Designing a New Old Home: Part 1
My house is a custom one. It's substantially different from the usual pacific northwest home design. For example, the eaves are about 2 feet deep. This keeps the walls dry & clean, keeps water from getting in the basement, and shades the house in summer.Almost no houses have substantial eaves.Also, I have too much experience with rotted wood decks, this one is concrete :-) and it ever so slightly slopes away from the house. All in an effort to keep the house naturally dry. A damp house is a terrible thing in the PNW.Don't ever buy a house where the driveway slopes towards the garage. You'll get a flooded garage/basement at some point guaranteed. Make sure your garage floor has a slight slope towards the door. It's the little things like this that count. (You can't even tell there is a slope on mine, except it's much easier to push the car out of the garage than in.)Houses around here on the north slope of a hill are cheaper than on the south slope. There's a good reason for that. Hello mildew!