Monday, September 08, 2014

 

Our Introduction to Double Brick Bungalows

In 2004 my wife and I were shopping for a house. We had lived in the High Park area of Toronto and were motivated to get a house there. Unfortunately we were competing against many other young couples hoping to do the same. The phenomenon of multiple bids was well under way and when we were in a house we like the first thing we asked was "when are you accepting offers?".

We didn't quite have stomach for the scene of realtors walking back and forth between the house and the multiple cars parked out front so we never did bid on  a High Park house, but we did learn a lot about house value through that process. As price and demand went up we found ouselves rationalizing 2 bedrooms with no closets, no parking and no basement. Did we really need those things?

But as we started looking at a less sought after neighborhoods we recognized instantly that there was hidden value in well located red brick 1930's bungalows. Imagine our surprise when we started looking at houses in a classic early 20th century neighborhood with 3 bedrooms closets and, gasp, driveways.

These houses, though in need of updates, had original gum wood trim, tasteful stain glass and double brick construction. Having previously toured updated houses that started with the same ingredients we definitely saw the potential. In one house in particular we asked when they were accepting offers. When the answer was "whenever you want", within 2 days we had bought a house.

I would love to tell you that I knew all about early twentieth century bungalows when we made the purchase, but it was through the course of the home inspection and subsequent trips to the library, that I learned about this kind of house. I always believe the saying that you don't make good right or wrong decisions. You simply make decisions, then you work at making it a good decision. Well you could say that after buying our house I worked very hard at proving that buying a double brick early 20th century bungalow was the best decision one could make. I researched their history, learned about the tennents of their construction, and figured out that aspects of their design actually had expansion in mind.

Much of this writing will chronicle the mental and physical journey we took over the course of 10 years, as we re-imagined an early 20th century home into an early 21st century home.


 

Topping up a Toronto Bungalow

My new house is complete. I've run out of things to do so I'm going to put together a book on the experience of putting a second story on a 1940's bungalow (a house type of which Toronto has many).

Here's the Before and the after.





The book will be an iPhoto book for my own consumption using the photos I took during the process. However, depending on the time and interest, I will add text and chapters to make it a book on topping up a bungalow in Toronto. Last night I brainstormed an outline while sitting on my new porch:
- History
-- Bungalows in Toronto
-- Top ups in Toronto
- Our house
-- history
-- our history
- Original ideas
-- Loft
-- Google sketch up
-- Bathroom
- Know you house style
- Planning Process
- Options for updating Bungalows
- Design process
-- Get an architect
-- Styles
-- Exteriors
-- Layouts
-- Features
-- Basements
- Move out
-- Purge
-- Store
-- Rent
- City Process
- Build Process
-- What to expect in the demo
-- What to expect in the framing
-- What to expect in the infrastructure in the wiring and plumbing
-- what to expect during drywall
- - what to expect during painting
- -


Thursday, June 28, 2007

 

Article In progress: Home on the Ranch

Here's an article I am working on about the Ubiquitous Ranch style (Its still very early in the edit process).
-----------------------------
In the neighbouhood where I was raised we were surrounded by variations on the Ranch bungalow. I can confidently say that most people reading this article would say the same. My certainty in this matter is sheer probability. The Ranch and its variations is the most populous creed of housing style on the North American continent.

If you are like me, by the time you were a teenager you never pictured yourself in Ranch when you "grew up"; you would be in a funky loft downtown, or live in a century home somewhere midtown. Its amazing how much one can learn about economics and life's priorities from about age 25 to 30. For example it turns out those lofts require a mortgage just for the parking spot, and that midtown Victorian? ... for most 30 year olds who enjoyed their 20's, you can afford a semi with no lot, no parking and a decade of renovations ahead of you. Who knew?

As a result of these not-quite-mid-life epiphanies, all of a sudden you see Gen XYZ-ers cruising around in their Honda Civics checking out neirbourhoods that no matter how much they rationalize it, are full of the ubiquitous Ranch. You hear them saying, "you mean to tell me that I can get parking for four, a hockey rinkable lot and a 1500 square foot house for the same as those 750 square foot five-storey Townhouses near the 'Village'?"

