Here is my first attempt at a sketch (I am new to the forum). Hope this helps explain what is in my head.

Here is a link that might be useful: sketch

Oh wow...I thought that I was the worst artist in the world, but I now stand corrected ! :) I think you probably need to hire a designer or an architect. I know that you said that your budget is tight, but you'd benefit from having someone else help you take the ideas in your head and put them on paper! I'm sure that there are plans out there that fit your requirements...hopefully someone will chime in with them. A few things we need to know before we can really do a houseplan search: 1) how narrow is the lot? ie, how narrow does the house have to be to accomodate the lot size and setbacks?; 2) all bedrooms on 2nd floor?; 3) mudroom/laundry? do you care where it is located?; 4) did you mean that you want the house to be a 1 1/2 or 2 story OR that you wanted your garage to be that size? your statement was unclear.
Anyway, I recommend a design professional. It not only would help you to focus your thoughts, but it very well could help you to manage your budget better in the long run. Best of luck.

I will go to a design person eventually but I was hoping to get help so I can articulate it better.

The lot is 125 by 65'. The buildable portion after setbacks is 90 by 50.

I was hoping to have 1 master down and the other upstairs. A small utility room/mudroom would be good. (Downstairs). Also a powder room downstairs (needless to say - not shown on my cryptic design)
I was thinking a two story design or at least a one-and -a half to accomodate all the rooms I have in mind.

adreamhome,
Actually just sketching out your ideas like you have is a good start. I started my house plan by deciding on the minimum sizes for the main rooms, the basic orientation for those rooms (north east corner, etc) and playing with how everything might fit together. A 30 year old book I have on designing your home for amateurs recommends starting just this way.

Better Homes & Gardens Home Designer Suite has a feature that lets you do that electronically. They have a House Wizard that asks questions about what you want then it creates blocks for each room with a minimum recommended size for each room. You can slide the blocks around, stretch them and change groupings until you get a layout you like. Then you have the program create a basic floor plan from those blocks. It is not perfect, but it certainly gives you a starting point.

There are other home design programs available for very little, you might want to try one to help you visualize your house. I really like the ones with a 3D walk through feature - that helps "see" how the areas fit together.

Get a cheap home architect program for your computer and play with it. I have one that i bought at walmart for $9.95 and i find i use it more than the professional grade program that i paid $800 for.

Hi adreamhouse

Excellent start!
I sure would love my customers if they'd specify their dream house with a sketch.
Some advice:
Your sketch is a 2D floorplan, you need to plan in the space. Why?, because the same plan fits different styles and budgets, depending of the roofs, finishes, details etc. So, it is a good idea if, independent of the floorplan, you look for images and pictures of the styles you like. This step will help you to create a spatial image instead of a 2D image
I agree with the users above: you can buy a 3D software or hire someone to do a 3D Walk-Through and Fly-Around.
But first, check with your building department about the restrictions and codes for your lot

Good luck!

I've talked to architects who said people just drew round bubbles where they wanted rooms. So, your drawing is a good rough idea. Don't be afraid to take it to a professional.

I blog about all this and just posted a new one this week and last week about house plans and some basic information to pull together whether you hire an architect, get a stock plan, etc.

As for your design around a courtyard. I love the idea (we included a cottage garden fence on our blueprints). However, that will be a wide design and your footprint and roof may get to be expensive. If you can get a good idea about what size you want for your rooms, you can do some calculations.

Also, if you do have covenants with an Architectural Review Board, you'll need to look ahead to whether they will accept the design. It looks like it can be contemporary. I love great contemporary homes, but there is a new neighborhood near me that will NOT accept contemporary, Italianate or Mediterreanean. All of those styles that would look great for your design plan.

Hope this helps. Knowing what you want (Define Before Design) is my motto!

Cameron

Here is a link that might be useful: blogging about our build

Thanks for all the tips. I live in Texas we donÂt have trouble on the type of house restrictions but I am checking the homeowners restrictions and building codes.

I also just got HGTV Home designer suite application from COSTCO and I am working on a better plan with the measurements for each room before I submit to professional.

Wonbyherwits (Cameron) I love the windows and the French doors that take to the cottage garden on your lovely house. Your blogs are also very helpful. Thank you.

Can anybody point me to online site where small house designed with a courtyard may be available?

Thanks

If you do a search for "courtyard" you'll get garages that open in front of the house for courtyard parking.

If you search for "central courtyard" + "House plans" you'll get a few hits for this style. You might also try styles that may feature courtyards such as Southwestern, Mediterreanean, etc. Another term might be "compound".

