How Did You Do That?

Why Does Anyone care?

Well, people have asked me how I did some of the detailed work that I have started putting into my house designs. So, I decided to have a much more detailed and advanced discussion on the subject.

The Design In Question

We're using the living room of my latest design, Suburban Contemporary #15A, which is somewhat less "contemporary" looking than its brethren, but nonetheless still follows the basic program. I won't repeat the program design elements (go here if you want to read them), but instead I'm going to just jump right in to explain what I wanted, and what I did to achieve it.

What I wanted

OK, I wanted a Craftsman/Prairie look. That meant creating features that were common in houses at the turn of the century (the start of the 20th century, in case we've forgotten). Here is a brief list (in no particular order) of the features I was looking for:

• Built-in seats around a central fireplace.
• Large wooden mantel over the fireplace.
• Dark wood trim, and dark wood paneling.
• Wainscoting.
• "Traditional" colors that were in use during the early part of the 20th century.
• A window alcove with a window seat.
• Arched doorways and openings. I elected not to make them cased openings, for a slightly cleaner look. Either way is authentic.
• Somewhat elaborate decorative trim around the ceilings.
• Ceiling beams, especially in the living and dining rooms.

I had a somewhat triangular-shaped room to work with. It made sense to put the fireplace in the wall between the living and dining rooms (I am not even done with the dining room, yet, so pay no attention to it). It would have been authentic to have made a two-sided fireplace (and I still may do this), but right now the fireplace opens only into the living room.

The front door, with sidelights, could be anywhere in the south wall. I placed it toward the left side of the wall to make more of a solid inside wall. More wall space. I chose not to put any windows in the south (angled) wall. There are two windows in the alcove, so they will have to do. It's true that in those bygone eras they tended to place a lot of windows, since interior lighting wasn't always as good as you might have liked, but for now, we have no other windows.

I placed a horizontal wall to make a hallway north of our living room. It was also a way to make a wall for placing built-in benches so we could sit near our fireplace. It does tend to make this room one devoid of any other furniture, but I may place a table against the wall, just for grins.

The Floor Plan

Some Bullets

• I changed the yellow color of the "Stucco-4" exterior walls to a more serene green color. My exterior walls are a dark chocolate brown pattern that I picked up off the Internet. The interior walls are another historically accurate Craftsman color.
• Don't worry about the curved walls. They don't figure into this exercise, but beware if you work with curved walls, they are a real bitch to get right, and they can cause the program to crash.
• In the center of the plan (as shown above) is a fireplace. I used a fireplace embedded in a wall, and set it to stick out the other side 9". It may be hard to see, but the fireplace faces left. It is 72" wide, 28" deep, and 60" tall. The fire box is 48" wide, 35" high and 20" deep. I set the hearth depth and height to 0". I used the "Old Used Brick" brick pattern.
• The tiled hearth is a slab. That's probably the easiest thing to do.
• The ceiling beams, decorative trim, wainscoting, countertops, and some of the benches are all soffits. The mantel is a soffit. The fireplace above the 60" line is a geometric solid (as is the angled masonry in the dining room).
• The ceilings are 120" (10') tall. I set the crown molding for the room at 108" (9') so I could put decorative trim above it.

