A Rough Floorplan
January 22, 2008
Well, here you go. A rough floorplan of the house we are going to build. It measures 24′x40′. It will be on a pier and beam foundation and have a gambrel roof.
Here is the upstairs. There will be a wall between the bunks, but no door - kind of dormitory style. There will be a dormer where the bathroom is.
The plan is to live in this house until we build Katie’s dream house, then this will become a rental cabin.
Like I said, this is just a rough floorplan. I know it is not exactly to scale. We are trying to make the space as useful as we can, being we are going to be cramming 14 people into it. I want to hear all the good ideas you guys have.
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:41 pm
I only counted 4 sets of bunk beds=8 kids. Where are the rest gonna go?
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:49 pm
I love it! Can we copy it? It looks very functional.
January 22nd, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Shannon. With all the little kids we have right now, it works. The little kids sleep 2 to a bed. If we still happen to be in that house when the kids get bigger we will put a couple of bunks in the other room and add a bedroom with a door by the stairway dowstairs for us.
The plan is, though, that we will only be in that house for a few year at the most.
January 22nd, 2008 at 3:50 pm
No doors on the bedrooms? Where do the kids change their clothes? Just curious as Jenna is shortly to become a teenager.
January 22nd, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Robyn, Sure you can copy it. Like I would ever know anyway! ;) Are you guys in MO also?
We have alerady talked about moving the main entrance to where I have the Washer/Dryer and closing that room in to make a mud room with a door entering the living room centered where the current doorway is - if you know what I mean.
January 22nd, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Barb, they change in the bathroom.
January 22nd, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Will DSS/DFS/CPS be ok with these sleeping arrangements if you want to adopt more kids? Or is that not an issue right now?
January 22nd, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Rebecca,
We re not actively looking to adopt right now so that is not really an issue. This is just a temporary house until we build Katie’s “dream house”.
January 22nd, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Hmmm….. Now I gotta see “Katie’s dream house” plans, just a hand drawn one will be fine! ;)
January 22nd, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Jeff, we’re practically neighbors, we live in Springfield. I found your teambettendorf blog long before you moved, and thought it was funny that you would move 40 min away from us, of all places. :-) MO is beautiful, isn’t it? I know you’ll love living out at your property.
The mudroom idea is excellent. No house is complete without one! If I ever build a house I will make a mudroom that also includes, or is close to the washer/dryer, a shower, and a big family closet. That way when you come in from the mud, you can shower, change, and deposit your laundry, all in the same room. Might have to work out some kinks with a big family, though, I can just imagine the line of muddy kids waiting outside the door for their turn. :-)
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Robyn,
Our families should plan to get together sometime. Your mudroom sound like the one we want in the next house we build. We have talked about having a shower on the porch. We also talked about incorporating a “family” closet in the mudroom / laundryroom.
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:59 pm
A few thoughts…
-I agree that a changing area may be needed with the older kids hitting puberty. If that is a wall between the bunks, maybe they can be portioned off into boys room / girls room? This will be a nice feature in the future when it’s rented out. (OK, I just noticed your comment about changing in the bathroom, but it still may be nice when rented later)
-I lived with a family in Germany for a few months. They had a nice entrance to their house….Not exactly a mudroom, but a type of room/foyer, with a separate room to the side. In that room they had a huge shoe rack system and places to hang coats, and store mittens, purses, or anything else they needed when entering/exiting the home. It was sooooooooo convenient and we will put one in if ever we build. Do you allow shoes in the house? If not this will help prevent the shoes from tracking through your current family room.
-Why do you have a full bath on the first floor? You could do a WC on the first floor, maybe under the stairs, and have 2 full upstairs.
-One more question…how are those closets separated? For individuals or for another purpose?
Hope those were thought-provoking. A word from my parents, who built 3 years ago…Think about light switch placement NOW, not when the electrician shows up. OK, maybe not right now for you guys, but soon. :)
January 22nd, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Dream house? This house looks pretty dreamy to me! :D
~Chas
January 22nd, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Lauren,
Yes… there is a wall between the bunks and, if needed, it would be easy to put another wall up with a door into each room. They are actuall separate rooms - they just have no doors.
The kids take their shoes off and having our shoe cubbies in the mudroom makes a lot of sense.
Regarding the full bath downstairs… It is nice to have a tub dowstairs so we can be close when one of the little kids is bathing.
About the closets… I don’t think I am exactly sure what you are asking. They will be separated by a wall. Two kids share each closet.
January 22nd, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Chas, I agree with you that that house would be dreamy… if we only had 4 kids. That house is set up well, but it has less than 2000sf of living space. That is not much space for 14 people. And besides - it is not Katie’s “dream house”. Don’t you think Katie deserves her dream house? :)
January 22nd, 2008 at 6:56 pm
So where is the floorplan for the dream house??
And of course Katie deserves it!! You both do!
January 22nd, 2008 at 7:04 pm
So…. we all wanna see Katie’s dream house plans.
Just a sketch in crayon on a piece of lined notebook paper would be ok….for now! ;)
January 22nd, 2008 at 7:04 pm
We are still working on the dream house floorplan. It is not necessarily going to be a huge house, but it will be the perfect layout for us.
January 22nd, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Isn’t building a house just to your specifications going to be fun!! I am very blessed with our home, but would love to pick it up and put it somewhere on land like you have! We are in the middle of a subdivision. Here’s my question…Do your boys and girls sleep in the same room now? Will there be separate boys room and a girls room in the dream home?