As we peer from our car at these neighbourhoods, we see all kinds of things we don't remember. By the time we moved out of them, the population we left behind was fairly senior and the habit of renovating was long past. But drive through a Ranch neighbourhood today and you'll see a number of houses that replaced the curly iron pillars and tin canopies with brand new porticos. The aluminum storm windows have been updated with attractive modern windows, and the angel-stone facade has been replaced with an energy efficient combination of new brick and stucco.

The Ranch style house with its broad roof, standardized dimensions and large plot is making itself the ultimate prospect house. They are easy to modify, they have room to expand, and standard parts are easily obtained retail. And when I say prospect I mean you can buy one with a child on the way, fill it up, then add-on as required (to the house or the family).

A great feature of this type of neighbourhood, is that most of your new neighbours are at the same stage. You all discover together that you can't hit downtown on Friday nights anymore, but you can get together and play cards. And whoever's backyard is within range of the most baby monitors is automatically the host.

Mind you these neighbourhoods don't fill up with young families overnight. Usually there will be a beachhead of a few young families. These people tend to become those nice young people who shovel driveways, and cut lawns for the neighbours that were the original Ranch owners. Then bit by bit the ambulances come and before you know it everyone up and down the street are in the same demographic.

So forget that I promised I would never live in a Ranch, and while your at it forget that I swore I would never drive a Mini-van.

...

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

 

Got to get over the hump

I've been doing a lot of reading lately that I hope will help me make this website successful. Previously all my reading was related to house styles and design. I have a nice stack of beautiful looking books (the words are actually pretty good too) about domestic architecture home renovation, and bungalows . The truth is that I have been pretty heavy on the bungalow part; to the point where my neighbours call me Bungalow Man.

However, lately my reading has been more about the business end of a website like this. The truth is that I started this as an outlet for my interest in domestic architecture, but lately I have been enthusiastic about trying to make this a source of income. I've been reading things like the Millionaire Next Door and the Tipping Point and my hope is that I can get some sort of feedback on this site in the form of some Adsense revenue in order to spurn me on to try and do some online retailing. I'm reading a book on Adsense and so far it has affirmed a lot of the things I am building into the website and given me some ideas on what types of things I should do when I launch. One thing is to pull out my old Marketing text books and actually do a marketing proper plan (revolutionary).

As the title of this entry would indicate, I have had difficulty in the past taking my websites to the point of being a commercial venture. On some of them like pooladdict.com I came quite close but never finished it off. I really hope to at least get this site finished to the point where I can setup Adsense, but I would really like to go further and sell products related to the content of the site.

Anyway, kind of a stream of conscience entry with a repeated theme. Things I have complete lately is to make the questionnaire look like its finished. I still need to fill in all the business logic for the different responses to the questionnaire. Once that is finished and I fill in the details for the style descriptions I will setup Adsense and register for the search engines.

Take it ez,

Brian

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

 

I'm back

Well it looks like Winter is the time I focus on Web projects as it has been since last March that I have posted an entry. I have been busy though. When I last wrote, all the interactive parts of the site were pretty much smoke and mirrors, but today you can enter a house profile, city or neighbourhood and it will actually be saved in a database to appear again another day.

The site is nearing a point when I would feel I could register adsense and begin marketing. My hope is that I will get some nominal income through adsense as I build up an audience. I hope to then move up the food chain a little and begin re-selling products that relate to my content, and potentially even my own products. I have found that you cannot buy stock components for an Arts & Crafts porch, yet I believe there is a market for them. I am currently building one in my garage and if I could find a market for porch components I would try to find a manufacturer.

So I am still working on the site. The technical work is done, now I just have to fill in some more content on the house styles.

Piece Out,

Brian

Monday, March 27, 2006

 

Getting there

It's has been a month since my last post. Part was caused by a visit to London England, and the other part was caused by plain distraction. I have been working on the site however and do have some updates to report.

