Getting Personal Architects And Homebuilders Field More Requests Than Ever For Unique Features And Upgrades

After almost three decades, architect Jon Sayler can’t recall the name of the girl he took to his junior prom.

But he’s never forgotten his first sight of her that evening.

He remembers waiting just inside the doorway. “Her parents are standing there, too, looking just as nervous. I look at them and think, `What’s going on?’

“Just then, my date appears on this little balcony above the entryway. Then she whirls down this spiral staircase and lands at the bottom, and I dang near go weak in the knees. I was totally blown away.”

That fond recollection resurfaced years later when Sayler began designing a home for clients with an 11-year-old daughter.

“I thought, `I’m going to recreate a Juliet balcony with that same kind of stairway, so that some other poor schmuck standing in the hallway can get blown away, too.”’

Personal touches - some extravagant, others surprisingly inexpensive - are increasingly popular in residential design, local architects agree.

They’re also part of the housing evolution that Jim Tolpin explores in his latest design book, “The New Family Home” (Taunton, $34.95).

“The traditional collection of formal living room, kitchen and three bedrooms worked fine when mom stayed put and dad brought home the bacon,” Tolpin writes. “But a lot of people don’t live like that anymore. In a brick-and-mortar way, our homes have had to respond to fundamental changes in how we work, rest and play. Homes have to do more.

“They still accommodate all the stuff we accumulate,” he says, “but they also have to make space for computers, video equipment, audio systems and, increasingly, space for working at home.”

He leaves out climbing equipment, but Bob and Diane Britton didn’t. When they sat down with Bob’s boss, architect Gerry Copeland, to design their new North Side home, one essential ingredient was a gear room.

“In our previous house,” explains Bob, surrounded by backpacks, ropes and sleeping bags, “the gear room was at the opposite end from the garage.

“Now it’s just six steps from a car full of potentially wet camping gear after a long, strenuous trip. And it even has a retractable clothesline for hanging up a wet tent.”

The room includes a closet, built-in table, storage loft and radiant floor heat.

A perfect solution. Yet the cost wasn’t much more than a traditional mud room, one of several ways that future owners could use it. The handsome wood paneling is leftover 5/8-inch soffit material, and the built-in table is a door blank.

The 1,800-square-foot size of the Brittons’ home reflects another trend that Tolpin discusses in his new book.

“Out is excess square footage, oversized bedrooms, bathrooms for every member of the family, walled-off dining room and living room - all within a facade scaled to dwarf the neighbor’s house,” Tolpin writes. “In is the home that works from corner to corner, with a design that gets used and tested every day ….”

Indeed, what the Brittons affectionately refer to as their “basement” is no subterranean catchall but rather a storage room tucked into the rafters above their three-car garage. (The one-story house actually sits on a concrete slab embedded with coils that circulate heated water to keep occupants toasty.)

Realtor Kathy Bixler of Tomlinson Black South cautions that personal touches don’t always translate into added value. “I always advise people building customs to build something normal if they ever intend to sell it.”

Generic upgrades such as coffee bars in the master bedroom suite are great, Bixler says. But more exotic features, such as home gyms and indoor pools, may work against sellers. “They limit the number of buyers who would be interested in that house,” she says.

Architect Nancy McKennon remembers growing up in a 1912 South Hill home that had tiny closets recessed behind the half-walls of upstairs bedrooms. “They each had a little window. The children took those spaces over as play spots.”

Now, says McKennon, clients ask that similar nooks and crannies - “secret spaces,” she calls them - be included specifically for their kids’ delight.

Well, not just for kids. Two different clients recently requested underground shooting ranges.

Less exotic, McKennon says, is the trend toward including kitchenettes next to basement bedrooms, with an eye toward out-of-town guests, live-in in-laws or future caregivers.

Spokane architect Steven Meek says one of the easiest and least expensive ways to add personality to a home is with bold paint.

“It’s amazing what bright color added to one or two walls in a house will do - how much energy it can bring to a space,” he says.

Sayler says the biggest trend he’s seen during his 21-year career has been the move away from formality.

“I remember as a kid sneaking downstairs and looking through the railing as my parents were having a party, and all the men would arrive dressed in ties,” he says.

“Today, even if my parents have a fairly nice sit-down dinner, they’re lucky if their friends are wearing long pants.”

Likewise, he says, the formal living room has disappeared from custom homes during the past 10 years. “Instead, that space has been absorbed into the family room,” Sayler says, “making it a more interesting space with bigger windows, cooler fireplaces, neater entertainment centers, built-in fish tanks, a niche for the piano, reading nooks - those kinds of things. And I’d say that’s way more family friendly.

“The other thing we’ve seen is the walls around kitchens coming down, and the kitchen being recognized as a hub of entertainment,” he says. “Kitchen activity is shared by everyone - someone is sitting on a stool drinking wine as someone else chops lettuce, and they’re all gabbing and interacting.”

Recently, Sayler began incorporating what he calls the delivery room. “It’s a little room next to the garage for delivery of Internet-ordered goods, including groceries,” he explains. “A place for the delivery people to pull up to your house, open the door, put the milk in the refrigerator, ice cream in the freezer and groceries on the counter. And that room is locked off from the rest of the house.”

It’s the sort of room that author Tolpin says fits wells with the concept of “The New Family Home.”

“A flood of trends and changes in family life has made us rethink the way we design, build and use the home,” he says. “At the heart of the new family home, however, is a hunger for stability.”

Referring to the two dozen homes featured in his book - including five from the Pacific Northwest - Tolpin observes:

“These new family homes are designed to respond to the needs of the family, not to some dated fiction of what we were. These are individual, deeply personal designs that are 180 degrees from the faceless ranchers and neocolonial boxes we grew up in. There is less concern with square footage … and resale value, and more attention to what real families really want.”