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Momma,
The boys share a room and the girls share a room. It will be the same when we build the dream house. In our last house we had 5 bedrooms upstairs for the kids and our bedroom was downstairs and the kids always wanted to sleep in the same room with eachother.
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:34 pm
I second the mud room idea! When we lived in TN, we didn’t have a mud room and wished we did. (I believe your climate is pretty much the same as there — plenty of rain much of the year — your creek & woods pictures look just like where we lived!)
I thought our 3 little boys with muddy shoes (and socks and pants) made a mess, but I can’t imagine 12 kids of all ages tramping through the living room, leaving a trail (that Katie doesn’t deserve!) to the shoe shelves.
January 23rd, 2008 at 6:43 am
Is that a door or window that is in the washer dryer freezer fridge room?
It would be nice if it were a door so the kids (and you) could come in that way sometimes.
January 23rd, 2008 at 8:48 am
Great ideas here! Good job Jeff. I know you will have a great time planning and building!
That looks just the right size for my family when we come to visit in a few years… grin.
January 23rd, 2008 at 9:04 am
Michele,
That is a window. We could just climb through the window if we want to come in that way. Actually, we are planning to redo that and make it into a mudroom.
Dana, We would love to have you guys!
January 23rd, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Ah, I would never have thought of the child-monitoring-benefit of a downstairs bathroom. Maybe this will all click when I have kids.
Closet comment revised: “What are all those closets for?” :) Of course, you’ve answered that now. I think what I was trying to find out was whether or not they were for kids and their clothes or storage of something else.
Hope to see your progression of plans!
January 23rd, 2008 at 10:13 pm
we just built our house…it was a blast! i tell ya, my favorite thing about my house are my two pocket doors!!! those things were a lifesaver to me!
yes, def. think furniture placement/computer placement/sewing machine placement and electrical outlets and light switches BEFORE the electricians come! we did for the outlets, cause i like lots of outlets, but not the switches….and boy oh boy, am i paying now! we just did a quick walk through with them and we have many lights that we wanted to be able to switched on in three dif. places..no biggie, but now, even after living in this house for almost three months, the light switch placements are not making sense, LOL…i wonder if we will ever figure it out!
Oh, and now that you are in the land of true thunderstorms….you need to think about this…you most defintely do NOT want your house to be all electric….you WILL have power outages and it will last for more than just a few hours..maybe not every year, but often enough. I ALWAYS cook with a gas stove and i always like a gas dryer and i always like a hot water heater that is gas, not electric…..anything that is gas can be switched to propane if you don’t have natural gas lines to your land. the less electric you have, in my not so humble opinion, is better!
How come you don’t have any kind of a woodburning fireplace instead of a stove? Those ROCK in the winter…if you shell out a small amount of money upfront and get a real masonry fireplace, you can actually run a vent system to the main rooms of the house (living, kitchen, bedrooms) and you can heat your house with this (all those boys, all that land with trees…..free wood!!!) at least part of the time and oh what fun it is to throw some apples with sugar and cinammon in the coals and hours later dig them out and eat ‘em!
We are doing this with our next house we build in a few years!
January 24th, 2008 at 12:08 am
I love the floor plan! Never heard of a mudroom but I’m in Australia. What do you use the cubbies for?
January 24th, 2008 at 12:40 am
Samantha,
The plan was to have the woodburning stove with a masonry chimney. I have been looking for some sort of inline heat exchanger with a fan to blow hot air from the chimney upstairs.
Kylie,
The cubbies are for the kids’ toys. You can see a picture of them here http://www.teambettendorf.com/2007/08/26/a-tornado/
January 26th, 2008 at 1:40 am
Those look like good plans… I think another bath upstairs, if you can afford it, would be a good idea. I liked the bathroom that was between Jenna’s room and the big bed/playroom in your house in Surprise. Having separate bathrooms for the girls and boys would be easy enough. As the kids get older it will be more important to have separate areas for dressing and taking baths. And if this is to be a rental cabin, having separate areas for people to use the potty, bathe, change clothes, etc. would be a great asset for big familes or groups of people.
I will start praying now you find a good architect and contractor!
Love you bunches,
Mom
January 28th, 2008 at 8:05 am
Where do you sit as a family? Where’s your couch? :)
January 28th, 2008 at 8:57 am
Angela,
We don’t really sit as a family, unless it is at the dinner table or in the van. We don’t sit and watch TV or just sit and hang out. If there is a time that we all watch a movie together (which is very rare) we all sit on the floor. We had a couch once, but I got tired of telling kids not to stand on it, jump on it, bounce on it, etc. We may get a couch when the kids get a little older, but right now it would just be in the way.
I hope that answered your question. :)
July 28th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Can you get a 24′ Floor Joist with no supports? You don’t have any interior walls for load bearing purposes. So you would need to span that whole distance.
Yes, you can get an I-joist that will span 24 feet.
-Jeff
July 28th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Which direction is North?
I am not sure yet.
-Jeff
July 28th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
working on a 3d model for you using Revit. I may not be able to model the roof correctly, but the interior should not be too much of a problem. Will give you a feel for how it will be. Might have questions for you as the model moves along.
That’s cool! Thanks!
-Jeff