I am in the " it's our money, it's our land, build what we want" camp. Have the home you want. As long as it is not a strange design, like the spaceship house that was floating around the web a while back, you should be fine. I think that a craftsman would add character to the neighborhood. Of course, I may be biased, as we are leaning toward a craftsman style too.
Anita

twolabs -- is there an HOA? I'd take a peek at the bylaws before purchasing land to make sure you won't have any issues once you start building. I'm sure if you find out who the HOA president is they would be more than happy to share the bylaws with you.

carsonheim- I'm sure this post piqued your interest! I did see your other thread and wanted to post, but was afraid I'd stir up a hornets nets! I firmly believe you are in the right about that 2000 sq ft metal building. No way would I want that directly next to my house! This neighborhood has no HOA, but a set of covenants and restrictions. I'll definitely check those to be certain before we buy the lot.

Anita - I tend to agree with you. I know that any home we would build would be a good looking house, and we would keep the property up. I think it would add a little more character to the neighborhood.

Here is the front elevation.

twolabs -- that is a beautiful home! The only thing my HOA would have to say about that is that our bylaws require 75% masonry. So some of those walls clad in siding would need to be brick, stone, stucco, etc. I personally hate that rule. I think there are GORGEOUS homes that are not masonry. In fact, the first home plan I really loved was cedar shake. GOR-GEOUSSSS! Alas, it wasn't to be as I needed to abide by the 75% rule. I'm still really happy with my soon-to-be home. It is about 80-85% brick, the rest siding.

The house you posted has all of the characteristics of a the Shingle Style, a variation of the Colonial Revival, Queen Anne and Stick Styles. All I can see of the Craftsman Style are the front porch posts although I've seen them on other style houses. The use of shingles without corner boards is characteristic of the Shingle Style.

A Craftsman would not have Greek pediment end gables or a Palladian window. It's a seriously good looking house and you should be able to build it anywhere.

Personally, I would get rid of the stone under the window sills and the middle of the 3 roof gables because they detract from the historic grandness of the house.

However, it might make the other houses look like sore thumbs since it is historically more authentic than the so-called French country style that was dreamed up by American builders and developers and has become a bit of a cliche.

However, to tell you more we would need to see photos of the houses on your street.

This post was edited by Renovator8 on Fri, May 16, 14 at 15:16

Thank you both for the kind words. Yes I'll definitely have to read the fine from the CCRs. The CCRs for our current neighborhood just says that the contruction materials must be brick, stone or hardiboard.

Renovator, of course you are the expert, and now that I go back and read your comments you are very right. I guess I had just assumed it was craftsman, but if I look at it more closely it is different from the standard "regular" craftsman style homes. The website lists the style as: Craftsman, Shingle Style, Northwest. So you are right on the money! I know this designer and this type of home is more popular in the North and Northwest. I just didn't know if it'd be really out of place in Texas.

As far as the other homes, I don't want to post their pictures directly just for the off chance that they could come on here. Now I think they are still attractive, but I think they are overdone in our area. So we want something that would stand out a little (but not stick out like a sore thumb). This is a good example of the homes in our neighborhood.

You mentioned that there are 14 to 15 homes in the neighborhood but don't mention how many lots, besides yours, are still empty. If you will be building on the last empty lot in the neighborhood, I'd think carefully about building something that is too far out of sync with the rest of the homes. While your design is absolutely gorgeous, for resale value it is usually not good to be too different. Folks with really good taste who will love your design sometimes won't want to be completely surrounded by what they consider to be ugly builder cliche McMansions.

But, if there are a dozen or more empty lots still waiting to be built on, go for what you love! At least SOME of the buyers of those empty lots are highly likely to be so inspired by your lovely home that they too will break away from the much overused "french county" and "ranch house" designs.

The favorite neighborhoods to live in have been the ones where the style of the houses do not match; the ones where someone buys a lot and finds a builder. They had deed restrictions but they were similar to the masonry requirements mentioned above.

