What does your roommate have to say? I would not care to live under someones house, or over someones garage.

I would not want a "stranger" living below my living spaces. It would be like living in an apartment and having to worry about sounds bothering the neighbors. I also think with a studio apartment above the garage you can do a separate HVAC (mini split type) and have it be a more comfortable space.

PPF - I'm not building FOR our current roommate / farm care taker. My husband and I are building based on factors such as finances, least amount of maintenance going into the future. For example are basements on going problems? I don't know, I've never had one, so that is why I'm posting here. I've also never lived in a house with a garage.

Many people live in MIL suits of various types in various locations of a home. If you don't want to then why bother responding to this thread?

I have a MIL apartment above our garage and pantry and then we have the kid's bedrooms in the walkout basement. We have dual zoned heating so that when the kids move out, we can turn it down/off down there and save money. We also have the apt above the garage on it's own mini system dual zoned with the pantry/mudroom and apartment. The only room below that there is sound issues in is under the kitchen....you don't realize how LOUD you are in the kitchen until you put your 13 yr old daughter's bedroom below it! :P (and I do hear my son when he practices drums! :) ) So, if you were to do a walkout I would put the office under the kitchen. I don't think an additional 1/2 bath in the basement connected to the office would be excessive. You could layout the basement in a way that the office bath and roomie's bath were back to back to save plumbing costs. I think you could really design the basement to meet your needs. BUT....what makes sense for resale? Is this the kind of property that when you sell it someone will be looking for a 'caretaker' for the property so a separate living quarters will be wanted? I don't think a basement apartment will feel separate if it's not a relationship like you have now with your roomie. Could you do the apt. and then put the office with a 1/2 bath in the basement? You could finish only the section of the basement you're using? Just a thought, since you seem to need a common area for parents (which if my kid was riding at your place, I would really appreciate that) AND a separate space for a caretaker.

I worried that, with the walk-out basement, it would look like a 3 story town house VS a cute colonial farmhouse.

Bingo! If you plan to do the walk out, do a slightly larger single level plan with main level master and guest bedrooms in the lower level.

Your needs are complex enough to need an experienced and talented designer to work with you to explore siting, interior space planning and exterior design...an architect!

It will save you time, money and headaches. Really!

Good luck on your project.

Virgil is right. Site planning with agricultural properties is especially important and goes well beyond designing a nice house. All the buildings should be aesthetically harmonious and sited carefully for functionality and to avoid noise and odor nuisances.

@Summet Studio Architects - noise and odor nuisances? LOL We are not living IN the barn. Gosh. My 8 stall horse barn is about 125 ft away from my house, with a pasture fence and the riding arena coming within about 50ft of our house and we don't smell (or hear) anything (inside or out for that matter). We're not running a commercial hog farm out here. LOL

We did hire someone to do a site map for us (where to put the house, a riding arena, the barn) and $2,000 later what they came back with was... well let's put it this way, I've either owned or managed horse farms for the last 20 years. Their lay out left little to be desired. ;-) I went to a friend of ours that does grading work that also has horses and we picked out the best spot for the riding arena and planned around that.

Our whole layout:

In regards to this "do a slightly larger single level plan with main level master and guest bedrooms in the lower level."

We went back to the builder with that, having a 2200 sq ft single story 'ranch'.

In the end it was way more cost effective to go with the walk-out basement due to how slopped the ground is and what it was going to cost for a larger foot print with a crawl space foundation. And the way this 10 acres is, it is ROLLING and the back 3 acres are in a flood zone, and the house has to be 100' off the road. We are very limited where we can put the house due to those factors and where the perc site is and the best location for the well. It's going to cost about $3,500 to fill for the 20 X 24 garage. A basement was the most affordable way for us to go.

So the plans have been finalized. I love what they came back with as far as the walkout basement (and there really were not very many options based on where the stairs were and how I wanted outside access to both the tenant's space and my office and we didn't want support poles all over the place). I feel like this layout will easily lend itself to outdoor entertaining if / when we decide we're done with a tenant. :)

This is the back of the actual house, without a walkout basement - that I did a bit of photoshop work to.

