You'll have to eliminate some of your wants such as the third bathroom and then combine many of the public areas functions, such as no "formal" living or dining areas. 1500 is a small plan to be able to cram in 3 full sized bedrooms as well unless the master also gets downsized from the new popular larger proportioned suites that are being planned.

You need to prioritize the needs for your space first instead of focusing on mere square footage and number of bedrooms and baths. Figure out the functions that you need the space to perform, and then design the room that perform those functions. What types of spaces can be combined functional areas? Could kids share rooms if they were "master bedroom" sized rooms? They can surely share baths. What type of cooking do you do, and does the family take part? What about eating? Do you serve buffet bar-b-ques for gatherings, or are you a sit down for 14 every Sunday? Or do you maybe not have people over often at all?

What is a frequent need? What is a occasional one? What is rarely needed?

That's how you plan a home.

What does 3/3 mean?

I believe 3/3 means three bedrooms /three bathrooms. If my guess is correct, this plus a bonus room over a garage will not fit into 1500 square feet. The laws of physics will not allow it.

You can build 3 bedrooms in 1500 square feet. Here ae some hints on how to make that happen:

- Open floor plan living /dining /kitchen, which requires less square footage and keeps hallways to a minimum.
- Only one eating space.
- Plan a U-shaped or L-shaped kitchen; probably no space-hogging island.
- Relatively small bedrooms and bathrooms.
- The children's bedrooms share a hall bath, which also serves as a guest bath.
- Plan a stack-up laundry in a closet.
- Plan a small, straight staircase.

Why waste your time responding to such a cryptic house description. If the OP is seriously in need of advice he/she will give us the actual program for the house in plain language.

Reno8- I could ask the same as you, why waste your time responding to such a " cryptic" house description? This is a home forum, I figured that anyone reading who would be provide helpful information would know I was refering to bed/bath, very sorry i didnt explain that in full description for you. I have read how you respond to people so your response to my question is expected, im sure you'll respond with something equally as helpful to this.

Thank you to those who responded with helpful comments. As im sure you can tell, im a new member on this forum. I actually meant to post this in small houses. We are in the very early stages of planning and im trying to navigate this whole confusing process.

I've been designing building for over 40 years and I have no idea what a 3/3 house is. The first rule of problem solving is to define the problem so others can participate.

Post deleted.

This post was edited by davemartin88 on Tue, Mar 26, 13 at 19:52

I don't know very much about home building at all, and I knew it was 3 bed/3 bath right away. :) So not cryptic to me.

To your original point, I have seen some very small homes (usually older) with these. The bedrooms are usually quite tiny, but cute, and the baths are equally tiny. I like the cozy feeling. Not sure how it would work for my (much larger) husband spatially though. Or my boys, once they get a little bigger. Even now, they bump into walls and each other all the time. Maybe your family is smaller?
I wish I had a plan to link to, but I don't. There must be something out there. I'll keep my eyes open.

For those of you interested in clear communication in the world of design and construction, the virgule or slash sign (/) has several meanings :

- It can signify alternatives as a shorthand for "or" (right/left = right or left)

- It can separate the numbers in a fraction (3/4 Cape)

- It can signify one thing is above another (4/1 = 4 pane sash over 1 pane sash)

It is a separator so it should never be used to signify "and" or "+".

Using symbols and language in a casual or inappropriate manner can be costly on a project so correct use is carefully taught and respected in the design profession where guessing is never appropriate.

My first house was 1100 square feet, 2 small bedrooms, a small hall bath (5x8) serving both, a laundry closet in the hallway (full size washer/dryer but that is all that would fit with shelving above), a decent size non galley kitchen, one smallish dining room and a living room (again not huge but liveable). Small closets - one double door double hung in the master, and a single door reach in in the other bedroom.

I can't imagine fitting a playroom and another bedroom and bath in 400 square feet, or wanting to. My house was really a single person house. Two people filled it up. I guess it could have been planned better to take advantage of the space (it was an older home) but still. . .

