Designing a Home for Dummies

A Small house plan

At the Antisocial Network offices, we spend a portion of each day hoping to expose the sort of factual rubbish that arises when greed intersects stupidity in the form of internet freelancers. Although the model is dead as a doornail now, at one point just about anyone could pick up a few bucks pretending to be 1) a professional writer and 2) knowledgeable on some topic or other; and not necessarily number two. Once those criteria had been met, the mother lode of misinformation, eHow, would pay "contributors" flat fees to answer questions harvested from the internet. They didn't pay well, but the contributors generally didn't deserve what little they got. Take, for example, Kelly Sundstrom, seen here attempting to explain "How to Make a Floor Plan on the Computer" (moved to the niche site ItStillWorks.com, and then deleted¹).

Kelly's answer (which she repeated in at least four different eHow.com articles, thereby earning herself somewhere between sixty and 100 dollars) was deceptively simple: buy a specific home-design software. Seriously? She actually pretended that someone who wants to draw a floor plan on the computer wants to be told, "Shell out $50-100 for design software"? We call BS on that. We call BS on a lot Sundstrom said, throwaway comments like

"Fortunately, you can create professional-quality floor plans easily on your home computer... using the 3D Home Architect program."

We're not sure why Sundstrom chose that particular product out of the hundreds of home-design software programs (except that there's a free version -- but remember that you get what you pay for). We have no experience with the program, though one of our staff has used similar software; but we can be pretty certain that the word "easily" does not apply. There's a reason why the course of study for an architecture degree is four to five years, not half an hour! Not that Sundstom has an architecture degree; her educational path was music and art...

Be that as it may, a floor plan drawn using Sundstom's directions will look rather... sparse. See, As far as Kelly is concerned, all that's necessary to "make a floor plan" is to

Draw the walls Add windows and doors Add a roof Print your plans Yep, a total of six steps; of which two were to find and download the software!. Of course, once a Kelly-style floor plan is complete, you're left with a building that Has no foundation Has no plumbing or fixtures Has no electrical wiring, outlets, switches, lights... Has no HVAC system Has no stairs, ceilings, floors, basement, attic...

In other words, a "house" that no one could live in; even though Sundstrom calls it "professional-quality," thereby making a mockery of a profession for which she has zero training. This load of utter bull was published just because some "starving artist" wanted to make fifteen bucks. With greed-suckers like this, it's no wonder we can expose a new Dumbass of the Day every day...

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was    ehow.com/how_4962497_make-floor-plan-computer.html

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