I can't answer your question, but I'd like to make a couple of comments about your plans. My Mom has a small lake cottage, and even though it is just a weekend place, we still need storage space; your plan has very little. Where will you put beach towels, a vacuum cleaner and broom?

I would make both closets reach-in instead of walk-in, and add the extra space to the bathroom and the right bedroom.

Sorry, I don't know about concrete foundation costs.

I would make both closets reach-in instead of walk-in

They're not truly walk-ins, but I think the "entrance pocket" for the door to the right-side bedroom prevents this. What I'd do with the closets: Put at least one between the bedrooms for acoustical privacy.

Bathroom thoughts:

- I'd add just a bit more space here so the sink wouldn't be absolutely minimal. If this is all the space you can afford for the bathroom, I'd go with a pedestal sink /big and deep medicine cabinets for storage ... because the pedestal would make a tiny bathroom feel bigger.

- Note that you have no storage in this bathroom. Even in a weekend get-away, you need space for towels, extra toilet paper, etc.

- Will you take baths here, or would a shower do?

Living room thoughts:

- I'm trying to lay out furniture mentally, and I'm coming up short. With only 9' of width, I don't see how it'll come together. Is that a seating bar between the kitchen /living room? I don't think you have space for that in such a narrow area.

- Consider moving the kitchen to the entry area ... it makes better use of the space and allows for efficient furniture placement -- kitchen cabinets in blue, comfortable sectional sofa in yellow, kitchen table in red -- the negative, of course, is that the bathroom door is very visible, but that was always going to happen in such a small space:

I'd make the island two cabinets deep to get extra storage on the "back side", and I'd hide a TV in the island:

- You're building at the lake ... yet you're building a narrow house. Something wider would maximize views. Are you building with trusses? If you were to go with a standard truss - maybe 26' ? -- you'd save money /labor and get a slightly wider house.

- For fire safety, you need a second door.

- You're going to generate dirty clothes and towels, yet you have no washer/dryer. You're not going to want to transport these things back and forth.

- Who will stay in this house? Could you go with one small bedroom and a set of bunks in the hallway (covered by curtains)? This would free up some space to make the living space more comfortable.

- I assume you'll be on the porch a lot. I'd consider making it wider than 7'7" -- I have a 12' wide porch, and it's a comfortable width; we're able to arrange the furniture so we can face one another instead of being in a straight line AND still have walking space.

- One last thought: Take a look at Ross Chapin's small houses. The smallest are in the same tiny ballpark as you're considering, but they're laid out so nicely ... I think the dining nooks are a wonderful use of space.

Sorry I don't know costs. It all depends on your area, what utilities are already there, etc.

Is the lake in the front of the house or the back?

If you have a queen sized bed you only have 27" of walk space on either side of the bed. That isn't wide enough to comfortably walk around. 30" is minimum and 36" is better.

Agree about the lack of closets. Agree about the bathroom.

Absolutely agree about needing a second doorway.

Ask the local contractor(s). Costs vary by location.

I can't comment on costs and likely no one here could. But the thing that sticks out to me is where will your mechanical space be? Or is this a primitive cabin with no HVAC or hot water? I also think some of the comments about better storage are worth taking consideration of as well.

Custom homes usually start at about $200 a square foot, exclusive of land and development costs. You're not doing a complete build, but the thing is, smaller costs more per square foot than larger. And you want to strip most of the profit out of the house, so whomever is going to need to raise prices to deal with that sµck as well. You could likely add on non kitchen and bath related 500 sf, and have him do a complete build and barely notice a increase blip in the total.

Sophie......that's complete BS! It should NOT cost more to build a smaller house!!!! Unless you're in the NE or Ca where they will sr@ew you to make a HUGE profit!!!!!

It doesn't cost more in total to build a small house, it costs more per square foot.

No one's thrown a number at it yet, so I'll put my WAG at $50 a square foot. In rural areas with low COL and minimal government interference, it could even be less. There are so many factors that affect cost-

Site work- could be minimal, could be enormous

Permits and fees- Range from zero to tens of thousands

Building codes- In some rural areas, there's no AHJ (Authority Having Jursidiction), so you could build a tarpaper shack and have at it. Other areas have stringent, some could even say draconian rules. In some locations, you could be required to have a fire sprinkler system.

In some places, you might be held to a tight building schedule, with only a set amount of time allotted to get a Certificate of Occupancy. Some places won't let you work on your own house! Some areas have minimum size rules (I assume you've checked on this). Even in rural SC, we found land with a 2500 square foot minimum size restriction.

The problem now days is that pretty much any structure is subject to the same building and energy codes. If it could be lived in full time, it is assumed that it will be lived in full time, and so has to meet all of the codes. Even if it is just a summer camp, you could be required to have a heating system. Unless you are building in an area with minimal codes, everything has to be up to current codes- plumbing, electrical, energy efficiency, etc.

It annoys me just a little bit that if one owns there own land, they have to follow all of the rules, even the ones that clearly don't make sense. I should be able to build a little shack in the woods and live like folks did 100 years ago, but it's not possible in most places today.

Enough of my opinions. Find out who your AHJ is, and find out what codes they follow, and what's expected. Being on a lake, pay close attention to rules about environmental impact. Find out what the permits and fees would run. I have a friend in CT who paid $66K in fees and permits (Yes, that's sixty-six thousand dollars!) By comparison, my permits in SC ran $400, and I have a friend who built in rural TN, and he had no permits or inspections at all.

Higher cost per square foot is the end result, but the individual items I mentioned cost just as much for a small house as for a large one. Another item I neglected to mention is driveway installation. The actual building permit is priced according to square footage, but other permits cost just as much. You also have to keep in mind that each contractor will have the same travel and set-up time, so their cost per hour will be higher.

