http://www.williampoole.com/plans/Calabash_Cottage

Here is our floorplan..

Is it maybe an issue with the ceiling height? I think they did 10 ft and 9ft, we did 9ft and 8ft. Or he has the dormer too far up?

Architect is saying the dormer would have to be way wider. I don't understand why, the foyers are the same size?

Edit.. I guess they aren't... Ours is 3ft wider.

How did you manage that without affecting the other rooms?!

Ohhh I see it now!! Do you think that would take from square footage from upstairs, though?

I moved the dining room and pantry over a few feet. Notice the kitchen seems to 'bump out' a few feet, but it's actually in the same place. By extending the porch (with steps and a bench) it seems to blend in pretty well.

Will this help with your dormer placement?

I sent him what you changed, let's see what he's got to say..

No dice, our long table wouldn't fit in our dining room. So this clearly has no regard to bring architecturally accurate because I have no idea what I'm doing, but maybe changing the dormer a bit then beefing up trim, columns, etc. will make the one dormer look less random??

Or have him make the roof steeper, step the two columns closest to the door out to mimic the dormer, raise porch roof just in that area up to where interior ceiling height would be (9ft) and mimic this dormer..

The dining room is the same size...the foyer is smaller. Do you extend the table out into the foyer?

If you just need to make the foyer smaller, move the dining room doorway over a few feet and make the dining room bigger.

I just told him that.. But our front windows wouldnt be centered. :( I may just have to give up on this one. He has architect working on my other crazy idea, after that I've got nothing.

You have no idea how awesome you are for helping me exhaust all ideas!!!!

The good news, cpartist, is you just helped me shrink my ( what I felt was) oversized foyer!! I was concerned with how small my dining room is.. You just added three feet. ;)

"they did 10 ft and 9ft, we did 9ft and 8ft. "

The drawings appear to show the opposite.

What is the slope of the main roof?

I’m sure you have figured out what he’s talking about by now
but to be sure I’ll assume not. The stair headroom is the distance between the
top of any stair tread and the ceiling directly above it. By code it needs to
be greater than 6’8”. This may help http://inspectapedia.com/Stairs/Stair_Headroom.php

In your house this minimum headroom occurs where the stair
crosses under the wall of the main body of the second floor i.e. the green
line. The gable doesn’t provide any extra headroom because its diagonal wall
crosses the right hand side of the stair at the same height as the green line
i.e the 2nd- floor floor.

So it took a little bit to figure out what happened in your
drawing because eit looks like you have two different types of stairs. The
stair for the first floor is an L but the same stair for the 2nd
floor is a straight run.

However both stairs don’t seem to work. If you compare your
drawing to the original you can see that in the original the stair seems to
cross the green line around the 6th step where as in your drawing it looks like
you cross the green line at the 10th or 11th step which
is too high up (less headroom.)

Also if the originals ceiling height is 10 feet and yours is
only 9 then you have to cross the green line at a step or two lower than in the
original.

a few ways to fix it

1. Move the stair way back into the house so that
the green line crosses over around the 4th or 5th step. You
would then have to rearrange your bedroom closets.

2. Go back to a shed or doghouse dormer that gives you
enough headroom at the pinch point.

3. If you use a gable dormer as in the original you
need a wider one so that the underside of the gable crosses the stair higher up
in the gable and not right at its base.

hope this helps

you could also use a hybrid dormer like this

"The good news, cpartist, is you just helped me shrink my ( what I felt was) oversized foyer!! I was concerned with how small my dining room is.. You just added three feet. ;)"

I did??? Well I'm happy I helped. Whatever it is I did.

The head room is not determined by the floor structure at the green line; it is determined by the height of the second floor ceiling so I don't see how there could be a headroom problem. The dormer appears to be there to provide light to the two story space. A skylight could do that.

If the floor structure continued across the stair at the green line no dormer design would allow a stair in the foyer.

The new design stair is shown differently in the first and second floor plans. It doesn't matter for headroom but which is correct?

