House Popularity by Color in Sudbury 2011

The chart below gives a little different picture of the real estate market in Sudbury, MA from the usual numbers and predictions realtors often present. The good news is that this year's 181 total home sales for Sudbury are up just slightly from last year's 178. I've been doing this color analysis for several years now, and to my surprise GRAY has been bumped from first place. The most popular color for 2011 is TAN, followed closely by GRAY, then WHITE & YELLOW, almost tied for third and fourth place`. Together TAN and GRAY make up 60% of the market.

I hope you find this interesting.

What is the Difference Between a Raised Ranch and a Split Level Style Home?

When showing homes to first-time home buyers we often end up in Splits and Raised-Ranches as they tend to be smaller in square footage and in the lower price points for their town/marketplace.
Whichever one we enter first, the buyers ask me "what's the difference between this one and the other one". So here it is:

Raised Ranch House Style

Raised ranch style houses were built in the Boston area from the mid-40's to the 70's and are occasionally still built today as individual custom homes.

They are typically built in this area on lots with high water tables, lots with stone ledge very close to the surface, or lots on a hillside.

Imagine building a single story ranch style home with a full basement and instead of sticking it in the ground up to the top of the foundation,  you set it on a flat spot carved into the ground anywhere from one to four feet deep.This gives you two stories of living space mostly above grade with full-height windows in the basement to give you air flow and sunlight.

Because of the foundation location, you enter the front door directly at the same grade as the driveway on the basement level and have to go upstairs to the main living level (see sketch).

You will enter on the level with a family room, utility/mechanical room, laundry/bath, possibly a bedroom, and if there is one, the garage. There will be a full set of stairs to the side of the front door that takes you up to the main living level where you will find the kitchen, dining room, living room, bedrooms and one or two full baths or a bath and a half.

In many towns they are found along rural roads or what were rural roads at the time in clusters of several homes that were built at the same time.

As these homes are anywhere from fourty to seventy years old, their heating/cooling systems, wiring, plumbing, windows, doors, and other systems have probably been replaced or updated. If they haven't been, they are easy to do and a great way for first time buyers to generate some sweat-equity.

When available, they sell well due to their economical carrying costs, generally low prices, and great use of space. So if you’re looking for all those things, a raised ranch might just be your perfect home.

Split-Level House Style

Split-Level houses are a variation on the raised ranch style and are also called Splits, Split-Foyer and Bi-Level houses. Splits are built with the foundation sunken deeper than Raised Ranches, usually four to six feet into the ground, and the driveway is excavated level with the bottom of the foundation. Unlike a raised ranch which has full-height windows, the lower level tends to have short windows.

In Splits, you always have to go up a half-flight or more via exterior stairs or a sloping walkway from the driveway level and enter the door to a landing or a small foyer.The doorway is often recessed and sometimes the main level of the house is cantilevered out over the basement level, creating a natural indentation and very clear wayfinding to the front door.

Once inside you immediately have to make a decision to go up a half-flight of stairs or down a half-flight of stairs, hence the name split-level (see sketch).

As with a Raised Ranch, upstairs you will find the kitchen, formal dining and living rooms and the bedrooms/baths. In many of these homes the owners have opened up the original walls between the kitchen and dining/living rooms giving them a wonderful flow and nicely supporting the behaviors of today's lifestyles.

Also like the Raised Ranch, downstairs you will often find a family room, utility room, possibly some miscellaneous finished space, and the garage (which is usually located under the bedrooms).
Splits were designed to be inexpensive homes giving two stories of living space while minimizing foundation and roof costs.



While most of them have full-height basement levels, there are many that have basement levels that were shortened to cut building costs. So if you're tall you might want to find one with forced hot water heating systems that don't require big ductwork.

In Metrowest developers built them mostly in large developments (by New England Standards) that have evolved into wonderful family neighborhoods of thirty to fourty similar homes. Depending on the original price point, they can have a variety of finishes and architectural details on their fronts, such as faux stone, brick, awnings, and bay/bow windows. They will hardly ever have front porches, and are often fitted with screened-porches or raised decks off the back of the dining rooms with stairs down to grade.

Splits don't tend to handle additions well, so many folks buy them as starter homes and then sell/move when they find they have outgrown them.  Because of this and the fact that so many of these homes were built, they are almost always available for sale in all local marketplaces.


Summary
Whether it's a Split or a Raised Ranch they be a very practical layout, they sell well due to their economical carrying costs, they have generally lower asking prices, and they make great use of all available space. So if that's what you're looking for, one of these just might be your perfect home.

How Hard are My Wood Floors?

Just  the other day I was at a home inspection (representing the sellers) and the buyer’s home inspector was commenting on the Brazilian Cherry floors in the Study, telling the buyers that “this wood is very soft, so you’ll want to be very careful when you walk on it.”

Having grown up in the household of a high school shop teacher, I’ve had a great education in woodworking and made lots of projects with my Dad.  Over the years I’ve worked with Brazilian Cherry and for a fact I know it is a very, very hard material.  It takes forever to sand and holes for fasteners have to be pre-drilled very accurately and sized correctly. But I kept that knowledge to myself and decided to share it with you instead.

Many woods are used for flooring and although today’s design trends and color schemes often drive the choice of materials, over time the most popular woods for this area of the country, are: Brazilian Cherry, Mahogany, Pecan, Maple, White Oak, Red Oak, Walnut, Teak, Pine, and Fir. Of these, Red Oak is the most commonly used (it’s considered the most color-neutral and affordable of the woods) and thus it is considered the standard or benchmark in wood hardness.

