Hi,
I've been lurking here for quite a while. Husband and I just put our house on the market. We realized after living in it for a few years that it's too big for the two of us. We want to have a smaller home, 1800-2000 sqft, 2-3 bedrooms, 1.5-2.5 baths, with a finished basement for "noisy" entertainment.
We found a great green builder, who specializes in building prefab, net-zero houses. We actually went to see several houses they've built. The quality is excellent. We are pretty sure if we ever build, we will use this builder.
Among the stock floor plans this builder has, we think three of them might work for us...
Classic Tall Cape (2 Bedrooms, 2.5 Baths)
- Two story, 2056 sqft, livable area: 1592 sqft
- Timber frame exposed
- Separate study on 1st floor
- Laundry nook on 2nd level
- The mechanic stuff will be in the basement
Classic Tall Cape (3 Bedrooms, 2.5 Baths)
- Two story, 2056 sqft, livable area: 1792 sqft
- Two full dormers
- Timber frame exposed
- Laundry nook on 1st floor
- The mechanic stuff will be in the basement
Swedish Farmhouse (3 Bedrooms, 2.5 baths)
- Two story, 1783 sqft, livable area: 1536 sqft
- Kitchen with pantry
- Laundry nook on 1st floor
- The mechanic stuff will be in the basement
These plans are customizable to certain degree, for example, basement could be added, garage could be detached with a connecting way to the main house, the floor plan can be flipped or mirrored, rooms can be added or removed, etc, but the foundation cannot be enlarged by a foot or two without incurring extra architect/engineering cost.
We are thinking of creating a large living space in the basement, so the entertainment stuff (TV, Wii, Rock Band, other games) and husband's hobbies can be contained in the basement. Then the 1st floor will be mainly for cooking, eating, doing work/homework, reading, relaxing. The 2nd floor will be mainly for sleeping.
Here is what we think of the pros and cons of each plan.
Dormers
We have no particular feelings for dormers..they seem to disrupt the clean roof line, but they also seem to bring in more daylight, and provide more livable space. If there's no dormer, we don't know if the bedrooms will feel too crowded, kind of like living in an attic.
Separate Study
Husband and I sometimes need to get work done from home. So while we want to use the official family room for reading and relaxing, we think it may not be quiet enough for us to focus on work, due to the open living design.
MIL suggests that we could use the 3rd bedroom as a study. I don't particularly like doing that, because I want to have built-ins for the study (i.e. built in desk tops with storage cabinets above and/or underneath). Once the built-ins are in place, I think the room cannot be easily converted back to a bedroom... even if it can be easily done, where will we move the study?
Two vs. Three bedrooms -- We've decided to have 3 bedrooms. :)
Currently we have a king-size bed and a queen-size bed to fill up 2 bedrooms. We don't plan to have a dedicated guest bedroom, and we may have 0-2 kids in the future (2 is more likely than 0).
If we turn out to have one girl and one boy, 2 bedrooms may not suffice.. My instinct tells me it may not be a problem, because in the old days, people had so many kids with so little space.. But I don't know exactly how they managed it. What do you think?
We think 2 bedrooms might be OK, but 3 bedrooms might help the resale value...Not that we want to sell it, but life has uncertainties, so we need to plan for it somewhat.
Square Footage
Somehow we feel that if we do need to sell the house, a 2056 sqft house is more likely to attract buyers than a 1783 sqft house. 1783 sqft just sounds much smaller, even if the livable space is about the same as the 2056 sqft one.
Timber Frame
Husband doesn't care whether or not there are any exposed timbers, but I really like timber frame houses. The Classic Tall Cape plans have just enough exposed posts and beams for me to enjoy them, while the Swedish Farmhouse doesn't have any.
By looking at the listed starting prices, the Classic Tall Capes ones are $41K~$66K more expensive. It's quite a bit of money.. but I really want to have some timbers in the structure. Do you think it's worth it? Should I re-evaluate the priorities?
Thanks a lot for reading!
This post was edited by ILoveCookie on Sat, Jul 13, 13 at 16:33
TxMarti
ILoveCookieOriginal Author
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