by Cherise James

Created on: January 07, 2009

Driving toward a friend's house one day, I observed (as is my custom) the passing houses, and what I saw made me want to scream and pull out my hair in frustration. What is with all these boring houses? In this upscale neighborhood, the houses all look roughly the same, are all painted nearly the same color, and the whole blah neighborhood depresses me. Who would want to live here? Not me, that's for sure.

Luckily I drove out of that neighborhood and into an older area with winding roads and huge trees. The houses there ranged from gracious restored Victorians to run down, dumpy mobile homes, but even the clutter and mess of the trailers was preferable to cookie cutter blah. Since you are looking for creative house plans, let's talk about how to identify quality uniqueness, as opposed to faddish nonsense (if you are looking for advice on choosing a floor plan, or designing your home, please check out my other articles, this article is dedicated to creative quality versus faddish nonsense).

Funny how what looks really cool today can look so tired or bizarre ten years from now. Think the ski slopes of the early eighties, or the overdone wrought iron of the seventies. No doubt you don't wish to be the butt of all your neighbors' jokes in ten years, but you do not want to live in a cookie cutter either. Quality home design follows the same principle that guides all truly quality design, it draws from timeless ideals and reinterprets them in a fresh and enlightening way. Basically homes are required to have certain types of spaces (kitchen, bedrooms, living spaces, etc.) and certain types of openings (windows, doors, vents, etc.), and these limit the possibilities to some extent. Certain arrangements have proved themselves workable over the long haul so they show up again and again, while other arrangements have been proved useless (or worse) so they get remodeled out of existence.

Begin by researching home designers, paying close attention to those whose houses look unique and fresh. You can do this using the internet or by browsing through home plan magazines. The designers may be architects or not, what matters here is the quality of their designs, not their credentials. Your local planning department will let you know if your plans are not structurally sound, but that is highly unlikely if you purchase plans from a professional (though certain areas do have special requirements that may have you taking your plans to an engineer for modification).

To help you sort

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