If you Google hardwood hardness you will inevitably encounter the Janka Hardness Scale. It is the industry standard for judging the ability of woods to withstand the beating that wood takes from normal wear and tear: denting, gouging, pet scratches, heavy furniture, etc. Janka measures the amount of force in lbs-force that it takes to push a half-inch diameter (okay it’s really .444 inch) steel ball half of its diameter down into the wood. While this gives a general sense of the wood’s hardness, there are many factors that also contribute to a wood floor’s hardness and durability, including how it is cut from the log and how it is finished.

How the tree is cut has an effect on its hardness and suitability as a floor covering. Hardwood flooring is produced by milling wood from trees. There are three basic ways to cut a tree into lumber, called “plainsawn”, “quartersawn” and “riftsawn”.

 “Plainsawn” wood is just that, the log is sliced lengthwise from one side to the other in a series of parallel cuts, sort of as you’d cut a block of cheese. This gives the best yield from the tree but for flooring it tends to result in a very inconsistent grain pattern and tends to expand and contract in unpredictable ways. Wide-pine floors (found in many Antiques and Antique Reproduction homes) are the typical example of “plainsawn” wood that most of us will encounter.

“Quartersawn” wood is the most common way that flooring material is made. In this method, imagine that the log is cut down the middle, then both halves are cut down the middle, and the boards are then cut from the “quarters” with the point facing straight down (a series of parallel cuts starting perpendicular to the centerpoint of the tree). This gives consistency to the grain of the boards (as consistent as any natural material can be) and a predictable stability that makes it perfect for flooring. For the purposes of this blog, I am using hardness factors derived from “quartersawn” wood.

“Riftsawn” wood is the absolutely ideal material for consistency of grain and stability but is very hard to find because it is so expensive to manufacture. In this method, the log is cut into a series of wedges that are perpendicular to the rings of the tree. The wedges are then sawn into boards and the excess material becomes waste. Because of the low yield per tree the cost per board foot is very high and you will probably never see “riftsawn” flooring unless touring a mansion or a castle. By the way, there are a couple of specialty sawmills in the Sudbury area that will produce “riftsawn” boards for you, but hold onto your wallet.

As mentioned earlier, the finish also has an effect on the hardness. I am not qualified to comment on what finish is harder or better (best to ask a flooring expert) but I can tell you that the typical finish penetrates into the top ¼” of the wood, at most, so logic would have it that finished versus unfinished wood would be harder but much beyond that I can’t really say.

So how hard is my hardwood floor?
Below is a list from softest to hardest:

FIR

• Latin: Abies sp
• Other Common Names: White Fir, Balsam Fir, Fraser Fir
• Janka Hardness: 400

WHITE PINE

• Latin: Pinus alba
• Other Common Names: White Pine, Eastern White Pine
• Janka Hardness: 420
• Hardness Compared to Fir: 1.05 times harder

SHORTLEAF PINE

• Latin: Pinus echinata
• Other Common Names: Southern Yellow Pine, Shortstraw Pine
• Janka Hardness: 690
• Hardness Compared to Fir: 1.725 times harder

AMERICAN CHERRY

• Latin: Prunus serotina
• Other Common Names: Black Cherry, Cherry, American Cherry
• Janka Hardness: 950
• Hardness Compared to Fir: 2.375 times harder 

TEAK

• Latin: Tectona grandis
• Other Common Names: Plantation Teak, Burmese Teak
• Janka Hardness: 1000
• Hardness Compared to Fir: 2.5 times harder

WALNUT

• Latin: Juglans nigra
• Other Common Names: Black Walnut, Eastern Black Walnut
• Janka Hardness: 1010
• Hardness Compared to Fir: 2.525 times harder 

HEART PINE

• Latin: Pinus palustris
• Other Common Names: Long Leaf Pine,
• Also Commonly from: the Center or 'Heart" of Yellow pine
• Other Notes: mostly from recycled or underwater harvested, swamp trees
• Janka Hardness: 1225
• Hardness Compared to Fir: 3.0625 times harder

RED OAK

• Latin: Quercus rubra
• Other Common Names: Northern Red Oak
• Janka Hardness: 1290
• Hardness Compared to Fir: 3.225 times harder

WHITE OAK

• Latin: Quercus alba
• Other Common Names: Old Oak
• Janka Hardness: 1360
• Hardness Compared to Fir: 3.4 times harder

MAPLE

• Latin: Acer saccharum
• Other Common Names: Rock Maple, Hard Maple, Hard Rock Maple, Sugar Maple
• Janka Hardness: 1450
• Hardness Compared to Fir: 3.625 times harder

PECAN

• Latin: Carya illinoinensis
• Other Common Names: Hickory, Satinwood
• Janka Hardness: 1820
• Hardness Compared to Fir: 4.55 times harder

MAHOGANY

• Latin: Swietenia mahagoni or Swietenia macrophylla
• Other Common Names: West Indies Mahogany, Honduras Mahogany, Genuine Mahogany
• Janka Hardness: 2200
• Hardness Compared to Fir: 5.5 times harder

BRAZILIAN CHERRY

• Latin: Hymenaea courbaril
• Other Common Names: Brazilian Copal, South American Locust,  South American Cherry, Jatobá or Guapinol
• Janka Hardness: 2350
• Hardness Compared to Fir: 5.875 times harder