How to design your dream home in 25 years
– July 26, 2014 –

I am a Certified Residential Real Estate Appraiser, with over 40 years of exposure to and reflection about what makes a home distinctive, comfortable and valuable. I have appraised homes with up to $20,000,000 of documented actual costs of construction, but I can honestly state, without reservation, that I don’t recall ever seeing any other home that was more pleasing to the eye inside, or with a more functional “feel” to its flow, than Jan Evan’s dream home, on Table Rock lake in Shell Knob, Missouri. And her’s DID NOT cost millions.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone contemplating building their own home, or even thinking about thinking about it! It is very well written and clear, thoughtful and helpful … as well as a quick and “easy read.”

–RWJ – Denver, Colorado

How to design your dream home in 25 years – A Review
The book is replete with gems of practical wisdom. Its conversational style makes for easy reading. Best of all, the recommendations are always very practical and with an eye to optimize costs.

An amazing amount of thoughtfulness and detailing seems to have gone into every chapter. The author has envisioned endless possibilities while planning the interiors, including getting around in a wheelchair in old age. And, planning for the worst-case scenario in the water drainage plans!

One thing for sure, I learned a lot. Who would have known that kitchens and bathrooms would be the most expensive rooms in the house per square foot? That the least expensive design for a house is one with a simple square or rectangle roof, as every corner you turn adds to building costs. Or that a 2 storied house is cheaper than a one storied one of the same square footage as you save on the foundation work?
That it is cheaper to put plumbing areas near each other so that pipes don’t have to run clear across a house? And, that designing the floor plan efficiently can ensure that you are not carting your dirty clothes all over the place in order to get to the laundry room?

So there is plenty of practical and useful knowledge to be gleaned. I was introduced to the concept of the work triangle or the space between the fridge sink and stove in a kitchen and learned the importance of placing a dishwasher so that you don’t keep banging your shins on it. As one who has suffered painful shins on several occasions and berated my husband for leaving the door open just before I tried to enter the kitchen, this one I can certainly vouch for.

There are also several unique concepts like the one of an appliance garage. The custom designed laundry cabinet is awesome as it allows you to sort your laundry into separate bins for whites, colours, dainties, delicates, towels and sheets and only when the specific bin is full does it get into the washing machine.

It is clear that the author has really put 25 years of premeditation into this project. She has even thought of reinforcing walls that could in future hold heavy items with backing. And, providing good strong handles discreetly placed so that people can heave themselves in and out of bathtubs or hang on to in the event of slipping. Since concrete is expensive she says that the shorter and more efficient the driveway the less it will cost.

One message stands out starkly throughout the book. Planning ahead saves a lot of costs. And, reading her book could well save you a lot too!
– PSM– Mumbai, India

Not a dry, “how-to” book! Humorous and enthusiastic with a logical sequence of progression in the design/build process. This book presented well-thought-out and well-researched information, painting clear pictures of what the author was talking about. It addressed aesthetics as well as practical suggestions. I was astounded that you could put electrical outlets anywhere you wanted, even in the floor! It would also be a useful book for remodeling as well. I just wish there had been more pictures of her actual dream house!
– MRR – Bartlesville, Oklahoma

I got to tell you this book really helps you think about things I hadn’t thought
of and helped me on the things I did think of. I really recommend this book to
new home builders as well as major renovations. Very Good.
– Dianna – Wheaton, Missouri

How to Design Your Dream Home (in 25 Years or Less!)
Jan Jones Evans
(Reviewed October 2014)

In this helpful nonfiction book, the author gives a first-person account of designing her dream home over 25 years and offers suggestions for readers creating a similar house….

Jan Jones Evans and her husband purchased property in 1986, knowing someday they would retire and build a house there. Throughout the years, she researched layout and design, foundation and utilities, building materials, lighting and electrical requirements, doors and windows, and more. Her experiences (both successful and unsuccessful) implementing these elements in her dream home, in addition to “green” ideas for low environmental impact and handicapped accessibility, are the basis for the 16 chapters.