I'm waiting for the plans to come back for the outside view of the back of the house with the walkout basement, but this is what we are anticipating it looking like (close enough) :

Why in the world would you, as you get older, want to walk to an upstairs bedroom, and down to each and spend your day? Have you considered one-level living, at least for the two of you?

I don’t know how many students you have, but if I were running any kind of riding establishment with lessons and parents, and waiting clients etc. I would not have those areas be part of the main house (“public” bathroom and the waiting/sitting rooms). Those areas would be part of the barn. I would never mix the two. You could also have a very small office there, as well as having a home office inside your main dwelling. I would treat the horse facility and those who visit there as a completely separate entity. I would also have separate laundry facilities in or attached to the barn for washing saddle pads etc. I would not want to wash all that in my “home” washing machine.

nidnay - at our current facility we have an 8 stall barn with a bathroom, 12' X 18' office, and 12' X 24' tackroom, with the barn being about 125' away from the back of our house (facing it actually). I've lived here for 18 years now and we RARELY EVER use the stalls, so we don't plan on building a 'stable' (or a barn with stalls). The horses are going to live out with shelters in each pasture. Our current barn had to have it's own it's own septic system. $$$

The current land we are looking at only had one perc site for 4 bedrooms. I don't want to pay for the test for a second perc ($250) plus the cost of having another septic system (about $4K), as well as creating a climate controlled office and bathroom in the barn (a mini split system is about $3K and a 2 piece bathroom probably around $2K). That is about $10K right there in a separate septic, a 2 piece bathroom, and office and climate control for both (as well as permitting, creating plans, etc.). All things that would have already been in the house at the square footage we had to build. Plus grading for a large barn was going to be expensive. We found a place next to the house to put in a modest shed row 'barn' for a tack room, feed room and grooming, that will work with the topography of the land for minimal grading work.

We did this to keep things cost effective. It's just my husband and I living in this house, it's not like we have kids to keep separated from my business. We're both fine with this situation. The door up the stairs to the main floor will have a lock on it. And I don't have a lesson mill program, I focus on quality not quantity. I've been teaching for over 20 years now. I keep about 8 weekly students at any given time. I get to know my students and my parents well... my students tend to stick around for years. Same for my boarders. We'll have 2 or 3 boarders at the new location. At our current facility 3 of our customers have been with us for 5+ years. At one point or another I end up paying most of my students and all of my boarders to house sit / dog sit / farm sit for us when we go on vacation. I'm pretty confident they are not going to bust the door down to access the main floor of my home. And they won't be there at inappropriate hours of the day / night anyhow.

Vigil Carter - I guess you didn't read my last post.

We priced out a 1 story 'ranch' with the same builder. 2200 sq ft was going to cost $209,000 THEN another $15K because of the sloped ground to add more courses to the crawl space foundation.

This 1700 sq ft two story house, without walkout basement, came in at $178K pre-basement. The cost of the completely finished 840 sq ft basement, with a grand total heated sq ft of 2540, came to a total less than the single story 2200 sq ft ranch. Though we could have gotten a separate entrance in-law space, the in-law space would have been way smaller (by over 150 sq ft) and I would not have had an office that was separate from my main living space.

I lift 50 pound bags of feed and hay nearly daily and my husband is military / infantry, we are active horse riders and hikers. I think we can handle interior stairs for another 12+ years. :) At that point if it starts to bother us then we can add a master suit to the side of the house (which we had already spec'd out anyhow but we just do not need at this time).

I hope you can handle those stairs. I'm ex-Special Forces. I wonder why I took so long to finally get to one-level living.

Hope you can live in your new design longer than 12 years...!

Sorry if I missed some of this but why would you not do a 1700 sqft ranch with a partial finished basement (500sqft)? And then that cost would be only a little more than your colonial.

High crawls are a bit of a waste but done very often in our area. The incremental cost to do a basement is not much. Modern basements are not usually a problem with moisture. IMO - if you have the sloped land and your are trying to work on a tight budget, build a walkout and shrink the upstairs.

That being said - I reread your roomie situation. Neither a basement or a garage is ideal so asking the roomie seems like a good idea. If you get up at 5 and go to the gym - will the garage door wake up roomie? If not, seems like the garage is best but more costly.

