Hopefully, this will become a series of posts about drafting and design under an overarching Rough Draft title. Several days ago, I wrote about two problems: the decline of starter homes and retirement homes on the market, and the needed to plan for accessibility. I said I should use my training as a draftsman to address this problem, and here is the beginning.
This floor plan is based on memories of the small Midwestern town where I spent my early childhood. One elderly couple in particular adopted us in as extended family. I asked the Mother Thing if she still had their old addresses somewhere, and she did! I was able to find their house on a real estate site with info from whenever it was last on the market. Their house was built (according to the real estate site, anyway) in 1947. The footprint is just a rectangle, about 20'x30' (or about 6m x 9m) with a simple gable roof with a basic attic/loft/garret used only for storage on top and a full basement below.
Architectural Tangent:
This design could be called a Cape Cod, if one felt generous. The front facade is symmetrical, with an entrance in the center and a large shuttered window to either side. The stereotypical Cape Cod is a "1-1/2 story" house with a livable attic space inside the roof rafters and dormer windows to allow more light inside, although this is not strictly necessary. I refuse to follow the McMansion trend of purely ornamental "dormers" tacked on top. Form should follow function, and artificial pretense is detrimental to good design. [/rant]
My design assumes a simple slab-on-grade foundation. Basements are almost a necessity when the foundation needs to extend below the frost line for a bitter Minnesota winter, and it doubles as a shelter during the tornado season in summer. Before air conditioning became commonplace, it also offered a shelter from heat because the earth maintains a steady cool temperature well below grade, and heat rises. Here in my part of the Pacific Northwest, frost depth is only 18-24" down, so crawlspaces and slabs are common. We also don't tend to have tornadoes, and this plan assumed a modern heat pump for climate control.
Since I am not using AutoCAD, I've had to poke around to find several settings in the software suite I'm using now. They are there somewhere, just not where I expect them to be. This led to some delays, to say the least, but I now have accomplished the basics for laying out a drawing to print to scale.
This is an incomplete work-in-progress floor plan. Most of the dimensions are in place. I included some blocks for furniture just as a reference, but these would be omitted in a proper set of prints. I also have 60" circles where I needed to guarantee wheelchair turning space, but those would also not typically be shown in residential drawings. In short, this is absolutely not ready for use as building plans yet.
Notes on Dimensioning
A plan is typically dimensioned so everything is read from either the bottom or right side of the page. Each feature should be located only once to prevent ambiguity, and this was especially important when plans were hand-drawn and added potential for minor errors in the drawing process to add errors to the dimensions. Plans usually include a note not to use a scale on the drawing, and instead contact the architect in case of ambiguity or error.
You can also see how tolerances can stack even in a floor plan, so features are dimensioned from either end of the wall with some wiggle room allowed at a points I selected. Some measurements are critical, and those should be clearly shown.
I also dimensioned to either side of windows and doors. Note that this method defines those features by their rough openings, with the intent of installing pre-manufactured units. Many drawings instead just measure to the centers, and leave it to the framers to account for the rough openings. This is a matter of architect and contractor preferences nowadays with more standardized options available.
Areas to improve?
- I'm not entirely happy with the kitchen layout and laundry room placement, but for now, this is dictated by minimal plumbing considerations.
- That empty void by the bathtub should be put to use somehow, once I decide how to rearrange the room.
- The small bedroom really should have two windows, so I may switch the closet access from the large master bedroom to this room instead. Note it is also not fully wheelchair accessible, even with a 36" door.
- Closets could be sliders instead of bifold doors.
- I didn't really design this to have a good place for a living room TV.
This is definitely a rough draft, so input is welcome.
Next Steps
Once I've finished adjusting the floor plan, the design is still far from finished. A full set of blueprints will typically include the following pages:
- Cover page with general notes and site plan showing the overall lot, setbacks, easements, existing structures, and utilities. For large projects, the site plan may require its own sheet.
- Elevation drawings of each exterior side of the house.
- Foundation plan with notes for load-bearing points, often from an outside engineering firm with soil analysis and site preparation instructions.
- One page per floor with floor plan, dimensions, and notes.
- Section drawing and detail drawings for foundation, wall construction, etc.
- Door and window schedules listing the quantity, sizes, and hinge side of each door; and window sizes and types.
- Interior elevation drawings, especially for kitchen and bath. This is particularly important when designing for accessibility, since that adds more requirements.
- Electrical drawing with locations for receptacles, switches, wired lighting, and breaker panel.
- Floor/roof framing drawings, although this is such a simple plan, that may not be necessary. A truss roof means the truss builder provides their own engineering and layout drawings as a supplement.
