Modern Home No. 146

I was drawn to this house design because of the illustrations in the book Homes In A Box that I had recently purchased. It was the first house in the catalog, and the interior rendering seemed to call out to me as a challenge.

I wasn't even sure (at the time I began it) how I was going to model some of the details, but other than the rafter tips that were shown lining the angled gables, I felt I was able to model nearly everything of consequence in this design. As near as I can determine, there is only one way to create angled rectangular solids, and that would involve using 3 geometric wedges to compose each shape. I deemed the effort to be more than the aesthetics of the result, so they're not there.

The image below more or less matches the illustration in the catalog. I know the trees and some other details aren't in the original image, but ... so what. I thought the arbor housing the pump was a nice touch, regardless. There also weren't colored panels on the window seat (front middle in the image below), but I thought my idea seemed to fit. The rest of the window seat is pure white, and its roof is nearly flat. I could not tell from the illustration, so I had to guess.

Overall, the dimensions indicated on the floor plans seemed to work with the illustrations and fit with how the whole house came together, except for the area above the first floor stairwell. I think there may be an inaccuracy in the floor plan, or perhaps I didn't put the attic stairs in quite the right place. In truth, I'm not sure how I could have located the attic stairs anywhere other than where I did. If someone actually knows ... please let me know. It's killing me!

The Front

Per the description in the catalog, the gable ends and the porch columns are "stonecote" (or, stucco, to you and me). I chose a rich brown color in keeping with the Craftsman tradition of earth tones. I even found a set of swatches for historically accurate colors, and the brown I chose matches one of the colors fairly closely. For the siding I chose a light, rose pink color.

I took the stained cedar shingle pattern supplied with the program and used Photo Shop to darken it, considerably. It seems to match reasonably well with the rest of the colors. Stained shingles (and not just on the roof) were common.

The trim is mostly shiny white with some parts being the same rose pink color as the siding.

The Rear

Some things worth noting:

• Both the living room and dining room are rich with oak. Beams, additional borders, wainscoting, etc. They would cost a small fortune to build today. Sears once sold solid oak base moldings for $6.40 per hundred feet. Yes, that's 6.4 cents per foot. (Thanks, Kathleen, for pointing out my math error!)
• There were several examples of fireplaces with mantels in the catalog. Fortunately, there was an illustration for this house that I tried to duplicate as closely as possible.
• The oak buffet in the dining room had a detailed rendering in the catalog. I could not duplicate the leaded glass panels in the doors, but the doors I used do fit with the overall look. And yes, Sears sold the solid oak buffet with beveled glass mirror for $46.00. If I were to guess (based on what I know about the cost of handmade oak furniture) I would price the item today somewhere in the $2,500 to $3,500 range. That's almost 100 times the price!
• The closest sink I had (to the original) was the apron sink that I placed in a craftsman style oak cabinet. I also had to guess with respect to the shelving. I'm not sure I duplicated what they would have done in 1910.
• I also did not have a typical kitchen stove of the period, so I included a wood stove in the kitchen. All in all, it's hard to see how anyone cooked in such a small kitchen.
• The T-shaped stairs are a rather unique feature. I found similar designs in several other plans.
• Entrance halls were also quite common, and window seats seemed to be all but required in most of these designs. It seems nearly every house had at least one. Who sits in the window anymore, these days?
• Oh, and check out the monstrously huge front porch. In the days before air conditioning, people spent more time outside than we do now, where at least it was cooler in the shade of the porch than it was inside the house.

First Floor

On the second floor:

• I included an image of the bathroom. Without more information, it was hard to guess, but I have seen several images of other Sears houses, and subway tile was commonly used to line the bathroom walls. This house was fairly expensive compared to some others, so the added cost of tile in the bathroom doesn't seem out of place.
• The claw foot tub is the closest I can come to matching tubs of the period. Nothing else is even close.
• The attic stairs go up from the eastern end of the hall, and obviously must turn one direction or the other. I turned them toward the center of the house, over the stairs coming up from the first floor. The floor plan shows the stairwell open to the first floor, but with attic stairs above, I'm not sure that was how the house was designed. It doesn't quite make sense.
• The closets in the bedrooms are very small, though the bedrooms themselves aren't all that small.

