It’s the Details That Set Tract Designs Apart

After two or three weekends of touring tract builders’ furnished models, a certain truth emerges:

For all but the highest-priced houses, the standard house offered at the base price is pretty basic. Most of the embellishments shown in the models are extra.

Unless you’re going for the strictly utilitarian look, you’ll want to get some of these optional extras. The question is, which ones?

Do you go for the artifacts, such as the soaking tub with the whirlpool jets? Do you opt for status and get the granite counter tops for the kitchen?

Or would you prefer some details that add character and differentiate your house from all the other ones on the block?

If the answer here is yes, here are a few suggestions that may not be in your builder’s repertoire, but they would not be hard for a tract builder to implement.

An easy place to make some changes that are apparent as soon as you walk in the front door is in the openings from your entry foyer into a living room, dining room or family room.

For a not-so-subtle 1930s retro look, make the top of the openings elliptically shaped arches. This may also be a potent reminder of your grandparents’ house or even the house you grew up in.

To add some stylistic consistency here without overdoing it, you can add the same elliptical arch shape to glass-paned doors on the wall cabinets in your kitchen or to a transom window over a doorway or larger window.

You might also consider rounded palladian-styled windows for a larger space, such as a family room.

For a more adventurous look, Tampa architect Jerry Messman suggested incorporating two or three rounded, arched openings in a row to create an arcade. “It has a very elegant feel and it’s a nice way to separate formal and informal space,” he noted.

For a more subtle and more contemporary look, you can increase the width of the openings to the rooms off the entry foyer and keep these open all the way to the ceiling.

This will make the space feel more open and the rooms feel bigger. Since it requires nothing extra, the builder may be more amenable to this idea than to the arches.

To add some subtlety and an even more contemporary look, make the corners of the openings rounded instead of square. If this is done consistently throughout the house, it will help tie the design together and make your house feel different from your neighbor’s, observed Steve Sinex, a Columbia, Md., architect.

“A standard 90-degree corner is a detail, but no one notices,” he said. “Make the corner 45 degrees or rounded and you’ve made it special.”

Although walls are the conventional way to separate functions and define spaces, you can also do this with columns.

In many parts of the country, these have been widely used in tract housing; some critics would even say they’re overused. Still, when used selectively, a column can be eye-catching.

If a round, prefabricated wood column proves to be too expensive or you don’t like the look, you can easily construct a square column out of 2-by-4-inch framing lumber and cover it with drywall.

To avoid a toothpick effect, the column needs to be big enough to look right. If the ceilings are 9 feet, now the norm for new houses in most areas of the country, Messman recommended that the column be 10 to 12 inches on a side. To create a capital at the top, you can use stock wood trim, he added.

Appeal of High Ceilings

Nine-foot ceiling heights for the main living areas are appealing to a builder because they are a relatively easy way to make a smaller space feel larger.

To make the space feel grand as well as big, McLean, Va., architect Margaret Rast recommended using 8-foot-high doors instead of the 6-foot, 8-inch high doors that most builders use, and wider trim along the top of the higher openings.

If you use a wider interior door as well, when you pass though the doorway, “you’ll feel like you’re really walking through something,” she said.

A sliding glass door on the rear of the house that opens onto a deck or patio from a kitchen or family room is standard in many places, but substituting a pair of French doors for the slider will give a more tailored, upscale look.

In the past, builders have not offered this on smaller houses because the exterior doors had to swing in for security reasons, and if the space was at all tight, the doors could easily hit furniture every time they were opened.

Exterior doors have always swung in, so that the hinges would be on the inside.

If the hinges were on the outside, the pins could be removed and someone could get in.

Andersen Windows now makes Frenchwood Outswing Patio Doors with concealed hinges that eliminate the security risk. Besides the look, the doors can save you as much as 18 square feet of interior space which was formerly devoted to door swings.

Large areas of glass windows that fill a space with light are a hallmark of new houses today, so whatever you buy will probably have these. To get a more traditional as well as a more custom look, Messman suggested putting a 6-inch drywall strip between windows that are lined up together. Separating the windows gives a sense of the thickness of the wall and, if you’re going for a more traditional look, it’s more authentic because “old houses didn’t have big windows,” he said.

A More Tailored Look

A detail that looks good in any house and, like the French doors, adds a more tailored look, is inlaid carpet with a hardwood border for a living, dining or family room. Besides the look, it’s also practical because buyers getting an entire hardwood floor would still want a carpet for the sitting area.

To create a focal point in hallways or stairs, Messman suggested a shallow niche made from drywall. Even if the niche is only two inches deep, it will be noticeable and it’s a nice way to highlight a painting or a set of photographs, he said.

Katherine Salant is a syndicated columnist. She can be reached via e-mail at news@inman.com.