New Arkansas Plat House - interior things like cabinets happening!

Things are moving along with the New Arkansas Plat House. Painting is happening, so there is color! And cabinets have arrived and no time wasted putting them in their place.

As usual, new photos of the progress on the house are posted to our Flickr set for the house. And you can find the Plat House in our catalog.

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Customer's Houses under way

We've been following the New Arkansas Plat House in the blog, but regular readers will recall that I've mentioned a few other houses that were under construction.

In Oregon this glue laminated timber frame modified version of the Plat House is well under way. This is going to be a pretty spectacular Plat House that I think will live up to the setting.

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0862 XHouse1 a peak inside

With all the excitement about new designs around here lately we have not forgotten about the roll out of the 0862 XHouse1 Construction Prints. To celebrate we've prepped a little interior virtual reality view - 360degrees up down and all around!

Just click on the picture above to load the virtual reality view. This is based on the QuicktimeVR platform - which is an old school format for 360 images like this. If you don't have the Quicktime software installed you probably won't be able to see this."

As always the 0862 XHouse1 is available in our catalog.

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1204 RoHouse rolled out in the catalog

The RoHouse family of compact houses for urban infill, twin homes, and suburban townhouses has been rolled out and is now in the catalog.

Design Prints of RoHouse are available now, and Construction Prints are available now on a Pre-Order basis.

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1204 RoHouse for urban infill sites

This is the second example we have prepared for applications of the RoHouse - Urban Infill in groups and on scattered sites.

Because of the variety of sizes that the RoHouse is available in, you can easily find one that fits well in a single or pair scattered site infill. And when doing big or bigger groups of new houses, the range of sizes allows the developer to offer houses to suit a variety of budgets, and give the streetscape that organic diversity that makes cities great.

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1204 RoHouse - diagrams of the range

Some simple schematic models of the RoHouse range, to give you an understanding of all the variations which will be available.

Transverse stair plan in 14ft, 16ft, 18ft, & 18ft expanded; 2 story, 2.5 story, & 3 story.

Longitudinal stair plan in 14ft, 16ft, 18ft, & 18ft expanded; 2 story, 2.5 story, & 3 story.

continues..

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Row House Concept - twin house configuration

We are now working towards Design Prints, and a presence for the now dubbed RoHouse in the catalog's XHouse Collection.

The challenge remains to figure out how to concisely represent the diversity of plan offerings here.

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Row House Concept - moving from concept to execution

We've reached a milestone in the design of the Row-House plans. The schematic layout of this collection of house designs is done. We now have to choose how to present these designs in the catalog, and for the first time post a group of houses that we have no intention of completing in advance of demand.

There are three distinct situations that we've designed these Row-Houses for. Urban in-fill sites; new development at row-house densities, and twin-houses, or duplexes for a transitional density between freestanding houses and attached row-houses. As such these designs extend the range of our offerings down to the smallest lots, highest densities common for American houses.

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0862 XHouse1 - Construction Prints complete

We are thrilled to officially announce that the Construction Prints for the0862 XHouse1 are complete and now offered on the catalog page.

The XHouse1 came into our catalog in 2008. The housing market had already blown up, and nobody was building houses, let alone modern houses. The design was posted to the catalog, spurring a new Collection, and shortly thereafter somebody had ordered a set of the Design Prints. Then 5 years passed without the release of the Construction Prints.

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0862 XHouse1 - solving a puzzle laid out years ago

Currently in production in the studio are the Construction Prints for the 0862 XHouse1. I see this house design as a puzzle I laid out 5 years ago, and now I am finally getting a chance to solve it.

The XHouse1 was the first design in what was a new Collection of designs - the XHouse Collection. This was the first move to expand our plan offerings into different collections, and this was the first house design to deviate widely from the design themes of the original collection of plans. So this is, and has been an important design for us, a turning point.

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New Arkansas Plat House - interior framing up

With the shell of the house complete, the carpenters have moved on to framing up the interior of the Plat House and we can see some familiar spaces beginning to emerge!

More shots of the interior framing are posted in the Flickr set for this house.

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Plat House influence in Arkansas - amazing!

The Arkansas contractor who built the second Plat House in Arkansas has built a spec house that is modern and clearly influenced by his work on the Plat House! It is currently for sale now.

Well, I have to hand it to him after all - if I did not know the influence, it would just seem a contemporary house. Look what has happened here: Its likely this house would have never been built in this style if he did not know of the first Arkansas Plat House and had built the second one. This is exactly the kind of influence we wanted to create with the house plans. This is how tastes are influenced. I take it as a victory!

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Spring has sprung at the Maine Plat House

Spring has come and Summer has begun at the Maine Plat House. Those of you following our customer builds will remember this house finished up in the fall. The owner has spent the first winter in the house, and now is starting the first summer.

The landscaping is new and fresh, and the Plat House looks completely at home in its Maine waterway setting. Wide decks overlooking water in the distance - sounds just like the illustrations in our catalog!

Please go enjoy more photos of the house in our Flickr photo album. And thank you to our terrific home owners who share the pictures of their beautiful homes!

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Row House Concept - the case for 2, 2.5, & 3 story

So far in our documentation of our Row House design process we've discussed the overriding organizing type that results from the transverse or longitudinal stair. At the same time we've been developing three different versions of each type - a 2 story house, a 2.5 story house, and a 3 story house.

These three house sizes allow a range of accommodations even as the footprint remains the same. The basic 2 story house yields a 2 bedroom house design with a low slope roof. The roof however slopes at greater rate in the front bedroom creating a higher ceiling and a loft like feel. But even this most compact version of the house can be had with the expanded floor plate, yielding a 3 bedroom plan with additional living space on the ground floor.

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New Arkansas Plat House - beautiful setting

Its always gratifying to see one of our designs placed into a setting for which it was designed. The point here has been to bring custom like design to people who could not afford or justify the expense of custom design. And so someone like you can now have a house like this that works so well with its beautiful setting.

A screened in summer porch is planned for this side of the house - a nice option when your Plat House is not close to a road and you have privacy on all sides.

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