In other words, the floor plan I've been refining off and on for almost two weeks now isn't complete, and even when it is, it is just the start. There is much to draw yet, and I should have another installment showing more of the process before too long. Once I've got a full set of drawings and I'm happy with the design, I'd like to upload a PDF. Any suggestions? I can always use MEGA, but I'm also open to IPFS and other hosts or decentralized file sharing options. Chime in with your ideas!
That box, at the head of the bathtub was where the Water Heater usually went.
Not in the middle of the house.
And, where you have physical items that need to go between walls, you need to set the measurement around them.
It is not 5'-6" between the right faces of the wall next to the bathtub.
It is 5'-1" between faces of the studs next to the bathtub.
If you are going to use trusses, then this floor plan is pretty good, if you are going to stick frame the roof, you want to have a continuous wall under the ridge. Which you almost have. Oh, we could definitely frame this, but the attack wouldn't look as neat.
And, about affordable housing:
It really isn't about building a cheaper/less expensive house, it is how much the land costs. Most places have very expensive land, with a very cheap house built on it. Even if it is a large house.
(shoddy construction eveywhere)
I initially intended to have the WH there, but access is still an issue.
Note which side of the framing is dimensioned. The clear space between studs is 5'-1." I may actually increase this for a roll-in shower unit once I check some commercial options.
I thought about a solid ridge beam and rafters like the original 1947 house had, but trusses are the cheap and fast solution, and adding a stairwell for an attic and basement would add a lot of extra complications.
And yes, even I remember when land was as low as $1-3k/acre in my rural area. No more. Bare land costs more than my parents paid for 10 acres and a house almost 30 years ago.
The access to the WH is a door to the outside.
Insulated door in colder climates.
You want it there because water heaters burst all the time, and you want the water to flow outside.
The one piece tub/shower unit is just a hair under 5'-0".
So, the opening is that, plus 1/2" for the drywall on each side.
For most of the one piece units, you shim the unit to the wall studs where it needs support.
That million dollar house, is $100k house + $900k property. It really wouldn't make a difference if you could make the house for half price $50k. But, really $100k is a cheaply/poorly built house already.
Looks good ! The space next to the bath could be ideal as a hot tank / airing cupboard space.
I'm still thinking about rearranging the kitchen and laundry, so the space may find a better use. And if I switch to designing for a mini-split heat pump system, I can repurpose the mechanical closet and its central air handler as well.
Maybe have the stove and kitchen sink swap places so the sink can share a wall with the bathroom plumbing? But then I suppose the dishwasher at the same wall?
As it happens, I watched a video yesterday that explored the demise of starter homes:
one of the keys to a good kitchen is having a window over the sink, so that is why it is on the exterior wall. I could move the laundry over to that interior wall, though. The dryer vent wouldn't need to be very long to make it all work.
Ours isn’t. Bad feng shui? 😅
When we were house hunting, in one of the places we looked at the kitchen sink window looked out into the garage. I can only guess that it originally looked into the yard and that the garage was a later addition.
Wooo! I really love this topic, and the design seems pretty livable. I'd be curious to see a couple of variations of the plan and ponder about the pros and cons of each...
On a personal note, I'd prefer a more open space between the kitchen-dining-LR, which would, of course, disrupt the current payout... But if that kitchen door has a window of it's own, then I'd say its pretty balanced as is.
Please keep posting these!
Yeah, I could rearrange a lot about that part of the plan. Keep an eye on future posts, I guess, and see how I vary it. And yes, the doors should have either a glass panel or a sidelight window.
I always thought houses in America are all very big, 20x30 seems to be a little on the small side?
If this is a retirement home, is it necessary to have two bedrooms? You could make one larger bedroom, and if a couple lived together, perhaps it's big enough to get two single beds inside.
And what about making it open plan? That would make it easier for wheelchair users
Houses began growing in the 50s as the postwar baby boom and growing prosperity both incentivized larger homes, and it really took off through the 60s. There was a sort of pause during the 70s recession, but it all picked up again with the McMansion trend of the 80s and 90s.
It's also intended as a starter home, with a nursery or kids room. Seniors may want a guest room. And it could also be an office space or sewing/craft room. A healthy neighborhood should have houses for all sages of life intermingled, in my opinion, and homes for young families aren't that different from retirement homes.
I'm pondering a more open plan, but that trend has pros and cons alike. One of my versions I am trying is more open for the kitchen, dining, and living spaces.
It took me a moment to work out the doors because I'm used to there being gaps for doors XD
Being where I am the only thing I would dislike about a laundry being in the centre of the house is the "long" hike out to the yard to hang it, but I guess it's less of a problem if you don't have an outdoor line or you rarely have the weather conducive to drying laundry in the elements. My current house is the only one I've lived in where the laundry doesn't have its own door to outside and even then the door out is about four steps away.
Yeah, I've changed my default door block now to include more of a visible wall gap, and I made the arc dashed. I've had to build my blocks from scratch as I assemble my library of symbols and elements.
!BBH