will work for roses - The gables in the front will cost more than not having any gables in the front, but any house over 2000 sq.ft. and on two levels will "need" a few gables and "juts/cuts" in the roof line or it will look very awkward in my personal opinion. I will tell you that of some of the more complex plans, the O'Neal is a fairly medium to medium-high complexity for the roof and foundation layout compared to other homes with similar curb appeal in my opinion. Many builders would tell you that it will be too expensive to build, but that's a relative term. There are 18 corners in the foundation which isn't all that many for a house this size when you compare it to say the "Harmony Mountain Cottage" plan by Garrell & Associates which has over 30 foundation cuts in a 2300 sq.ft. design (see it here: http://houseplans.designsdirect.com/disp_pic.asp?sf=GAR%2Frenderings%2F06110FrntRndrng1.jpg&planid=5995&planName=Harmony+Mountain+Cottage&viewName=First+Floor+Plan&filename=GAR/floorplans/06110FrstFlrPln1_f.gif). You can easily have more than 20 in a 1500 sq.ft. house if you start picking out plans that have tremendous curb appeal. Another higher cost in this plan will likely be the hipped roof design versus a traditional gabled end design, but that debate is one that should be saved for another day b/c a gabled roof and a hipped roof have two very distinctly different looks and it all depends on what "look" you want overall for the house. I personally would like the O'Neal and Luxembourg much much less if it were a traditional gabled end roof design. Anyways, I'll move on from that. I would say look into roof trusses and see if the truss company your builder uses (if they even use them at all) can truss the roof you want as it will save you money and time versus traditional framing and you can use attic room trusses in a lot of instances and what can't be trussed can then be stick framed on site by your framing crew. As for the potential savings, I look at it this way: your garage gables are going to be the same on almost all plans (some may only have one large gable, but adding the 2' bumpout doesn't add that much to the cost of building, at least not enough to not do it on a house like this as the added appeal is well worth it in my opinon.) So far so good! You'll also likely have another small gable like the one over the bathroom window on the O'Neal somewhere on the plan, so still no real additional costs. The gable over the front second level bedroom is going to be there on almost all two story plans that have a bedroom over the dining room or else they look very funny. Even if no bedroom on the front of the house in the second level you'll likely still have a couple of dormers or one large oversized gable highlighting the two story foyer. Still not going above and beyond in my opinion. The large columns and the additional gable/pitch over the entry is the "knock-out-punch" on the O'Neal and Luxembourg plans and if you lose those you change the entire appeal of the house. Yes, it will cost you more than not doing it, but to tell you how much it costs would be nearly impossible. Your builder will be the one to ask based on your finishing materials. It would really still be a "it depends" answer. B/c it depends on if you do the columns in stone and the exact way the plan calls for like in the Luxembourg_southmountain.." photo in the link I posted above, or if you buy pre-assembled columns made from pvc or other similar material like the ones in the picture of my friends house that is labeled "December_17...". The front entry my friend built will likely cost a good deal less than the other, but he spent a good bit on the real stone for the front, which is awesome and so he hasn't really sacrificed the look by doing the pre-made columns. I just think it's important to keep overall scale in mind when choosing the columns b/c you can make a big house look very awkward very fast by changing the scale of important features like these bold front entry columns. You could always lose the arched window over the front door that illuminates the grand foyer and reduce the height of the arched gable over the front door to save money, but without drawing that out I wouldn't be able to tell you that would look okay, although I'm sure it would still look nice. If I were building this house, I'd keep the big archway above the door just like it is, not just for exterior looks, but for the massive impact it has from the inside as well. The back of the O'Neal house will always need to have the gable where the bedroom is on the second level because there is no other way to get the bedroom in without adding the additional roof clearance in the gable. The additional bump-out for the great room could be squared off to match the rear wall in the master bedroom and breakfast nook, etc. if you wanted to take out that gable to save some money. You would also take out some of the grand windows in the rear of the great room, which also makes this plan so great, but if you don't have people gazing at the rear of your house all day, every day then you may not care. As I mentioned, he lives on the tee box of a nice golf course and so more people see the rear of his house than the front so that wasn't really an option. One way you could essentially reduce some of the cost to build this and up/meet your sq.ft. requirements would be to square off the back of the house by adding another couple of feet to the master bedroom and