Home Layouts

In the old days, you could buy a Craftsman Home Plan from a Sears-Roebuck catalog for a small fee which taught you how to build a house in specific steps, from digging and constructing the concrete foundation to the plumbing, walls, electrical wiring and drains and then bathrooms, siding, interior walls, roof beams and shingles and all the windows. It tells you how to do this and when to call each inspector to sign off on your work.

You will notice something about each of these. There is no garage or driveway  in front. That is because in those days, before automobiles, people got around on foot, caught a horse-drawn trolley which ran on rails with street on either side, or via a buggy if they owned a horse, which was smelly and a lot of trouble compared to those new-fangled bicycles. Pity that streets were rarely paved, but every bicyclist was clamoring for pavement with smooth modern concrete. A bicycle could really move on concrete, far faster than cobblestones.

There were rumors of new Safety Bicycles, which wouldn't stop on a dime and flip you into the ground like a speedy Penny Farthing. If you had a carriage house, it would be around back so the stink wouldn't drift to your front porch or parlor where you entertained guests or caught the evening breeze because air conditioning wouldn't be invented for decades, and swamp coolers only work in places with really low humidity. This was between 1900 and 1928, essentially, that Craftsman houses were in their greatest popularity as the modern, self sufficient thing. Pre-depression houses were either these, the ultramodernist kind which leaked, or Victorians. Each of their appeal.

Victorians have more room, for bigger families, and tend to be tall, with basements and parlors and up to three stories with a seriously large floored attic with dormer windows. People don't often build like that anymore. These are presentation homes, indicating those living there are civilized, proper, and not criminals or poor people. Or Irish immigrants fresh off the boat.

The important lesson is that in modern times, for couples without kids, a bungalow is big enough, without wasting lots of space (which is taxed by the square foot), and in a post-oil economy, having your garage in the back is a good idea. It is going to become rather optional in coming years. Why dominate the front of your house with a place to park your car when you don't have a car anymore? Because mining oil is illegal (fracking has been banned in half of California already, and most of the counties with oil under them), and electric cars cost more than a house. In the post-oil economy, because there's no fuel for commuting, house prices will plummet to the going rate for all the minimum wage jobs around where you live, which isn't much. So houses are going to drop down to about $80K, which is still double the cost of materials. The thing about a bungalow is they're around 500-750 square feet inside. A smallish apartment. Not cramped, but not the sort of place to encourage you to to have a bevy of children. Bungalows are for more responsible people, or those who haven't married yet.

After cars replaced carriages, the stable stalls were replaced by gravel parking spaces for a car, and swinging garage doors behind the house. The alley which ran behind the houses, facing the back gates and carriage houses of each bungalow, was the place to slowly drive your automobile down and carefully open the gates and garage door, then drive in, then shut them both. A bit of a hassle in the rain. Large parts of Los Angeles is still built this way. Unfortunately, that alley is an excellent place for a gang of hoodlums to burglarize any unlocked gates or garages. It is easy to get in because few homes have many windows facing that way.

Modern high density housing ignores the alley, and instead reverses the house. The back garage is all you can see from the street, and the house faces its postage stamp back garden. If it has one.

In cases like this, they cram these as close together as possible, for maximum profit. This is unfortunate since if there were space on the side, there's a method for a side-drive gate that passes by the kitchen and retains the carriage house as a separate building facing 90 from the street, behind the house, out of sight.

This also makes it a very convenient workshop in exchange for a garden or having a back yard or back lawn. Many homes like this have a gate, and an electric opener. An important consideration for all the people who prefer to make furniture or work on cars rather than hoe weeds and plant corn instead of buy them at the local market. This is not to say that bungalows can't have gardens. They can, if they don't bother with a garage. And they have have some in the front, like this picture. It is usually very formal. I understand it is considered poor manners to grow veggies in the front garden.

I think bungalows, currently second only to restored Victorians for sale value, are the next big thing in real estate. Unlike the "Ranch House" which is dominated by its driveway and 2-3 car garage in front, the Bungalow isn't obsoleted by the end of oil. Not to say you can't do useful things with a Ranch House, or a McMansion. You can break up the driveway with a sledgehammer, remove the doors, replace with greenhouse or convert it to more bedrooms or even an apartment of a shop. You could turn a garage into a business, and put up a wall and gate in front of the house entrance so customers would know not to pester the home, focus on the shop or cafe or whatever you have there. I think we'll see a lot of this.

In the post-oil future, a single parking stall from your former garage is enough for your scooter or motorcycle and bicycle parking. Somewhere out of sight from people who like stealing cars. A big garage won't be necessary.

Real human beings won't own electric cars, though some might own golf carts because they're dirt slow and the batteries are cheap and don't wear out. But same with an ATV, which is faster and if running small diesel engines or setup for Alcohol, they can go faster, further, and are easier to refill. They aren't bragging about how rich they are, not like a Tesla or Porsche 918.

Porsche 918 hybrid. $875K. Rich people only. 

 Cars for the ultrarich. Cars that don't have room for a bodyguard to protect the person who owns it.

$95K, Tesla S. If you can drive this, you are worth kidnapping. 

These hybrid or electric cars are very fancy. Very nice. Very expensive. People who own them will need to live in places where others are so rich they won't steal them either. In closed communities, with armed guards with machineguns and the right to shoot on sight. Places like Mexico and Brazil and Florida and Russia. Places where money talks, and the only lives that matter are those who can pay. Not like here, not where normal people live.

Former garage on the right side, driveway garden now. 

We will have bicycles and scooters and small houses that are easy to heat and cool, and live modest lives without much money. We will have the bungalows because that's all we can afford. And people with kids will convert their ranch houses and restyle them to look more like a bungalow, turn one of the garage spaces into a bedroom or office. This is what most people will do. The ones who either found the right town to settle down into after travelling a while, or never left in the first place, or fuel was so difficult to get that an RV/trailer no longer made sense. This is the outcome of the final result of oil depletion.