Redoing Big Things--Houses, Yards, Etc.

Been reading some of  A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander this week, and in that above-linked thread about it, got to read Miz Pearl's decisions based on it to MAKE her house. I have to make the best of a house: I have a late 1980s ranch which "got some things right" from the Pattern Language perspective--(example: tiny one-story, but #116--Cascade of Roofs, somehow!!!)--but a lot of other things, not so right.

I have a nano-budget, so I can't knock out our walls and put lovely windows in, etc. as I would like to, as I learn more and more about what makes buildings good, livable, and beautiful. But there are probably many things I can do, and so I would love to hear from any of you that have made great changes to the hand of cards you were dealt, especially DIYers of all kinds. That's my favorite kind of story!

Can you give us more data? The whole point to the pattern stuff is to pick what works for YOU. I guarantee my life doesn't look like yours, anything I'd say would be MY needs and wants, not yours.
An exercise for you might be to think and write up if you had the house of your dreams, what would it be like? Tell us that, and we might be able to help you find the best parts to change of what you have.

A cheap easy one might be to put a built in or fake built in window seat. A flat bench with cushions, that match cushions in the window frame might be a lovely place. Pick a window with a beautiful view!!

I know you read, maybe built in bookcases, or neat looking standing at the wall ones (whatever you think looks neat, which again, won't be what I would choose for me)  that makes a sheltered reading nook. Work a window seat into too if you can, so you have more than one place to read, depending on weather and mood.

One thing I would LOVE is a place for #181--The Fire, but our house was build without a fireplace possibility. However, because we are currently unable to replace our defunct 25+ y-o central air system (that died three years ago), we have had to discover #230--Radiant Heat, with space heaters in several rooms. But that's been SO nice, I was shocked at how much I've liked this, and I now have a book to prove why I have liked it better than the original system. (Our utility bills went waaaaay down, too!)

Dear Mother-in-Law replaced her HVAC last year, but still mostly uses the radiant heat, which she also discovered the benefits of as well!

Most kitchen renos can be quite pricey. However, there are some things that can improve efficiency without a lot of cost.
Have you read this thread?  https://permies.com/t/236919/Easy-kitchen-home-modifications-life

As Pearl suggested, making a list of some of the things that appeal to you in A Pattern Language, would give us more to work with, if the goal of this is to help your house.

If it's more to document cool things we've done, like I did at my Sister's house in the link above, you could get a lot of unique ideas. There are  a couple of shelves I should take pictures of!

Rachel Lindsay wrote:One thing I would LOVE is a place for #181--The Fire, but our house was build without a fireplace possibility. However, because we are currently unable to replace our defunct 25+ y-o central air system (that died three years ago), we have had to discover #230--Radiant Heat, with space heaters in several rooms. But that's been SO nice, I was shocked at how much I've liked this, and I now have a book to prove why I have liked it better than the original system. (Our utility bills went waaaaay down, too!)

Dear Mother-in-Law replaced her HVAC last year, but still mostly uses the radiant heat, which she also discovered the benefits of as well!

Have you seen the radiant heaters with the fake flames? Those are neat ambience, and could have a fake fireplace built around them.

Jay Angler wrote:Most kitchen renos can be quite pricey. However, there are some things that can improve efficiency without a lot of cost.

Small things that improve efficiency, like Jay says, plus a couple of easy things that change the ambience might be cool. I said a fake fire above, replacing the flooring is expensive if you want something like real wood, but wood grain or fake stone linoleum is cheap. Put it and a red brick fireplace, and you might change the energy of the room a lot :D  

Again, it comes down to what matters to you? What annoys you? Where do you feel not a home in your house?
I've been rereading The Timeless way of Building since you posted in the Patter Language thread, and it comes down to what makes you joyful, makes you feel alive? What is stopping your home from letting you feel that way? THAT is what to fix.
Whit my life right now, it's logistics and usefulness, with Jay's it's efficiency of the kitchen. What is YOURS? Some people need a peaceful dreaming place, or a quiet spot, some of us need to figure out where to store the rototiller so you quit falling over it and having to move it all the time. I also need it made so I can create the things I dream up. what DO you need? What makes your heart sing, and you don't feel you have it in your home?

