Ever walk past new construction in your town or city and say to
yourself, "I can do it better?" I did.
I'm Jim Collins, Oak Park, Illinois resident and an admitted
architectural scavenger, and having said just that to myself many
times, I finally decided to do something about it.
Easy right? Just ten steps - all the 'how to' books have
them.
1. Find a vacant lot that is for sale and
affordable. Oak Park is a suburb on Chicago's
western border; the community is built up, but in-fill lots were
still scattered around town.
2. I soon discovered vacant lots that are for sale and
affordable are basically the ones everyone else avoided.
Let it be a challenge. Get your creative
juices flowing.
I found a long, narrow lot bordered on two sides by alleys in a
residential area. That particular side of the street was zoned for
limited multi-unit use (a two-unit development only). A
contractor's typical solution would be to stack one unit on top of
the other. Instead, I designed a pair of houses on the
single, long lot. This mini-development is not a
duplex, not a rowhouse and not two detached single-family
dwellings. Instead, it became two single-family homes,
joined at their separate two-car garages.
3. Find a contractor. In this case it
wasn't a problem. A small contractor had just finished building my
studio/garage next to my Prairie-Style home. We were compatible
working together, and willing to take a chance.
4. Find a bank. Nothing gets built
without money. And what lone architect in private practice has
any? So we visited local banks, drawings in hand, plus my
portfolio and the hard and soft costs on the proposed project.
5. The local bank is interested. They liked me; however,
banks want collateral. Then came the hard part: convince my
wife. Convince her that putting our house up as
collateral is not as risky as it sounds. *Note: this is best done
over a pitcher of margaritas.
I wasn't alone. My contractor/partner was more than likely
at an adjoining booth with an even larger pitcher of margaritas
trying to convince his wife.
6. Get a permit. Small-town bureaucracy
is the same everywhere. Nothing goes quickly or smoothly. The
building department lost the first set of plans I dropped off.
However after two more visits in as many months, they grudgingly
gave me a permit. "A spec house? You're not gonna live
there?"
7. Start digging, and immediately attract sidewalk
superintendents. I spent at least ten hours a day at
that site. And I thought my wife had it hard during a pregnancy.
But this was my baby. And watching what I put on paper come into
being, so to speak, was a great experience.
The exterior is brick, cedar and beige stucco with a definite
Prairie-Style trim. Both homes are reached by the north
'courtyard.' I didn't take the easy way out: these are not
two mirror-image houses; they have two entire different layouts.
Each house is over 2,200 square feet (not counting the garages),
but the space is used differently in each one.
The front house has three bedrooms, a large living room, and a
sun room/den. There are three bedrooms and two full and one-half
baths. The rear house has a smaller living room, but gains a
bedroom on the first floor. This house has three full baths
and four bedrooms. This house was also designed to be
handicapped-accessible.
The homes are slab-on-grade, no basements, in order to cut
construction costs. Both houses have large attics - 12 by 38
feet of usable space that are easily accessible. Already with
floors in place, by extending the staircase up a level and
providing a skylight an owner can easily expand when finances
allow, or space needs dictate, in order to gain another room or
two.
Both homes have brick fireplaces that match the brick on the
exterior, large well designed kitchens, horizontal wood banding in
the living rooms and lots of Prairie-Style casement windows, as
well as some inventive uses of angles in the staircase.
In the front unit, the stairway landing pushes a triangle out of
the front wall of the house, with two huge tempered glass windows,
one on each edge. This matches another triangle in the
upstairs hallway, to form a diamond shape. Both units have
master suites with private baths and walk-in closets. The homes
each have a private patio. The front unit is shielded by
shrubbery, while the rear unit has a privacy fence to protect the
small back yard from the alley. The laundry areas are placed
upstairs off the hallways and close to the entrances of all three
bedrooms. This is, after all, where most of your dirty laundry is
generated.
Some touches are immediately apparent, such as marble floors in
the baths; others are less so, like insulating the plumbing walls
and furnace rooms for sound, and the energy-efficient windows,
furnace and wall and ceiling insulation.
I feel that the homes add an interest and brightness to what
could have been a mundane corner of Oak Park.
8. Be happy in your work. Convincing my
three teen-age sons that pouring concrete, sweeping up the site,
loading and unloading lumber is the basis of good architecture:
"Yes Frank Lloyd Wright did it this way. None of his apprentices
sat at a drawing board all day." They will have an
understanding of how a building goes up. "Can't learn it all
from a book."
9. Inspections, inspections, repeat, repeat.
How can a building department in a small village have so many
inspectors? And why do they have to be told the same thing at
least three times? Finally: an occupancy permit.
The completed building
10. You're done, now what? Find a realtor
and sell it. Or have your wife get a realtor's license - which mine
did. Of course she immediately informed me (over a pitcher of vodka
martinis) that building it was easy, but selling it will be hard.
Then she found not one, but two buyers, and soon I was turning the
keys over to the new owners.
Would I do it again? In a heartbeat! And I did…four
more times.
James E. Collins Architects, in business for over 25 years, is
a small architectural/consulting firm specializing in residential,
commercial and condominium buildings, both new construction and
renovation. Mr. Collins has combined his interest in
history & architectural scavenging and restored an 1860
commercial building which was designated a National Historic Site
and placed on the National Registry in 2003.
