My NTL House - Revised Plan

The 'revised plan' of the NTL* House is fairly similar to the previous version. The main differences are size, placement of the stair and location of second floor bedrooms. The previous version was seriously over sized and therefore over budget. The First Floor is now roughly 2,124 SF; the Second Floor is 648 SF; and the garage is 780 SF. 

At this early stage, I am using $100/SF for a house construction cost and $50/SF for the garage. These are lower than I would normally use only because I plan to build the house myself. 

The next two tasks are to scout building sites and to develop a much more detailed cost estimate. As it is, I am $41,200 over budget now. At an early stage like this, it is easy to control costs. Reducing area will lower costs, but not dramatically beyond this point. Detailing and choices of systems will have a direct impact, however. Once the size is fixed, the cost of materials and systems continues to raise or lower the cost per square foot.

MAIN FLOOR

SECOND FLOOR

ROOF PLAN

Just about everything got smaller in the revised plan. Relationships, however, remained pretty constant. The stair to the second floor will be straight rather than 'U'-shaped as before. At some point in its rise it will have enough headroom to access the kitchen below it so that the access from kitchen to pantry and laundry is maintained.

The location of the second floor bedrooms changed dramatically. They also became much smaller, which suits their use as guest rooms. Being located over the Living Space meant the ceiling height would be constant. Moving to above the master bedroom area eliminates that issue. The right bedroom may have an issue with window placement where the sill can be low enough for emergency escape requirements. That could be solved by moving the bedrooms down to the outside wall of the MBR closet area.

The roof plan doesn't indicate any problems that need to be resolved. The roof over the bedrooms has a two story eave. Everything else starts off with a one-story eave. The roof over the Living Space could be a continuation of that rising one-story roof line or it could be offset upwards for more height below and the possibility of clerestory windows. The alternate hip roof over the Office and the far end of the Living Space creates some extra flashing and exterior wall. It is probably better to keep it simple and change the ceiling heights with interior construction.

This may be the last post on the NTL House for a while. I want to search for a site next. The actual site could have a major impact of the layout of the house because of solar orientation, views, topography and shape of the lot

* NTL = Next-To-Last