production values
Bring a personal touch to your production home through these high-leverage improvements that set your place apart from the crowd, inside and out.
A curving brick walkway, plantings of varied scale and color, and a water feature distinguish the entry to this new residence by Pulte Homes at Loma Colorado in Rio Rancho, New Mexico.
Designing a home that fits you like a glove is not all that difficult if you are starting from the ground up or have a generous remodeling budget. But if your funds are limited and you have just bought into a development where the houses are alike, you face a real challenge in trying to personalize your new home.
Developers try to hold down costs while offering features to sell houses. As a result, production homes, if not exactly alike, tend to feel much the same; except for a few obligatory kitchen and bath amenities, the detailing can be simple; materials can be ersatz; exteriors receive minimal attention; and the home might lack truly green attributes, unless it is certified by a program like Build Green New Mexico, for example.
Standards in the building industry could certainly use some improvement, as recent Style with Substance columns have suggested—but what’s to be done in the meantime? Begin by choosing a home carefully. Sure, it’s important to respond emotionally to a new abode, but keep your wits about you and confirm that the important elements measure up, especially those that are built into the structure. Carpets and paint may be easy to change, but insulation and heating or cooling systems definitely are not. You can upgrade doors and hardware without much trouble, but windows and recessed lights present bigger challenges. Kitchens and bathrooms are expensive to remodel, so they’d better meet your expectations for the foreseeable future.
If the basics are in place and you feel confident that, over time, you can mold the house to be your second skin, then you might start with the typically underdeveloped exterior, which is probably crying out for help. It goes without saying that almost all homeowners want their home to go beyond looking good; they want it to appear distinctive. Privacy usually ranks high on the list, but you should also explore other less-obvious considerations: does the house need shading or windbreaks? Can shading be provided without compromising wintertime solar gain? Is it feasible to collect roof water, or to at least convey rainfall to key trees or plantings? Do you have long-term plans for a hot tub, swimming pool, or room additions?
Fortunately, exterior improvements are both the easiest and cheapest to accomplish. Trees and shrubs are the most cost-effective investments, delivering benefits that literally grow over the years. Fences, walls, and gates—“hardscape”—though pricier, make key elements that can set your house apart from look-alike neighbors, while patios and portales can serve as mainstays of your outdoor living areas. Although codes and covenants often limit the extent of front-yard walls, even a tiny courtyard can transform your house’s presentation as well as give your visitors a pleasing transition zone en route to the front door. Remember that it’s critical for your visitors either to see the front door right away or suffer no confusion between front door and side entrance—and of course, the door itself is hugely important. Whereas many production homes offer big-box-store doors that are high on glitz but low on elegance, you might consider a replacement that better expresses how you want to greet the world.
Now let’s move inside the house: although you can easily buy and install furniture and decor, you might find other interior improvements more daunting in terms of both mess and expense. The short list of easy-to-change items includes doors, hardware, surface-mounted lights, and window coverings, while another list of messier projects covers paint and carpet. A few elements such as skylights, though messy, produce a lot of bang for the buck. Beyond these categories, you are looking at full-on remodeling (and another Su Casa issue).
Any of these details can effectively customize your home—provided you weave your changes into a cohesive whole that maximizes the structure’s potential and generates some emotional charge. Simply shopping for things you like is not going to be nearly as effective as first developing a color scheme, a strategy that anticipates both day lighting and nighttime lighting, and a sense of what experience or flow you want to create as you move through the house. For example, deeper colors support intimate spaces such as bedrooms or dens, while off-whites help set off artwork and make living rooms feel more expansive.
A rhythm of light and dark creates energy—think of the “pop” you feel when you go from a relatively dim hallway into a bright great room. Look carefully at walls at the end of a hallway or opposite a passage into any room: these are perfect surfaces for showpiece paintings or special collectibles. Find existing details that you can enhance with a small touch, such as placing a stone sill on a nicho or banco. As these improvements fall into place, find out how to optimize them with the existing lighting. Switching out the bulb in a recessed fixture or installing a directional trim can instantly transform most architectural details.
In a time when lean and green is becoming the order of the day, you can make plenty of choices to help your house function well in addition to looking good. Pick window coverings that insulate as well as provide privacy, and consider window films, which reduce UV penetration and unwanted solar glare at east and west windows. Place large house plants for improved air quality and cooling. Install low-flow shower heads, wrap your water heater with insulation, and use compact fluorescent bulbs wherever possible. All these measures save both energy and money, which you can stash for that full-on remodel or addition, should you decide you just have to have it.
Vishu Magee designs homes around Santa Fe and Taos. He is the author of Archetype Design: House as a Vehicle for Spirit. Contact him at archetype-design.com.