If I didn’t find my own old house to renovate, I would have built this one instead. 100%.
About the Episode:
I am honored to introduce our first guest to the podcast! Please join me in welcoming Jay Osborne — an artist who designs buildings and a fellow old house lover — to the show. Jay is the creator of Free Farmhouse, free architectural plans and open-source CAD files to help modern people build new homes like they used to do way back when.
In this episode, you’ll hear:
- How Jay’s career in California and world travels (plus an abandoned old house in Virginia) inspired his design
- Why Brandon and I POURED over the incredible plans he sent me
- What makes an American farmhouse so unbelievably special
And so much more!
Resources Mentioned:
Follow me on Instagram @FarmhouseVernacular!
Get Your House Right: Architectural Elements to Use & Avoid by Marianne Cusato
Follow Jay on Instagram @FreeFarmhouse!
Transcript:
Paige:
Hello, and welcome to The Vernacular Life Podcast, where we talk about anything and everything that goes on in our turn-of-the-century vernacular farmhouse. I’m your host, Paige, as usual. And today is a very, very exciting episode because we have a special guest with us. Today we are talking to Jay Osborne, who really did the coolest project that I kind of stumbled on, and we’re going to talk to him about it. And he’ll be on for this episode and next week’s episode, so make sure you tune back in. But welcome, Jay. So glad to have you.
Jay Osborne:
Hello. Thanks for having me. Nice to be here.
Paige:
I’m so, so excited about this. So to get us started, tell us who you are, what your job is, and how you got to where you are now.
Jay Osborne:
Could be a long story, but I’ll try to keep it short. My name is Jay Osborne. I grew up in the countryside of Virginia, and when I was a kid, I used to design houses with my old T-square. And I used to make drawings of floor plans, sections, elevations, and that naturally led to architecture school. So I got a degree from Virginia Tech, and then I biked across the country and got a job in San Francisco. And I worked at many architecture firms in San Francisco, mostly designing really, really nice things. For instance, waterfront restaurants, enormous mansions, retail centers, and other kinds of restaurants, as well as I worked on wineries and resorts, and sometimes houses that were as big as resorts. So quite an assortment of projects, even a ferry terminal.
Paige:
Oh my gosh. That’s just, that’s a very wide range of things. I’m assuming you were with a firm or something?
Jay Osborne:
Yes.
Paige:
Or was this all by yourself? Okay.
Jay Osborne:
I was always with somebody else, always working for an architect. After a while, after a few years of doing that, I decided to travel the world for a year. And then I went back, but in the middle of all of this, while I’m designing gigantic houses that I could never afford to live in, I went back home a few years back to see my family on Thanksgiving. I was just wandering around the woods, like I do. I just wander all over the place around the woods, and I’m not going to tell you whose land it is.
Paige:
We don’t ask those questions.
Jay Osborne:
But I found this old farmhouse. It was abandoned and dilapidated, and there were buzzards living inside. I had to scare them out just to explore. And I took some pictures, made some measurements, and I thought, wow, this is the simplest house in America. And even though I’m very good at designing extremely complex houses, I thought, what would it be like just to create a very simple set of house plans and give them away to the world for free? Because I was also interested in the open source movement, and I was disappointed that architects weren’t giving anything away open source, or if they did, it wasn’t usable. It was just a bunch of pretty pictures that nobody could actually build from.
So I wanted to create a full set of architectural plans for this little farmhouse not only because I wanted to see this in the world, but I also wanted to learn as much as I could from the house. And I firmly believe that the best way to learn about anything is to try to recreate it, to try to make it yourself. I decided to redesign the farmhouse, and I sent it out to the world and nobody noticed it.
Paige:
Well, that’s a very good place to segue here, because I had no idea who you were until I went to my PO box and there was this fabulous little book that was there, called American Farmhouse. And then there was a note from you, of course, which was very nice. But tell us about that book and how it relates to this project.