To create our front garden, we have an L shape with the garage forming one wall. If you can find a plan with a L shape that lends itself to adding a room to form a U shape or sliding a room back to make a U shape, that might work for you.

Cameron

Here is a link that might be useful: an example

We visited a home yesterday that had a courtyard! The built house is high-end luxury and just gorgeous. It is a Don Gardner plan. While it is larger than what you want (2991 sf), perhaps it will give you some ideas?

Hope this helps.
Cameron

Here is a link that might be useful: The Hembree courtyard house plan

I think your design looks interesting.
I LOVE a courtyard like you are wanting! In fact, we played around with something similar, but for our location (on a farm with open fields all around) it seemed stupid. I think a courtyard like that is better for a city lot like you have. DH and I would have loved something like that in the right setting, though.

Also, we designed our house with a starting sketch very much like what you have done. I bought a computer program (less than $100) that lets you draw designs, but honestly I could have done just as well with graph paper. The only plans we ever used were the ones I printed off my computer. The only "professional" who ever looked at them was our builder, and everything so far has turned out just like we envisioned.
Good luck!

Thank you Cameron!That plan is very helpful. This is the closest thing I have seen. I will actually use the first floor plan with some changes to explain my ideas to an architect...it will save me some time. The Powerful home design software I purchased is also very good but I didn't get time to play with it. Thank you'll.

I did get some google hits by searching "rear courtyard" + "house plan". You might try that. It's hard to know which ones to tell someone else about; don't know your biggest priorities. Also, have you just blocked out which rooms would go where and determined how the dimensions would work on your buildable space? It's hard to get a 2-car rear entry garage, family room and kitchen and bedroom to all face a courtyard. Unless you use a drive-under garage.

I love courtyards, too. But here are 2 cautions from our architect: 1) they are more expensive to build for the same space. Any house that has wings is. 2) It's harder than one would think (and this was a total surprise to me) to get enough natural light into them. Because there are a number of corners in rooms that can't have windows. She was obsessed with balanced, natural light, so take this into consideration. You may not be.

Some of the ways to search would include those plans that may be otherwise unsuited to your needs. EX, all the Charleston plans (a category on some plan websites) are raised up off ground level for flooding. But a lot of those low-country plans are, or can readily become, a full H-shaped courtyard plan.

Some narrow lot plans. Some Mediterranean plans. Coastals. Spanish Revival. Vernacular architecture designed for arid regions often surrounded a protected courtyard.

I've been where you are. It took a year, including one purchase of a later-determined-to-be-unsuitable stock plan. An architect. A draftsman. And most of my waking, and half of my "sleeping" hours. BUT it is perfect. For us.

Good luck. Post specific design questions here when you get farther along; this group is really interested in, and good at that sort of thing.

I'm keeping an eye on the realty listing to see when they post photos of the house. It is on the Parade of Homes here in our area. They will probably post photos after the POH is over in a few weeks.

What my husband and I loved most about the house is the way the kitchen and family room look out through the lanai to the courtyard. This house has a fountain on the brick wall as a view (no pool). The patio within is stamped and stained concrete, but it was "amoeba" shaped instead of rectangular so there were flower beds and 4 small trees in there. The living room was formal, but had a nice fireplace with built-in bookshelves and high square windows on either side. The cathedral ceilings in both the living and family rooms have beams. For the kitchen, they did an L shaped island. On the family room side of the island was a built-in banquette and a round table to serve as the breakfast nook. They omitted one of the upstairs bedrooms to enlarge the master. They had a walk-out basement with several bedrooms, another family room and a wine cellar to crank up the square footage to 4700.

Cameron

Thank you Cameron. I love the living areas opening into the courtyard. That had always been my dream. The stamped concrete, fountain and garden all sound heavenly. I would love to see pictures. I am having a hard time visualizing the vaulted and cathedral ceilings.

It looks like most/all rooms I need can be accomodated on the first floor. If I make the ceilings high enough - I am wondering if I may be able to get by a one-story alone. It might make it a lot cheaper. Any thoughts?

Typically a two story is cheaper to build, but only because you can stack your rooms vertically and reduce the overall footprint of the building. That reduces the most expensive components of the shell: foundation, perimeter walls, roof.

Since you're trying to create a what? 3-sided enclosure? you'll have a lot of expensive components anyway, so 2-stories in your case will not matter much budget-wise. I'd just put everything on one level and use the spaces to enclose that outdoor courtyard. (You will save money on landscaping, BTW, since there won't be a big yard.)

Have you read Ruiz' book Building An Affordable House? We have studied it since before we started designing. Remember that he's talking to production builders mostly, but his info. as to shape of house, framing details, etc. is INVALUABLE.

