Two garage doors sit in the front of this house, one wide and one narrow, under a charcoal tile roof that never climbs past a single storey. From the street, plan 95189RW is a low Tuscan house: cream limestone veneer, smooth stucco, an arched portico with a black iron gate, and 2,380 heated square feet arranged on one floor. From the back garden it is two full storeys.
The lower one is the whole decision here. It is drawn with rooms already in it — a bar, a living room, two bedrooms, a wine cellar — but not one square foot of it is in the heated figure on the listing, and it will not be in your gross living area either.
Walkout foundation · 2×6 exterior walls · truss framing · 4:12 pitch · 10 ft ceilings on both levels
Main Level. The standard plan: all 2,380 heated square feet, on one floor, with the stair down drawn at the entry.
Optionally Finished Lower Level. The walkout floor underneath, drawn but not counted in the heated area. It adds a bar and a living room, two more bedrooms with their own baths, the wine cellar, and about 19 by 17 feet left as unfinished storage. The covered patio on this sheet sits directly beneath the main level’s covered deck.
How the Main Level Is Arranged
The drawing does not print an overall width and depth, so take the room dimensions as the reliable numbers and have your builder scale the envelope off the construction set. What the sheet does show clearly is a wide, shallow plan with the garage pushed forward on the left and the living spaces strung along the back wall, where the ground drops away.
You come in through a covered front entry of about 8 by 6 feet, and the stair down is immediately on your left, before you have properly entered the house. Straight ahead is the great room, roughly 24 by 17 feet with a corner fireplace on the master-suite side. The kitchen is open to both the great room and the dining room; the dining room is rotated off the grid at the far corner; the garage arrives through a mud room of close to 9 by 8 feet, which also takes the laundry, with a pantry a little over 10 by 5 feet on the same run. Groceries land on a counter without crossing a living space, which is more than most plans this size manage.
The bedrooms are split hard. Master suite on the right — close to 16 by 15 feet, with a bath of nearly 15 by 14 and a walk-in closet about 8 by 12 — and bedroom two at the opposite end, close to 13 by 12 feet, tucked behind the kitchen with its own bath and a hallway between it and the mud room. The den takes the front right corner at 12 by about 11 feet. Nothing here is a second-storey compromise, because there is no second storey above.
What the Lower Level Sheet Actually Draws
The lower living room is about 31 by 20 feet, opening straight onto the covered patio, with the bar tucked into the angled bump at its top left corner. Bedroom three, about 15 by 12 feet, and bedroom four, about 14 feet square, sit at opposite ends of that room, each with a bath — so the two extra bedrooms are below-grade rooms and want to be treated as such from the start, with egress glazing and daylight planned rather than added. The wine cellar, close to 12 by 10 feet, is interior and windowless. About 19 by 17 feet at the right of the sheet stays unfinished storage, which is where the mechanical will want to live.
The personality fact of this plan is that ratio: 2,380 square feet you build and 1,877 more already drawn inside the same foundation walls, reachable by one flight of stairs.
The Street Elevation Never Admits the Second Floor Exists
The front is a single-storey Tuscan composition and it commits to it completely: hip and gable roofs at a shallow 4:12 in dark clay tile, an arched entry with a stepped-up roof mass over it, three arched windows to the right, and the garage running off to the left under its own low hip. The elevation drawing shows what the render confirms — two overhead doors, one 16 feet wide and one 8 feet, both 8 feet high.
That garage bay measures about 31 by 24 feet and the listing rates it for three cars, which is the right way to read it: a wide bay behind two doors, not a three-door garage. The 16-foot opening takes two vehicles, the 8-foot one takes the third, and the door count is what your builder orders — not the car count. It enters the house through the mud room, so the garage never opens into a living space. On the elevation it is also the largest single mass on the street face, which is exactly why the designer dropped its roof and let the entry tower carry the height.
One specification here deserves attention before you order framing. Clay and concrete tile is heavy, in the region of three to four times what an asphalt shingle roof puts on the same square foot, and this plan is framed with trusses — which means the dead load has to be engineered into the truss package at the point you buy it, not discovered afterwards. The pitch matters for the same reason: 4:12 is the lowest slope that takes tile on a conventional single underlayment. Below that, code requires a doubled layer, and most tile manufacturers require more than code. If you value-engineer the roof down to a shallower pitch, you have changed the roofing spec, not just the profile. Plans that put all their living space on one floor behind a three-car garage tend to carry a lot of roof for their heated area, and this one is no exception.
The Back Is Two Storeys of Stucco, Stone Piers and Deck
Walk around the house and the whole argument reverses. The rear elevation is a full two storeys: an upper covered deck carried on heavy timber posts landing on stone piers, and beneath it a covered patio at grade opening out of the lower living room. Stucco above, stone at the base, dark metal railing between the two, and a gable over the center with exposed timber under it.
