I went back and forth with deciding on a walk out or not. I think the same way you do, I don't really like the look of a two story home on the backside. That being said, I really wanted big daylight windows in the basement. We went with large windows, but no walk out. We would have had to bring the grade up a bit more for a walk out and as it is, we will have to put in two retaining walls. I am not sure how much more expensive it was with the large windows, but I am sure it was more than smaller windows and the extra expense of the excavation. I thought about what we would be walking out to and that is a woodsy area on our 7 acres. It is nothing special and since most of our living space on the property is on the other side, it didn't seem to make sense to put the walk out in. We do have the large, two story look on the back side, but we have made that look shorter by siding choices. We put a cedar shake on the top section, then followed with straight siding. You can see photos of it here. Good luck with your decision. It is one of many you will be going through. Here is a link that might be useful: My house building blog

nidnay - at our current facility we have an 8 stall barn with a bathroom, 12' X 18' office, and 12' X 24' tackroom, with the barn being about 125' away from the back of our house (facing it actually). I've lived here for 18 years now and we RARELY EVER use the stalls, so we don't plan on building a 'stable' (or a barn with stalls). The horses are going to live out with shelters in each pasture. Our current barn had to have it's own it's own septic system. $$$ The current land we are looking at only had one perc site for 4 bedrooms. I don't want to pay for the test for a second perc ($250) plus the cost of having another septic system (about $4K), as well as creating a climate controlled office and bathroom in the barn (a mini split system is about $3K and a 2 piece bathroom probably around $2K). That is about $10K right there in a separate septic, a 2 piece bathroom, and office and climate control for both (as well as permitting, creating plans, etc.). All things that would have already been in the house at the square footage we had to build. Plus grading for a large barn was going to be expensive. We found a place next to the house to put in a modest shed row 'barn' for a tack room, feed room and grooming, that will work with the topography of the land for minimal grading work. We did this to keep things cost effective. It's just my husband and I living in this house, it's not like we have kids to keep separated from my business. We're both fine with this situation. The door up the stairs to the main floor will have a lock on it. And I don't have a lesson mill program, I focus on quality not quantity. I've been teaching for over 20 years now. I keep about 8 weekly students at any given time. I get to know my students and my parents well... my students tend to stick around for years. Same for my boarders. We'll have 2 or 3 boarders at the new location. At our current facility 3 of our customers have been with us for 5+ years. At one point or another I end up paying most of my students and all of my boarders to house sit / dog sit / farm sit for us when we go on vacation. I'm pretty confident they are not going to bust the door down to access the main floor of my home. And they won't be there at inappropriate hours of the day / night anyhow. Vigil Carter - I guess you didn't read my last post. We priced out a 1 story 'ranch' with the same builder. 2200 sq ft was going to cost $209,000 THEN another $15K because of the sloped ground to add more courses to the crawl space foundation. This 1700 sq ft two story house, without walkout basement, came in at $178K pre-basement. The cost of the completely finished 840 sq ft basement, with a grand total heated sq ft of 2540, came to a total less than the single story 2200 sq ft ranch. Though we could have gotten a separate entrance in-law space, the in-law space would have been way smaller (by over 150 sq ft) and I would not have had an office that was separate from my main living space. I lift 50 pound bags of feed and hay nearly daily and my husband is military / infantry, we are active horse riders and hikers. I think we can handle interior stairs for another 12+ years. :) At that point if it starts to bother us then we can add a master suit to the side of the house (which we had already spec'd out anyhow but we just do not need at this time).

I did a walkout basement design for someone on the existing house. If you only want the walkout part like the sample bellow not much dirt removal from the property would-be needed but you would need a good amount of excavation done (which is not a big deal) and most of the cost would be in a footing modification especially if you have to meet frost depth requirements and that will add to the cost, because the basement area which is being excavated and remain open the footing would have to meet frost line requirement and drain at the bottom of the stair would have to be tied into a sump pump pit. If you looking to make it more than a walkout and have a patio, etc a good amount of dirt would have to be removed, you would need retaining walls, drainage system, grading, etc, and that can be very costly. Good luck

OK now i'm learning, haha. I had never noticed or heard of the daylight with walk up door basement before. I'm mostly familiar with the full above ground walkout. That is an interesting option. Also I had assumed they could move the dirt around to make both levels walk out on grade, but now i see that would be an awful lot of dirt/expense. Or dig deeper so the back door is at grade, then put retaining walls on either side of the lower walk out door? That sounds a bit exessive too. I don't mind a few steps down in the back of the upper level, maybe I can minimize this by going more rectangle shaped. Say 34' deep into the hill by 22' wide gets me up to a 5' drop front to back. Thanks again for taking time to show me the grade sketches. I had an old F150 3 on the tree... loved that truck!