A Home Plan Makeover
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Jo Gawthrop
Homes By Jo
Lexington, KY
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Athough Jo Gawthrop is a second generation builder/developer, she
has also had three previous careers: teaching first graders, hotel management and retailing. Her company, Homes By Jo, builds about 60 starter and move-up homes a year in the Lexington, KY area.
Jo is very active in her local homebuilders association and became the second female president. She also judges entries in home shows in other cities - including Raleigh, Denver and Atlanta.
"It's a great opportunity to see what's currently popular in larger areas - because it allows me to predict what will be in demand three to five years from now in Lexington."
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Sharon Kephart
Kephart Contracting, L.L.C.
Kansas City, MO
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Sharon has been a business partner with her husband Ed since 1993. The couple builds 10 - 12 custom and speculative homes annually, ranging from 2,000 to 4,500 square feet. Sharon, who acts
as the firm's designer and interior finish manager, is a former art student with a deep appreciation for traditional home design. She particularly likes the look and feel of homes built during
the first half of the twentieth century: with wonderful trim carpentry, window seats and an abundance of built-in cabinets. Sharon and Ed have received two grand awards for homes they've entered
in the Kansas City Home Builders Association's Homes Tours. Sharon says her worst habit is looking at model homes while on vacation.
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Michele Center
Home Solutions by TWC, Inc.
Williamsburg, VA
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After 32 years of combined service in the utility industry, Michele Center and her husband, James, decided to take a new direction and pursue their passion of creating quality custom homes.
Since they started their firm, Home Solutions by TWC, Inc., three years ago, their reputation has grown with referrals of satisfied clients. Because they prefer to maintain a high level of personal
involvement, they do not build more than five or six homes annually, ranging from
$350,000 to $500,000.
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The sage who originally said, "Too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth" had probably witnessed two strong-willed chefs unsuccessfully attempting to merge two very different
culinary tastes. The phrase could no doubt be applied to other areas of the home as well - because everyone approaches creating or managing a home in their own way.
With that in mind, the challenge we presented to three women builders could have seemed daunting: to work together to improve one of Design Basics' perennially popular plans to suit
the needs of their current individual markets.
A conference call brought Jo Gawthrop in Lexington, Kentucky; Sharon Kephart in Liberty, Missouri; and Michele Center in Williamsburg, Virginia, together to "rework" The Orchard,
#2818. It turned out to be a productive afternoon of give and take, which resulted in a "new and improved" plan with universal appeal.
As you'll see on the following pages, the revised plan is dramatically different from the original plan. The following information explains why the various changes (numbered in blue
in The Carrigan, #30016) were made.
ORIGINAL VERSION
1) While the three builders had different ideas about how to go about it, they all agreed that one of the most important changes was to open up the kitchen.
"In the original plan," Jo explained, "the kitchen is sort of shut off from the great room. Someone actually working in the kitchen would feel rather isolated." After trying out
several different layouts, our designers came up with a way to implement Michele's suggestion to "use part of the porch to expand the floor space in the kitchen and dinette" while respecting
Sharon's feeling that "the big, private porch is a very sharp feature of the house." To accommodate both, they moved the third garage stall forward and used the space freed up to lengthen
the porch.
* With the kitchen being the hub of activity, these alterations allow for greater openness and continuity between the great room and kitchen.
* Opening up the ceiling in the entry and great room adds a feeling of spaciousness.
* Adding more angles throughout this home adds a new level of interest inside.
* Elegant double doors open to a luxurious master bath, providing expansive, dramatic views.
* Changing the elevation to a Craftsman style gives the home a fresh look, reflecting today's new trends. |
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2) The designers then moved the kitchen to the right outside wall (formerly where the laundry room was) and used an angled peninsula to keep the kitchen
open to the dinette and the great room. In the process, they incorporated a wider pantry, added a recycling center and raised the eight-foot ceiling to 10 feet.
3) All three ladies felt it was important to add a powder bath to retain more privacy in the bath near the bedrooms. Moving the double garage stall forward
allowed our designers to add a half bath and, at the same time, create a new laundry room with a soaking sink and a better traffic flow when entering the home from the garage.
4) By changing the configuration of the porch, the designers were also able to increase the width of the dinette by four feet.
5) Regarding the angled windows on the back of the home, the group formed a consensus to straighten out the walls to make the windows easier
to trim on the outside and to maximize floor space inside. The designers also responded to Michele's comment that she didn't like the original design's windows - some with and some without transoms
in the same rooms. In the new plan, transom-topped windows of the same height were used throughout the dinette and great room.
6) When everyone agreed that the fireplace should be changed to a direct vent, a corner fireplace was used to ease furniture placement.
7) Sharon suggested increasing the staircase leading to the basement to four feet in width. "That will make it much easier to move
furniture up and down if you finish the basement," she explained.
8) Michele and Jo quickly agreed when Sharon said she thought the master bath was too confining. When asked whether it was necessary to
retain the whirlpool tub, another consensus was reached. "Even if homeowners will rarely use it, it's a perceived value and it's important to them," Jo remarked.
9) To create a more spacious bath, our designers relocated the walk-in closet, which added 5ft to the overall depth of the master suite.
This also allowed them to increase the size of the suite's walk-in closet.
10) In Bedroom 2, Sharon proposed changing the angled ceiling to a flat, 9-foot-high ceiling and replacing the half round window with a
rectangular transom. Michele advocated straightening out the front corner; the extra space this added was used to accommodate a built-in desk.
11) Bringing the third stall of the garage forward and extending the corner wall in Bedroom 2 allowed our designers to create two sets
of double gables on the front of the home. Michele suggested adding a dormer for character. Jo said she didn't like the siding-wrapped columns in the original design; she thought a Craftsman style
pillar with brick or stone on the bottom would be more attractive. Our designers extended the Craftsman style to the rest of the elevation by changing the hip roofs to gables, adding vertical siding
in the recessed gables and roof brackets to the eaves and replacing the round louver over the garage with a pair of square louvers. In all, the changes increased the home's original square footage
of 1,651 to 1,899. Because lots in many parts of the country are limited width-wise, all the stretching was done in depth, rather than width.
