Milwaukee Craftsman’s 2000+ sq. ft. “Fond du Lac” house plan has a very unique exterior – with steep roof lines, side dormers, a breezeway and an attached garage that faces westward. The floor plan has a few quirks as well. The living room oddly extends to the front of the house, bedrooms #1 and #2 have confining shapes, the master bedroom has a master dressing area rather than a closet, there’s a creatively placed sitting area on the second floor, and there isn’t a single tub in the entire house.
Granted, it’s just a house plan and you can pay someone to make any changes you’d like, but when looking at stock plans you want something as close to perfect as possible – which this is not.
Still, there’s something I like about this place – the openness, the large mudroom, the 3-car garage, the desk area in the kitchen…I see it all and can’t help but think that we could make it work.
Clearly, the style of a home is representative of the owner. Odd and quirky is okay with me. I don’t dig taking baths anyways.
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Get rid of the gray siding, swap the columns, brackets, and other exterior trim for raw stained wood…THEN you would have a house with some craftsman class. Otherwise the stylish wooden garage door looks awkward against the dull gray blah of the house.
The inside of this 2,200 sq. ft. home places the bedrooms upstairs and all living spaces downstairs. My personal preference in two-story homes is to have the master suite downstairs and the kid’s rooms upstairs. This floorplan in particular places the master bedroom next to one of the kid’s rooms…no good, man. No good.
The kitchen and great room are perfectly sized and the built-ins flanking the fireplace help create a definite craftsman flair. This house has a lot of potential on the interior given that there is a bonus room on the second floor and a den on the first floor. Lots of space indeed. Maybe a room to house your collection of Aquaman paraphernalia or a place to showcase your Lionel Ritchie albums. The possibilities are endless.
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Love the columns and love the porch. My wife is a little iffy about wraparound porches though because they keep a lot of direct sun from coming through the windows. I’m not sure if that’s a big deal or not – sun coming through just makes the house hot anyways…I don’t think I care much if the sun shines through our windows or not. Anytime I see the sun beaming through I notice all those little particles floating through the air…oh, c’mon, you know what I’m talking about. It just reminds me how dirty the air I’m breathing is.
Seriously, I could do without the sun making me self-conscious about my level of cleanliness.
Aside from the porch, this house plan is severely lacking. The “formal room” is awkward, the large foyer could be resized to give other surrounding rooms the opportunity to expand and the upstairs layout offers odd-shaped rooms and cramped bathrooms with no double sinks. In order for this place to even come close to working for us it would need to be gutted completely and reworked to fit out needs and wants. It could happen, but it’s not worth the time or money to make it so.
What a shame that an house plan with so much promise on the exterior had so little to offer on the inside.
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I love being given the power to choose. From the flavor of ice cream I want for desert, to the type of music I want to play on my iPod on the way to work, to the type of video camera I’ll be purchasing in the next couple months. Choice is empowering and gives me the opportunity to be unique in my own way. Taking this concept and applying it to a house plan is a first for me and I think it really sets Epic Homes apart from the truckloads of builders/developers who put together subdivisions full of bland cookie cutter homes that lack character and unique designs.
This 2,560 sq ft. (not including a finished basement) craftsman house plan satisfies my love of choices by offering three unique exterior facades to choose from – each quite distinct from the others. Whether it’s altering the roof lines, columns, or the actual siding, there is much that can be done to make your home look and feel different from the homes around you.
In addition to the exterior, the interior offers a spacious open floor plan with 3 bedrooms and an optional 4th. The 3-car garage is a bit much, though to be honest I wouldn’t mind having the extra space to convert into a workshop. I have no doubt these houses would be fairly expensive to build. The details that go into Arts and Crafts style homes typically equate to a lot of dollar signs, but for me quality doesn’t come cheap and what you get in return is often well worth the money spent. It seems Epic Homes understands this. I only wish we had more local developers who feel the same way.
House Floorplans:
Architectural Designs has a number of well-designed Craftsman house plans including this one. At nearly 2,700 sq. ft., this house is a tad too big for our needs, especially considering we plan to have a finished basement, but it has a nice open floor plan with a large master suite that has access to the covered patio out back. The exterior details are consistent with the period and I love the large, 5 column front porch.
The large arched 2nd story window would be a very cool feature for one of our kids’ bedrooms and I really like the practicality of the large pantry in the kitchen.
The guest room suite is the only area that we don’t feel is necessary to have, especially since there is a bonus room upstairs. But other than that, this house is pretty classic. Nothing too extravagant on the exterior, though not unlike my dream girlfriends in high school, it’s what’s on the inside that could make this house really shine…OK, so that statement applies much better to this home than the girls I was physically infatuated with in high school, but you get the point.
Ehhh, I’m not really sure where I’m going with this so I’ll just close for now before I get myself in trouble.