We originally were considering a second floor, but decided that, for us, it was unnecessary. Unlike what Sophie said, the extra square footage would NOT have cost the same as what we ended up building. I do think The Cabbage was not terribly lucrative for the builder – I notice they no longer offer it.

We also have the added benefit of very low heating costs -- about $60/month in winter. Of course, this is Oregon, so snow as pictured above is rare.

Sophie......that's
complete BS! It should NOT cost more to build a smaller house!!!!
Unless you're in the NE or Ca where they will sr@ew you to make a HUGE
profit!!!!!

I get what she's saying: A smaller house costs more PER SQUARE FOOT. A bigger house will have a bigger total price tag.

Why? Because a small house still needs a kitchen and bathroom, and those pieces are the most expensive rooms in the house. You still need all your appliances, and you still need to run plumbing and electrical. And with a small house, you lose economy of scale; for example, let's say your plumber comes out and plumbs one bathroom for you ... he's already made the trip, already unloaded his tools, etc. ... if he stays and plumbs a second bathroom, that second bathroom costs less.

As usual, the desire to live simply and in an earth-friendly manner comes at a premium. No good deed goes unpunished...

blue.....you did bring up somethings I didn't think about. Some places outright rip people off 'steal' on permits! Elect cost psf, plumb costs per item(they don't give discounts on having more bathrooms....unless it's a relative), so you don't save on building a larger house.

That's ALLOT of snow!!!!!!!!

Built a small beach house few years ago. Total cost was $240k or so for 2000 sqft. But here is what I remember about some fixed costs.

Septic was $16k

Gravel drive and rain mitigation $5k

Finishes - ie flooring, cabinets etc - $25k, paint $3k

Just throwing out some numbers. Note the finishes after drywall were just over 10%. IE you don't save all that much money DIY the interior on a basic house.

Note the septic. It was huge for this house as a percentage. In this case our contractor was $54k on the total so septic was almost 10% of the build. This small house could (not likely) have a similar septic bill. I know people who have had to pay $10k to get electricity to a rural location.

I would second the AHJ question.

If you spend 200K on a 1000 sf house because you have the lot clearing, driveway building, electric run, well dug, septic engineered, and a small house with a 10x10 kitchen and 8x5 bath built, then the large part of the expense is over and done with for all of that. Adding another 1000 sf of less expensive space like another bedroom, a garage, and a larger family room, and it might only increase the costs by 75K rather than the $200 a sf that the original 1000sf cost you. Your average sf cost (which is NOT how houses are costed!) goes way down. You've already accounted for the expensive part.

The required functional minimums for a house are where the costs are in a build. You don't want to deal with that, go buy a couple of hundred acres in Idaho and live off the grid completely with no automobile. No contact with outside humans at all. Your environmental impact on a couple of hundred acres will be negligible. But, you attempt that on a 5 acre lot, and your outhouse next to your neighbor's well and a mud driveway won't go ever so well. Civilization has it's requirements and costs.

In our location (semi-urban), the cost per sq ft is higher for a smaller house. We accept that as part of the cost of living here.

Sophie -- While I agree with you on site prep costs not generally being included, your other points really depend upon the jurisdiction. We built our 783 square foot house on 4 acres just half an hour outside of Portland, Oregon.

We were incredibly fortunate to find a beautiful, semi-secluded property in the forested hills with a seasonal view of the Cascade Mountains that already had septic (sorry–no outhouse), well, electric and long gravel driveway (I wouldn't have asphalt if you paid me) in place and in great shape.

We do suffer the scorn of hipsters by living in a decidedly unfashionable area – in urban Portlandia, our area is considered a hick backwater, but we're loners so this doesn't matter to us. We do keep our progressive political views and artistic proclivities to ourselves, lol.

We paid more per square foot than we would have for a larger home, but we built simply in a style and size that suited us and our sensibilities, and the overall cost of building, site prep (property was already paid off – also at a great price), and upgrades to please my graphic designer tastes totaled right around $106/square foot. (I just double-checked my spreadsheet on that.)

Many of the very true statements on this thread are wrapped in thinly veiled judgment and disapproval. This may not be the way for all to build, but like many, we did not want to be forced into the de rigueur giant house. It's worthwhile for us to pay more per foot for what we really want.

bluesanne - I think we're practically neighbors! We choose to live in Clackamas county which I'm sure is terribly unfashionable to those sweet hipsters of Portlandia. I'm glad you shared photos of your home and floor plan; I love small homes too.

Robin, same house still one bath and one kitchen, but 500 sq. Feet more living space will certanly cost more overall, but is going to cost significantly less per square foot. That's what people are trying to tell you.

If
you spend 200K on a 1000 sf house because you have the lot clearing,
driveway building, electric run, well dug, septic engineered, and a
small house with a 10x10 kitchen and 8x5 bath built, then the large part
of the expense is over and done with for all of that. Adding another
1000 sf of less expensive space like another bedroom, a garage, and a
larger family room, and it might only increase the costs by 75K rather
than the $200 a sf that the original 1000sf cost you. Your average sf
cost (which is NOT how houses are costed!) goes way down. You've already accounted for the expensive part.

It'd be more fair to say that the first X number of square feet COST BIG because you're bringing in electrical, plumbing, appliances ... but you essentially have a discount (which is really economy of scale) on the additional square footage in a larger house.

benjesbride, We're on the other side of town from you in Columbia County, out in the hills between Scappoose and Vernonia. I grew up close to where you are now in Happy Valley – back when it was a bucolic, semi-rural community rather than the monstrosity it has become – so I know well how incredible Clackamas County is. Sometimes I think that people get so caught up in their coolness that they forget to look up and see the jaw-dropping beauty that surrounds them throughout the region.