If you have 5 acres, why on earth would you need to have a front facing garage? The plan and elevation you posted seem suited for city or suburban lots...not 5 acres! :) I totally get budget issues, but I think you could find something that would suit your lovely acreage better while staying within your budget.

See if you can at least push the garage back a bit. We have 7 acres, but it would have been expensive/difficult to make our garage a side load because of our sloping terrain. We pushed our attached garage back a bit behind the front of the house so that it isn't the most prominent feature. Coupled with a deep porch, our garage fades out of the picture somewhat.

Lovely property, BTW!

there are so many options to do - budgets exist unfortunately but this house is for a subdivision. do some more research or at least turn garage so it is not front facing. your land is beautiful!!

Yes, yes your land is beautiful, but I don't see a Craftsman bungalow fitting it well. Craftsman is a city choice.

The picture doesn't look really Craftsman though. The eaves and porch aren't deep enough, nor are the pillars the right shape. This looks like a farmhouse with Craftsman colors and a bit of Craftsman detail.

On this land, I'd consider going with a farmhouse.

Agree with all the others.

I always thought Craftsman was a 'city' design, but there are a number of them scattered around here in rural SC. Sadly, most are neglected, and the upper part of the porch columns are long gone, replaced with either 4X4's or wrought iron on top of the original brick column bases. I don't know if they're really original Craftsman, or very old copies.

Thanks everyone, maybe I'll go with more of a farmhouse feel. Would anyone care to post a picture/link to something you think would look great (sorry, I am very design-challenged ;)

It's hard to tell from the picture, but we have a very steep slope just past that tree line (we have a lot of work in our future cutting some zig zag paths down to the pond). That, coupled with a very deep front setback requirement (40 ft from property line, approx 60 feet from road), leaves us with a max house "depth" of about 45 ft (including any porch on front) before we get into prohibitively expensive sloping terrain. We can go as long as we want to go, but we're trying to stay with a 1500 sq ft foundation. If we do a side load garage, with our slope, we're talking about a significant extra cost in retaining walls along the side of the driveway. I'd rather spend that money elsewhere. In this area of Iowa, 95+% (give or take) of garages (even on very expensive houses) face front. I guess that's why a front-facing a garage door really doesn't bother me.

Update - we have a draft of the first floor plan... what do you think? For context, top is north, view is to the north. Neighbor to the east (right) is quite a distance away, and there are trees between. "Back yard" would be to the east. My first thoughts - garage and dining room/living room area might need to be a foot or two bigger. Need to add a fireplace and windows to living room. We'll have 3 bedrooms upstairs (plus bathroom and possibly bonus room), and will eventually have a rec room/wet bar/in-law suite in the walkout basement. I don't have drafts of those yet I really want a first floor master bedroom, which coupled with my max depth requirement, lends toward a little different thought process for the floor plan.

Also, attaching entire lot (edited to add, this is not quite the entire lot. Approx 1/4 of it goes to north yet - not buildable, no access, behind pond) with contour lines for context (2 ft per line, drops off to pond, half of property is woods behind pond). Dark red line is the setback. Existing barn/shed is staying (will be fixed up a bit). It wouldn't meet today's setback requirements but is grandfathered. Removing it to place the house there wouldn't be worth it.

Hawkeyekitchen

If you want more of a farmhouse design, take a look at Yellowducky's picture on the June How's your build progressing. It's way at the bottom, posted today. It's a very nice looking farm house style, in my opinion.

A coupla things for you to ponder hawkeye.

You plan still looks like a generic "one house fits all" run of the mill suburban tract house. A house like that will NOT do this great site justice. You have beautiful piece of land!!

With great sites or sites with great views (and we have a lot of those here in Annapolis) or even a view of a pool in the backyard, I like to set it up where that view is seen when the front door is opened. You'll be looking at the kitchen counter where the sink is and we all know how those look like most of the time!

Not to get into a bunch of design theory mumbo jumbo but great designs are not created as objects. They're created as relationships and the object is born out of that. There are 1000's of these relationships in a typical house and one of them is the first thing seen from the front door. If that relationship is respected then your views out the back literally become part of the house itself to anyone coming in not to mention the house will feel larger and be considerably lighter/airier when looking through it to the view beyond. And building a house this way doesn't cost a dime more then building your plan above.

As examples of what I'm talking about I have some houses in an "ideabook" I put in there long ago for some long forgotten houzzer. They are there to illustrate how to not stop designing at the exterior walls and in all of them the site becomes part of the house. The entry views go clear through the house to great views beyond.

Also, I'd get the living space oriented to the back and look to make the screened in porch more integrated into the design. Right now it looks like the house was half up before someone said "OMG, where's the deck and screened in porch!?!?!".

Gotta go now but more on how to go about this later.

hawkeyekitchen

If you like the craftsman inspired homes then go with what you like. This will be your house built on a nice piece of property. However, many of the posters have good advice about building a house on land with acreage.

We are in a similar situation as you are. Bought 8 acres with 3 acres cleared for the house. At first, it seemed like the plans we looked at were like yours. When you have always lived in a subdivision tract house, that is all you know. We finally realized we should build a house that fits the land and have always been drawn to a more rustic type of house. We are planning to build a rustic ranch house with one bedroom upstairs which will blend with the beauty of the land.

Your land looks peaceful and inviting.

I had one saved that I really liked but I can't find it. Here is a close second that has a really nice porch but it's a little more modern country.
Alsmeyer Country Home Plan

I'll post back if I can ever find the other one.

I think the OP left.