Award-Winning Home Design - HPG-2510B-1 - The Windsor House

You may have always heard the old adage that “first impressions” are the ones that count most – and this is all too true when it comes to curb appeal and your home.  

If you are having new home floor plans designed, or revamping your existing home (perhaps to put it on the market), then you must add some curb appeal in order to make your home a stand out in the neighborhood. Landscaping choices can go a long way towards adding curb appeal – which means that lawn maintenance and lawn care has taken on a whole new importance.

Curb Appeal Tip: Go For a Healthy Lawn

Just like a bright smile is a sign of health, a beautiful, healthy, green lawn that is lush and full, yet manicured, is a sign of a well-kept home.  Whip your lawn into shape by using fertilizer, weed eliminator, and good techniques with edging to add maximum curb appeal.

Curb Appeal Tip:  Choose Contrasting Plants

The plants around your lawn can make or break the appearance of your Country style house plans, and give it an inviting look.  Choose plants that contrast with the mulch you are using for maximum visual impact; as an example, if your plants are dark and rich, then choose light mulch and dark mulch for light colored plants.

Curb Appeal Tip: Choose Plants by Foliage, Not Flowers

While flowers are beautiful and can add some nice curb appeal, they don’t last very long. To get the most for your money, choose plants and landscaping that have beautiful, dark foliage instead.

Curb Appeal Tip: Keep it Manicured

When we want to make a good impression, we make sure our appearances are manicured.  The same is true for your lawn.  Mow it, trim it, edge it, and clip it – including your lawn, trees and plants – to get the most curb appeal.

Curb Appeal: Don’t Go Over the Top

Keep your landscaping simple and clean, don’t overdo it.  One of the obvious disadvantages to “too much” landscaping is that it is harder to maintain properly.  Likewise, it creates visual clutter that may detract from your home.  You want your home and your property to be inviting, but too much landscaping can actually be intimidating – especially if you’re trying to sell your house.  Who wants to trim two acres of hedge? That might be an exaggeration, but never do more landscaping than you are comfortable with maintaining regularly.

Curb Appeal: Other Exterior Concerns

Besides your landscaping, there are other concerns for the outside of your traditional home design that you should take into consideration when it comes to adding curb appeal.  Obviously, you want a great walk way to the front exterior.  Make sure the walk way is uncluttered and laid out well.  The driveway to the home should be in excellent shape (no “pot” holes or cracks).  The exterior lighting should be clean and in good working order as well.

When you take these considerations and put them into action, you’ll find that enhancing your home’s curb appeal is easier than ever.

CLICK HERE to shop online for your family’s new house plans!

Popularity: 11% [?]

Hiring a reputable contractor can be accomplished if the research is done before making a decision. New home construction, like any other industry, has both good and not so good people involved in it. Taking the time to assess the situation (and the contractor) before hand can save time and money throughout the project.

Bids for the Project

The best practice for securing bids from contractors is to provide each contractor that will bid on the project with a copy of the small house plan designs, and prepare a form for the contractor to submit the bid on. Each contractor should have the same exact information and the same exact forms to submit the bid on. Providing each contractor with identical information will insure that there is no miscommunication in getting what is needed.

Once the bids have been submitted review them diligently, keeping in mind that the lowest bid is not always the best. Any possible candidate for the job should be fully licensed, bonded and insured to work on your property without liability to you; if someone falls off the roof, whose insurance covers that? You need to find these things out in advance. A reputable contractor will also have his own insurance.

About Low Bids

Value for your dollar is more important than lower and higher when reviewing bids. When reviewing the bids keep in mind that value is what the goal is – finding a contractor that will provide the best value for the dollar. Best value can be determined by, best service, experience, best materials, and length of time that the contractor takes to complete the project once he gets started. Essentially if something seems too good to be true with a contractor it probably is.

Accepting the lowest bid could compromise the quality of the  project. Unfortunately many times the lowest bid is submitted by a contractor that does not have the staff to commit to a larger project hence the lower bid, or the contractor may use subpar materials on the project which is another money saver for the contractor but not something anyone would like for their project. In extreme cases the contractor provides the lowest bid to get the job takes fifty percent up front than never does the job.