In the context of the original post, 3/3 meaning beds/baths was pretty obvious to me and not confusing at all. May not have enough training to have been confused and I was just glad there weren't any fractions, lol!

We were looking at plans in the 1500 sq. ft. area for a while and really never saw anything with that many baths and bedrooms that fit well. Best of luck in the search.

My first house was 1400 square feet, and to use the terminology in this thread, it was a 3/2: Three bedrooms, two bathrooms.

The living areas and bedrooms were ample sized. The living room comfortably held a sofa and a love-seat as well as other furniture, and we had a dining room table that expanded out to a very large size. These were comfortable rooms. The kitchen and bathrooms were small but adequate.

What we didn't have was storage. Our bedroom closets were much too small, our laundry was in a closet that opened into the kitchen (so we often had loads of clothes on the kitchen floor). The coat closet /linen closet was deep but too small With no garage, we had no space whatsoever for storage.

That's what's realistic to expect in 1400 square feet. 1500 square feet would get you those rooms . . . with better storage. But not a secondary living area.

Thanks everyone. I appreciate that im not the only one who knew what I was refering to, it appears reno8 is the only one. I have real estate background where that term is used, I guess not so much in the design field.

As to my intial request, I was hoping to find 1500 plus a bonus room being an aditional square footage. I think im back to looking in the 2500 range.

You are all a bunch of help, im excited to have found this board.

In Reno's defense, I wasn't sure what you meant by 3/3, or whether the 1500 sq ft included the bonus room or that was in addition.

Why do you want a bonus space over the garage? Often it's easier if you describe what you need the house to do, than if you start with so many specifics.

http://www.rosschapin.com has some nice small plans. There might be something there that appeals to you. They aren't likely to have as many bathrooms as you're looking for, though, because that's usually one of the things people cut from a small house.

The knowledge and experience of the members here varies greatly and that is what makes it so useful to those who ask questions. The use of multiple posts, casual jargon, incomplete/cryptic descriptions, and URL's without Links tends to limit the kinds of responses you will get to casual "chatroom" anecdotal discussions. If you want more specific, detailed and/or professional advice it is best to ask your question in one post in a more specific and thorough manner.

Even if I had understood the meaning of 3/3 the program you have outlined is too incomplete for me to be of much help. For me the design of a house starts with assembling the relevant needs, wishes, restrictions, and limitations instead of searching for designs published by others. If 3/3 hadn't been so puzzling I probably wouldn't have bothered to comment.

If you took all of your needs and site features and sketched a rough bubble diagram of how your house might work that would be something I would find find worth discussing.

I wasn't sure what you meant by 3/3, or whether the 1500 sq ft included the bonus room or that was in addition.

I actually thought you wanted the bonus room included in the 1500 sq ft and was thinking whoa, the rooms are going to have to be really small.

A bonus room is often designed as a free attic space but the cost of it and any other uninhabitable spaces must be added to the cost of the habitable spaces so such spaces must be included in a cost take-off and the smaller the house, the greater these overlooked spaces affect the total.

For this reason habitable square foot costs are unreliable predictors of the cost of a house even at the preliminary stage of design and the cost of additional area should not be assumed to be at the average s.f. cost amount since that number includes so many other costs that might not increase proportionally.

Right now, we live in a 3 br 2 ba house with 1700 sq ft all on one floor and 2 bonus rooms upstairs - one over the garage, one over the master. We use them as playroom and office. Those rooms take our total sq ft to 2300-2400. Our floor plan is very easy to live in and has a formal dining room in addition to breakfast area. I only wish I had more of a mud room and one additional coat closet.

Keep looking.... I think you can find what you want, especially if the bonus room is in addition to 1500 sq ft. If you are interested in seeing our house LAN, let me know and I will draw it out or find something similar for you. Good luck!