Through personal anecdotes, advice to readers, and illustrations, the author hopes to guide readers when designing new houses of their own. Her advice ranges from common sense (“YOU CAN NEVER HAVE TOO MUCH STORAGE!”) to specialized knowledge (when planning windows, can natural light possibly “be a fire hazard if reflected to just the right place?”). …valuable to readers in similar circumstances … designing their own house.

Also available in hardcover and ebook.
– BlueInk Review

This debut book from Evans describes her efforts to design her dream home during nearly 25 years of careful planning.

Half how-to guide, half wistful letter to an imagined group of amateur designers and dreamers, this book chattily limns Evans’ various successes and failures as a house designer. She explains how, after purchasing lakefront property in the mid-1980s, she and her husband decided they wanted to retire there. She began mentally drawing up blueprints before the ink on the contract was dry, and with the aid of friends and a design firm, she started literally drafting and redrafting plans over the next two decades as her lifestyle and needs began to change. Evans shares the pros and cons of various design features, including alcoves versus hallways (an alcove will give you more square footage, whereas a hallway will give you a little more breathing room). She laments her lighting scheme, which caused an unanticipated glare on the big screen television. “Any ONE of these three light sources would have been sufficient!” she says as she excitedly discusses attempting to light her Northern White Cedar vaulted ceilings. Evans uses this prose style throughout the book, frequently capitalizing for emphasis and liberally punctuating with exclamation points. Her otherwise endearing enthusiasm can occasionally distract from the focus of the chapters. While the book is structured sensibly—Chapter 7: Lighting, Electrical and Technology; Chapter 12: Storage, Closets and Cabinets, etc.—the information contained within is anecdotal, not soundly informed. While Evans doesn’t claim to be a trained architect, her advice about conceptualizing exactly what kind of “dream home” a person might want before working with an architect is very useful. The remainder of the work, however, is largely a detailed tour through Evans’ personal design process, and as such, it qualifies as an informal if occasionally amusing work.

Offers amateur designers cheerful, intimate opinions on creating an ideal living space.
– Kirkus Review

This do-it-yourself book features practical advice from someone who designed her own

dream home.

For anyone who wants to undertake designing a home from the ground up, Jan Jones Evans’s book should be a valuable resource. Evans, a retired special education teacher who has been drawing floor plans as a hobby for some fifty years, writes that while she is not a trained architect, she has “enjoyed sketching out different versions of my ‘dream home’ since I was in junior high school.” In 1986, when she and her husband purchased a lakefront property, Evans made good on her dream and designed her retirement dream home, which the coupled moved into in 2011.

In a book that is informal and easy to read, Evans shares what she learned about the process of designing a home. The author walks the reader through such issues as locating the home, picking the desired home size, and the basics of layout and design. She then devotes one chapter to each of the key elements of any home, including foundation, utilities, lighting, doors and windows, the kitchen, bathrooms and laundry, storage, and outside areas. She also includes a useful section about “green” building.

Evans’s observations of her own design challenges are particularly helpful. For example, she discusses the cost implications of “impulse upgrades,” such as the hardwood ceilings she added to her dream home. “The impact of that choice is phenomenal in our house and adds so much to the grandeur of the vaulted ceilings,” she writes. “However, it added an equally phenomenal amount to our overall budget!”

Evans’s honesty, along with her ability to talk about design and building details through an ordinary consumer’s eyes, makes for a book that is both engaging and instructional. In telling the story of her own experience designing her dream home over many years, she shares numerous tips and techniques that could help readers with an interest in home design, whether or not they want to design a home themselves. In fact, her book might be just as useful to someone working with an architect or builder on a new home or a remodeling project.

Evans enhances the text with graphic illustrations, such as roof designs, various kitchen layouts, and options for bathrooms. At the end of the book, the author appends the entire floor plan for her dream home. She also offers a complete set of engineering blueprints for the floor plan for $995. The book is well designed and illustrated. The cover features several full-color photographs of various home designs.

In her book, Evans advises the reader, “I am not recommending that you take 25 years to plan your dream home, just giving reasons why you need to take your time and do a lot of thinking before you begin.” Thankfully, How to Design Your Dream Home (in 25 Years or

Less!) offers the kind of helpful insight based on experience that should make planning and designing a home a much less time-consuming and arduous process.

– Barry Silverstein, Foreword Clarion Review