I did a thing from a book many years ago, and my answers are here it's what works for ME, what makes me feel alive, but it lets you see the questions and think on them for yourself. Link to post about my Zone of Genius

Pearl Sutton wrote: I also need it made so I can create the things I dream up.

Yes! I'll take a 2 1/2 car garage, fully insulated, with *really* big locks so people only get in when invited. The projects I could tackle if I had a warm place to work! Small spaces often don't work because I'm constantly hitting walls or ceiling lights when I try to maneuver long bits.

The beauty in architecture comes from harmony, proportions, quality materials and structural features that seem ornamental but have a solid function; socles, butresses, arches, vaults, cornices, heavy beams. Everything that is pretending to be one is... pretentious.
These things rather can not be changed and for sure not with nano-budget.

If you would like to have fireplace and have cheap wood source I would suggest building a masonry heater, but it's not nano-budget either, even if you do it yourself.
If the house is stick-built, another option would be tearing drywall and filling the walls with light clay (for insulation, fire and insect resistance) and applying natural plasters and finishes, section by section.
Next suggestion would be changing floors, if they are not natural.

Jay Angler wrote:Most kitchen renos can be quite pricey. However, there are some things that can improve efficiency without a lot of cost.
Have you read this thread?  https://permies.com/t/236919/Easy-kitchen-home-modifications-life

As Pearl suggested, making a list of some of the things that appeal to you in A Pattern Language, would give us more to work with, if the goal of this is to help your house.

If it's more to document cool things we've done, like I did at my Sister's house in the link above, you could get a lot of unique ideas. There are  a couple of shelves I should take pictures of!

Yes, this thread was started mostly to hear about other people's great ideas, just like that. Thank you!

The thing I dislike most about my house is the Master Bedroom. We basically live up against a woods on the south side of the house, and since the bedroom is a long rectangle with only one tiny window (on the long side facing south) the atmosphere is always that of a dark, musty cave. (We almost might as well not have a window in the room at all, it is so small and carelessly placed. What were the designers thinking?!?!) The wall is so long that at least two large windows could have fit there to give a beautiful view of the woods, and perhaps even three windows or a big picture window--they just didn't design it that way. But I do not have the money to fix that glaring problem 35 years later.

If we bought a mirror for placing over the bed directly opposite the window to reflect the smidgen of light that comes in (my only idea for fixing this so far), I would sleep nervously, with a "Sword of Damocles" over my head.  

Rachel Lindsay wrote:

If we bought a mirror for placing over the bed directly opposite the window to reflect the smidgen of light that comes in (my only idea for fixing this so far), I would sleep nervously, with a "Sword of Damocles" over my head.  

I'd not put a mirror over the bed. BUT I would set the biggest one that would work to reflect on any wall or ceiling you can hit, then put mirrors where that hits, and where they hit. Bounce it all over!

If right over the bed is really the only spot, pull a Pearl... Go to video stores, ask the owner if, when they throw out dead disks, you can have some. Put tinfoil on a board, fastened VERY tightly, and glue the disks, shiny side out, to it. Makes an excellent reflector that isn't heavy glass. Bounces light all kinds of weird ways! The foil makes it reflective between them too, but can be skipped pretty easily, use bright white if you want  to skip the foil. Overlapping them like shingles does some cool bouncing of light too! Test them with tape, see what works best for you!

The video store that was saving me disks went under, but I have a LOT of disks they gave me, a milk crate full at a time. I told them I wanted them "for solar stuff, they are really reflective!" and they never asked what kind of solar stuff. You could probably also say "artwork!"

If you look up "light tubes" all those are is a bubble skylight with a highly reflective tube coming off it the light reflects and rereflects all the way down it. And a periscope is just angled glass. Those are the ideas I started with, my last house I had a periscope, basically, that came down through the floor from above where there was a window I pointed it at. Lovely light in that room!  

