The game of planning a house

Front matter

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Preface

T his volume is offered as a solution to a very perplexing problem which confronts almost everyone some time during his life,—that is, the designing of a house. It is written primarily for the layman, and his limitations are kept continually in mind in the preparation of this work.

The ideas herein given are not in any way to take the place of the architect in the designing of a house, but rather to assist the layman in getting together, in an orderly and thoughtful way, his ideas relative to the house he wishes to construct. It is to help him to discover all the mistakes that it is possible to find in the house to be built before the final drawings and specifications are made. The plan is to give the layman a method of operation that will enable him step by step to work out the design for a house and to carry this planning through in a systematic and progressive way.

The contents of this volume are based on years of experience as a teacher in colleges and as a designer and builder. In addition, considerable original investigation work has been done not only by the author, but by his students and co-workers, as well.

The research work on this subject has brought forth results that are so outstanding and that have received such a warm recep¬ tion among those interested in small house design that consider¬ able demand has come for something in published form that will make available the results of this study.

It is hoped that this volume will be a source of help to laymen who are considering the building of small homes, to students in colleges and universities studying small house design, to lumber¬ men and the building material trade in assisting their customers. Then, too, architects may find use for it in dealing with their clients; and it has been suggested that architects may find this

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Preface system a means of “plastically” developing the initial “sketch of the floor plan” on their drawing boards.

Acknowledgment is hereby given to all who have helped in various ways in working up this material. This publication was helped materially by the courtesy of the following in allowing the use of copyrighted illustrations from their publications which may not be reproduced without their permission: The Architects’ Small House Service Bureau, Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota; The American Face Brick Association, Chicago, Illinois; The Common Brick Manufacturers’ Association of America, Cleveland, Ohio, and The Southwest Clay Products Institute, Dallas, Texas. Also, The Southern Ruralist, Atlanta, Georgia, permitted the use of ma¬ terial they had collected on houses.

The author is especially indebted to Lois P. Dowdle, Ernest Langford, Morgan I). E. Hite, C. A. Cobb, and S. C. P. Vosper for their valuable suggestions relative to this manuscript.

It is the author’s sincere hope that this contribution to the house planning literature may assist many in getting a better and more carefully planned house than they would have otherwise obtained.

Dan Scoates.

College Station, Texas

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Frontispiece

Preface . v

Chapter I THE PROBLEM

The present prospective home or house builder (and I like to think o£ him as a home builder) attacks the building of a home in what seems to me to be a very unsatisfactory way. The pro¬ cedure is something like this: He and his wife decide to build a house. They customarily think it over for some time and arrive at two very definite facts regarding this house: first, the number of rooms j second, the amount of money to spend on it. (Usually, when the house is finally constructed, they have stayed pretty well within the number of rooms that they wanted in the house, but have run over the amount they planned to spend.)

With these two facts they approach a lumberman, architect, contractor, or carpenter. They ask for help in designing this home. In some cases the prospective builders have gone so far as to look over house plans and have in mind something regarding room ar¬ rangement. Ordinarily, however, they approach the above-named people with just the two mentioned facts and a need of help. The architect, lumberman, or contractor, as a general rule, handles the situation by giving this prospective owner one, two, or more books of plans with the suggestion that he look those over and pick out the plan that best suits him.

The prospective builder takes these plan books home and studies them in an effort to find some plan that has been worked out that will fit into his needs. The plan books, however, may not contain just exactly what is wanted j so the plan nearest to what he wants is selected. Then the architect changes it, often preparing several “sketch plans,” in such a way as to meet the desires of the owner; eliminates anything too expensive, or of an otherwise impractical

2 The Game of Planning a Holtse

nature j and the plan is then given its final shape, and the specifi¬ cations are written. All is worked out to the satisfaction of the prospective builder.

That is the way most of the homes are planned and built. Sometimes so satisfactory a set-up is not worked out. Frequently, I have seen homes that were constructed from just a rough sketch of a floor plan with a picture of the final house that was cut from a magazine. The floor plan and the picture might be of two dif¬ ferent houses, but the builder who does this kind of work brings the two ideas together to the best of his ability. This is a very crude way to plan and to build. A much better home is obtained if one follows some system whereby plans and specifications are worked out for the house, because it is only through the use of expert help with special training that one gets the best final structure.

Money is saved by any process which allows working out the details in some way before construction begins, rather than the wasteful correction of errors after the actual building is started.

There seem to be many mistakes made in the building of a house, even when its construction has received attention from the best informed designers. Therefore, it is very poor economy to avoid the necessary preliminary work, because it inevitably leads to avoidable mistakes, and waste in space, building materials, and labor—all of which represent money loss. Consequently, it is to one’s advantage to employ an architect or some trained house de¬ signer to put one’s plans in final shape before construction is started, if one not only wants to get the most for his money but also wants to have the least trouble with the house afterwards.

Now, what is wrong with the method of house planning that is so widely used at the present time? In fact, it seems to be the only method used, and this is true largely because there has not been any other way to go about it up to the present time.

The greatest trouble with this method is that the problem of designing the house does not start with all the fundamentals and

The Problem work up systematically, in progressive steps, to a final solution of the problem.

The prospective builder starts with two facts and then looks over a number of other people’s solutions of similar problems in an effort to find a ready-made solution to his own. These other people may live in the city, while he may be building a home in the country. The reverse may be true. Or the plans he looks over may be for northern climate, while he is to build his house in a southern state. The setting into which a house goes has a very de¬ cided bearing on its construction; and the plans he is studying may be designed for another width lot or entirely different loca¬ tion, with its many features that need to be considered in house designing.

