Both camps in this argument are defending something almost nobody builds. When the National Association of Home Builders asked buyers how they wanted the kitchen and family room arranged, 70 percent chose completely or partially open — but only 32 percent wanted them completely open. Builders delivered completely open in 54 percent of their typical … Read more
Cost per square foot is the number everyone shops with, and it is the number that hides the thing you are actually buying. Two plans can enclose the same 2,000 square feet and come back from the same builder with bids that are not close, because a drawing does not set square footage — it … Read more
There is no eave on this building. The roof plane runs from the ridge to the ground on both sides, and the only thing that overhangs anything is a second, smaller A-frame pushed out over the front door. Plan 270129AF is 1,482 heated square feet arranged under that one geometry: two bedrooms, two full baths, … Read more
Small plans usually get smaller-looking as the budget tightens: pitch comes down, the porch gets shallower, the ceilings go flat everywhere. Plan 52049HZ spends the other way. It holds the heated block to 1,253 square feet across two bedrooms and two full baths on a slab, then puts what it saved into a 10-in-12 gable, … Read more
Outdoor kitchens are usually sold as something you add later — a grill cart, a run of stone veneer, a weekend behind a house that was never drawn to receive one. The ones still being used in November are the ones that were on the drawings before the slab went down. Plan 56570SM puts the … Read more
The standard advice on RV storage is to keep it off the house: a pole barn at the back of the property, cheaper per square foot, no shared wall to detail and no compressor running two rooms from where you sleep. Plan 850022PKE does the opposite, and it does it at a scale that is … Read more
Circulation is the part of a house you buy without ever seeing it. Renderings show rooms, plan sheets show rooms, and nobody draws the line you will walk forty times a day between the garage door and the refrigerator. The nine failures below all sit on the plan sheet in plain view if you know … Read more
The standard advice on a covered porch is that you cannot really have too much of it. You can. Past about twelve feet, a porch starts taking daylight out of the rooms behind it, and most plans this size quietly accept the gloom as the price. Plan 51942HZ does not. It runs the porch twelve … Read more
The word barndominium is doing a lot of work it has not earned on most listings, and it does almost none of it here. No post-frame shell, no metal siding, no clear-span shop bay. Plan 135402GRA is a conventional stick-framed two-storey house of 1,895 square feet with a two-car garage attached, and the barn part … Read more
Wrap-around porches get sold as an upgrade: a thing added to a house that would have been fine without one. Plan 12977KN runs the other way round. The heated house is 2,054 square feet, and it sits inside a building that also carries 1,171 square feet of garage, a great room open to the second … Read more