Jay Osborne:
Okay. I sent that book to you because I was following you for a while and I thought that since you and Brandon were both engineers, you’d probably appreciate it. And since you were working so much on your house, I thought this would be … The book and the design is meant as a gift for everybody, but I wanted to send a book to you specifically because I knew you’d like it.
Paige:
Oh, we did.
Jay Osborne:
I didn’t realize you’d like it that much, but that was a delight.
Paige:
I just, I have to tell you, usually there’s a lot of stuff the PO box, so I don’t always open it, but this time there were only a couple packages. So I’m sifting through them, and I open this, and I was stuck in the post office parking lot for like 20 or 30 minutes, just literally looking through the entire thing. And I immediately was on my phone, I took pictures of it, and I sent it to my friends. I was like, “Look at this book.” And then I got home, and Brandon and I were eating dinner and I showed him and I was like, “You have to see this book. This is the coolest thing.” So you were completely right that two engineers were a very, very big fan of this book.
Jay Osborne:
That’s great. It’s a very unique book.
Paige:
It is.
Jay Osborne:
I don’t know how to get it out into the world. Nobody’s ever put a full set of architectural drawings into a book. I don’t know of anybody who’s given such a complete set of architectural drawings free and open source. So the book was kind of a way for me to bring the project to the world and also explain it a bit. So with all the technical drawings, there are also 3D illustrations that show you in a more intuitive way how the house comes together. So this is a way for anybody to be able to learn about architecture and design and about the construction of houses. I think it’s necessary for quite a few people, ranging from architecture students, to builders, to homeowners.
Paige:
Right. So this book is really just all of those plans that you made from learning about the original house, the inspiration house that you found. It’s all the plans, it’s 3D renderings, it’s measurements, it’s material lists. It’s everything that you need to build this little house. And then in addition to putting it online, which you did, you made this little book, right?
Jay Osborne:
Right.
Paige:
So what were some of the challenges, or what was the process of going from the plans to the physical book?
Jay Osborne:
Okay. Well, the biggest challenge I had in the process was that when I started the design, I didn’t know how to design traditional buildings. This is the first traditional house I’ve ever designed.
Paige:
What do you mean by traditional?
Jay Osborne:
Traditional as in something that would’ve been done a long time ago and based on the old rules and customs of craftsmanship from over a hundred years ago.
Paige:
Okay. Okay.
Jay Osborne:
In architecture school, you don’t really learn that kind of thing. You learn modern buildings. And once you get out into the profession, there tends to be a focus more on modern. There’s some firms, some firms that I eventually even worked for, they were very focused on traditional design. The challenge was first learning all the rules and conventions of traditional buildings, because it’s not just a checklist of features. A lot of people will get confused about traditional and vernacular design elements. They just think you just add in some shutters and you’re done. But there’s a lot to it. For instance, if the shutters aren’t functional, they’re just corny. They’re just like [inaudible 00:07:12].
Paige:
Yes, that is [crosstalk 00:07:14]. Even from my non-architecture perspective, that is something that I have noticed about old houses, is even the very grand ones, things have a purpose. They don’t put stuff in them, I would say, unless it’s decorative moldings and stuff like that, that doesn’t serve some sort of purpose. But even the moldings are, I mean, they were a sign of wealth. They were a sign of status. They didn’t just do things just because, and especially a house like this, which is, isn’t it right at a thousand square feet?
Jay Osborne:
It’s 975.
Paige:
975 square feet. Okay. So for a house like that, they could not afford things that didn’t work and didn’t function.
Jay Osborne:
Right. Yeah, I always like to say, I don’t know if anybody will ever quote me on this in the future, but I always say that form fulfills function. It’s not that you add form after you’ve solved the problems. It’s that if you’re not creating forms that are also useful in some way, then why? It can be a waste of your time and energy to design forms that are completely useless.