Oh, mylar works well too, or just foil, anything shiny and reflective. How about a pretty picture you make of a fish with scales made of mylar from a cheap emergency blanket or empty chip bags out of trash, that hangs where the sun hits it and bounces it? Or of flowers with mylar petals, outlined in colored lines of paint?

Think sideways, like a Pearl, and think things that make reflections, that don't have to be glass, or even bought. Go to a thrift store and see what reflects nicely. I have some pretty cut leaded glass bowls that no one seems to buy, it's out of style so they were way cheap, bounces some light around though. Go to a recycle place and see what shines nicely.

EDIT: And right now, while it's still winter, start marking where the sun actually comes in, and do it every week or so until the summer solstice, will let you know where you are actually dealing with. If it's a 4 inch wide beam of light you need to be more creative than if it's a 4 foot wide one.

:D

Rachel Lindsay wrote: ... the atmosphere is always that of a dark, musty cave.

It's a guy thing - guys seem to be attracted to caves...

Sometimes you can get second hand mirrors cheap/free off the internet or just by putting the word out. A building at OUR Eco-village had a skylight and they'd cut narrow strips of mirror and set them in the tunnel of the skylight.

If you were to put little strips all around the frame of the window, would that help?

I also second all the ideas Pearl wrote. That said, LED lights are pretty cheap nowadays, so adding a few small ones that shine on the shiny artwork, might also help. I seem to recall that it is also Pearl who hung some sort of Christmas lights right up at the ceiling to keep her and her Mom a little safer when walking around at night. I've had small lights that I put on timers to come on early in the morning to act like the sun is rising in former houses, but I've now got a *very* small east window that shines *right* on my pillow depending on the time of year. Unfortunately, it's a moving target!

Yeah that's me, I have strands of white LED Christmas lights all over. Way up where the wall meets the ceiling. I recommend "warm white" LEDs, they are not that weird glaring blue that the others are, and don't bother your eyes.

This rental we are in is DARK. I have lights on timers in odd places, aimed at walls and the ceiling. Some of them hit reflectors of various types, or are hidden behind thin cloth. It helps keep us sane.

The only good sunny window we have has a big picture frame that we hang there, and put puzzles in that we liked, the picture changes, but the reflection doesn't. Lights that room up a lot. The windows that get sun less but still get some we have glass crystals hanging in, so they sometimes make rainbows and make you look!

Jay Angler wrote:

Rachel Lindsay wrote: ... the atmosphere is always that of a dark, musty cave.

It's a guy thing - guys seem to be attracted to caves...

Not just a guy thing, though, lol. I love caves - real ones and bedroom ones! Maybe whoever designed it couldn't sleep without cave-like darkness? I struggle with that, myself, so we have light-blocking window treatments. When I travel, I take a sleep mask, because if I have to sleep with some stupid neon sign glaring in the window I'm going to end up a very grumpy ol' woman, for lack of sleep.

Wow--great ideas!

My husband thought my mirror comment would just be laughed at, but I read him the detailed replies here of constructive options. They blew us away! :) But I know my Permies people--y'all are fountains of great ideas and encouragement!

"The wall is so long that at least two large windows could have fit there to give a beautiful view of the woods, and perhaps even three windows or a big picture window--they just didn't design it that way. But I do not have the money to fix that glaring problem 35 years later."

We had a little room that had no window at all, and put one in ourselves for way-cheap.  I think the window itself was about $50 at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore, we already had screws and wood for trim, and had to buy a can of Great Stuff to fill in the gaps, and now that little room is super sunny and lovely to be in.

Photos posted below--both shots are along the same long wall with the one window. Note--this is a cloudy day, with the bedroom light ON.

That's a sad excuse for a window. I call those "we put a hole here" types. No, a window is more than a hole in the wall!!

Test putting reflective stuff on all four sides of the window frame. The ledge, up both sides, across  the top. See what it does. Use foil or something to test. Don't buy anything till you know what part works.

You might also, once you get it to reflect well, put a bump out, greenhouse thing on the outside, to unflatten that wall. It's so visually flat it makes the window look worse.

