Bottom floor plan possible?

9 years ago

last modified: 9 years ago

The custom home builder we're looking at offers 50 or so base plans for ideas and allows you to customize them or completely design your own. They have an in house architect that will go over the plans you submit and make suggestions / let you know if it won't work etc. We're still about a year out from starting the building process and just kind of trying to get an idea of what we want. We took one of their plans we kind of liked and knocked out a bunch of walls on the lower level. I'm curious if anyone around has any kind of builder/architecture knowledge to know if something like this is even possible structurally before we spend too much more time getting excited about a design that may be impossible.

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Virgil Carter Fine Art

9 years ago

Anything is possible if one designs a proper structure and has an adequate budget. From the stairs as shown, I assume there is a basement and a second floor. Roof loads will likely be carried by budget trusses, but without the second floor plan it's impossible to figure out the various loads and how to carry them successfully down through the basement and into the foundations.

It's a small and very simple house, so there's probably a way to do what you want to do.

Looking at your red "Xs", do I understand correctly that you propose to take out the partitions separating your lavatory and closet from the family room? And the closet from the shower, tub and water closet?

Should make for interesting conversation with friends and family.

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Comments (9)

cpartist
9 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Virgil, I'm guessing that they want to move the master upstairs and extend their family room.

Of course there's no bathroom on the main floor then, and even before were you expecting guests to use the master?
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chispa
9 years ago
I've found over the years that anything is possible in construction ... all it takes is time and money!
just_janni
9 years ago
2 thoughts:

1. Anything is possible if you throw enough money at it.

2. If you are making that significant a set of changes on a very simple floor plan, there's likely a much closer match out there to start with...
cpartist
9 years ago
If they have an actual architect and not a glorified draftsperson who calls themselves a designer, why not put together your wants and needs, and have the architect walk the property with you and design exactly what you want instead of picking from a plan that may or may not work?
Josh Blade
Original Author
9 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Responding to a few of these after a couple of days:

There is a bathroom on the bottom level. There are bathroom,laundry room, coat closet, and garage off the right side of the plan, but none of it supports the 2nd floor, so I didn't show it here.

The upstairs rooms roughly mirrored the original downstairs rooms, but we floored off the open foyer and made it an additional room.

We are about 600 miles away from where we plan on building, so we haven't had a chance to actually sit down with the builder yet (we're doing that in May). We're just in the dreaming / saving up money stage at the moment and I wasn't sure if knocking out those downstairs walls would be impossible or not (or if maybe we might have to account for support columns or something)
chispa
9 years ago
Not impossible, it will just add more cost to the project.
User
9 years ago
Do you have a large budget? If not.....
Josh Blade
Original Author
9 years ago
So it ended up not being an issue at all. There was a $2400 cost to floor and wall off the open great room (into an upstairs room), which was less than I was hoping for, and no additional costs for removing the walls downstairs. No need for support columns or anything either.