He is building the house or home to meet some definite re¬ quirements. They may be those of his own family. If that is true, the members of the family have their own peculiarities and their own ideas of just what a home should be. This affords an oppor¬ tunity to express one’s self in a very concrete way. One’s tastes, likes, dislikes, and personality can be embodied in this habitat. Every family has its ideals of what a home ought to be in order to be the most enjoyable from its viewpoint; here is the chance to embody these ideals in a very substantial way. These ideals may or may not receive due consideration. In most cases there are many things to be considered in the designing of a home, and, in looking over plans which have already been designed, some phases may fit the problem under consideration and others may not. Since all the requirements of the home are hard to keep in mind, some may be overlooked in the study of plans developed by others for their own needs. So, fundamentally, this idea of taking somebody else’s solution to the home problem and trying to fit it into one’s own solution does not always work out to the best advantage.

Another very decided objection to the existing method is that it does not provoke original thinking. One is taking somebody else’s solution to his own problem, which is following the tend¬ ency of this age,—“to let George do it.” One looks over plans and accepts one in toto rather than trying to shift it around and get it in the shape it should be. Th s is bad from the standpoint of getting the maximum benefit out of the house, because after the house is constructed along these lines it is often found that it does not measure up fully to the needs of the inhabitants. Then it is too late to do any changing, and one lives long and continually with the mistakes.

It is, therefore, important that much constructive thought be put on the design of the home to be built. Equally as important is it that this thinking be done in a methodical, progressive, and systematic way, in order that the house plan may grow from a simple start to its final shape.

There is still another objection to these plan book solutions. That is, they do not, as a rule, contain a wide variety of solutions of final plans from which to select. In my analysis of plan books I found that the designers of these houses ride hobbies. They use a few fundamental shapes, follow these through, make many solutions of these shapes, but do not give anything else. Then, too, strange as it may seem, many of these designers use the very same shapes, so they do not offer a wide selection of shapes. So in just looking over plan books one does not get an opportunity to view and study a large variety of solutions to the problem on which one is working.

It seems that prospective house owners should take the two fundamental facts that they always have and from these two facts develop other facts and then put them all together to get the solution of their problem.

I have called this method of solving the house planning prob¬ lem “The Game of Planning a House,” because it does work itself very nicely into a game, and if taken in that spirit the best and largest number of solutions can be obtained. Of course, as a result of all this work the final answer is much more workable because of the wide number of solutions from which it was selected.

With the prospective builder knowing how many rooms he is going to put in the house, as well as how much money he is

The Problem going to spend for construction, the next decision to make is what sizes are to be used for the various rooms. These are not difficult facts to obtain. The local contractor can tell approximately how much will be the cost per square foot of a house of the type one intends to build. With this information, by dividing the total sum by the cost per square foot, one can find the square foot area, or how large the house will be on the ground. For example, if one is building a five-room house and has $3,000 to put into it, and if the local contractor says that the cost of construction, considering the class, grade, and type of house desired, will be $3.00 per square foot; then there will be 1,000 square feet in the floor plan.

Now, with the total square foot area of the plan available, the next thing to do is to decide what sizes of rooms are desired. This is really a simple thing to do, but it will take some study. To help a little, let me say that in the study of small-room homes I found that there does not seem to be any set rule as to just what part of the total space to allot to the various rooms and parts of the house. However, this analysis of the farm homes, ready-cut houses, and architects’ plans seems to indicate that the following is a fairly good general allotment of space:

1/10 of the total floor space for kitchen 1/6 of the total floor space for dining room 1/4 of the total floor space for living room 1/3 of the total floor space for bedrooms 1/6 of the total floor space for halls, closets, and bathrooms.

These will give an idea of about how to apportion the space; then by changing and rearranging, one will arrive at the size of rooms needed. A more detailed discussion of just what size rooms are advisable to use will be found in the next chapter.

The point is that the next step is to decide on the size and shape of each room, closet, etc. In this way the builder will find out what size rooms he would like to use. This, no doubt, will lead him to investigate the sizes of rooms used for various purposes, to measure rooms in his friends’ homes, and in other ways to check up and find out exactly what sizes of rooms best meet his needs.

With these room sizes decided, the next step is to arrange the rooms in various shapes. In the study made it was found that for the small house (4 to 9 or 10 rooms) the rooms, in practically every case, are put together in only eleven fundamental shapes. But these rooms can be arranged together in not one but a number of different ways in each shape. Therefore, a small house, with the room sizes remaining the same, can be arranged in at least thirty different ways without very much trouble.

Recently, I had a group of women studying the planning of a five-room house with definite size rooms, and they obtained, in a very short time, twenty-nine solutions, nine of which were for one shape. There is no doubt that if they could have been given more time, they would have obtained many more arrangements.

A large number of solutions to any house problem offers an excellent opportunity to make the best possible selection to meet the family needs, and to give due consideration to the house in its rela¬ tion to location, climate, and all other important limitations that come into the construction of a dwelling.

When one has selected from these thirty or more plans the solution that best meets his needs j then this solution can be set up to a definite scale size, windows and doors put in, and the furniture arranged inside the house. In this way, one can see just how the entire inside of the house will look and be arranged when it is finally finished. In other words, the house is visualized and one sees the plan of it in as definite a way as it is possible to do before actual construction is completed. The way the doors swing, the location of windows, and the placing of all the furniture are parts of the game of designing a house, which carries through as far as one can go before the final plans and specifications are drawn up.

This method of visualizing a house appeals to many people because they are unable to understand a blue print. They are not trained to know what a blue print means, because it is made up of

The Problem signs and symbols, all of which are clear to the profession but mys¬ terious to the average layman.

So this is the way the game of planning a house is played j a synopsis of the plan that will be taken up in the subsequent chap¬ ters of this book.