Where will your utilities - water heater, furnace - be located?

If you are able to change the plans a bit, I would put the washer/dryer in the bathroom where I could close the door. Wouldn't want to compete with the noise.

neonweb US 5b that's a really good idea. I'm seeing very little storage in this plan. a pantry could be put where the w/d are in the kit. you'll surely need more space for food and kitchen items.

you'll also need some space in the bathroom for things like TP, towels, wash cloths, soap, hair brushes, lotion, hair dryer etc.

rosesstink- We will have a small woodstove to heat the home, and the water heater will be in the crawl space. We want to have a cement floor in the crawl space with 3-4 ft walls so we can access it and use it for extra storage.

An earlier draft of this plan had closets in each bedroom, but that reduced each bedroom to a much smaller size. The bunk room will end up more as a storage room unless we have someone over; I was planning to have under the bed storage in each bedroom too.

neonweb- I would love to put the washer/dryer in the bathroom, but with the plan as it is currently, I don't think that can be accomplished. I'll have to play around with it some more, but I like the general layout of this plan.

desertsteph- I was hoping to add between the stud shelves for extra storage, and utilize vertical storage as much as we can for bathroom necessities.

I should also mention that my boyfriend and I have a different work schedule than most people; we work at a remote mine and are gone for two weeks and home for two weeks. I can see how this smaller home with limited storage could be claustrophobic for a couple who is living in it day in and day out.

I've had a large pantry in the past, and when I had to move I had so much extra food that was just wasted and never used. I know the kitchen is short on space but my goal is to live with the essentials and not miss the extra clutter or waste. Our other option instead of building was to live in a 5th wheel camper, and I would have be even shorter on space in that so this now seems spacious.

In our small log house we built the washer dryer were in the bath and it was really nice.

tatianask86 I agree your small house would feel large compared to a fifth wheel. Only living in it for two weeks every two weeks would make a big difference. Not sure where you are living while at work. The fifth wheel?

Maybe consider actually building your small house with add on plans so you do not have to build a larger house later on. We always wanted to build a shop house. Where the house was build on one end of the shop. It can be done in stages. It never worked out for us by the time we were done flipping houses hubby just felt a concern at our age to be able to complete another house and he did not want to leave me stuck with a half built house.

Over all the plan looks good. I was just sharing how I felt in the smal rooms we now have and have had in the past. One thing that makes our smaller house 1375 SQFT feel so spacious is we have vaulted ceilings. Every one walks in here for the first time and says oh this house is so much bigger than it looks from the street. Not sure what your plans are for ceilings.

Vaulted ceilings really do open up the space. Look fordual purpose furniture, with storage built in. If you have hobbies, crafts, outdoor activities you're going toneed to store equipment.

Looks good to me, but I like the idea of starting this as a core house that can be added to if life interferes with your plans.

I thought about what everyone said, and kept looking. I've found this plan that seems more livable with more storage. The second bedroom is in the loft, which isn't a big deal, and we can hopefully use the shorter sections of the wall for clothes storage. The bathroom layout is a little irregular but I think it can work just fine.

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On gardenweb's kitchen forum people promote the use of drawer bases in place of standard lower cabinets. Drawers apparently store more within the same amount of space. Something for you to consider.

Spacially I think the loft plan might be more comfortable, but give thought to who would be sleeping in the loft part. Can you make it private enough for a couple? Protected enough for children? Would older parents be okay with the stairs?

Mamagoose is a genius on how to make the low ceiling walls work for sleeping and storage. Hope she will chime in here and lead you to her post where this was shown. It really was an efficient use of space.

One thing I discovered over the years of us having company or not. You can always make do. Even if parents can not climb stairs You and hubby can sleep up for the short visit times. It is inconvenient a bit for you but it id doable then no worries of privacy or kids jumping over the rail. Or maybe close in the wall with a big window. We looked at a house that way and it was good because it shared the light but kept the privacy with curtains when wanted.

Just adding I really like this second one better but it is you that has to live there.

I like the 2nd one also. being able to later add on to it would be good.

Folks its a TEMPORARY house. More sf, more features =more expensive... and a significant amt of #2 appears to be wasted, unnecessary space (entry, under eaves, air space over LR, etc) Id save the $$$ for the main house and plan this to be your guest cottage or whatever your original intention is

I agree with kashka_kat. I would not put the time, energy, and money into building a temporary house.