I finished my first article. It was one of those things were it sat at about 90% finished for three weeks and then I decided I needed to finish something. The article is called Bungalow Mania and it informs on the history of bungalow communities surrounding urban areas. I started the article as one to discuss all there is to know about bungalows, but I remembered that I am writing for the web so I need to break it up. I focused the article on discussing the historical social-demographic themes tied to bungalows. I tied it to the resurge in popularity that bungalows are experiencing right now. I will discuss details of the style itself in another article.

I have also moved ahead in putting the structure to the site together. Each section now has an index page that serves as a summary of the section, and I have added bread crumbs to help you know what section you are in.

One thing I have realized about the project in general is that it will take time to get the content I want the site to have. I happen to have 2 - hours of transit commuting time on a daily basis, and I have dedicated that time to House Proud. This will allow me to stay married, and also make progress on renovating my 1940's bungalow.

I still have not decided when I will launch, we'll see.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Action List:
To Do
- Work out process for making line-drawings from photos
- Test image manipulation with Java
- Test image storage in MySQL
- Look into logic to rotate articles

In progress
- Create What style is my house questionnaire? - put online, still need to build the logic

Complete
- Bread crumbs
- Create House Style section - still need to fill in the styles
- Complete profile form - done
- Write my first article and work out subsections and format - Done, Bunglowmania
- Test use of blogger for articles - Done, decided no
- Created no-sides style sheet to drop conten at edges
- broke style sheets into separate sheets
- Took care of printer friendliness
- Research post war homes - Done
- Create front page centre content - Done
- Test out compiled page technology - Done
- Create a mini icon for browsers - Done

Sunday, February 26, 2006

 

What Style is My House

I'm writing in my notes that I made to rough out the What style is my house questionnaire. I lost the paper notes twice, so I want to make sure I don't lose this before I get a chance to build the questionnaire.

Basically I will ask a series of questions. Different answers will have different scores adding towards a particular style. Some questions should help specify within a style, for example a house that is victorian, could be specified based on what they respond to the roofline question.

Questions:
1. What year was your house built? (list consists of eras)
2. Which of the following most closely resembles the shape of your roofline? (series of drawings)
3. Select the elements that are prominent features of your house? (porch, centre hallway, 10' ceilings, fireplace, stained glass, vaulted ceilings, garage, carport, split-staircase, walk-in attic, dormers, 7' + basement.
4. Which of the following most closely resembles an original window in your house?
5. Which of the following does your house most resemble?
6. How many storeys does your house have? (1, 1 1/2, 2, 3 or more)
7. Which of the following describes your house? (Detached, Semi-detached, Side-by-side, Row)
8. If your house has pillars outside, which of the following most closely resembles those pillars? (craftsman, victorian, doric, metal)

Would like 2 more (5 is kinda weak).

 

About House Proud

I tried writing the text for the About House Proud page directly in HTML but I was feeling kind of stiff creatively, so I am attempting to write it here in the blog. Words seem to flow more freely here.

The goals and objectives of House Proud can be summed up in one statement. If I can stop one person from dismantling their Craftsman porch and replace it with an ornately turned Victorian style ballustrade from Home Depot, I will feel satisfied with my work. This is not a knock against Victorian homes or Home Depot. I live in Toronto Ontario and there is a large number of Victorian homes here, and if your house is Victorian then by all means rebuild your porch with turned ballustrades, and Home Depot has a great selection.

My point is that all houses have an original style and by using that style as a guide to your decoration and renovations, you will ensure that your house is in harmony with itself. A favourite quote of mine is taken from a website called SplitLevel.net
"Right now the trend is very dressy doors with oval glass. If you have a bowfront window, avoid these at all costs. A 2005 door with oval glass on a 1967 house with a multiple-square or multi-pane front window just doesn't jive. It's a bit like an old lady wearing a mini-skirt; she looks like an old tart. Put her in a 1960s era pillbox hat, a pink skirt and jacket, with modest black pumps, and the old lady looks positively elegant. Same with the house."
The point is that it doesn't matter if your house is a 19th century Victorian row house, a 1920's Arts and Crafts bungalow, or a post WWII Ranch Rambler; each house is built with a particular style. Applying decorations or renovations that are in line with that style is the difference between a balanced good-looking home, and a house that is awkwardly attempting to be something it is not.

