The First Order of Business

The first order of business is to decide what to build.  Square footage will dictate how much of an area to clear for building, but the style and shape will dictate the intended approach to the house,, where windows and doors will be best and a host of other issues relating to the style of house.
Most of my friends and I love Cape Cod houses.

The beauty of the Cape Cod is unparalleled in a country sort of way.   They are also very energy efficient.  The closer to square and low a building, the less surface area there is in the building and therefore there is less heat loss.  But in my case there is a basic drawback.  In order to build one accurately, there is a lot of wasted space in the middle with a central chimney, and there is a central front entry hall with rooms leading to each side to eat up space.

I feel that I can compromise without that loss of space and still keep the surface area pretty small. 
I have always loved Greek Revival houses as they appear in rural areas.  High style is not practical for a country house.  The same floor plans appear in Gothic Revival houses as they are roughly contemporary styles to each other.

The floor plan and general arrangement of the exterior facades recurs too, all the way up into the first decades of the 20th century. Scale and decoration changes dramatically, but the same general plan.

This is a larger version of my Greek plan

 

 

This similarity gives you a larger search to find the floor plan on the Internet.

Basically the house is rectangular.  On the narrow side of the rectangle, there is a gable roofline.  In classic Greek houses the pitch will be rather low, and in Gothic rather high.  In country styles, it will be roughly 12:12 on top of a stub wall to raise the upstairs ceilings a couple of feet.
Across this end façade(generally used as the front) there will be a door and two windows evenly spaced and the door to one side.   This sort of breaks up the symmetry that I like, but as you see in the house above, they helped that by making very tall windows.
Inside you generally enter the house facing the foot of the stairs.  The main living space is two rooms, one behind the other to the side of the stair-hall.  Behind the staircase and adjoining hall, there is a narrow room that  fills the space to the back of the house(often later added on to through this small room by means of an ell of some kind).
In my case, I plan to eliminate the hall beside the stairs, and make the narrow back room even smaller(narrower) to install an outer wall kitchen between the back of the stairs and the back wall.  This will be open to the back main room  with perhaps a decorative arch, and perhaps a wall of screens, or drapes to hide the kitchen if desired.

And another large version in New England

 

 

The first (front) main room will be living room.  The back space will be the dining room with the kitchen open to it.(this is because the kitchen will be basically only as deep as the width of the stairs enough room for the kitchen counter and basically you will be standing in the dining room to prepare meals in the kitchen).
Upstairs, the stairs will rise to a landing and turn to face the middle of the house.  Either the entire upstairs can be one room, or there can be a tiny room(Bath?) just in front of you as you stand on the stairs, and a room to the right and one to the left.  These two rooms will have one or two windows in the gable ends of the house.
The downstairs living spaces generally have windows all along the three sides of the house.  In my case, I plan to save energy by eliminating the two windows in the front gable beside the door, and the three windows generally at the opposite gable end.  I plan to put a large window or bank of windows on the long wall in each room. This plan will save energy and provide solar gain, being on the south side in my case.
I have always loved a watercolor painting by Swedish artist Carl Larson.  He painted a room with a bank of windows along one wall that had plants on the sills.  I may never be able to afford a whole bank of windows, but perhaps three in each room would be possible.
I rather hate the idea of losing the two windows beside the door, so perhaps I will relent if good windows can be afforded.  I also like the idea of solid wall space for that wall for display.

 

This might be a good place for window seats to sit and read in as well.

 

 

The gable end bedrooms upstairs would allow one to use one room as a library, guest room or den and the other for a bedroom.  One would get morning sun to wake you, and the other, evening sun to extend the daylight...you choose which is best for you.  I could do a dormer in each room, but they break the skin of the house and so become an energy waster, and add to the expense of the build.

Also, every break in the seamless character of a roof makes it vulnerable to failure.  Valleys, dormers, ells all compromise the seal of the roof....if not at first then as it ages.  I simply do not understand all the jogs and angles and additions to a house that seems the norm in modern construction and design.  yes, I love a Queen Anne house with all the turrets and dormers and jog, but they are endlessly difficult to maintain.  Leaks are always creeping up.  A simple outer skin to a house, like a Cape Cod or a simple single shed roof or gable roof will be easy to install and easy to maintain through the life of the house

 

If you need to add space in your house, add an ell at right angles to a wall and drop the roofline down to below the overhang of the main roof, either the gable end or a side overhang.  Alternatively, cover new space with a continuation of the old roof so that it is seamless and does not form an angle that will require a valley.  Obviously this is a recommendation, but take it seriously, don't test my logic by finding out ten years down the road that your roof is leaking. You do not want to have to tear off a whole or part of a roof that still has twenty years of life in it, and may not be still available so you have a terrible looking patch with non matching roofing.

 

The dimensions of the house are modest.  I have not quite settled, but have a good idea of them  I want inside dimensions to be about 16 by 24.  I had a living room that size and always loved the space.  That may be fine just building the house 16x24, or if the framing seems to take up too much space, perhaps 17x25 or 18x26 to end up with the same space as I planned inside.

This should give me just enough space for the furniture I have and keep it small to be affordable and easy to keep clean and repaired.

 



I do not have a penny to my name, so all this will be on the tiniest budget. Small and simple will make it possible to build myself, the only thing that will allow me to accomplish this.