Build your cottage with country home plans
Designing & building for yourself

Build your own cabin, cottage, or small home!
Our Plans & Tools can help.

  • The 5 ways to build your house. OR  How to Modify Plans.
  • Quick visit? Go here for the FREE stuff!
  • Or, visit the Latest Posts to the Forums
 
• Tool of the day: Rafter & Joist Calculator
  • Update: 1/6/09
  • Gritter Univ. Cottage  • 20x30 1.5 story • 16x24 cabin
Loft ladder 1-1/2 story cabin
CA Cabin

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Small Home Plans

Order Form

Little House Design Kit

Expandable Cabin Design Kit

16' wide Victoria Cottage
1 Story 2 Bdrm Volks Cottage
1 Story 2 Bdrm Grandfather Cottage
20'x30' 1-story cottage plans
20'x30' 1-1/2-story cottage plans
20'x34'  2-story Universal cottage plans
24'x36' 2-story Solar Saltbox plans
Glazing plans for sunrooms & skylights

Sunkit site tools

Have fun builidng your house!


Practical Small Home Design & Construction

Design & build your own expandable small home, cottage, cabin, or addition. You can modify our standard plans to fit your site, budget and building style. Our Plans and home design tools will get your home building project moving!

What
to Do
Next?
happy house
• Click the Gallery link in the orange bar above to see houses others have built.
• These Tools will help you find and evaluate property.
Customize a stock plan - for example, one of our plans on the LEFT!
• Click a quick link forum topic at RIGHT.
What to do in 2009
in a slowing economy?
Coming Soon
Better Business Bureau accredited business

20' wide 1-1/2 story cottage in Alaska
20' Universal 2-story cottage
16x24 owner build cabin
dogtrot cabin - 2 buildings and deck
Most Popular Houses: The photo links at left have stories about some of our most adaptable and easy to build plans. Click for more info.

Resources for New Builders: There is lots of great information here on small home building. Just mouse around this master portal page to links that interest you. Our Tiny House (200 sf) Design Contest has spurred many ideas! Visit the Owner-builder Gallery to see what folks are building for themselves.

Join the Small Home Discussion: Visit our free Forum. Use it to get answers to questions about home planning and building (using our plans, your own, or anyone elses). We have over 3,300 members with more than 69,000 Q&A posts.  Try the Owner-builder section for a first visit.

Customizing Stock Plans: Many of our members and visitors also find our sister site PlanHelp.com to be of interest. This is a subscription site most useful for it's planning and home design downloads. The site also includes template floor plans for many of our houses. Once you have the compatible software program, these templates allow you to edit a floor plan, rearranging walls, doors and windows. You can test furniture, layout a new kitchen and make a custom electrical plan. You can view your layout in 3D and then print out scaled floor plans that can be pasted into the pages of your blueprint structural plans.

Finally... don't know if you could really build a small house or cabin? Get Inspired!

Quick Clicks go directly to: • Plans Order form •  Books to FindWeb linksAuthorFinding LandDesign Ideas3D Home Arch tutorial • Maps200sf Design ContestVintage plansBolt Together houseGlenn's Underground cabin •  EcoCottage Plan  Finding Land & Building a Homestead. • Browse PDF toolsShed Roofs •  Stock Plan Templates • Jefferson (ladder) stair

Articles of Interest
Customizing a Stock Plan — How to get what you want when the plans aren't quite right.

Looking for Land — find and evaluate property; a buyers checklist. Great map links.

Post and Pier Foundations — This easy and inexpensive foundation may be just what you need for your building project - if your soil is right.

What it cost to build — A simple construction cost estimator and how to work with the inspector.


Thought Experiments - How to build a house in your mind.

Small Alternative House - A photo tour of a 3 building post & pier compound under 1000 sf.

Solar Saltbox photo tour — 24x36 w/ attached sunroom.

Building Trust - How most owner-builders really learn to build. It's not how you think.

Design Contest - Winners of the under 200 sf house design contest. How small can you go?

Cabin and cottage plans you can customize & build for yourself
Learn how-to build inexpensive easy-to-build structures
Free How-To printouts: • Browse these PDF files • Built-up beam • Ladder stair Shallow foundations Plumbing guideNo-Cost Green BuildingVisual Stair Guide 

Forum Topics

cabin and cottage design build public discussion group
Questions?

Visit the free Discussion Group. A few recent posts of interest.

Searching forum posts
Shed roofed cabin study plan
Span calculator for joists & rafters
Why People build their own house
2 story Universal - 1
2 story Universal - 2
Electrical & Plumbing tutorial
Cord wood House
What fuel to heat with?
Glenn's low cost garage
Costs for the 20' wide Universal
Framing the 1-1/2 story
Pier footings in cold soil
How to use stock plans
Making frame walls rigid
Indigenous Housing - learning from the natives
20x32 1-1/2 story
Victoria Cottage Project
SIP panels
Finding a builder & working for yourself
Insulated headers
What type Foundation
Frost proof foundations
Owner-built 20x24 cottage (w/ pics)
Underground Cabin Update (fun!)
Tiny cabin built for $1400 Tiny cabin built for $1400.
cabin and cottage home plans 

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