So of course you can add a lot of bells and whistles. You can add fills. You can always add more ornamentation to a design, but even if you look closely at the ornament, it usually fulfills some kind of function, if only to make the house look stronger. And for old builders, that was very important, because a hundred years ago, engineers weren’t as necessary. So builders would make things stronger.
Paige:
Overbuilt, everything was overbuilt. It’s like, yeah, that’s all right, it’s not going to fall down.
Jay Osborne:
And it was meant to look strong, too, so you couldn’t blame the builder if something fell down. The builder would make the house look strong enough that it was unquestionably resilient.
Paige:
Right. So what did you reference to learn these traditional building techniques? Was it books? Was it just kind of looking at the buildings, or what’d you do?
Jay Osborne:
A lot of it was just about learning and looking at old designs and really waking up, because you don’t really appreciate something until you look closely at it. So as I designed modern buildings at architecture firms, I neglected to understand a lot of the values of traditional and vernacular designs. But once I got into designing this, I just started walking around. And at that time it was the streets of San Francisco, which have a lot of old houses, not farmhouses, but a lot of old houses. But I would try to decipher all the intentions behind those old houses. And then I would look at pictures of old vernacular farmhouses and get out into the countryside, like in wine country, and see what it’s like over there.
But there were some books that were very helpful. One is Get Your House Right by Marianne Cusato and a few others, and it explains in pretty good detail how you can design a house so it looks like an authentic, traditional house. And there are others that I referenced in the book, as well.
Paige:
Okay. Obviously there are house plans out there, and they’re pitched as a farmhouse or modern farmhouse, but they don’t quite get things right. And part of the reason I was so excited about your house plans is because these are the first plans that I’ve ever seen that seem to get it right. Like, that looks like a turn-of-the-century farmhouse to me. So what do you think these modern houses do that goes wrong, that makes it look not quite right?
Jay Osborne:
Right. Modern farmhouses can be done really well. So I want to put that out there fast, because I worked for an architect, Howard Backen, who basically invented the genre of modern farmhouse design.
Paige:
Oh, really? Okay.
Jay Osborne:
He did extremely good work. He did a resort for Robert Redford, Ashton Kutcher, and Mila Kunis, a lot of Hollywood celebrities. And it’s basically the best of the best modern farmhouse design. So it can be done well. It can be extremely nice. But usually when you see it, the design really misses the point. It needs to feel like it’s old in some way. You might want more sunlight, you might want it to be more open for some houses, but if it doesn’t feel old, then just call it a house, not a farmhouse. So what I did a lot when developing this design was basically just looking at old houses and copying what works, and that’s rarely done for some reason, among designers and builders nowadays.
Paige:
Yes. Everybody has to reinvent everything.
Jay Osborne:
Right. So I copied what works, and I put it all in the design, and a lot of it comes down to things like proportion, certain rules of craftsmanship, and materiality.
Paige:
One of the biggest things that I’ve always noticed that always just instantly tells me that something isn’t old or it was renovated poorly has to do with the windows. And some of that has to do with the construction techniques of the difference between balloon framing and platform framing. A lot of the balloon framing, as far as I know, the studs run from the foundation all the way up to the roof in a continuous line, which they don’t do anymore. They build them in separate floors. And I know part of that is for fire safety. But when you have those studs aligned, they tended to align the windows, too, right?
Jay Osborne:
That’s pretty basic. Yeah. It’s amazing how few people get that right nowadays.
Paige:
It is unbelievable. And because of that, the windows are usually at least similarly sized. They may not all be exactly the same size, but they’re generally a taller proportion and they’re generally the same width. And that just seems like such a simple thing that’s just, align your windows and make them the same size. And you’re like-
Jay Osborne:
I totally agree. I once worked for an architect, and he was designing a Tuscan house, or in this case, a Tuscan retail center. And he did not want to align the windows up and down. [inaudible 00:12:59] training just, that he didn’t understand that if you don’t do that, you’re defeating the purpose of that style. That style has a bunch of rules, and traditional houses are based around a lot of rules that need to be adhered to, otherwise they look like they’re frauds. They don’t look like they’re right.