The new design plan shows 17 risers and the original plan shows 15. How can that be correct?

You are correct. In general green lines don't determine anything but in this case I am pretty sure that the green line was placed there by the architect to indicate where the minimum stair header height hits the the 1st floor ceiling which does determine the header height (not the 2nd floor ceiling).

To my understanding, the issue is not that the 2nd floor continues across the stair at the green line. The issue is that the dormer is a gable dormer which cuts across the stair at too low a level. The OP's original drawing had a doghouse dormer which does give the necessary header room. The problem came up after switching to the gable.

The change in the design that is causing the problem is having the stair too far forward in the house. In the original, the stair is 3-4 tread widths back which gives the necessary headroom.

What you describe is not shown on the drawings posted.

I don't see how there could be a headroom problem even if the dormer was eliminated. There should be plenty of space under the main roof.

I can't imagine that an architect would design and document a house without drawing a section through it.

The winder shown at the turn in the stair is not legal if the IRC is the applicable code nor does it appear to be necessary.

Building a dormer this size with no floor to brace the the exterior wall and provide the required tie for the rafter tails will probably require a structural ridge beam and posts to footings which will be expensive. What was wrong with William Poole's clerestory window design?

I suspect that there is no architect involved and that the house cannot be built as drawn.

The only problem I can see, and its difficult to know if it is intentional or just another of many drafting errors, is that the plan shows the out-to-out framing dimension of the two cross gables as 14'-4" but in the entry elevation drawing it appears to be as much as a foot narrower. Of course, this could just be another drafting error since there would be no reason for the gable structure to not stop short of covering the entire floor opening.

I haven't seen a readable elevation of the gable end of the main roof but I suspect you will need to give it a 12/12 pitch, make the cross gable the full width of the foyer, and steepen its roof so it doesn't contradict and detract from the main theme of the house. (The theme of this house is a tall central roof with a wrap around skirt roof - it doesn't take much to lose that theme). It will also add 4 ft to the width of 2 of the bedrooms for very little money.

The William Poole drawings must have sections and elevations that would make all of this clear. I would not trust the author of these current drawings to detail this building or any other. If you haven't bought a set of Poole's drawings you should do so ASAP.

I am continually amazed at the depth of knowledge and help available here. The amount of time strangers are willing to devote to helping someone puzzle something out is amazing. Plus it's free besides. ;)

I built a home a few years ago and made so many mistakes it makes my head hurt. But I'm stupid enough I may try to tackle another build again in a few years anyway. If so, I hope this place still exists then. You guys are awesome.

I'm reading all of these, just trying to wrap my brain around them!

Now I'm starting to get really concerned. I've met the architect (also the framer), but he is a friend of the builder and they worked together. So we would tell builder what we wanted, he would relay to architect, etc. At one point, the architect couldn't figure out how to attach our garage to our house. We wanted our wrap around porch to just go around one side - like on the Calabash Cottage - but he said there was no way to do the roof around the porch. I argued but he said it just wasn't possible. A lot of this sounds like Spanish to me (which I know very little) but I'm going to keep studying and trying to understand. Very concerned at this point.

I just realized - that green line is because I took a screen shot and my phone was still loading the PDF file. He hasn't sent us back any of the 'attempts' at the Calabash Cottage. The only thing he sent us was the front elevation with the two extra dormers and without. Since they built a similar house (with three dormers) I have a feeling he just used that plan and just fit what we wanted into it. Which wasn't what I wanted.

Would having the rooflines, etc. help? I know we have it somewhere, but my husband is out of town and has his computer. I'll check in my email for it.

I've lost track of your concerns.

I thought there was something wrong with the dormer and stair headroom. All I could find was an illegal stair winder that has made me nervous about the capability of the designer.

The William Poole design has a porch on two sides of the house, one of which terminates at the face of the garage. All of the elevations show the roof wrapping around two corners.

I don't know what you mean by roof lines, green line or Spanish.