There is only an exterior photo now posted. I hope you'll be able to link to this since it is a local realtor site. I forgot to mention that they had added a 3rd car bay.

If the link doesn't work, the MLS listing number is 960459 in Chapel Hill, NC.

Cameron

Here is a link that might be useful: The Hembree built upscale

wonbyherwits, thanks for all you are sharing on this plan. My DH saw this plan in a Don Gardner plan book the other day and thinks this is the perfect plan for our 3 acres. The main reason is because the west sun will be facing our back yard unless we build something like the Hembree. Pinktoes got me wondering though, about the natural light. Did you notice a lack of natural light in the house you toured? What was your feeling when you walked around in it. Of course, ours would be the 2991 s.f.-not the expanded version.

I don't know if I could actually build this plan or not, because it is pretty unique and I would wonder about the resale value around here. I do love the fact that we would be shaded in the courtyard, but wonder if I'll feel "closed-in". We would also have a pretty pond view on the side of the courtyard, so that would be nice.

Olliesmom -- actually, I noticed a lot of natural light. It didn't feel closed in. The fact that all of the main rooms overlooked the courtyard made it feel connected to the outdoors. The courtyard seemed like the hub of the house.

The POH house had cathedral ceilings in the family/kitchen and in the living room. The master bedroom had a cathedral ceiling. The dining room would have been cathedral, but they flattened it out at about 11' up and had an artist put a beautiful subtle design up there.

If you walk through the plan:

Living room -- large windows into the courtyard, there were small windows flanking the fireplace in the POH house. Whenever you have windows on two walls, you get more light.

Dining room -- French doors onto lanai, large front windows.

Kitchen/breakfast -- French doors opened onto the lanai. Windows over the sink on the opposite wall.

Family room -- French doors opened onto the lani. Windows were put on the POH house on the opposite wall as there are no neighbors on that side of the 2 acre lot. The builder moved the fireplace to the inside wall of the POH house at the opposite end from the kitchen. That freed up the outside wall for larger windows.

Master bedroom -- French door opened onto the lanai. Large bow window on the back.

The only downside that I could see from building it as a one level house is that due to all of the cathedral ceilings, there was no attic space. There was a pull-down stair in the garage, so I believe that's where the only attic was located. Also, look for where you'd put a pantry (if needed) or a broom/vacuum utility closet. That's about the only thing that came to mind in my functional critique when walking through it. I noticed on the actual plan, there is a stairway up to the room above the garage. I didn't see a stairway, but I might have missed it in the POH house.

There is a large closet off the foyer for storage. I did like the economy of that small foyer. It was enough to give you a transitional entrance, yet no space was wasted as in some foyers.

wonbyherwits, you have really put a great visual on this plan for me! I truly appreciate it!

I'm really glad you told me about the Family Room fireplace being switched to the opposite end of the kitchen. I would like all those windows there, and we have no neighbors on that side either.

I do wish the utility room was bigger, but, that is one area I can fudge on if need be.

We would definately want the bonus room as plan states it has. Maybe the builder of the POH house decided on the cathedral ceiling instead of the bonus room since the house of made quite a bit bigger anyhow.

We will be building a nice size building to match the house also, so no attic space is okay for us.

We will be putting in a pool, so I'm hoping there will be ample space for patio furniture and the like.

I'm impressed of how much you remembered about this POH house. I go in one and then can't remember things I wish I could remember.

Thank you so much for the "tour" of this plan!

We tour only 3 houses per weekend. My DH and I look through the large catalog of homes and decide on the ones that look like they are architecturally different from the ordinary. The builder's wife, the interior designer and the artist who painted the dining ceiling were all there, so we took the time to chat a lot with them about all the details.

Glad to help.

The interior photos have finally been posted on the mls listing.

Hope this helps you visualize.
Cameron

Here is a link that might be useful: courtyard house

So here with all your help and very good counsels from each one of you I have moved to the next step on the project and have the first draft from a professional. It has lot of arches (wherever you see the scribbled wall thingies, all of them are arches) I need your input:
a) - Any dead space that I can shrink the square footage some
b) - Is there enough lighting specially in the kitchen
c) - Any other comments all appreciated
Thank you

Here is a link that might be useful: Mydreamhome-01

Could you re-scan it into your snapfish account? The way it is now all of the writing is upside down, and it's hard to read.

I think I sacnned it on my snapflash account but it is just same as before. Is there a way to upload PDF file. The PDF verision of my plan is very clear.

Here is a link that might be useful: first draft