Paige:
It just doesn’t ever look right. And that was one of the things that you did in this farmhouse, is all of the windows are bang over each other. It’s like, that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
Jay Osborne:
Yeah, sometimes it’s a little bit of variation, and it can be kind of fun in old houses. You have the front door skewed off by a few inches, and it’s kind of charming. But if it’s done all the time, it’s just, it’s wrong.
Paige:
Oh yes. And I’ve seen some where they’ll do like a double window on the lower floor instead of a single window, and stuff like that.
Jay Osborne:
Yeah, that was popular in the 1910s.
Paige:
Yes. But for the most part, they stick to those aligned windows. So you had this plan, you had this book, and then you made a Kickstarter out of it. So tell us what a Kickstarter is, and why you made one and what you were hoping to accomplish.
Jay Osborne:
So Kickstarter is a crowdfunding campaign, just like Indiegogo, and it’s a way that people can put money into a project and get rewards. In this case, you’d get a book back from me. For me, I did it because I wanted my projects to get out into the world, and nobody was finding it. I’d built websites. I’d given away the project for free online. Anybody can download it as they wish, for it was almost seven years.
Paige:
Really? When did you start this?
Jay Osborne:
This was a long time ago. 2015 was when I first put it online, early 2015.
Paige:
I didn’t realize that. Holy cow. Okay.
Jay Osborne:
So it was mostly ignored all those years. And that was kind of disappointing because when you give a gift to the world, it’s sad when the world doesn’t know. So I wanted to get this out. I wanted more people to discover it. And so even though I got a few messages of people who said that they loved it and they were planning to build from it, I wanted to bring it to the attention of more people. So I launched this Kickstarter campaign for the book.
So the book is also somewhat new because I decided to create the renderings for all the plans recently. So the actual technical drawings are quite old, but the 3D renderings and the explanations are from this year. So I launched the Kickstarter campaign, and as soon as I launch it, I’m getting messages from people, saying that they’re actually building it. There’s one in Amish country that’s being constructed. And there was one in west Richmond that I didn’t hear about until the first few days of the Kickstarter campaign.
Paige:
Oh my gosh.
Jay Osborne:
So the publicity really got it out there, which is great, but it really wasn’t until somebody mentioned it to all of her followers that it really got out to the world. And now it’s getting exciting.
Paige:
Because I’ve been thinking about that a lot, because I did share it and I didn’t really know what was going to happen. I was just, I don’t usually find things that I’m so excited about, that I just immediately want to tell people. And then I started to see the reaction to it and started to, like, I think I told you, I was watching your Kickstarter numbers for two straight days of just like, come on.
I think I figured out why it resonated. And it’s because even though we have an old house, and we’re renovating an old house, pretty much everything we’re doing is new. Every room is taken down to the studs, and we’ve had to rebuild it because the house was in such bad shape. We’ve had to use new windows, new trim, redo the floors. And so for all intents and purposes, it’s a new build inside an old house. And we’re just doing it in the style, as much as possible, of what would’ve been done in 1905 or 1906.
So the people that I could show this to were already interested in doing things the way that things used to be done. But not everybody wants the headache of an old house, which I totally understand.
Jay Osborne:
Yeah, the plumbing is a nightmare.
Paige:
Oh my gosh, our plumbing was atrocious. It was terrible. And so once this got out there and people started to see it, I mean, I don’t know, what happened on your end of social media? Were you getting messages? Were you getting emails? What happened?
Jay Osborne:
For most of the campaign, it was a scattering of emails that I started to get. But a lot of people who are, I mean, I feel new to social media when it comes to launching something like a book. So a lot of people who are following me were my friends, and they were very supportive initially, which is great, but they’re also very modernist and they went to architecture school and they design modern buildings for the most part. So it wasn’t until you brought it to the attention of people who it really resonated with that I started getting this flood of support that I’m still swimming through it right now. I’m getting a lot of love, and I’m trying to return it as much as possible.