House Proud provides good information about house styles so you can make good choices for your home.

I'm not saying you have to restore your house back to every detail of 100 years ago. You can use modern components and materials. But as it is with most things in the world, every "new" design stands on the shoulders of previous designs. So if you know a bit about the style of your house, you can choose designs that have traits in common with your home.

What's in it for me?
A number of things about me personally came together in the form of House Proud. I am trained as a Historian at the University of Waterloo, however almost my whole career I have had the unofficial job title of "Computer Guy" (this is how my wife describes my job to her family).

House Proud is way for me to combine my interest in History and design as well as online technology. Being in the "home-owning parent of two" stage of my life I have taken a great interest in domestic architecture. I have always like certain styles of homes but it was only when I found out more about my 1940's bungalow that I realized why I like those homes. My previous statement is almost a web cliche as I have read about so many other people who have had the same experience of purchasing a home, and later becoming fascinated by its origins and its design.

The name House Proud comes from the adjective I would use to describe myself and others who are interested in making their house as good as they can be. With the record-setting housing market over the past number of years, there are hordes of us setting out to update our homes. I think everyone wants to be proud of their home, and I think everyone would like to know more about their house's pedigree.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

 

Re-thinking Articles

Dynamic Dropdowns
I haven't written in a while, but I have made some developments. The Who's Your Neighbour
is coming along. I have the javascript working pretty well at taking the selected city and
pulling in the neighbourhoods associated with those cities. In implementing this on the
client side I have established that I need to associate neighbourhoods to cities on the
physical model side. I had thought that I would use coordinates to associate things together
but it would just be too complicated to do that using javascript. I will simply require
that people select a city when they add a neighbourhood. I have also figured out a way to easily drop the links and ads space at the sides when a form appears. I think this adds to the usability
of the form.

Articles
On the article content side I have made some progress. I have an article on the bungalow
about 70% finished. The article started out titled The Craftsman Bungalow, but I began by
talking about the social aspect of the Bungalows popularity. By the time I had barely coverd
that area I already had a sizeable article by web standards. So I then renamed the article
Bungalow Mania, and have decided that I will treat the bungalow in three articles.
Bungalow Mania to cover the social aspect, The Arts and Crafts Movement, to cover
the origins of the bungalow, and The Crafstman Bungalow to cover the features of
a early 20th century bungalow. In each article I will need to be clear that I am discussing
a different kind of bungalow that many of us grew up in the 50's, 60's and 70's.

I think that I will need to take this multiple article approach for most articles. Rather
than trying to write one far reaching article that no one would ever finish reading on
a web page, I will break them down into smaller articles. This has the benefit of being
better for the reader, but also will allow me to write content more quickly if I do it
in smaller chunks. I will make sure that I link between articles carefully and always
provide a list of related articles.

I am still trying to decide whether I need to finish the house styles descriptions first
or whether I should write the articles, as I learn a lot about the styles as I research
and write the articles.

Well I got to get back to finishing Bungalow Mania.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Action List:
To Do
- Test image manipulation with Java
- Test image storage in MySQL
- Look into logic to rotate articles
- Test use of blogger for articles

In progress
- Create What style is my house questionnaire? - roughed out on paper
- Create House Style section - in progress
- Write my first article and work out subsections and format - Started Post war homes
- Complete profile form - looking at blogger format

Complete
- Created no-sides style sheet to drop conten at edges
- broke style sheets into separate sheets
- Took care of printer friendliness
- Research post war homes - Done
- Create front page centre content - Done
- Test out compiled page technology - Done
- Create a mini icon for browsers - Done

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