The deed restriction of 2,200 sq.ft. is commonly understood to be above grade and heated. That's the minimum. I don't think your 1,700 sq.ft. plan is going to qualify. I would confirm that with the County before I proceeded any further. The basement doesn't count in the calculation, even if it's finished.

I've had two rental situations. One home had both a detached cottage and a basement rental set up. We found that we, a couple with large dogs, were much happier when the basement was not rented. We could make as much noise as we wanted at any hour of the day or night. With the tenant in residence, we were always aware of their presence. It disturbed our enjoyment of the home. MY DH said we would never do that arrangement again.

Our current home has a detached three car-garage. Above the garage is a one bedroom rental apartment with one bath. The original owner built it first to live in and as storage while the main house was being built. There is also a half-bath downstairs in the garage that would be perfect for the situation that you are describing. Adjacent to the half-bath is a washer dryer hookup that the tenant can use and a water filter system. The garage is on well and septic, while the main house is on county water and sewer. (That is a very unusual situation.) The downstairs of the garage is also heated and air-conditioned and an office had been set up in the third bay. We removed the office wall and offer the third bay as covered parking to our tenant for an extra cost. So far, all of our tenants have wanted the space.

I wanted to suggest the detached garage set up as an alternative to the basement proposal.

homechef59 - the 2200 sq ft requirement isn't with the county, it is with the 'community'. The person who wrote and is in control of the covenants and approves all building actually told us to do a walk-out basement, and approved our house plans as 2200 sq foot, with 1700 sq ft being above grade and another 800-something being below. As long as he approves it... I also believe that the state of North Carolina counts a finished / heated basement as final square footage meeting criteria that the ceiling is over 7ft, it is heated/cooled, has an exterior door and is finished.

Doing a detached garage (which my husband did not want because he wants to go from the house to garage to get to his car) was going to be more expensive and NOT count towards the sq footage requirements.

David Cary - read my previous post to explain the cost between a 2200 sq ft ranch on this sloped land and the basement and adding sq ft below this 1700 sq ft colonial.

We priced out a 1 story 'ranch' with the same builder. 2200 sq ft was going to cost $209,000 THEN another $15K because of the sloped ground to add more courses to the crawl space foundation.

This 1700 sq ft two story house, without walkout basement, came in at $178K pre-basement. The cost of the completely finished 840 sq ft basement, with a grand total heated sq ft of 2540, came to a total less than the single story 2200 sq ft ranch. Though we could have gotten a separate entrance in-law space, the in-law space would have been way smaller (by over 150 sq ft) and I would not have had an office that was separate from my main living space.

At our current facility we have an 8 stall barn with a bathroom, 12' X 18' office, and 12' X 24' tackroom, with the barn being about 125' away from the back of our house (facing it actually). I've lived here for 18 years now and we RARELY EVER use the stalls, so we don't plan on building a 'stable' (or a barn with stalls). The horses are going to live out with shelters in each pasture. Our current barn had to have it's own it's own septic system. $$$

The current land we are looking at only had one perc site for 4 bedrooms. I don't want to pay for the test for a second perc ($250) plus the cost of having another septic system (about $4K), as well as creating a climate controlled office and bathroom in the barn (a mini split system is about $3K and a 2 piece bathroom probably around $2K). That is about $10K right there in a separate septic, a 2 piece bathroom, and office and climate control for both (as well as permitting, creating plans, etc.). All things that would have already been in the house at the square footage we had to build. Plus grading for a large barn was going to be expensive. We found a place next to the house to put in a modest shed row 'barn' for a tack room, feed room and grooming, that will work with the topography of the land for minimal grading work.

This set up also gave the 'roommate' a kitchenette with no oven/stove. The basement gives them a full kitchen. And then if we ever wanted to be roommate free WE PERSONALLY FELT this would leave an awkward space... more so than a full kitchen in a basement that could be called a man-cave / entertainment space / visitors on extended stays (grown children with their own family / the grandkids for example).

It truly got down to money and how expensive just the foundation on a 2200 sq ft ranch on this sloped land was going to be.

The only thing we are waiting for is the lender to do their appraisal. The builder doesn't seem to think there will be a problem with it appraising out with the finished walk-out basement.