Paige:
Oh, that makes me happy. That makes me very happy, because one of the things that we talked about briefly in our email exchange was that I don’t begrudge anybody wanting to build a new house. Like I said, not everybody wants an old house and all the problems that go with it. That’s fine. But if we could just stop building McMansions, if we could just stop building these kind of like blobs that sit on the countryside and don’t do anything and don’t look like anything. And that’s really what I saw your project as an opportunity for people to do, is like here’s an old house. It just happens to be new.
Jay Osborne:
Right. People tend to ascribe a lot of value to traditional houses. They pay a premium in the real estate market for traditional houses and old houses. But they’re not paying that extra money for the plumbing. They’re not paying for the hassle. What they see in those old houses is something that we don’t have nowadays. And the craftsmanship, it’s a feeling of authenticity and the design, so the walls align, the windows align, everything has a purpose. It’s not just check boxes and overinflated McMansion style rooms. Everything feels like the way it would’ve been in an old farmhouse. So since it’s so hard to find new house designs for an old house, it seemed like an opportunity to give people something that otherwise it would be unaffordable, because a lot of those old traditional houses, they cost a lot more than new ones.
Paige:
It’s just, it’s not normal. And as soon as you’re building something outside of normal, you’re going to increase the price because you’re going to have to hire the architect. You’re going to have to do all of this extra stuff. But then here you come, with all of the plans already of like, hey, here’s how you can do this. Now, with your Kickstarter, you had different goals, right? Different financial goals to hit. And there were different things you would do at each goal. And I think at the time I shared it, I don’t remember where you were, but it was fairly far off from the biggest goal that you had. And I very selfishly wanted you to hit that goal because of what it is. So talk to us about the goals.
Jay Osborne:
So the original funding goal was $5,000 for the Kickstarter, and it basically, it stalled for a while, but it eventually got to about $6,000 before you found it. So it had just reached its funding goal. But I had a lot of other goals that I wanted to reach. So for $7,500, I would give an extra book to international backers, for instance. And I wanted to do that because they pay a lot for shipping, and it doesn’t cost me that much more to add another book to their package. So I wanted to make sure, I was hoping, really hoping, that it would meet that funding goal. And as soon as you mentioned the project, it smashed through that funding goal.
Paige:
It did.
Jay Osborne:
It eventually went up to $15,000, then $18,000 at the end. And at $15,000, I promised to design the extension of the house, so to not only have this small 1000 square foot kernel of a beautiful little house, but also to have the extension, which would include a master bedroom, a little bit of a living area on the bottom level, maybe even a bedroom suite on the bottom level, as well as a garage and a wraparound porch and a bay window. I wanted to add the works and make it into a house that looks like it had grown over time. And it can.
You could start building the kernel of this house, the very beginning of this house, the 1000 square foot portion, and then later build this addition. And I think, I really hope a lot of people consider that possibility because there tend to be a lot of people who are willing to go into extreme debt when building a house. But I want to give them the opportunity that they can build something small right now, something manageable, something that’s more in line with their budget. And then they still have the possibility of building these extension plans in the future. So I’m really happy that the Kickstarter campaign got to that point because now I’m making it happen.
Paige:
Yes. That is such a good point, because I think part of what I’ve at least seen with the McMansions and a lot of the modern houses is that they’re kind of built like a Santa Claus wishlist of, I want this and I want this and I want this and I want this. And by the time you hit all of those wants, you have a 5,000 square foot farmhouse that doesn’t look anything like a farmhouse because that’s just not how houses used to be built. There’s a certain amount of, I don’t want to say deprivation, but there’s a lack with old houses, where you just kind of learn that your bathrooms are a little bit smaller. Your closets are a little bit smaller.