The elevations you posted were drawn by a drafting company rather than an architectural firm yet you keep referring to an architect. Are you sure an architect designed these modifications? I know professionally prepared drawings when I see them and these fall short. Construction communication is difficult enough without poorly drawn design documents.

I know this is a terrible picture but it's the best I can get. On front elevation he has porch roof written in as 12/4, large dormer roof as 12/7, garage roof at 12/9 but I can't find one of the main roof that's readable..

From the beginning he has been referred to as an architect by our builder, so we took that as he is an architect.. But from all of this I'm gathering he is not actually an architect. My concern was getting the front elevation right - I had no idea there was more going on. I'm not sure what to do from here. My husband is deployed and we've already started building the house. We thought we were just changing the front elevation... I'm completely mortified. I've seen houses they've built that he designed and they look fine - I'm almost to the point where I just want to do the three gables just because I've seen it in person and I know it's within their capabilities. Lesson learned on not researching the 'architect'. I appreciate everyone helping and your drawings, renovator. At this point I'm just going to wait until I hear back from them and go from there.

You should't feel pressured to change the current design. It looks fine. I just feel a professional challenge to propose a design that doesn't rely on 4 fake dormers but I don't expect anyone else to have that kind of compulsive attitude.

I suspect the main roof slope is 9 in 12 just like the garage roof. IMO since this is a story and a half design, a 9 in 12 slope doesn't quite provide a high enough ridge line for a large full height dormer to have an attractive roof slope.

So, I think you need a bigger roof. If the roof slope is, in fact, 9 in 12 you should ask the builder what it might cost to make both of the roofs slope at 10 in 12. And while you are at it, ask him what the actual floor to floor height is. That would tell me how deep the floor joists are above the large open family room and allow me to make sure the stairs will fit without the non-compliant winder.

I wish your DH a safe return.

Here are all of the roofs at 10 in 12.

In the lower drawing the ridge of the dormer roof is held down and the pent-roof skirt feature further reinforces this horizontal quality. I think the ridges need to be higher, the face of the dormer taller and the windows ganged together with an 8" trim between them even if you add smaller dormers either side. I think that will be more compatible with the original design of he house.

I see the siding wraps around the corners. Does that mean it will be shingles?

I wanted to mention something that I 'm not sure anyone picked up on from my earlier sketches and comments.

A dormer is not needed above the foyer for headroom above the stairway. The original triangular pediment on William Poole's design was put there to provide a window in the upper part of the foyer.

The dormer on the modified design serves the same purpose but with vertical side walls aligned with the foyer walls. If the goal is only to provide a second story window it could be Poole's pediment triangle, a 4 ft wide dormer, a 10 ft wide dormer, etc. A larger size only allows a larger window and a square ceiling opening instead of a triangular one.

I see little reason to have three dormers on the foyer side. What needs to be carefully studied is the dormer on the other side that houses a bedroom. I believe making all the roofs slope at 10/12 makes that work.

The fake dormers bother me; I could live with them, but it's definitely not what we set out for. I am going to ask him the slope of the main roof because I've searched all of our paperwork and can't find it mentioned, then suggest 10/12 to him. Would you mind if I showed the GC and the..... Drafter.... your drawings if they still can't get it right? So when ordering the windows, the two in the dormer need to Be two seperate windows, correct?

Thank you for the hubby comment, I'm sure he will! This is just a short trip, but we've unfortunately gotten a little too used to them for my taste!!!!!!

The drawings are for you; do what you want with them. I'll deny everything.

I like to pair windows the old fashioned way with several studs and 5/4" flat trim separating them. Put a projecting sub-sill below the paired windows so the vertical casing trim sits on it (like a real window). Do NOT let them put casing or apron trim under a window.

Find out the floor to floor height (ceiling height + floor thickness) so we can verify the stair design.

It would also help to see a section through the roof eave. The detail where the rafters sits on the wall is very important. Please don't tell me they want to use trusses.

Since they are now building the house they should have given you a complete set of the drawings.

Just wanted to update that so far there is no update..