Cabin design rec's for family of 7?

[rinadav7]

After spending endless hours reading on this forum, and gleaning information from all of your wonderful responses to my other posts, hubby and I have decided to buy a lot of land and build as budget permits. We will first build a small cabin, and then either add on, or build a larger home to carry us through retirement later on. Where can we look for plans and suggestions for designs? We have five young kids, who will all love to sleep in a communal loft area, but I don't think a tiny home is for us. I am interested in using passive solar/other Eco design ideas. TIA

Rina

[7thswan]

Look at Log Cabin sites. They usally show basic floor plans.

[BigHenTinyBrain]

Just my two cents (and this applies to ANYONE building a home in a colder climate)- put in plenty of windows, get lots of sun! It will really help with cabin fever.

[Gray Wolf]

Starting small makes sense as long as you start smart.

Have selected windows framed now to be 3' wide doors in the future, and see that there are no wiring runs under the window. Then when you add on you can just remove the 'temporary' wallboard and framing and hang the door of your choice.

Set up circuts in your breaker box and run wires now to a point where you can easily extend the system when you remodel/expand.

Stub hot and cold water lines to the point where you will expand.

Make all doors 3' wide.

Give some thought to the eve width. In our case, I figured the sun angles at different times of year and we have 3' eves that block the summer sun but are high enough to let the lower winter sun shine in. Bigger eves don't initially cost much more and free heating and cooling and your exterior paint will last a bit longer.

Consider laying floor tiles yourself. Cheaper and better for mud/dirt that your family and dogs will track in. Spill-proof too. (I've put down well over 2,000 sf in this house and we love it. Check out our house sale web site if you like. Web site: offgrid150.simpl.com

Solar electricity?

Enjoy the adventure!

[Maura]

Agree with above. Build for a lifetime by making it handicap accessible. Wide doorways, stairways wide enough for a lift (minimum 4 ft). If you have stairs up to the doors, make sure there is enough room to later put in a ramp.

Around here, people will build a typical house with a front door, then everyone comes in through the garage. Where the garage (if you have one) comes into the house, don't have it come through the laundry room or directly into the kitchen. Have the entrance come into a hall or mud room. Best, have the front door and garage door come into the same foyer/vestibule/front hall. Have enough closet space and hooks for everyone.

Design the big house you intend to have, then figure out how to build just part of it. The kid's loft can later become your studio or office. Any room has more room the fewer doors that it has. If your kitchen has a back door, a door to the dining room, a door to the basement, a door to the living room, that's 4 doors. Less cabinets, more interruptions.

[haypoint]

Just my two cents (and this applies to ANYONE building a home in a colder climate)-
Keep the windows small, especially on the north and west sides. The rising cost of heat will ruin your future if you have too many windows. The R factor of a window is near zero. Fight Cabin Fever by enjoying yourself out side or in a south facing moderate sized window. IMHO

[haypoint]

You need a place that contains all the essentials, but can grow with you, then shrink down when the kids are not there every day.
The essentials are the most costly and will make it seem like you aren't making much progress. Build with an eye towards future expansion, limit temporary setups that get torn out as you grow.
Imagine a small kitchen, small dining room that can eventually become the big kitchen. Plan the livingroom to become the next step dining room.
I have no idea how much you can spend at the first shot. Perhaps a structure that has all your future square footage, just unfinished.
Check out :
http://www.familyhomeplans.com/plan_...anNumber=49824

Build it with Attic trusses that provide a 12 by 27 foot upstairs and put some bigger windows in the basement, for egress. Then enjoy the shell. Eventually finish the second floor into two bedrooms. Next finish the basement into either a family room and bedroom or two bedrooms, maybe, if planed in advance another bathroom.. Now you have lots of sleeping area as the children mature. Then, when they are gone, shut off the second floor and stop heating the basement. You'll have an economical home that expands for the Holidays, family reunion, etc.

I wouldn't do the fireplace. Too costly and pulls heat from the house more than it produces.IMHO

[SteveD(TX)]

one word ....... BIG

[rinadav7]

what do you all think of shipping container homes?

[Marthas_minis]

Barndominium. When we were looking for our homestead; buying land and building was an option we considered.

We were going to build a metal barn & finish it out on the inside. We were going to divide it into 3rds: common living area & kitchen w/ open floor plan in the middle and bedrooms/ bathrooms along each side and a loft area above the bedrooms for storage & play space.
Concrete stained flooring, the new high efficiency HVAC units, etc. I forget the cost we estimated but it was less expensive than a builder & we were saving even more by doing a lot of the finish work after dry-in ourselves.

[Jerngen]

Check out this site.
Most of the plans are designed to start out small and then be added on to later.
These are designed to be friendly to the owner/builder and the forums contains tons of excellent first hand advice.

http://www.countryplans.com/

[simi-steading]

Just a thought about your plans... Check the local laws first..

Once you build one home, you may not be able to build a second.. or if you can, you may not be able to do it without separate utilities such as a well and or septic..

The best thing you can do is find a place to build that doesn't require permits and such.. they tend to be more lenient about more than one home on a property..

[painterswife]

Design the whole house now, then break it into sections that can be built over time. If you build with no finished design in mind you will spend more on alterations to roof lines, doorways and hallways.

For example instead of windows use doors on the initial structure that will be the door way to the addition. Then you just remove the door when you add on and you don't have to cut into walls. Don't put windows in walls that will be future interior walls. When you take the siding off of those walls windows now make for chopped siding that you could of used later.

[painterswife]

Consider stacking wall bunks for the kids. You can design them into a place that can be turned into a pantry or storage room. It could be down the side of a hallway like in those travel buses. That could give them their own space for sleeping, reading etc.