House Plan

We had several criteria for a house plan.

1. Minimize the number of corners. Corners increase the complexity of most every structural aspect of construction. From your footers to your framing to your roofing...every corner adds cost. If you look at a lot of house plans and count both interior and exterior corners you will find yourself counting over 20 and 30 corners quite regularly. Our final plan has 12 corners.
2. Scale: We are building right next to our current home which isn't large (1300 +/- sf). Plus our current home is a single level with only a one car garage. We settled on a narrow lot house plan with a two car garage. We are digging down to set the house as low as possible to keep it from towering over the current house (our crawl space will be recessed...not at ground level). So we got narrow and low as possible.
3. Floor Plan: We wanted a master suite on the main floor with a walk in closet and a nursery/study attached. We really wanted a walk in shower and a tub in the Master bath, but had to compromise and we will go with a cast iron tub with a curved shower rod to maximize shower space. Two bedrooms, a bath, and a playroom over the garage are on the second floor.
4. Shape: Our lot is a backfilled lot and there is a culvert running under it. We needed a house that would not be situated over the culvert. The house plan we chose could be visualized as three connected rectangles oriented North to South. We moved the rectangles on the left side (the garage and kitchen/dining area respectively) as far forward as possible so as not to be over the culvert. We set the house on the lot as far to the right (when you are facing the front of the house) as possible. We then moved it forward to be just even with the current house. Unfortunately, part of the garage was still over the culvert and we had to dig the old culvert out, reroute it, and backfill.
5. Access: With an aging population access to certain parts of a home can be an issue for some people. With an eye on that we are designing the garage to have a zero degree entry into the house (i.e. there are no steps). We will also have a half bath that is wheelchair accessible.

Drawing below is not to scale...we will work on getting a better depiction of the floorplan.