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

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

  • The Right Amount to Spend on a New House. OR  How to Modify House Plans.
  • Quick visit? Go here for the FREE stuff!
  • Or, visit the Latest Posts to the Forums
 
Updates: 1/16/10 Check out the new Gallery postings 
• Books • 24' wide UniversalGritter Univ. Cottage
• 20x30 1.5 story
• 16x24 cabin 
1-1/2 story cabin
CA Cabin • Tiny HousesVictoria in Maine 

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Small Home Plans

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FREE Shipping and FREE Sunkit on orders over $100

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. Click Plans and home design tools to get your home building project moving.

What
to Do
Next?
happy house
• Click the Gallery in the orange link 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 (Now with Free Shipping.)
• Visit a Forum Discussion that interests you in
the column on the RIGHT.
Better Business Bureau accredited business

20' wide 1-1/2 story cottage home in Alaska
20' Universal 2-story cottage home
16x24 owner build cabin
Owner built Victoria Cottage in Maine
Most Popular Houses: The photo links at the left have stories about how some members have adapted our stock plans. At the far left column are links to our modifiable stock plans that provide full construction blueprints for simple-to-build houses.

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. Visit the Owner-builder Gallery to see what folks are building for themselves. The Tiny House (200 sf) Design Contest has spurred many ideas!

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 now have over 4,000 members with almost 88,000 Q&A posts.  Try the Owner-builder section for a first visit. You are welcome to start a new thread with info and photos of your own evolving project. Joining and posting is free, click here for Mountain Don's helpful tutorials. 

Customizing Stock Plans: Many of our members and visitors also find our sister site PlanHelp.com to be of interest. This is a paid 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 and 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 the house you you want from an inexpensive standard house plan.

What it cost to build — A simple construction cost estimator and how to work with the inspector. Or, look at it this way — The Right Amount to Spend on a New House.

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.

Thought Experiments  How to build a house in your mind. 

5 ways to build your house — Different ways to balance your money, time and skills.

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

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

 

Cabin and cottage home plans you can customize & build for yourself
Learn how-to build an inexpensive easy-to-build house
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 home design build public discussion group
Questions?

Visit our free Discussion Group.
A few interesting posts to explore:

Searching forum posts
Fast tubes for concrete piers
Using a water level
Designing a bigger house
Llyod Kahn owner-builder movie
Span calculator for joists & rafters
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
Victoria Cottage Project
Finding a builder & working for yourself
Insulated headers
What type Foundation
Owner-built 20x24 cottage (w/ pics)
Underground Cabin Update (fun!)
Tiny house built for $1400 Tiny cabin built for $1400.
Want to visit the competition? 
tiny house cabin

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