5th wheels with slides have a lot of space and would work fine for two weeks at a time, as long as you aren't in Alaska or somewhere so cold you can't keep it warm. Also, if you buy it used, you can probably sell it with little loss in a couple of years.

You wouldn't want to start construction on a guest house, and then go off and leave it every 2 weeks, unless you have a construction company building it, and then there's that much more money spent on a house that is temporary.

And last reason for not building 2 houses, is that building is stressful, and after building one house, even a small temp house, you won't want to build another so soon.

I agree with not building two homes. Unless you DIY it, the cost may be surprisingly more than you think and might prevent you from saving for your main house. If you DIY it and are only there two weeks a month, it might take the entire two years and you will still need another place to live while doing the DIY.

* First go with a clothes processer rather than a stackable
washer and dryer. Clothes processors are
"the" standard in Europe. They wash and dry all in one machine. They are less than 35 inches tall, only 24 wide and only take up 25-27 inches
deep.

That would give you more counter and another upper cabinet. You are really lacking in kitchen storage --
our 5th wheel RV has 50% more storage . You don't have much space for food +
dishes + glasses and cups + cookware.

* push the sink over so it is next to the corner. That might buy you enough space for an
18" dishwasher.

* woodstoves are great - had one in our cabin in the
mountains that heated the whole place.

BUT -and this is a huge BUT - you can NOT have
that chair in between the couch and the woodstove. You do not have enough clearance. There has to be minimum 36 inches from any
part of the wood stove to something flammable (wood, cloth etc.) Even a small box stove is gonna take up more
than you realize because of the clearances.

Also the stove will have to come out more from the corner -
again the heat clearances. Bare minimum
with a good heat shield would be more like 125 from its rear.

Small box stove 16
inches wide, 24 inches deep... gonna take up a huge amount of space

You have much bigger problems though as in:

(1 ) No room for a dresser for socks, undies etc. The main bedroom is TOO small - at least not
with the bed centered, That leaves you
only 42 1/2 inches on each side of
it. You need that much to get in and out
of the room-length closet. Either widen the
room or give up some closet length for a dresser space.

(2) No place for the vacuum cleaner brooms, mops etc.

(3) No place for coats
(the bedroom closet - especially
if part is a dresser - is not gonna fit everything. )

(4) No place for linens - towels, sheets, winter blankets

(5) No place for the water heater or electric box

My GARAGE is bigger than this. There is a small 'house' in the village here
that was a garage - rented by a lot of
local workers since it is cheap. They
could only fit in 1 bedroom after allowing for
brooms, water heaters, coat hooks
near the entry, linen closet etc.

To fit in the necessary things like linens and vacuums and
electric boxes and water heaters, you are gonna need to lose that 2nd bedroom

___

Sigh...just saw the 2nd version.

W a t e r h e a t e r. (Even my beloved tankless Bosh that hang on the wall still need space and are 18 inches wide with nothing above or below them)

E l e c t r 1 c J u n c t 1 o n box. (No box, no power)

H e a t - as in where are you gonn a put even a small heat pump? (Do NOT DO electric baseboard-- you will go broke. Think $400 -500 a month in the winter)

While you are still planning and since you are building on your land, I thought I'd weigh in with an alternative construction to think about.

When we were planning to build our home, we considered living on site minimally/cheaply/temporarily by constructing a basic living quarters in our 50'x96' pole barn while the house was built.

Reconsidering, we decided to go all in and within our pole building constructed a 1000' living quarters with more quality/ permanent finishes. We live there still and love it.

50'x66' of the building (including the finished living quarters) is insulated, rough finish dry-walled and heated with a wood furnace. We can move our vehicles out of the garage portion, wash the floor, set up tables, decorate and host for large family gatherings.

The furnace is in the garage area along with DH's work shop/man cave. All the messy wood and ashes are out there along with the water heater and a gas furnace (for when we are too old to cut wood).

The living quarters is on the right side in this pic. We screened in the 10'x32' front porch for more outside living. Even though we have a large building, our home is a small space.

The pool table is in the garage area too! You can see it in this party picture.

Behind the walk in door on the right is the 50'x30' unheated area of the pole barn. The extra space is wonderful storage for our utility trailers, ATVs, camper, etc.

A crew erected, skinned and set windows and exterior doors for the pole barn. With very little experience, my husband and I built and finished out the interior by ourselves. We lived in our small camper during construction.