breakfast nook, additional main level bath and back bedroom/garage if you needed more width in garage, etc. and that would remove 2 corners in your foundation (save a little $$$) and also remove the additional gable and siding that goes on it, painting the siding or the cost of stone if you were to stone it like my friend did, etc. which would also save $$$. It wouldn't be enough to justify building this plan if you were $25k off, but each little bit you can make a little easier will help you get your costs in line. One more thing I noticed in his plan is that he has additional unfinished and un-floored attic space over his master bedroom and master closet area because he did a tray ceiling like the plan calls for in the master bedroom. If you were to nix the tray ceiling or start with the 9' ceiling in the center and build the tray down to 8' on the sides versus the traditional way its done of starting with 9' on the outsides and building up to 10' in the middle you could have additional sq.ft. above the master that otherwise would be wasted. You already have the roof, foundation, primary wiring ran, ductwork to master, etc that you could easily tie into and add cheaper sq.ft. to get you to your goal. You would have more carpeting and sheetrock and lighting, painting, wiring, and may need a little more "uumph" in you HVAC unit for the added space which would add, but those are the cheaper things in the total cost of adding square footage. Just something to keep in mind. It wouldn't be an enormous room because of the hipped roof line, but it would add more that is otherwise unused or some might say wasted. I'm also linking to another great Gardner plan called the Newcastle that has an awesome "overall look & appeal" in my opinion and I would consider it a milder roof and foundation design with only 12 corners in the foundation (I didn't count the window boxes either since you can cantilever the bumpout/window-boxes if you chose to instead of building the foundation around them). The Newcastle looks great inside as well and has pictures on the site you can look at. It takes advantage of the additional attic space under the gabled roof versus the hipped roof on the O'Neal upstairs and has bedrooms on opposite sides of the upper landing versus all on one side like the O'Neal which is also why you don't need the additional gables on the front & rear of the house like in the O'Neal, but like I said earlier, you still have the two dormers on the front, but not as much as that larger gable dormer & entrance archway. Again, saving $$$!! I hope this isn't info overload, but hey, you asked!!! Here is a link that might be useful: View Newcastle Plan

Nice plan but a few things you might want to think about before finalizing: 1) This is a very complex shaped house design (i.e., lots of exterior corners). Be aware that the least expensive home to build is a basic rectangle and that every variation from the rectangle increases costs. All those juts in-and-out increase costs per square foot because they result in a higher ratio of exterior walls to interior square footage which means more framing material, more insulation, a more complicated roof-line and foundation, etc. Not saying you should change a thing... just thought you ought to be prepared for the sticker shock you may receive when you start getting bids. 2) You kitchen island is positioned so that any dirty dishes in the sink will be on display to anyone in the Great Room. No problm if you're the kind of housekeeper who keeps the sink area spic and span at all times. Me? I would want the island turned so that the raised section helped to hide my sink from the great room. But that would pretty much require an entire reshaping of the kitchen and thus the rest of the plan. So, you will probably want to keep it as is. 3) No windows in the kitchen itself? Patio deck doors and great room windows may be rather far away to provide much natural light for kitchen. You don't mention the direction your house faces and, if the wall that the fridge is against is a north wall, you might not want any windows there. But, in that case, I would question placing your screen porch on that side of the house. 4) The laundry room and mud room seem a bit cramped...especially for a home with three kids. Since the garage juts forward anyway, unless you're already running up against lot-line setbacks, consider pulling the snout of the garage forward another couple of feet and then extending the mud room and laundry room forward an equal distance into the garage to enlarge them. The cost to do so should be relatively minor compared to overall cost to build because, although you would be adding a bit of square footage, you would not be increasing the complexity of the design in any way. 5) Make ABSOLUTELY certain that your pantry is wide enough to accomodate the freezer you want to put in it... not just the one you have already. Measure the depth of the freezer you want to purchase and then add about three inches. A freezer can't sit right up against the back wall. You have to leave room for air circulation and you don't want the freezer sticking out so far into the pantry aisle that you can hardly squeeze past it. I thought I had left plenty of room for a freezer in our mudroom/pantry but freezers today are bigger than my old one. Our new one just BARELY fits. I have just exactly enough space between the freezer and the counter across the aisle to fully open the freezer door... nor an