Custom Makes a Comeback

Posted on: December 9, 2009

Colossal, cookie-cutter houses are losing ground to smaller homes with distinctive upscale elements.

By Dawn Klingensmith
CTW Features

Image courtesy Leonard Lampel; design by Sharon McCormick

One of the ironies of an economic downturn is that custom homebuilding and remodeling make a comeback.

“During boom times, production builders take a larger share of new homes sold, and the custom market increases during down times,” says Stephen Melman, director of economic services, National Association of Home Builders, Washington, D.C.

“In 2005, only 19 percent of new homes were custom homes.” That share climbed to 31 percent in the second quarter of 2009.

Changing priorities in the recessionary economy is driving two trends in home construction and remodeling. First, the size of new single-family homes has decreased about 9 percent since 2007, down to 2,091 square feet in the second quarter of 2009.

That trend, in turn, is reinvigorating interest in custom home design, including cabinetry and other built-in elements, as the focus shifts from sheer size to quality craftsmanship and efficiency.

Built to last: Add bookcases and storage options to living spaces that will likely evolve over time. Create built-in flexibility that will be as functional in the future as it is now. Image courtesy BEHR Paints

“It seems with the economy that people are looking at wasted space almost as a financial drain, and they’re looking for ways to utilize every last inch of space,” which calls for custom storage solutions in new and existing homes, says Durham, Conn.-based designer Sharon McCormick, a spokeswoman for the American Society of Interior Designers. “This year, we’ve been designing custom everything, as people decide they’re not going to be trading up after all, as well as for 50-somethings who are downsizing” and need to make the most out of smaller floor plans.

“I often find myself faced with oddly shaped rooms or very specific storage requests in clients’ homes,” says Los Angeles designer Sarah Barnard. “My favorite way to solve design problems is to build the solution instead of buy it.”

As people look to maximize smaller spaces, flexible, multiuse rooms often are the answer. McCormick worked with a client to create an exercise studio that could quickly transform into a guest room. They had a custom-built Murphy bed installed, which folds up into the wall to mimic the appearance of built-in cabinetry. When overnight guests visit, the exercise equipment folds up and is pushed to the side to make way for the pull-down bed.

Image courtesy Brian Urso; design by Sharon McCormick

Another client, a model railroad builder, wanted his “train room” to double as a guest room. They built a platform bed into a nook designed to look like a Pullman sleeper car, complete with silk curtains partitioning it from the rest of the room.

As hobbyists and collectors decide to stay put, they’re opting to customize corners or entire rooms. Working with an avid scrapbook maker, McCormick outfitted a nondescript room above a garage with a built-in workstation with places to store colored paper, stickers, rubber stamps and other scrapbooking supplies. “Until they made the decision that this was their ‘forever’ house, she was working from a card table and boxes,” McCormick says.

In living areas, people want “consoles for flat-screen TVs with built-in storage for DVDs and video game components,” says Joan Kaufman, principal of Naperville, Ill.-based Interior Planning and Design.

Custom kitchens often include small, built-in desk areas to accommodate a laptop, filing system and docking stations and chargers for various electronics, she adds. Banquette seating, built around the kitchen table and generally tucked in a corner or nook, is getting the go-ahead from McCormick’s clients, who need the under-seat storage.

Staying put: With the recession in full swing, more homeowners are customizing their homes to meet their needs, whether it’s creating a designated scrapbooking room [above] or making room for a growing extended family [below]. Image courtesy Leonard Lampel; Design by Sharon McCormick

“To help use every inch of a house, some people are opting to build a vertical side drawer next to a refrigerator for smaller items like spices, small bottles or sponges,” Kaufman says. Hand-carved, pullout pilasters also can store small items, Barnard says.

In the bathroom, “A lot of my clients are trending toward classic porcelain pedestal sinks supplemented by custom, need-specific storage that looks more like furniture than cabinetry,” Barnard says. McCormick designed a furniture-grade, mirrored armoire in a client’s bathroom with two built-in hampers to separate whites from the rest of the laundry.

The work-at-home trend also fuels demand for custom carpentry, McCormick says. One client wanted a desk in the middle of her home office to serve as a “central command system” complete with built-ins “to accommodate the equipment and storage needs of the client exactly,” she says. For example, the workstation has a built-in shredder.

The desk itself “is built in with a granite top. It’s not going anywhere,” McCormick says. The permanency of custom elements gave homeowners pause when a home’s resale value and broad market appeal topped their list of concerns, but that’s no longer the case for many people.

And it’s not just custom cabinets and built-ins that are gaining in popularity. McCormick’s design firm has seen an uptick in handcrafted woodwork in general.

“We’ve been installing lots and lots of crown molding, in part because people moved into bigger houses during the boom and never got around to personalizing them,” she says. “So they have all these big rooms without a lot of character, and now they’re going back and adding the finishing touches.”

McCormick points to shorter delivery schedules as another possible reason custom is making a comeback. Since the recession started, custom cabinet makers’ backlogs are shrinking, allowing for quicker turnaround times and client gratification. This brings up another irony about custom’s rise in recessionary times. Custom cabinet makers, on the whole, aren’t necessarily benefiting.

Just ask Jim Owen, who founded Owen Custom Cabinetry in Elk Grove Village, Ill. “I’m actually downsizing my business and going back to school to complete a nursing degree – that’s how bad things are,” he says, and then ticks off a list of other decades-old Chicago area cabinet makers who have recently gone out of business.

“It’s horrible what’s going on right now. And people expect to get everything for cheap because the economy is so bad,” Owen says. He recently received a letter asking him to outfit a kitchen with handcrafted cabinets – and beat the price of IKEA’s ready-to-assemble cupboards.

“I will not drop my standards,” says Owen, who plans to continue building cabinets as a side business. After all, uniqueness and quality are what custom is all about.

“Little features can add a lot of comfort and value to a home but don’t necessarily have to cost a lot during the design and build phase,” Kaufman says. “Working with a registered interior designer from the onset can make a real difference in taking advantage of your home’s existing footprint.”