I posted before about using tigerfoam. I used in in my addition. My garage ceiling was sheetrocked by my builder, and I'm sure he did the least he could get away with. Part of my bedroom is over the garage. I'm thinking that they didn't used to build living space over garages before. Now we all see why. If someone could figure out how to retrofit insulation onto a sheetrocked garage ceiling, that would be great. For stockrex, you don't have to fill the entire space for the Tigerfoam to be effective. Just a few inches will probably stop the air leaks. Then, you can fill the rest with the same batting that you take out, if it's clean. I think that it's best to figure out where the airleaks are coming from first. My powder room shares a wall with my garage. It was always cold before we renovated, but now it's freezing. When I had a wall mount sink installed, I decided to have an access panel behind it in the garage. Cold air was flowing in through the electric plug. I sealed that. It's better, but the walls are still very cold.

Thanks for the information, Casey. Kirkhall, You bring up a valid concern, but I'm not going that direction. The house plan we've chosen has everything we need -- probably for the rest of our lives. Our ONLY reason for "prepping" the bonus space is that IF at some point our circumstances change, we want the space to be available. For example, if at some point one of our children moved back in with us, we might want to use that space. Or, if at some point in the future, our children inherit this house and think it would be perfect if only it had one more room, we'd want it to be ready to make into a real room. Mind you, I'm not saying you're wrong about codes -- only that I think the possibility of us using this space is fairly remote, and I'm willing to chance it. Ren8, I agree that this term is used -- perhaps purposefully? -- to confuse buyers. It sounds like, "Hey, here's a free room for you! A BONUS!" And it's easy to say, "Oh, look, we can afford to build an 1800 sf house! And it'll be comfortable for our family, especially with that big upstairs room!" And then once they realize the upstairs room is 500 sf OVER what they thought they could build, they've already bought the plans. Yeah, it's misleading.

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).

A 4,000 sq ft ranch (since it is all attached to the house and on the main floor) is going to be pretty expensive. The only thing you will be missing is the cabinetry and plumbing. You still have the very expensive items, foundation, walls, trusses, roof, etc. If you don't have support walls in the middle, then you need expensive supports to support the roof. Since you are paying cash, you don't need to worry about financing. I'm going to assume you aren't accountable to an HOA, because none would ever allow this. So your next hurdle (other than paying $200,000 or more for this structure) is zoning. Call your zoning dept to see if this can even be done. My guess is your home will be assessed very high due to being a 5,200 square foot ranch. Resale will be non-existent.