inch to spare. It works - but if my pantry/mudroom were 6 inches wider, it would feel a whole lot more spacious! Also, speaking of freezer doors, you probably don't want to put the freezer right up against the side wall or you may not be able to fully open the freezer door. It needs swinging room. Finally, make sure that at least one of your pantry doors is wide enough to get the freezer in and out of the pantry! We had to have the interior door of our pantry reframed to 36" wide b/c our builder installed a 32" exterior door on the mudroom/pantry instead of the 36" wide one specified on the plans... and we didn't notice THAT error until after we fired him and took over the build ourselves. (By that time it would have cost us thousands to reframe the exterior wall, get a new exterior door, have the cabinets on the exterior walls remade to fit the reduced space, etc., etc., etc., GRRRR!!!) 6) Similar issue to above...how much room is there between your refrigerator and your kitchen island? Unless you get a "counter depth" fridge, your new fridge could stick out as much as a foot beyond the edge of the surrounding countertop. 7) Have you thought about furniture placement yet? Bedroom 2 looks a bit problematic b/c the best position for a double bed seems to be up against the bathroom wall. But that would mean one would have to walk around the bed to get from closet to bath. Perhaps you could flip the bathroom vertically so that the tub is against the front wall and the bathroom door is close to the closet door. 8) In bedroom 3, would the door fit on that little angled section of wall? If so, I think you'd find it easier to place a full-sized bed and other furniture in the room. Besides, that would give you a nice section of wall space in the landing/hallway for a bench or maybe some book cases. 9) Not sure I agree with zookeeper93 about combining the closet and laundryroom (especially not if you can increase the size of the laundry room.) It can be nice to have a separate closet that isn't subjected to laundry room lint. And I definitely would not want my freezer in the laundry room area. Guests helping me cook sometimes need to access the freezer when my laundry room is simply not presentable. LOL! 10) I do agree with zookeeper93 tho that the angles in your master closet are going to limit the actual useable hanging space. Unfortunately, I don't think you have room enough for a door into the commode room if you try to just straighten out the wall by the commode room. I can't tell what those two little niches are between the master closet and the master bedroom (seats?, inset bookcases? art niche's?). If it were me, I would get rid of them and incorporate that area into my master closet. I would also swap where the shower and commode are. I think that would give you enough room for a closet with nice-sized USEABLE his/hers sections. Maybe something like this with a pocket door to the master bath: BTW, you need to be very careful when using pocket doors to make sure that you're not planning to attach closet rods or the supports for something like an Elfa closet system to the walls where the pocket door "hollow space" is. Remember, there are no STUDS in that space and you need STUDS to support the weight of clothing hanging on closet rods.

I've never heard of a skillion roof- I had to google it. I guess it's just an upscale term for a shed roof. Anyhow- It won't cost much more to build your floorplan as an 'L' rather than a rectangle, especially if you just have one roof plane as shown. The nice part is that the 'L' could have windows on 3 sides, which is something I personally like. The other argument against complex shapes is that they do waste a little more energy due to having more wall area. A square has the least (actually, a circle has the least). As a rectangle gets longer and skinnier, the wall area increases for the same square footage. The shape you have shown doesn't have excessive wall area, and how you build and site the house will have a bigger effect on efficiency than the actual shape.

Look at vintage 50’s -70’s home plans. Thats the era of the true Ranch. These days, lots of people call any single story home a ranch. It’s not. A ranch has a single long axis, low sloped gable, maybe with a cross gabled wing, or even two. It is 2 rooms deep along that axis. It is a simple, classic design. It was a vernacular utilitarian design at its peak production, having millions built without any professional designing them. It was also elevated and very well done as a professional design, creating a wonderful indoor outdoor connection, and rooms with a lot of light. The professionally designed MCM ranch homes are in high demand and enjoy tremendous resale value because of that design sensibility. While you can get a utilitarian design from a self designed simple ranch, or a bought plan, most lack that connection to the site that elevates a home from OK to Great. The site has to rule the design choices. Not the reverse. From the side of the property with the road cut acces, to any elevation changes that it has, to the direction that it faces. Start your exploration, not with “plans” but with the demands and constraints of the building site. You can have a well designed, thoughtful, simple plan, just as easily as you can have a poorly designed, wrong for the site, plopped, “simple” plan. https://www.google.com/amp/s/antiquealterego.com/2013/01/21/vintage-house-plans-1960s-ranches-and-l-shaped-homes/amp/