Take a Couple of Additional Steps

Before making a decision, take a few additional steps. Contact the Better Business Bureau in your area and make and inquiry about the contractor. Look out for a few flags from the contractor. If the contractor gives only a PO Box as an address, if the contractor asks for more than half the money up front, if the contractor asks that you file for permits -these are all signs of bad business practices.

There are also a few other indicators that should be noted; if there are complaints on record with the Better Business Bureau take heed, don’t ignore the complaints. Don’t be pressured into quick decisions, do the research and keep in mind the lowest bid is most likely not the best bid.

Shop online for the top customer-rated 4 bedroom house plans at HousePlanGallery.com!

Popularity: 14% [?]

Over the last year, the HPG-2200C-1 – The Avondale Court house plan has become one of our most popular home designs, and our customers have told us that there are several reasons for that..

Here are a few reasons why:

- Front exterior design is very attractive and unique

- Extremely large two car garage which is situated at the rear right of the home

- Optional and large bonus room that can be built out initially or later on as their family’s need arises

- Large front AND rear covered porches with great views out the breakfast area windows

- Highly-flexible floorplan layout that can evolve to better fit needs over time

- Walk in pantry

- Large laundry room with half bath

- Large master suite with oversized his and her walk in closets

And here is a happy customer testimonial from Ann in Cleveland, Mississippi:

“We were so happy to have found the HPG-2200C-1 house plan. It met all of our needs and has absolutely no wasted space. We have already started the building process and its coming along great. The team at House Plan Gallery was a pleasure to work with, and we can’t wait to move in!”

And remember, if you like this plan but would like several modifications made to the design, give us a call at 601-264-5028, and we’ll be glad to give you a 100% Free, No-Obligation modification quote…

Have a blessed day, and let us know how we can help,

Mark

Popularity: 15% [?]

Every single day, without fail, we speak with people who are looking for unique house floor plans to build their dream home, but they become frustrated that they cannot find a stock plan that fits ALL of their wants… as-is.

Many times, they end up discounting a group of plans, altogether, that would actually be quite easy to modify to their specs.

Its a common misconception, but ALL house plans can be modified.  In addition, many “modifications” can actually be done onsite, with your builder, however its always best to confirm this by talking to your home designer and tell them what you want changed…. specifically.

The best case scenario is that the builder could make the changes onsite, or if the modifications need to be implemented into the actual house plan documents, you’ll prefer to have the actual designer of the home plan complete the modifications.

House Plan Gallery is one of the few home designers in the entire United States who offer full modification services on ALL of our plans. In addition, we offer every single option on every plan including materials lists, CAD files, PDF files, Reproducibles, and much more.

If there’s a plan you like, but would like several modifications made to the design, give us a call at 601-264-5028, and we’ll be glad to give you a 100% Free, No-Obligation modification quote…

And if you have any specific questions, feel free to call us or send us an email, and we’ll get that answer to you directly..

Its a great time to build!

Mark

Popularity: 14% [?]

 This is an transcribed excerpt from an interview that I did with Home Ideas magazine a few months ago.  In the interview, we talked about flexible home living spaces and about what the current trends are in using more flexible floorplan layouts in residential home design.

What follows below are the questions from the reporter, and my responses…  I hope you like it, and please be sure to send me an email with any other questions you have…

Lets get started…

When you design a new home plan how important is it to design a floor plan that allows the homeowner to choose how they use the spaces provided?
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Its extremely important, and one of our primary considerations on every new plan we design.  Since our homes are typically in the 1400 to 2500 sq ft range, we want to make sure that the home can fit the needs of a growing or changing family, and to make sure to minimize wasted space in the floorplan. 

