Posts Tagged ‘custom homes’

Slow Home Movement Focuses on Building Homes That Work for Occupants

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011

Dreambuilder found this interesting article on what’s known as the ‘slow home’ movement.  Though the name is not very catchy, there are some great concepts here regarding effective home design, livability and sustainability.  While we don’t agree with every detail of the concept, we firmly believe that every house should be designed around the family that will be using it — no ‘cookie cutters’ here.  Sizes and locations of rooms, optimized storage spaces and efficient use of square footage are just some of the considerations for home design.  At the same time, the home should be created to be not only functional but beautiful and unique.  Lines of site, use of windows and views and artistic construction all have a place when in proper balance with other elements.  These are just a few of the details that Dreambuilder considers when designing a custom home for our clients.  Visit our Dream Home Gallery to see our original designs, and contact us today to see how we can help you imagine and create the home of your dreams, so you can live the life you’ve always wanted.

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By Mary Beth Breckenridge

RISMEDIA, March 1, 2011—(MCT)—John Brown believes a home should ease the stress in life, not contribute to it.

Brown is the founder of the slow home movement, a philosophy of home design that emphasizes livability and sustainability. It’s about building a home that works for the occupants, not one that’s intended to impress.

The concept was inspired by the slow food movement, with its focus on healthful, sustainable ways of producing and preparing food, explained Brown, an architect, real estate broker and architecture professor in Calgary, Alberta. “You can think of the typical cookie-cutter house as being like fast food”—often supersized and designed to satisfy our craving for beauty, he said. It’s a house that’s designed to seduce us into buying by feeding our fantasies of a more glamorous life, he said, not one that’s necessarily easy to live in or easy on the environment. (more…)

Kitchens.com provides great design ideas

Monday, February 14th, 2011

We here at Dreambuilder recently discovered Kitchens.com and encourage you to visit.  One of the things we really like about the site is the vignettes of various styles that the site provides.  For example, if you select the “casual coastal” kitchen, you not only see pictures of a beautiful kitchen in this style, but also a listing of all of the indiviudal design finishes that went into it.  It’s a great way to view alternatives and see exactly what went into putting the kitchen together.  From there, you can emulate the style by selecting similar elements in your own kitchen.  Dreambuilder can help you transform your kitchen — contact us today!

 

Craftsman style reborn

Wednesday, January 19th, 2011
By Jean Patteson
The Orlando Sentinel

The Craftsman-style home of Tom and Vivian Ward looks so authentic that passersby assume it is a remodeled version of a house dating back to the early 20th century.

Although the home sits in Orlando, Fla.’s Lake Lawsona Historic District, where many of the homes do date from the Craftsman period (1905-1930), the Wards’ home is brand new.

Only the distinctive new-home smell gives it away.

(more…)

Kitchen Remodel Inspires Home Reorganization

Thursday, December 30th, 2010

Jan Neiges, CKD of The Kitchen & Bath Studio, designed this kitchen to be the opposite of its predecessor: open, light-filled, with plenty of work areas and places to sit and enjoy. Credit: Kenneth Wajda

As we continue our series on kitchen and bath design trends, today we look at how a kitchen remodel inpsired a reorganization of several spaces, creating a more ideal living environment.  Dreambuilder has the design expertise and access to professional consultants to do the same for your new or existing home.

By Andrea Girolamo

ARVADA, CO— Kitchen projects always start out simple: redesign the kitchen.

“I was called in to do the kitchen,” says Jan Neiges, CKD of Centennial, CO-based The Kitchen & Bath Studio. “But through talking with the client and assessing her needs for the space, and how the family dynamic was changing as her children were heading off to college, my design grew beyond the kitchen to include the surrounding rooms.”

By the time the project was underway, Neiges’ design for this suburban Denver home included the living room, the creation of a pantry and the enclosing of a porch. Additionally, she repositioned the dining room, and relocated a bedroom door.

Read the entire profile and see more pictures here.

Creative Ideas for ‘Rightsizing’ the Master Bath

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010

This uplift cabinet from Robern is perfect for the ‘road warrior' or 'night owl,' says Rightsizing Your Home author Gale Steves.

by Mary Jo Peterson, Kitchen & Bath Design News

Have you ever looked at the space given to the master bathroom and wondered if we might be going so far as to need roller skates for those nocturnal visits from bed to bathroom? Have you noticed that in the hall or family bathrooms, it frequently seems the opposite – that we stick to the standard expected layout and design, with little or no appreciation for how that particular space is actually being used?

With this in mind, the concept of “rightsizing” the bathroom appealed to me. Rightsizing seems to be one of the latest buzzwords, and it’s being applied all over, from businesses to cars – in fact, I’ve even heard a reference to rightsizing your dogs!

When it comes to rightsizing the master bath, I naturally turned to industry icon Gale Steves and her new book, Rightsizing Your Home. The following thoughts on bath design are the result of that conversation.

View great design ideas in the entire article here.