The render is honest about the setting in a way vendor images usually are not — neighbouring houses on both sides, a graded lot, retaining walls doing real work to hold the terraces. That is the site this plan needs. A flat lot gives you a walkout floor with no walkout, and a house that has spent its foundation budget on a basement it cannot use. Plans that keep one elevation closed and glaze the opposite one live or die on which way they face, and this is a stronger version of that bet: the closed side is the whole street, and the open side is an entire additional floor.
22 Mexican Hacienda-Style Patios That Look Stunning Shade, tile and planting ideas for a sheltered outdoor room in this style.The Great Room Glazes Its Rear Wall and Opens Above the Ten-Foot Plate
A chimney of pale cream limestone runs the full height of the room in the corner, coursed rough, with the firebox low and a heavy stone shelf across it. Black-painted box beams cross a ceiling that has climbed well past the 10-foot plate the listing specifies for this floor, and there is a band of clerestory glass above the sliders — which is the raised roof mass you saw from the street, seen from inside.
The whole rear wall is glass to the covered deck. That is generous, and it costs you: between the corner fireplace on one wall, the deck doors on another and the openings to kitchen and entry, the uninterrupted furniture run in a room of about 24 by 17 feet is short. Seating pulls onto a diagonal facing the corner hearth whether you plan it that way or not. A stone chimney climbing through a two-storey volume is doing the same job here that it does on plans twice this size, and it is the reason the room reads bigger than its dimensions.
Walnut-Stained Cabinetry, a Full-Height Marble-Look Slab, and a Prep Run Behind It
The range wall is stained wood in a mid-walnut tone — flat-panel doors, deep drawers, black bar pulls — set into a recessed surround with a floating shelf across it. Behind the range, the counter material runs straight up the wall as a full-height slab with soft grey veining, and it turns the corner onto the island. A black and brass drum pendant hangs over the island, brass gooseneck taps at both sinks, and the floor is wide-plank oak.
The kitchen runs roughly 15 by 13 feet with a 5 by 9 foot island, and the useful move is what sits behind it: a secondary white-cabinet prep run with its own sink, square tile to the underside of the shelves, and a sliding barn door on a black flat track through to the service side. The walk-in pantry, a little over 10 by 5 feet, is on that same corridor between the kitchen and the mud room. Two sinks, a prep counter out of sightlines, and the pantry a few steps away — the working half of this kitchen has been given real square footage rather than a cupboard.
The Dining Room Is Turned Off the Grid With a Deck on Each Side
The dining room is about 16 by 14 feet and rotated roughly forty-five degrees off the main block, which is why it gets glass on two elevations and its own black beam crossing the ceiling where the angled roof meets the straight one. A linear brass and glass chandelier hangs over the table; the floor is the same oak as the kitchen.
Both of the flanking decks open off this room. The larger, about 17 by 19 feet, is the covered deck shared with the great room; the smaller, 13 feet by nearly 12, sits on the far side. The designer’s logic is that the grill lives on one and the table on the other, so smoke and dinner are not in the same outdoor room — a small thing that plans with one long undifferentiated covered patio never solve.
The Master Bedroom Takes the Corner and Its Own 16-Foot Deck
Black box beams cross a flat ceiling at the specified 10 feet, windows wrap two walls, and a door leads out to a private deck of 16 feet by 8 with the same dark metal railing and stone pier you see on the rear elevation. Walls are pale grey, floor is carpet.
With glazing on two walls and the bath door on a third, the bed is committed to the interior wall — no real alternative arrangement exists. That is the trade for a corner room with two exposures. Buyers looking specifically at plans that keep the primary suite on the ground floor will find this one unusually private for a main-level suite, since the only other main-floor bedroom is at the far end of the house.
The Master Bath Runs Nearly 15 Feet Square With the Closet Behind It
Stained walnut vanity cabinetry with brass bar pulls, a seated makeup station between two runs of counter, and marble-look porcelain underfoot and up the shower walls in a large format with grey veining. The corner shower is frameless glass on a low knee wall with brass fittings; a freestanding tub sits at the far end; a small high window carries daylight.
At close to 15 by 14 feet this is a large bath for a 2,380 square foot house, and the walk-in closet of about 8 by 12 feet is entered through it rather than off the bedroom. That sequencing suits couples who keep different hours badly and everyone else fine.
The Den Sits at the Front Behind the Two Arched Windows
Those arched windows on the elevation are this room. Black grid muntins, dark-stained built-in cabinetry with an upper bookcase and brass pulls along the inside wall, oak floor, and an orbital iron chandelier overhead.
It is 12 by about 11 feet and it faces the street, which is the compromise: good light, no privacy from the driveway, and the front door a few steps away. As a home office it works; as the flex bedroom the listing's bed count implies, it is a room with a window onto the neighbours.
The Lower Level Bar Gets the Window Band and the Walkout Door
Black shaker cabinetry with brass bar pulls, a dark honed counter, and a black and white geometric tile backsplash between floating shelves. Undercounter glass-front wine refrigeration, a stained horizontal plank wall, and a wagon-wheel chandelier of exposed bulbs over a live-edge high-top with brown leather nailhead stools.
