Michelle Kodis, of Blueprint Small, now has released Blueprint Affordable: How to Build a Beautiful House Without Breaking the Bank. I had to have this, as I really liked the format and facts of Blueprint Small. BSmall has floorplans to scale (amazing!) and every photo is identified in context on a small scale reference plan, so you can see where the photographer was standing when it was taken. Very nice. BAffordable does the same, but adds in the additional facts of money numbers.
Note: I'm very fond of money numbers. Cost of construction has risen locally from $65/foot two years ago to $100-200/foot now. And that's still quite a range, a hundred bucks per foot!
At the same time, I noticed Duo Dickenson's The House You Build: Making Real-World Choices to Get the Home You Want. Hmm, let's get both, and see if I learn twice as much!
I haven't. Blueprint Affordable starts off with a bang - a fifteen-item Affordability Checklist that not only jives with everything I've been learning about the residential construction business, but taught me a couple of things. For example, I knew that keeping detailing simple was a good budget-preserving measure, but I hadn't run into the difference between gable dormers and shed dormers yet. (Shed dormers are cheaper.) Kodis' reliance on concrete examples and definite recommendations made me feel like I was getting somewhere on budget decisions, rather than being lost in Home Improvement Quagmire.
Then the examples begin. Starting from a $55/foot renovation (in California!) which is actually my favorite, because it's the most inventive, and I like to see materials used in unexpected ways (Item Five on the Affordability Checklist), the book cruises through ten examples of inexpensive structures. Every example lists the cost per square foot of construction, the location (so you can place it in context), a list of 'Budget-Friendly Factors' that corroborates the Affordability Checklist to each project, and lots of details about exactly what materials those are, and why certain design decisions were made. Plus the aforementioned plan to scale and located photos, and clear, approachable language with active verbs, which some saint ought to make standard to architectural writing. (Excuse me while I vent.)
I'm not as happy with The House You Build. I really admire Dickinson's built work, and he's widely published in magazines such as Fine Homebuilding. But his book just doesn't have as many facts as Blueprint Affordable. The facts he does include are perfectly valid, but are widely diluted with language that seems to overly justify the architect's role. He seems to protest too much that to make these aesthetic decisions, the prospective homeowner-builder needs to hire an architect. Then he tells the reader how to make the aesthetic decisions. Arrgh.(This is a separate rant that I will write up more fully at another time. Stay tuned.)
His writing is not as clear as his architecture, because, unlike the built work, he doesn't seem to have a defined idea of the purpose of the work, and it wanders around architectural theory and effects. As I went to architectural school, I know all this stuff. If you're a lay person trying to figure out how to save money building your house, you won't be able to replicate the effects just upon this book's contents, because that's why they call it practice. (Unless you too, want to go to architecture school. Which is the best audience for this book - young people with aspirations.) And you'll be frustrated trying to find the money savings amongst the explanations.
Both books feature a style that is modern crossed with traditional, with various amounts of quirk added. Dickinson does approach this issue, pointing out that strict conformity to a predetermined style will unnecessarily inflate the cost of construction. That's the mistake I see most people make - it's more difficult to assemble a pleasing design that isn't clearly one style or another, so novitiates fall back on something ripped from history, and give up a lot of the options that arise from say, being willing to consider roofing as siding. Or plywood as floor.
Will I keep Dickinson's book purely on the value of its photographs? Hard to say. Some projects have been published before, like in Sarah Susanka's The Not So Big House series (rapidly becoming Not So Small - snerk!), or in other 'small house' books. I'll compare and see.