Our Oklahoma Version of the Modern Craftsman

My husband and I recently built a new house with Ideal Homes here in Oklahoma. While not an entirely custom builder (we picked out our floor plan and elevation from those available), we were able to upgrade and make changes to the house during the selections process. We really loved the floorplan of the house we chose, but weren't big fans of the curb appeal offered by the floor plan. Ideally, we would love to purchase a beautiful old Craftsman that we can renovate and make our own, but we don't plan on staying in Oklahoma more than 5 years, so we didn't want to take on any huge (and costly) renovations. Especially since this is our first house. Plus, we wanted a house that would sell easily, and since we don't really have an "Oklahoma Design Style", we didn't want to personalize the house too much. We decided that we would wait for that. We decided to make some design changes to both the interior and exterior of the house in order to get closer to that Craftsman feel (on the outside), and modern, eco-friendly design (on the inside). We requested several changes that were made during the building process, and we also made our own changes once we moved in. We decided to make several changes on our own because, as I said earlier, Ideal Homes is not a true custom builder. There were several things we wanted to incorporate into our home that Ideal Homes did not offer. We even asked if we could purchase the items we wanted, and have the builder install them as they went, but that was not an option. As of right now, we have not completed all of our changes, but we are getting there.

In this post I will cover the changes that we have already made to the exterior of the house.

The first change we requested was to the columns of the front porch. We really did not like the design of the columns, so we chose to incorporate tapered columns instead, which came out beautifully. Below is a picture of how the columns would have looked (left) and what our columns look like (right):

The pictures are somewhat blurry, but you get the idea.

The original plan called for siding on the side gables of the house, which we did not like either. Instead, we requested the Tutor style batons. Below is a picture of this change as well (even though it is difficult to see the siding from this picture). The picture on the left is of the side gables from the original plan, and the picture on the right is of our house:

We didn't like the fact that we were only able to choose one paint color for the exterior of the house either. We chose to go with two paint colors (a green and a tan), which are classic Craftsman style colors. You can also see the paint colors that we chose in the picture above.

We also changed out the carriage lights on the garage. The selection center with Ideal Homes did not have any that we liked, so we purchased them from Lowes, and installed them ourselves. They look so much better than the lights that came with the house. The picture below on the left is of the original carriage lights, and the picture in the right is of the lights we installed:

Our new lights are also eco-friendly in that they only turn on when it is dark outside. So if we accidently leave the lights on during the day, we aren't burning a ton of electricity. They remain off until the sun goes down! And they look great, too!

We did some landscaping in the front as well... although we are waiting until next Spring to do the majority of the work, as many plants are already past their blooming season. We want to plant quite a few trees, both in the front and the back yards. We chose black mulch for our yard, which looks amazing. It gives the yard a more modern, clean look.

The next two pictures are just for comparison purposes. The house of the left is the same floor plan and elevation as ours, but it was a field home, and changes were not made to the existing plan (so it is what our house would have looked like had we not requested to change things up a bit). The house on the right is ours (prior to the new carriage lights).

We are very pleased with how the changes turned out. I can't wait to continue making this house truly our home! We have already made quite a few changes to the inside of the house as well, but I will wait to cover those in my next post. Most of the changes to the inside incorporated eco-friendly, modern design elements into our Oklahoma home (which is no easy task).

So until next time... keep living small and enjoying it. I am!