The Living Room Images

Some Bullets

• The 36" arched openings in the wall with the row of benches (immediately above) are arched doorways (8" broken arches) where I pulled the bottom up to 48". That made the doorway height 48". I also suppressed the casings.
• The countertops in the wall openings are soffits. I applied a molding trim. And yes, the soffits are wider and deeper than the wall openings.
• The alcove (in the top image) was made by making a similar 72" arched doorway (8" broken arch), and the bottom is at 16 1/2". I also removed the casing for this doorway.
• The alcove seat is 2 soffits: one inside the alcove, and one at the bottom of the doorway opening with a curved molding applied to it. Each is 1 1/2" high, 16 1/2" from the floor.
• As I said before, the ceiling beams are soffits. I applied a molding to the beams to give them something other than a simple rectilinear look. The soffit is about 1/2 taller than the molding, so it does stick down slightly below the molding at the top of the decorative trim.
• There is a trick to getting the soffits that comprise the ceiling beams to look right. In some configurations, they tend to fill in between them. In others they tend to lose their moldings. I will show what I did to get them to look right.
• The soffit that makes up the mantel has a door/window casing applied to it to give it a beveled look. You can stretch the moldings to whatever height and depth that you want.
• The dark stone piece over the firebox is a soffit, too.
• The benches (in the image immediately above) are made up of base cabinets. I removed the toe kick and the door, and inserted a 6" blank area at the bottom of each cabinet (actually, I made one and copied it to make the others). I also adjusted the drawer height to 9". I applied a curved molding to the top (which I set to 18"), and applied my base molding to the bottom.
• I set the default room molding color on the cabinets to the particular shade of blue-green (also a Craftsman color). It is possible to change the molding color on the cabinet to match the default room molding, in case you change your mind about the color, later.
• The frames on the mantel contain pictures from my family picture collection. Simply copy any JPEGs to the "-MyTextures" directory (under the Textures directory), and create a new Picture and place it in the frame.
• The wainscoting is made up of 2 different soffits. The lower soffit is the vertical brown siding, 3/4" thick and 42" high, 0" off the floor. I stretched each soffit to the correct width, adjusting for fractions of an inch. To get the base molding, I applied the room's base molding to each one, and set the color to the default room molding color.
• The upper wainscot soffit is 6" high and 3/4" thick, and set to 42" from the floor. There's a small molding at both the top and the bottom, and the soffit is set to the same color as the base moldings. These soffits have to be placed in cross-section mode, by hand. They stick to the wall with no problem, though.
• The decorative trim at the top of the wall is also a soffit. It is 1" thick, 12" high, with a bottom height of 108" (just at the top of the room molding). I applied a large, angled crown molding to the top of the soffit, making it the nominal crown molding for the room. These soffits are covered with the Gray-Gold Leaves wallpaper pattern. Choose what you like for the effect you desire.
• Notice the wall end in the image, above. Since the decorative trim is not auto-generated, I made a narrow piece of soffit and pushed it against the wall end. You will have to force the soffit into position by momentarily pressing the CTRL key and pushing the soffit with the mouse (by its center handle).
• I also made a 1/16" thick soffit 96" high and applied both the base molding and room crown molding to it so I would get both of these in position. This thin soffit was also forced into position against the end of the wall.
• The hearth is a slab, 1/2" thick, and covered with tan subway tile. I made the tile smaller than its default size so it would look in scale with the rest of the room. Simply shove the slab up under the fireplace back far enough to completely cover the base of the fire box. Slabs are better than soffits when you definitely don't want an automatic molding to be applied.

The Difficult Parts

This is where we get down to how I did some of these things, especially the harder ones. Hence the title.

Difficult Part #1: The Ceiling Beams

OK, my recommendation is that you not try these until and unless you really need them. But, since I've already done the hard part, perhaps your experience won't be nearly as frustrating as mine. All the ceiling beams are soffits, with moldings applied to make them a bit more interesting.

• The angled beams at the bottom of the plan are positioned nose into the bottom wall. This means they are 3" wide and deep enough to extend to their ends (many inches deep). All the beams are 4" high, with the same molding applied to them as is used on the decorative trim. It's not important what the numbers are for these moldings; pick the ones you want. What is important is that the ceiling beam soffits are nosed up against the angled southern wall.
• The angled ceiling beam at the bottom right (against the arched wall of the alcove) is positioned nose into that wall. The "nose" of the soffit is where the inverted "V" is, when you select the object. That is, the front-most part of the object.
• The other beams (angled 90° to the other angled moldings) are pointing toward the northwest, nose against the beam.
• The vertical beam is nose into the horizontal wall at the top.
• The beams are longer, as necessary, so they stick into the beams next to them, to eliminate any gaps, especially in the angles. You will need to use the CTRL key while moving these soffits so you can force them into position. Once positioned, they will stay where you put them.

Difficult Part #2: The Alcove Arched Doorway

This is not such much difficult as it is tedious to make.

