Re: Can\'t find a house plan
We have a meeting set up next week with a draftsman/designer husband/wife team here in the area. They have done 1400 custom designs in 30 years, and the cost will only be about $1000 for the drawings.
Lack of doors and windows on the sketch makes some of it confusing. The master bedroom opens into the living room, but the master bath on the back only opens to the bedroom.
We didn't want a true 2-story looking house, but rather a loft area withing the normal roof area. The reason the upstairs area is smaller is that on a 12/12 roof the ceiling won't be 6 feet tall until you come in 6 feet from the outside wall. Thus you lose 6 feet on the front of the house and the back of the house.
The bottom of the picture is the front, thats northwest. To the right is southwest, which is where most of the sun comes from in the summer.
Since I drew the plan we decided the kitchen would be better on the front and the dining room on the back. It will be U-shaped with the opening toward the back (dining area). We have tried to draw the kitchen cabinets in the area provide and its a tight squeeze. Instead of an Island we might use a short diagonally set 4th side to the cabinets, and it will contain a second sink. The kitchen might be too small so could require some work. As for light in the kitchen, above the sink will be a 4 foot wide Anderson casement window, the rest of the walls would be taken up by cabinets.
The mud room is skinny. The walls will have to come out of the other rooms to net the full 8 feet. This gives us useful space on both sides. The front few feet of the "mud room" is actually a bathroom with shower & toilet. So you can take a shower if you come in too dirty to walk through the house. Be we want washer, dryer, freezer, fridge, counter top with sink, ironing board, and lots of shelving. Probably even the hot water heater will go in there. The doors would be lined up from the garage near the front straight through into the kitchen or dining room. Pocket doors sound like a good idea, but I'm not sure about permanently sealing the hardware inside the wall.
We have an absolute budget and we can't go over that. This means when you add something you have to take something away. The garage will have the same 12/12 roof for a short distance, so will give the roofline a little break. There will be some room in its attic, but we might have to put 2 HVAC units up there, as there is hardly any attic anywhere else.
I think the stairs will have to have a landing, in order to have them arrive at the proper place upstairs. We plan to put the upstairs bath on top of some plumbing downstairs if it can come out that way.
Its just my wife and I, but the biggest reason for building a house is that when my daughter, son-in-law and 3 grandchildren show up, and my son and his wife (and soon to be 4th grandchild) show up, we don't have any room in our current 879 feet in the metal building.
The reason it is design with 2 bedrooms PLUS a loft (which can be consider the 3rd bedroom if it has a closet), is that we want BIG rooms, not MANY rooms. Our current living quarters will be 50 feet from the house, as guest house it will be, and it has 2 bedrooms. So when we have company we will have 4 to 5 bedrooms plus hide-a-beds in both houses.
I like OSB on the garage walls, so that I can hang stuff on the walls without worrying about studs. The garage will be fully insulated but I doubt we will be throwing any parties there. We have thrown parties in our shop building which is considerably bigger.
Rox, I have drawn this in Punch! software but it is such sorry software you can't do the roof correctly. Dormers are very difficult and the shed pitches for the porches are impossible.
I think my wife would like the idea of the sink on the back porch. She is the one that loves flowers and such.
Thanks for all the input, thats why I posted. I realize this drawing is (I hope) not where we will end up. There shold be much more efficient/attractive ways to get it done. I hope the guys that have designed 1400 homes can help.
