Your rv area is 20' wide. Wonderful, but could you make it 2 or 3 feet narrower? Then, you could give that 2 or 3 feet to your living room/kitchen area.

We just enlarged it from 18' to 20' upon the advice of folks at an RV forum who have built RV garages. One reason we did too is because one wall will have cabinets, workbench, and tools. That's 3'. The RV, with slide extended is 10.5'. Room to walk around the RV, and pull tools around to work on it inside the garage is another 6-7'. That's almost 21'.

I would add some windows on the side of the rv space, even if high, awning types that could be cracked open for ventilation and light, if needed.

That's an idea we haven't considered. We need to see if we would be able to get to them to open and shut the windows and the rolling shades we would have to put on them.

Your guest bedroom - Think about placing the bed on the front wall, instead of the bathroom wall. Now, you can put a door to the bathroom, into that bedroom and you don't need the 1/2 bath, in the house, if you don't want one. The bedroom chair can still go in the corner, where you currently picture the bed, I think.

I'm not sure I follow you. 3 doors into that 1/2 bath? We do need the half bath. We only need one shower, but we definitely need two toilets.

Where you currently have the 1/2 bath, maybe that could be a closet, for whatever is in those 2 small closets in the hallways to the bedrooms? OR, you could enlarge your master closet into that area. ...If you remove the small closets, you might be able to widen your master closet.

The other two small closets are for the water heater and HVAC.

Since you are gone in the RV, most a good part of the year, do you need a hallway for the master bedroom? If you don't need a separated master bedroom, and you can get rid of those small closets, you can mov eh stairs back further, toward the master closet. That gains you at least 3 feet of space in your great room.

I hadn't considered that. I don't have a problem not having a hallway to the master. But I don't see where I could put the door from the living room.

What if you re-configure the entire bedroom side. Since you don't have guests, often and you were considering a jack and jill/shared bathroom. Why not just have one nice bathroom, between the 2 bedrooms that has it's entrance in the hallway?

I definitely want a half bath on either side of the shower room.

Personally, we don't like the idea of having to go through the bathroom to get to our master closet. If someone is using the bathroom, the other one, is not able to get into the closet. So, at the least, I would consider re-doing your existing bathroom, so that you have a more spacious vanity. As it looks now, you are wasting an entire foot of space in the bathroom, that could be used in the living room.

I don't like rooms that have a door on every wall, especially bedrooms. I'd rather have my clothes in a convenient location when I get out of the shower instead of having to walk through the bedroom to the closet. Are you saying the half bath off the master is too wide?

I would not make your porches any smaller. As it is, a 6' porch, sort of makes you sit like ducks in a row, if you have guests and it's harder to talk. Someone has to lean out to look at the person down the row of chairs. As a matter of fact, why not use ALL the space for your living room/kitchen and add shed roofed porches, to any width you like? Surely, they could do that.

If we have people over, we will be in the car garage used as screened breezeway. We can set up tables, chairs, and cookout in there without flies and mosquitoes. We seldom sit outside now because it's not very pleasant.

Thanks for looking this over. You've given me a lot to think about.

First, there's the elephant in the room: This is probably the most taste-specific house we've ever discussed on this website. Not many people want a house that's 50% garage /tandem garage or a house with only two bedrooms -- if it's what you really want, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it means you'd have a very, very hard time re-selling the house if you ever need/want to do so. If you're planning to borrow to build the house, the bank might not be so willing to loan on something unusual.

Having said that, I think you need to flip-flop some of the rooms. Why? Because you've given one of the best spots (a corner, where you can have natural light from two directions) to the tiny guest bedroom, while the living room is squished into the middle of the house. If you re-arrange as follows, you get the good windows in your living room and your bedroom -- probably the rooms where you spend the most time.

By laying out the public rooms in a "shotgun layout" -- that is, the main rooms all in a straight line -- you save square footage.

I like the attic stairs on the side of the living room -- this arrangement allows the sofa to "cuddle up" into the L. And you don't want to waste the space under the staircase, so you can have some under-angle storage in the master closet (I see that I didn't give you a dor into the master closet -- that's a mistake. You do, however, have a real laundry room with a door into the master closet, which is a big convenience.