The bar occupies the angled bump at close to 16 by 14 feet, open to the living room, and it takes the run of windows on that wall. This is the single strongest argument for finishing the lower level at all: it is the one part of the floor that does not read as a basement, because the angled wall pushes out from under the deck above and catches light the rest of the level does not get.
15 Modern Basement Bar Design Ideas for Comfy Entertaining Layouts and finishes for a below-grade bar, including the small ones.The Wine Cellar Is Interior, Windowless, and Backed Onto Stone
Dark-stained racking runs floor to ceiling on the long wall, individual bottle slots above, diamond bins and case shelving below. One wall is faced in cream limestone — the same stone as the front of the house and the great room chimney, which is the clearest thread the designer runs between the two floors. Oak plank floor, a wood-banded drum fixture, recessed cans.
Close to 12 by 10 feet, no exterior wall, in the middle of the plan. For wine that is the correct location and the cheapest one to condition properly.
What Finishing the Lower Level Actually Commits You To
Start with how it will be counted. Under the measuring standard appraisers have been required to use since 2022, a level with any part of its perimeter below grade is below-grade area regardless of how it is finished — a walkout with full-height glass and a wet bar included. It gets its own line on the appraisal, separate from gross living area, and it is adjusted at a different rate. Finish all 1,877 square feet to the standard of the floor above and you own a house that lives like 4,257 square feet and appraises like a 2,380 square foot house with a very good basement.
Then the foundation itself. A walkout is not a slab with a stair: it is excavation, retaining, drainage and a taller wall on the downhill side, and on a lot flat enough to need engineered fill it becomes a significant line item before a single stud goes up. Add the 826 square feet of porch and deck and the 862 square foot garage, both roofed, neither heated, neither counted. This plan asks you to build and cover a great deal of floor that will never appear in the heated number.
None of that is an argument against it. It is an argument for pricing the foundation and the site work as their own scope, early, with the actual topographic survey in hand — before the elevation seduces you.
One stair, at the front door, connects the two halves of this house. Everything bound for the lower living room passes the entry: furniture, guests, and every tray carried down from the kitchen during a party. If the lower level is going to be the entertaining floor, the walkout door at the patio is your real service entrance, and the grade path to it should be drawn and surfaced at the same time as the driveway rather than left to landscaping later.
The main level’s covered deck is the lower patio’s roof. Stack the two sheets and the deck of about 17 by 19 feet sits directly over the covered patio, so that patio and the living room glass behind it sit in permanent shade. The bar’s angled wall is the one part of the lower floor that pushes clear of it. Decide which compass direction that angled wall faces before you site the house, because it is the only unshaded exposure the lower level has.
The master’s private deck shares a corner with the deck off the great room. Two outdoor rooms, side by side, divided only by the building’s turn. A party on the larger one is happening a few feet from the master bedroom door. A screen wall or a planted divider at that junction costs almost nothing when it is framed in and is awkward to add afterwards.
Ten-foot ceilings on both floors, an open stair at the entry, and a great room that opens above its plate add up to one continuous stack of air. Warm air will collect at the highest point in the great room while the lower level, against earth on three sides, runs cool year-round. Zone the two floors separately and put a return high in the great room volume; retrofitting either is disruptive once the ceiling is closed.
Assessed by our team from the designer’s floor plans and elevations. We have not walked this house. How we assess plans
Buy this plan for a lot that falls away at the back. On that site it is close to unbeatable value: a single-level Tuscan house with a real master suite, a den, a proper working kitchen and a three-car bay, plus a second floor already drawn, framed and roofed that you can finish in five years when the money exists. The style holds together too, front to back and top to bottom, which plans that mix Mediterranean street presence with mountain-house rear elevations frequently do not.
Skip it on a flat lot. You would be paying for a walkout that cannot walk out, and the whole point of the design is that the ground does half the work. Skip it too if you want the four bedrooms now rather than eventually, because two of them are below grade and the standard build gives you two. Check the listing for what the plan set includes and for the foundation as drawn before you order.
Buy This PlanRelated Posts
- 4-Bedroom Transitional Farmhouse House Plan with a Covered Rear Porch (3,611 Sq. Ft. Floor Plan)
- 4-Bedroom Transitional House Plan with Main-Floor Living and a 3-Car Garage (3,382 Sq. Ft. Floor Plan)
- 4-Bedroom Modern Farmhouse House Plan with a 52-Foot Covered Patio (3,544 Sq. Ft. Floor Plan)
- 3-Bedroom Modern Farmhouse House Plan with Expansive Porches (2,616 Sq. Ft. Floor Plan)
- 4-Bedroom Modern Farmhouse House Plan with an Outdoor Kitchen and Fireplace (3,594 Sq. Ft. Floor Plan)
- 4-Bedroom New American House Plan with a Two-Story Great Room (4,350 Sq. Ft. Floor Plan)