• Start by placing a door in the wall (you have to have a wall before you can do anything else).
• Make the door into a doorway. Make the height 96". Delete the sill, but don't delete the casings. Make the doorway into a broken arch, 8" high.
• Now, go into a cross-section view that is straight into the wall (with the doorway). Select the doorway by clicking on the casing. Note that you won't be able to select the doorway in cross-section view if you suppress the casings.
• Pull the doorway up till the bottom is about 16 1/2". In our case it doesn't matter that much since we will be covering this part of the wall with a soffit, but if we weren't covering this part of the wall with anything, you would need to pull the doorway opening up from the floor.
• Center the doorway, if you haven't already done this. This is easiest done in plan view.
• Once you are satisfied with the size and position of the doorway, open the specification dialog for it and suppress the casings. Now it should look for the most part as it does in the images.
• Make a soffit 1 1/2" high, 16 1/2" from the floor, with width and depth enough to fill the alcove "room". Nudge it into position, and make it into your dark oak material. I did add this material to the library. I also needed to make both a vertical (90° rotation) and a -45° (northwest to southeast angle) version of this material. I applied the 45° material to the soffit that makes our window seat.
• Make another soffit, also 1 1/2" high and 16 1/2" from the floor, and apply a curved chair rail molding to it (set the molding to 1 1/2" high, and adjust the width appropriately). This soffit should be wide enough to fill the doorway opening, and just a little deeper than the wall. Nudge this soffit into position, using the CTRL key while moving it so it will move through the wall.

Now we should have our alcove with a window seat. Of course, you can add the windows anytime you like.

I did all the doorway work first, then much later came back and added the wainscoting. I would recommend performing this detailing in stages, working on one set of aspects throughout the plan, then coming back to build in other aspects (after checking our work to make sure everything is exactly where we want it, and covered with the material we want, too).

Difficult Part #3: The Arched Wall Openings

These are essentially just like the arched doorway to the alcove, except that they are smaller and not as tall.

• Pull the bottoms up to 48". Each doorway is 36" wide, and they are 9" apart. The rightmost one is 9" from the vertical living room wall.
• I made soffit countertops to place in the bottoms of each doorway. Don't worry about placing these until you are satisfied with the doorways and have deleted the casings.
• These countertop soffits are 1 1/2" high, 5 1/2" deep, 38" wide, and 48" from the floor. I gave each one a curved molding and covered them with the same dark oak material. Choose a material direction that makes your images make sense. The grain should be inline with the long way, usually.

Difficult Part #4: The Fireplace

Here was the basic problem: I needed the fireplace to become narrower at the mantel, and there is no way to do this with the fireplace object. If we look at the backside of the fireplace (see below), we notice that this side has an angle to the brick (it's not exactly 45°). So, let's explore how we did all these things.

Referring to the first living room image (way at the top), we see that our fireplace is 72" wide up to 60" tall, then it's 48" wide to the ceiling.

A 6" high mantel is placed off-center, with its bottom at 56". The mantel is 24" deep and overhangs the fireplace on the right 3". The mantel also has a molding applied (one of the door casings), made 5 1/4" high. There is 3/4" of mantel below the molding.

• First we must draw in the wall. In general, walls always go in first, and beyond that we make sure all the walls are where we want them, before going to the trouble of detailing our plan.
• Place a fireplace in the wall. It can be a trick getting the fireplace to face the direction we want (especially in an interior wall) but click more toward the left side of the wall when inserting the fireplace, and it should face in the direction we want.
• Widen the fireplace to 72". Open its dialog and set the height to 60", depth to 24", and hearth to 0" high and deep. We will make our own hearth, later.
• Set the fire box to 48" wide, 35" tall, and 20" deep.
• Make sure the fireplace is positioned (vertically) where you want it. Mine is placed 29 3/4" from the adjacent wall (just so you know).
• Pull the back of the fireplace out until it is 9" from the right face of the wall. That is, we want the fireplace to stick 9" into the dining room. This happens to be important in my plan because there is a fireplace on the second floor above, and since it is placed in an exterior wall, we needed to pay attention to the positioning between the floors.
• Make a geometric closed box 60" high, 60" from the floor, 48" wide and 14 1/2" deep. I used a geometric shape instead of a soffit because soffits inherit room moldings when they are placed against walls. We don't want any moldings on our masonry, particularly.
• We need another geometric box on the other side of the wall (in the dining room). It is 48" by 9", by 60" high, and is 60" from the floor.
• In plan view, carefully nudge the box into position. Make sure it aligns exactly with the north edge of the fireplace. Check this in cross-section view, if necessary.
• Make the mantel (from a soffit object), and place it against the wall. Slide it over (using the CTRL key) until it is in position.
• Now, make a soffit for the stone lintel over the fire box. Mine is 5" high, 5" deep, 54" wide, and 32" from the floor. I covered it with black-gray marble, and positioned it carefully above the fire box opening. Use cross-section view to get it exactly where you want it.
• On the dining room side, get a geometric wedge and make it 30" high, 9" wide, 24" deep, and 60" from the floor. Cover it with the same brick, and carefully (using cross-section view) nudge it into position.