You had a bath and a half, but to make that work you had a whole lot of wasted space /walking space in those bathrooms -- by making the bathrooms pretty minimal, I fit in two full baths -- the only extra cost here is one tub.

The secondary bedroom is no longer tiny; in fact, it's the same size as the master. The master is still nicer, though, because it has nicer windows and a nicer bathroom and closet.

The kitchen is bigger ... and the table is now next to the kitchen rather than being placed across the room. And you have a pantry ... though I see that you don't have a desk anywhere; the pantry could easily become a pocket office ... or you could push the master shower towards the guest bedroom /make a pocket office at the end of the hallway where the shower is now.

Instead of two small hallways, you now have one wide hallway -- with a bookcase on the end as a nice focal point.

Do you see what I messed up? I used your exterior dimensions ... but I forgot your porches. These rooms aren't small, so you could squish them a bit and still have a porch across the whole front of the house.

- The idea of adding windows /a door /whatever to the RV garage is a good one. However, if you're making one garage "nicer", I'd plan on using it as your guest entertaining space.

- I'd rather have one 12' porch than two 6' porches. You could put in a little stoop to mark your front door and shelter guests from the weather -- something like this would cost little:

- I have the impression that you're a retired couple, and you say you'll be out RVing much of the year ... yet your plans can "house" three cars. If you're away from home much of the time, one of these cars'll just be sitting there losing value. I wonder if you might be just as happy with the RV and one car.

-

LOL, Ms. Pete. This is a lot like one of our first drawings:

Lily's mom, I see I wasn't clear either. I meant since we didn't have guests often, I didn't care whether they had a door directly into a bathroom.

I am not saying the master/1/2 bath is too wide, but it is wide, for what's in that space. It's 7'9" by 6'3" just for a toilet and single vanity sink. ....... uggggghhhhh..... I am so sorry, I have completely missed your 2 pocket doors which create your jack and jill bath, so that the 1/2 guest bath and your 1/2 master can both use the shower. Narrow the master 1/2 bath and shower area to 6'9".

I see what you are saying now. The master half bath is wider, but because of the shower room. I'm not 100% sure what size the shower will be. I need to go talk to the people who make it and get exact measurements. From what I've read online, I think it is 6'x3'. I also need a linen cabinet of some kind in there and was waiting to see how the shower was configured to see how much room was left. It looks like the only place to put it is across from the stacked washer/dryer. So I could move the wall just in the half bath by that amount. But imo, it makes the master closet even harder to work with.

I totally agree that taking a foot off both bedrooms is a good idea. I'm just afraid that taking a foot out of the shower room leaves no where to put towels and laundry items. And now I'm reminded that there is no where for dirty clothes. We have a built in hamper in our current bathroom. Hmmm, now have to figure out where to put that. Somewhere not in our closet preferably.

Dh talked to a metal building company owner today and got a little more information about how they are built. It is both good and bad news. He had said originally that we couldn't go over 40, but that's not exactly what he meant. Every 20 feet is a larger support post than the rest. He said they can do 25 feet but prefer 20. So that's where the 40 came in. however, we could do 45 and have a 20 section and a 25 section. Or we could do 50 and have two 25 foot sections. It will also depend on which builder we use and the roof pitch.

They also discussed our current needs and future needs and suggested for our current lifestyle, that we make the garages longer so we can park the pickup AND RV in there. Will make it easier for quick weekend trips.

So we need to make a plan based on what we would really like, and then tweak it with the builder. If we make the RV garage 50', we can get both RV and pickup inside. Then we can either extend the apartment side so it is also 50', or we can T in with another section. I haven't had time to sit down and play with these new sizes, but it helps.

(That's all the good part. The bad part is that it needs to be in uniform sizes.)

What about residential building codes for foundation and insulation that will make your plan more expensive than a standard conventionally constructed home and separate storage structure?

We will get quotes from a traditional builder as well on a comparable sized traditional house. However, other than septic, there are no building codes to follow. It is in an unincorporated part of the county. Barndominiums are getting to be very popular here. As far as cost, it may not be any cheaper than a regular house, but doubt it will be more. The benefit is in the taxes.