer walls be clad in cedar shingles to match the building's exterior walls. 

Then, the local building inspector required a second egress stair. At the time, we felt this was redundant since both egress doors would be opening into the same studio space about fourteen feet from each other.

Nonetheless, we complied and designed the second stair that climbs from the deck and travels up across the end gable to a second French door. We took a similar design approach with the second stair and specified that its stair stringer walls be clad primarily with cedar shingles and, near the base, vertical cedar skirt boards like the sides of the deck. We designed both stair guard rails to have narrow wooden balusters to prevent the stairs from feeling too enclosing and appearing too overwhelming for such a small building.

Interestingly, the two exterior stairs which had struck me as somewhat cumbersome, seem to actually help ground the building. They bring the building down to an easily relatable scale and soften or mitigate what might otherwise have been a fairly harsh transition from a tall sidewall to a sloping grade. They also help visually tie this building to this specific place, as if the building and its stairs grew directly out of this incline. Sometimes a building regulation really can be a design asset.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast

Q: What does the architect say? A: Program

For a home design to be successful, it must first satisfy a homeowner's program, which is the design's spatial criteria. The program often takes the form of a list, describing each desired room/use, the approximate amount of square footage assigned to each, and the relationship of each to other rooms/uses, environmental forces (like sun and breezes), and/or the site.

Think of the program as the building blocks of your home design -- whether your home will be new construction or a renovation/addition. Your program will be unique to you. It should reflect how you would like to experience your home. Edit it, and edit it again to be sure the spaces and relationships it includes are true to your lifestyle, not your parents' lifestyle, not your neighbors' lifestyle, not the imagined lifestyle of some unknown potential future buyer.

If you're drafting a program for your home project, you might want to visit the homework section of the KHS website. There, you'll find a number of questions that will challenge you to hone your program. Visit the KHS design process page to to get a sense of how your program fits into the overall design process.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast

Design snapshot: Winter Wyeth-like

I generally scout for Design snapshots in New England's more temperate months than in bone-chilling January or February. Every once in a while, though, I snap something despite the cold because it simply begs to be captured.

This stoic New England gambrel at the crest of a brown hill, with a thick stroke of bordering hedge and a bare tree at its corner, called to me. Its first-floor shades drawn and its porch framing a quiet block of blue held my gaze. Its cloak of weathered-grey shingled walls and roof dotted with 8/12 and 12/12 windows, edged with moss-green trim, and accented by a tall, brick chimney nose greeted me plainly. Yes, this house speaks my language.

I grew up with a print of Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World behind the family room couch, which -- along with 19th century farmhouse it occupied and my mother's taste for sturdy local antiques -- must have trained me early in the hardy, resilient language of vernacular New England dwellings and their surrounds. I feel in their company as if I have found a dear friend or relative, someone with whom I can be completely at home.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast

Primer: Breezeways as connectors and destinations

Image excerpt from my Fine Homebuilding "Drawing Board" column about breezeways. Offset breezeway example.Pick up a copy of the February/March 2014 Fine Homebuilding magazine to catch my latest "Drawing Board" contribution. This one explores designing breezeways that not only connect but serve as outdoor-living destinations.

Click here for a PDF of the column. "Three ways for breezeways" by Katie Hutchison, Issue #241, February/March 2014. Reprinted with permission copyright 2014, The Taunton Press, Inc.

Visit the KHS publications page to see other magazine columns and articles I've written.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast