Virtual Home Exteriors

Introducing - Virtual Home Exteriors.

In an effort to make life easier for contractors and homeowners, we purchased virtual design software that allows us to generate color pictures of completed projects before they are started. WOW! This stuff is really "awesome".

Hard to believe these are the same two houses isn't it?

We will be offering this service under the name "Virtual Home Exteriors". All we need to make color dreams come true is a digital photo of an existing home or an elevation drawing from a blueprint. Then with you or the homeowners color and material selection, we will take the actual picture you submitted and send you back a picture of the same house as it will look after you do the work.

I love Virtual Home Exteriors because it uses the real house the work will be done on. So many "design your exterior" services make you pick from a selection of home styles. How often does any house really look like the "pre-canned" pictures you are provided with?

Another great feature is that we can use the actual colors and products from many of the manufacturers we distribute product for. So, if you want Crane Lighthouse Red, you can see it in all the profiles from double 4 to double 7, plus dutchlap. It is amazing to see how the wider or narrower siding affects the look of the home.

Archer Lion is happy to be bringing this service to it's customers and to homeowners (and business owners). What a great way to help in the decision making process that goes into deciding how a house will look before a project starts. Which color, what size, contrast or monotone, and all those things that can lead to family "disagreements" can be easily solved by looking at a house done multiple different ways. Informed decisions are always the best!!!

So after a certain amount of technology frustration, I am glad that this service is off the ground and ready to be used. As with all new computer stuff, the first reaction was, "what did I just spend this money on?". I had not realized the instruction guide could be downloaded until a few weeks later. But as I was impressing myself with everything I learned by myself, not only did I find a user manual, but they upgraded the software to a new version. Re-learn what I had just learned. Then I had to install a color printer (won't even go down that learning curve story). And "oh, by the way", a good photo editing software is needed to really achieve great results. Thanks to my daughter's patience (or lack thereof - she believes in the "learn it yourself like I had to" method of training), I spent considerable time mastering yet another software program.

Note: For anyone who has not ever edited photos, you can really make some fun things happen. It is quite interesting how much weight you can make a person lose or gain with a few simple cursor strokes.

But, after many late suppers and missing of the early evening reality TV shows, I am proud to announce we have this service up and running. Start e-mailing your pictures and blueprints today to design@archerlion.com. Put virtual reality to work for you.