The Wild and Crazy House You Should Be Living In

Ideas - keep 'em coming, fast and loose

Naomi Dunford is an online business coach who’s a little wild and a little crazy, something I admire in an entrepreneur.

Correction – she’s a lot wild and a lot crazy, which I admire even more.

She’s also full of wisdom about how to market a small business online, and the blog articles she writes about it are always, at the very least, very entertaining.

Including one a couple of months back about how it’s ok to quit doing things that you think you’re supposed to do, even though they’re not helping you or your business.

Maybe those things aren’t a good fit for your particular business, she writes, or maybe you’re just not very good at doing them.

If it’s not working for you, stop doing it.  Even if you’ve heard a million times that it’s the right thing to do.

Chuck it.  Dump it. Leave it behind.  And try something completely different.

A bit unusual, that advice, but Naomi makes the point that doing the unusual can get your business “unstuck” and back on the road to success.

You might find yourself stuck, too, if you’re trying to figure out what to do with your remodeling or new home project.

You might be trying to make your house look like or work like a house you’ve seen on TV, or on a home tour, or in a house plans book.

You might be trying to do with your house what your neighbor did with theirs.

Or maybe you read an article that said you should do this or that to your home to improve its resale value.

And it’s just not working, because you’re trying to do things that you think you’re supposed to do, rather than the things you really want; things that work better for you, or work better for your particular house.

You might even know what you’d like to do, but are afraid to do it – afraid your ideas are too wild and crazy for most people.

Tsk, tsk.  You’re missing an opportunity to do something innovative and special. I may have to report you to Naomi.

What if...to save money, you didn't put in kitchen cabinets?

What If?

I meet people every week who want to change something about their home, but can’t quite bring themselves to do it – because they think what they want to do isn’t what they’re supposed to do.

Things like getting rid of the formal dining room, even though they never use it.

Or removing a whirlpool tub and replacing it with a larger shower.

Or buying a – goodness gracious – split-level home.

Breaking free of boring, conventional design ideas isn’t hard – it just takes a little exercise of your creative muscles (and yes, you have creative muscles, you just haven’t used them in a long time).

There’s a bit of a trick, of course, but it’s a simple one:  Ask yourself, “what if”, but don’t answer the question…just write down the “questions”.  Just scribble down every nutty idea that occurs to you about your house.

Sometimes those ideas will be written thoughts, sometimes sketches.  Sometimes they’re a photo you took, sometimes a picture from a magazine.  They’re all valuable fodder for design, and they all should go into your “What If” file.

Here’s a few crazy ideas my clients and I have come up with that ended up getting built:

What if…you could back your pickup truck right into your basement so you could load up your cases of homemade wine?

What if…your house had a tower, with remote-controlled windows at the top that would let out hot air on summer days and help cool the whole house?

What if…you didn’t have much room for a garage on your property, so you built a two-story garage instead?

What if...you built an open, spacious, comfortable, attractive home and kept the size under 2,000 square feet?

At RTA Studio, we encourage our clients to see every idea as valid, no matter how unique, awkward, or seemingly impossible.  Because ideas are the real building blocks of home design.

What’s the wildest, craziest home design idea you’ve ever heard of?