In addition, we want to make sure that the home fits the needs of, not only a family, but also retirees, empty nesters, or just single individuals in a way that makes sense for them…

In homes of this size, every square inch of the living space is needed and we’ve always tried to provide a very flexible floorplan layout where the usages of the spaces can evolve to meet the current and future needs of the homeowners…

How important is it for the house plan to be flexible enough that the homeowner can make changes as their life changes i.e children, empty-nest, office space, additional bedrooms (in-laws) etc.
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Very important.  Over time, every person’s life changes and every family’s needs change.  We realize that, and thats why, in our designs, we try to minimize the “labeling” of different living spaces to a particular usage, at least where possible. 

For example, in the past, we might have labeled a room off the great room as a “dining room”, and even though that room could certainly be used for that purpose, we’ve found that labeling that room in that manner is actually a turn off to many younger homebuyers..  Dining rooms are not important for many of our buyers, which are many times younger families with children, so they would much rather use the space as a kids playroom or a home office, for example.   

For whatever reason, when we label that room as a dining room on the floorplan presentation, many people seem to get that usage stuck in their mind and sometimes its difficult to get that specific “dining room” usage out of their mind so they might automatically discount the house plan and move on…

What we try to do, to better illustrate the versatility of the space, is to label that type of space as a “flex space” which then implies that the space’s usage can be whatever the homeowner wants it to be… and then they can also change its usage over time…

Is it pretty standard to include a bonus room in a house plan?
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We think it SHOULD be, however its not for many designers… We know that, especially if you have a smaller home design with a roof design that can easily allow for the inclusion of this space…typically over the garage area, we always try to include this feature because its a HUGE value-add for the homeowner.

  As I had noted earlier, the majority of our designs are in the 1400 to 2500 sq ft range so having a bonus room space as an option, is a tremendous selling point for a plan.

Its a great way to get alot more space in a home for very little additional cost…

If the homeowner’s budget is tight, then they might choose to just build the stair portion up to the bonus area, and that could just be used as a convenient way to access the attic area until a time when they actually wanted to build out the space.. 

At the point where they want to build out the space, all they would have to do is finish out the walls, ceiling, and floors of bonus room, which is a fairly simple and inexpensive process (esp when compared to doing an addition), and they could just continue using the existing stairs…

They then have, typically, between 200 and 500 additional square feet that they can use for a kids playroom, another bedroom/bath, a large home office or anything else…

Probably 90% of our home designs include bonus room spaces, whether included or optional, and we find that probably 70% of our customers go ahead and build out these spaces initially, because its not really that much more money to do in the beginning while your building the rest of the house…

Most popular flexible spaces are?
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Probably home offices are #1, then kids’ playrooms, then guest bedroom spaces, then dining rooms.

How challenging is it to design a small home that still offers flexibility?
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It can be very challenging.. Again, when you’re talking about plans in the 1400 to 2500 sq ft range, every square inch counts so you want to make sure that you first have all the essentials like a large great room and kitchen, an eating area off the kitchen, plenty of storage, large closets, comfortable bedrooms, a utility room and pantry, etc.

At the same time, you need to take into consideration all the “other” spaces that might be good options for identifying as a flexible space..

Some good examples of flexible spaces in a smaller home are bonus rooms, rooms off the great room, multiple large closets in a master bedroom where one might be sufficient, sitting room areas that might be better used as storage / home office / etc.

Its definately challenging to provide high levels of flexibility in a small footprint, but we think we’ve found the balance in our floorplans…

Outdoor Flexible Spaces….trend to including outdoor living spaces to house plans?
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For the size homes that we typically design, outdoor flexible spaces are not typically a primary consideration of our buyers.. We always include a comfortable outdoor living space which might be a large covered porch, and/or might include a large screened in porch or patio, and thats what our primary customer is looking for…

And thats basically, a simple, inexpensive design that provides them with everything they need to comfortably spend time outdoors with their family… 

I would recommend your customers check out our house plans: the HPG-20002-1 traditional ranch house plan, the HPG-2067-1 craftsman house plan, the HPG-1752-1 country style ranch house plan, and the HPG-2200C-1 french country house plan for examples of some of our most popular flexible home designs…

Popularity: 22% [?]