Difficult Part #5: Other Tricks with Soffits

Soffits are the all-purpose geometric solid. It can be covered in any material and stretched in any direction, and can be as small as 1/16" in one direction, and as large as you need it, in another. Not only that, it can be sloped, too. We didn't using any sloped soffits in this plan, but it's worth mentioning.

Placing Moldings

Soffits also can take moldings, as many as you want. These moldings can be placed at the top, the bottom, and using the offset, anywhere in between. Soffits also inherit moldings when they're placed against walls (and against ceilings, too). Sometimes it's difficult to make a soffit grow a molding where you want one, but most of the time they will behave fairly predictably.

I use soffits to put moldings along walls where otherwise I couldn't. I tend to setup my plans with base moldings that are in the library, so if I need a soffit to hold a base molding, it will match what's already there. I also use crown moldings that are in the library for the same reason: repeatability.

Positioning

Soffits like to hug walls, and that makes them pretty easy to use (around walls). They don't want to go into walls (and some other objects), but you can make them go anywhere by using the CTRL key. Press CTRL before grabbing the soffit by its center handle, then drag the soffit where you want it. If it snaps back to some other location, grab it again (using the CTRL key) and drag it back. Eventually it will stay where you want it. If it does, don't move it again, unless you need to.

Once positioned, all objects (including soffits) stay where they are unless you move them. You can color objects in 3D mode, too, and they won't move, but if you open their specification dialog box to set their material, they will probably snap away from where you put them.

Selecting Soffits (and other objects)

Selecting a soffit is usually easy, since soffits are selected first before other object types. The easiest way to select any object is to click near its center point. If you are trying to select a soffit, and if you click near the object's center it does not automatically select, don't panic. Simply press the TAB key until the soffit in question is selected. The room is always the last object to be selected.

Geometric shapes can be used in many places where soffits can, except they can't take moldings, nor do they inherit moldings from the room. It's simply preference whether one is better than another, in some cases.

Stretching Soffits

One good trick that works with many stretchable objects (soffits and cabinets, in particular) involves getting a soffit to expand to fill the space allotted to it.

Say we're placing a wainscot along one wall of a room. We first make a master soffit with the height, thickness, material and moldings we want, then we copy it and place copies along each of the walls. Now, grab one soffit by its center handle and push it over until it stops at one corner. Grab the opposite end handle and drag this edge as far as you can. It probably won't stop exactly in the corner. Instead, it stops at the nearest even inch. No problem. Open the soffit's specification dialog and change the width (or whatever relevant dimension) to one inch higher than it is. Press TAB to tab out of the field, and notice that the width sets itself to the highest value it can, without actually going into the wall. Voila! Your soffit has been stretched to fill all the available space.

Making "Curved" Soffits

I often use soffits to make decorative molding-like features. They can also be made to go around curved walls, too. This plan, in particular, has soffits acting as trim along the tops of curved glass brick walls in the master bath. Check it out, then read on.

The "trick" to making soffits that appear to curve around is to know two important facts about how soffits behave. One we have already mentioned (though it was only in passing), and one we have not touched upon, yet.

1. Soffits hug walls with their backsides. This also means that if you have a curved wall, a narrow soffit, when placed against it, will assume the angle (regardless of other settings) of the piece of wall to which it is attached.
2. Soffits join with other, similar soffits nearby.

Let me explain that last point. When two soffits are in close proximity, and when they share certain positional and dimensional similarities, they tend to fill the space between them as if there was a continuous soffit. This means that if you place one narrow soffit on a curved wall, and place another narrow soffit next to it on the same wall, these soffits will join, thus making a curved soffit that follows the wall. Moldings on these soffits, likewise, will extend and bend. The screen shot below shows this phenomenon.

The decorative trim alone the top of the curved wall is composed of a number of soffits, each 6" wide, 12" tall, and holding the crown molding. The molding below the trim is a room molding, as is the base molding, below. They are made by the wall, and required no effort to construct.

I simply copied and pasted each of these soffit "pieces", and nudged them individually against the wall, and then against their immediate neighbor. It is quite tedious and time-consuming, of course, but it is the only way I know to achieve this effect.

At the corner at left, above, I made the long soffit overhang the end of the wall by 1" so it would be a brake for the small soffit next to it. Then when I snugged the soffits together they "joined" to appear as if they were one piece.

Last But Not Least

That's about all I have, for now. I do plan to cover other advanced techniques in future installments, but for now, I'm putting this page away and moving on to other things.

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