No matter what you do, extend the curtain rod longer, so the drapes can pull back to expose the entire window.

:D

Seems to me that the "partial wall" isn't helping either? It looks  like a sink behind it, in a dark, narrow space. I doubt the upper part is structural. The lower part is finishing or possibly supporting the sink counter. Would it be in the cards to remove at least part of that wall, like a kitchen pass-through or put a translucent material for part of it?

Finally had time to look stuff up and write this morning. I'm rereading Christopher Alexander's The Timeless Way of Building, and A Pattern Language, (Timeless is the theory, Patterns is how it works) and he talks of how the pattern language is not supposed to constrain us, it's to give us words that we can make into our own sentences so we can say what we want to. He likens it to language, how the rules of grammar make it so all the words we know can be used to say what we want, and it eliminates the need to try to make sense of jumbled words. "Octopus lemon dancing stripe floor" COULD possibly have a meaning, but not a very useful one, and we'd really have to puzzle it out, not just casually understand it and go on. In the same way, his Pattern Language is a way to use the words of housing in a way that is easy to understand so we can be comfortable and happy in our home.

The pattern Rachel's bedroom lacks is #159: Light on two sides of every room.
His short explanation for it says:

When they are given a choice, people will always gravitate to the rooms which have light on two  sides, and leave the rooms which are lit only from one side unused and empty.

Since the problem with her room is constrained by budget and logistics (I doubt she can just put a sliding door that goes out to a courtyard, that she doesn't have either) the question becomes "How I can I got light on the other side of the room to make the room a happy useful one?" And ANY solution that changes it will help. Making the window reflect around more will bring in more natural light, but artificial light helps too. I have rooms in this dark rental that I have lamps facing the wall to bounce their light around. Is it what I'd prefer? No, but it IS effective.  

My point, however is less to comment on the window, and more to use it for an exmple of how the pattern book is meant to be used. Ideally, the main patterns would be built into the house when it's designed, but the construction practices of the past 50+ years did not do that often, leaving houses that we are in that have things that subtly or overtly bother us. Reading through the patterns helps you figure out why you are discontented with an area, and shows what WOULD help. Not how to do it, or how to do it within a budget, but what the GOAL is. The goal in your bedroom is "Light on two sides of every room" and the TECHNIQUES for getting there are dependent on your personal factors.

A lot of his experiences are in parts of the world where natural materials are cheap, and people build their own houses, and there aren't builders and codes and what you can get from Home Depot as constraining factors, but the patterns work for both the more natural houses and the standard American construction style, it's the PATTERN that's most important, the details can be what you have access to.

An example from my own life on this is pattern #233 Floor Surface

We want the floor to be comfortable, warm to the touch, inviting. But we also want it to be hard enough to resist wear, and easy to clean.

I'm in a rental. It has laminate flooring  over a badly insulated crawl space. That floor is hard, and cold. It is technically easy to clean, but the color makes it show all the dirt so even when you just cleaned, it shows every fleck of dirt. Drove us up the wall. It's a rental, I can't just rip it out. In most of the rooms we have carpet or rugs over the laminate, but the kitchen still was bare. I know of a type of packing material they wrap furniture in for shipping, that is often in a dumpster by me. I put a layer of that down in the kitchen, and then used cheap vinyl linoleum to cover it. It padded the floor, warmed it, and is still cleanable. I made it pretty, because that's both my style and what I had, but it fit the parameters of the pattern, the constraints of reality (rental) and my budget as well as my aesthetic sense.

This is why the patterns are useful, the idea "this floor is cold and hard" and "I will put a rug on it" is not a deep thought, but that is because we are familiar with it, and know what the solution could be. We HAVE that pattern in our minds already. The Pattern Language book gives us other patterns, that we may have never thought about, that can be used to either design in to start with, or fix an existing problem. And he talks a lot about all these houses that wouldn't pass codes, and techniques that are great but not available at Home Depot, but the PATTERNS are usable, no matter what the situation is. The patterns that resonate with your personality will affect how much you like or dislike a house, and can be used to come up with solutions to make a house more what makes YOU happy in it.