Matching home styles introduce a feeling of sameness that in my opinion devalues the overall atmosphere of the neighborhood. Shake things up a little bit.

Your home is lovely. The architects at Architects NW have several really nice plans.

I think if your lot size is big enough to allow for some space from one house to the next - you can mix all kinds of styles.

As long as your house doesn't tower over the others, or dwarf them totally out of scale, different styles and sizes are fine. It's the extremes that throw things off.

Give us the street and city and we can look at the houses with Google maps.

The example you posted of the kind of house in your neighborhood would give me a reason to look elsewhere to build. It's an architectural eye sore all by itself.

The dominant front facing gable with corbeled cornices and large stone wrapped windows is characteristic of the American Tudor style and the huge hipped roof is characteristic of old French municipal buildings with some later Second Empire features thrown in. Few of the features are of the same century much less the same culture. The brick at the rear emphasizes the awkward tension of the English and French split personality.

If you are going to reuse design ideas from past eras and countries you should use the good ones and combine them with respect for their origins.

Trust your taste and judgement and build what you like but consider finding an area with nicer houses in order to protect your investment.

I don't necessarily think a whole neighborhood needs to be the same style -- that's something that's come about in the last few decades as a developer builds ALL the houses and then sells them. I prefer neighborhoods with mixed styles: Some bungalows, some ranches, some colonials, whatever. It's nicer when everyone's house isn't so cookie-cutter.

However, I do think that -- for financial reasons -- you should stay within the general size and cost of the neighborhood. You don't want to build the biggest house, or you'll never be able to sell it -- the other houses will bring down your value.

Well first to the lot size, they are good sized lots. There is definitely room inbetween. The smallest lots are about 1.5 acres, most of the lots are 2.5-3 acres. The lot we're thinking about buying is almost 6 acres. The neighborhood itself is rather bland, as far as the land goes. It is just a large former pasture, turned into a neighborhood. So the majority of the lots don't' have any trees except for the rear property lines. The lot we're considering is the most attractive lot in our eyes. Since its a corner lot, it is fairly narrow at the front but widens out (pie shaped) to a fairly wide lot at the rear. So if we back up the house enough, we'll have nothing but a view of mature trees on the back of our lot.

If we build this specific house, we will be the biggest house in the neighborhood unfortunately, by about 800 sq ft. The largest home in the neighborhood currently is about 4,000 sq ft. The rest of them are 3300-3700 with a couple around 2900. I know it isn't the best policy to be the biggest and/or nicest home in the neighborhood, but unfortunately that is most likely just going to be our reality. This house is probably going to be our last house we live in before we retire (and we're a good 25-30 years away from retiring). So I am not going to fret too much about that aspect of it, as its just a reality for us with a town this small.

I still hesitate to put the street and city just because I'm a little paranoid that one of the homeowners would find it and see that we're criticizing the neighborhood, and their style of homes before we even buy a lot! Maybe that example I posted isn't completely accurate. Most of them are attractive houses, however, I'm sure there are a few that would get torn apart on this forum :) They are fairly typical for this part of the country, just regular ranch and country style homes.

Part of our problem is in our particular small town, there are 2 (literally, two) neighborhoods of middle to upper/middle class style homes. We currently live in one of them. Our current neighborhood is the smaller of the two with slightly smaller homes and only 1/2 acre lots. We're thinking of moving for a few reasons, the first being we want a pool (can't build one on our lot, just discovered that about 2 months ago) and we want a little more room to perhaps build a detached garage/shop on our land, and just have a little more room to stretch out and not be directly next to our neighbors. So we are extremely limited on our options if we want to live in a neighborhood. So its either this neighborhood, or we find some acreage in the country and build there. We still like the idea of being in a neighborhood. Plus this particular one is outside the city limits, but just barely. So its probably 2.5 miles to the grocery store, school, church, restaurants, etc.

Thanks all for the tips so far!