And with a lot of the modern building, you don’t necessarily have to do that. You can have a huge master bathroom if you want, but the trade off is that you lose that charm of that traditional smaller house style. I was really, really just crossing my fingers and hoping that you would hit that $15,000 mark, because in my messages, I had a lot of people who had large families, four, six, eight kids, and they wanted to build this house, but they’re like that thousand square feet is just a little bit small. So now, seeing the extension, they were like, “This is perfect.” You know, if it comes out to be 1500 square feet or 1800 square feet, it’s still, it’s not a sprawling mansion, but they can get that style with their family, all because of your plans. I am so excited to see your plans.
Jay Osborne:
They’re coming probably faster than you expect.
Paige:
Really?
Jay Osborne:
Yes. I’ve decided to postpone one of my other projects and work on this, and I might, okay, this is a secret. Well, not anymore. Have the extended plans on Kickstarter if anybody wants a physical copy around Christmas time.
Paige:
Yes. Okay. Well, any kind of Kickstarter thing, any links that you have, if they’re still active, if they’re still good, they will be in the show notes of this podcast. And then as far as I know, you were going to put the book on Amazon. Is that correct?
Jay Osborne:
Yes. Sometime in the first half of 2022, I’m thinking February or March, I can have it on Amazon. I need to learn a lot about Amazon before I do that. And I’m actually not quite sure if the book is done, because I’m wondering about if it should be in color on the inside, because it’s all black and white on the inside, and I think color would make it perfect. So I’m also considering that, and that also might be in the next potential Kickstarter, a color version.
Paige:
So you’re going to have absolutely no complaints from me on making things more colorful, so let’s see. So you mentioned you postponed one of your other projects. What else do you have cooking?
Jay Osborne:
I’ve got a lot of things in my mind, but there are a couple of projects that I’m actually drawing and modeling. And one is so far down the line. It may be ready in the first half of 2022. And I don’t know how much I want to talk about it because I love surprises.
Paige:
That’s fine.
Jay Osborne:
I love making surprises.
Paige:
But it is another house, I assume.
Jay Osborne:
It is. And a lot of people, I sent out a questionnaire after my first Kickstarter, after this recent Kickstarter. Yes, I’m planning another. And I got a lot of feedback from people saying that they wanted a larger farmhouse. 75% of people who responded to that survey wanted the larger farmhouse. And the good news is that one is a larger farmhouse. And not only that, it’s actually only 2,500 square feet, or a little less actually. So it’s not huge. It’s not unattainable. It’s not a McMansion of any kind.
Paige:
But still a good size house.
Jay Osborne:
Right, right. And it will feel grand. It’ll feel like something much better than any McMansion.
Paige:
Okay. If that doesn’t get you excited, I don’t know what will. So I think we are almost done with this episode. So where can people find out more about you, learn about your next project, kind of keep tabs?
Jay Osborne:
My base of operations is at freefarmhouse.com. Anybody can download all of the files. They can even download the renderings. They can download the CAD files. They can download the SketchUp models. That’s all available on freefarmhouse.com. And you also find me on Instagram at @freefarmhouse. I decided to just stay on Instagram because social media is a vast world of things I don’t understand.
Paige:
Yes, it is.
Jay Osborne:
Instagram feels comfortable to me. So I’m just going to make that my place where I have more of a direct contact with people.
Paige:
I think that’s very important. There’s so many platforms. You can go so many different directions. You just have to pick the ones that resonate with you.
Well, this was absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. And make sure, everyone, that you come back next week because we are going to talk more. Maybe it’ll be a little bit of a fluffier conversation about what we can learn from historic architecture.
So all of the links to everything that I have, if any of the books are out, all of Jay’s information, it will all be linked in the show notes. Definitely make sure to check him out. And thank you so much for talking.
Jay Osborne:
All right. Thank you.
Paige:
All right. Thank you so much for being here. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Jay. His project is really fantastic. I hope you check it out. Just a really, really unique house project out there, and I’m obviously tremendously excited about it. So thank you so much for listening. I have loved having you here, and I’ll see you next time. Bye.