Help with Floor Plan for 1st time build

14 years ago

Please help us find a floor plan to meet our needs. We were originally looking at the Architectural Design Farmhouse Plan W60586ND but recognize we will have to modify it... a lot.

We will be living out in the country so we want the farmhouse look with an 8ft wide wrap around porch that stops at the garage. In addition, we are going to build a brick house instead of siding and a metal roof instead of shingles. This is due to the high winds in the area and snow in the area.

We want an open floor plan with the main floor around 1800- 2000 sq ft. We will also have a full basement and a loft as well.

Here is our wish list for the main floor:

Master

Second bedroom for elderly parents

Office

Large Kitchen

Dining room large enough for a table to seat 8.

Living Room with fireplace.

Extra Large pantry with room for sink, ice machine, prep area, and appliance storage

Large Mud room with wet bar

Laundry room

Wrap around porch

Upstairs

Half loft overlooking living room, kitchen, dining area.

We would like the mudroom to connect the house to a four-car drive through garage.

The house will sit on 40 acres with the kitchen, dining, living, and office facing the front of the house (West). We will enter the house from the rear, using the garage and/or mudroom. We would like the garage offset from the house so we can use it as a wind/snow block in the winter.

We also want lots of windows so there is plenty of light in the house.

Please help us if you can. We are looking to build within a year so we are running out of time.

Thanks for all your help.

Architectural Designs link

http://www.architecturaldesigns.com/house-plan-60586ND.asp

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Comments (4)

MichelleDT
14 years ago
This may seem like a silly question but have you contacted an architect to help you design your dream home?
mypaperscraps
Original Author
14 years ago
I thought it would easier to find a plan similar to what we wanted and then have it altered a little. Guess I am in over my head. We currently live in a tract home so it was easy when we bought this house. This seems to be a little harder than I thought it was going to be.

We currently live in Southern California near Palm Springs. Our new home will be built in Wyoming. We haven't talked to an architect yet, but I can't imagine there would be too many near us who have experience with farmhouses.

Any suggestions are appreciated. We are looking for all the help we can get.
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MichelleDT
14 years ago
I can't speak for others but when we started this process, we had very clear ideas of what we wanted (like you do from your above list) and searched every online plan site we could find. We just could not find the "one".

We did find close to what we wanted on a contemporary blog and found a house/plan we loved (with mods of course) from an architect in South Africa.

We took all of the inspiration plans, our list of must haves and worked with an architect locally. It was important they understood the site, view lines (we have great views and vistas from lot and wanted to max them out), grading, ARC restrictions (if that applies to you) and local building codes.

Took us about four months to design our forever home. We felt the cost of having an architect design the home to our specs (and having our builder as part of the design process to guide us on design vs. budget) was well worth the cost. At the end of the day, the cost was only $5 per finished square foot (we interviewed architects ranging from $3-9 per sq. foot). But...what we got for that was EXACTLY what we wanted, custom designed for our lot/lifestyle.

They also ensured that all of the community design guidelines were met and attended the meetings to explain/review/negotiate design elements where we pushed the envelope from the ARC preferred traditional to our contemporary must have home.

I think it is worth it to at least have a preliminary conversation with a local (Wyoming) architect or two. Others may disagree.
mypaperscraps
Original Author
14 years ago
Thanks for the advice. I think we will make a few phone calls and see if we can find an architect in Wyoming. It looks like this would be well worth the expense in the long run.

Thank you so much for all your help. I appreciate it.