Second Floor

.

This is an almost straight-on view. It's a very handsome house, and I like the details of the attic windows and flowerboxes (outside the attic windows, which are on all 4 sides).

The arched trim around the front porch was made from arched doorways in "no room def" walls. You can't line up walls over top one another, but the siding porch walls (that are not solid railings, but regular walls brought down to a 32" height) and the trim walls abut one another. The front step side walls and the porch column bottoms, with the footings showing, were made from soffits and the footings are moldings applied to the bottoms of the soffits.

Just in case you were wondering how I did it.

Here is the obligatory night shot. Right now this is also my desktop background on my computer at work. I have found that, in general, limiting the number of lights that cast shadows to a single light works best for generating these images. This image, though, was made with shadows generated by all the exterior lights. It took more than 15 minutes to generate.

This looks from inside the front door toward the stairs and the kitchen beyond. There is a window seat on the right that you can almost see, and another seat in the space between the living room wall and the stairs.

The stairs seemed to lack something, so I put in a stair runner in dark charcoal carpeting. Perhaps it's not accurate for the period, but I think it looks better than without.

Here is another view from the front entrance hall, showing the bookshelves next to the fireplace. The large newel posts were added from the millwork library and positioned appropriately.

Here is the living room from the doorway next to the bookshelves. No, there's no sofa, just a table and some chairs. The original illustration didn't show a sofa, either.

The ceiling beams are soffits with moldings added to make them appear slightly angled. Soffits are the all-purpose shape that can be molded from 1/16" x 1/16" all the way beyond 100' x 100'. It can even be sloped, which is useful for making rafters and the like.

I made the picture moldings at the 7' line (at the tops of the windows) by making very thin soffits (1/16" thick) that extend from the ceiling down to the bottom of the molding line. You can place moldings both at the top and the bottom of soffits quite easily. The fireplace, as well, was made partly from soffits (with moldings).

This looks from the corner of the living room back toward the fireplace and doorway into the dining room. As I said, the details around the fireplace were made from soffits and moldings. The fireplace hearth is also a soffit, made 1/2" thick and covered with white subway tile. For the fireplace itself, I turned off the hearth (set height and width to zero). A soffit easily shoves under/into other objects.

This is the view that was illustrated in the book. I could not accurately duplicate the wide angle view, not without distorting walls and ceilings, but this view still shows both the living room and dining room details quite nicely.

Here's an experimental view with only the dining room lights for illumination.

I made this view by dragging the active camera (originally positioned in the living room) into the dining room and adjusting the lights so that the dining room lights are used to illuminate the view. Then I dragged the camera back to its original position and immediately did a final rendering. Not a bad effect.

Here is the dining room, more close up. The wainscoting is made from cabinets that have been made 60" tall and 1" thick. I also used doors with glass panel inserts, and made the glass into a green wallpaper pattern. I used chair rail moldings for the plate rail, and extended the counter tops an additional 1" to make the plate rail a little wider.

I did not have a stained glass pattern for the window (as in the original), so I made a diamond pattern in the window, instead.

This focuses on the window seat along the side of the dining room. Again, window seats were awfully popular in these houses. The lighting fixtures may not be accurate for the period (though these are Craftsman pendants), but I thought there should be some sort of light in the dining room.

Moving on around, here is the view from just inside the door between the dining room and the pantry. As I said before, the shelving isn't that great, but it's there. It probably didn't originally extend over the cabinets, and in all probability the cabinets aren't quite accurate, either.

From the stairs, this is the kitchen looking toward the back door. I decided the kitchen needed some cabinets, so I put in some along the wall. They look pretty good, but they're nothing special. All things considered, it's a pretty small kitchen.

Another view from the back door, toward the stairs. Yes, you could walk up the five or six steps, then down again to go from the kitchen to the living room. Funky, no?

There isn't too much to see in this view, it being the upstairs hallway looking toward the attic stairs. The bathroom doorway is immediately on the left.

Finally, here is the bath. I embedded a wall cabinet in the wall to make the medicine cabinet. I took the basic clawfoot tub supplied with the program and made it a tad smaller so it would fit in the cramped bathroom space.