By Design: Better Shed Dormers

FEBRUARY JLC 2000 Hand someone a pencil and a piece of paper, ask them for a quick sketch of a house, they'll almost always come up with a gable-end view of a structure with a symmetrically pitched roof and punched windows. This mental image of the word "house" is one that most of us form as children, and carry with us into adulthood. That mental image doesn't come out of thin air. There are a lot of simple gable-roofed houses out in the real world, and it's a form that has some obvious practical benefits. In a storyand- a-half structure, this approach limits the amount of headroom and natural light available upstairs. So shed dormers are often added