ARE WE CRAZY???

[nicky_snax]

Hi All,
 Newbies to this site, just found it by accident, but have a feeling this could be the MOST USEFUL on the web to us at this time, and probably for some time to come!!! Hope so anyway. now for our plight... we want to start building a small home...1008 sq. ft. with diminsions of 28' wide 36'length. Our land is a small hillside with not alot of fall from the back to the front of where the house will sit, maybe 2'-3' at the most. We know how to set the piers (wood) but are curious, do we attach the beams or just let them rest on the piers?  We would welcome all the info. we can get!!! Hoping to see a dream realized, and created by our own hands... we must be crazy...we are newly weds...in our50's and we know we want to do this!!!

[Amanda_931]

Yes, you definitely attach.  Or the first good jolt--earthquake or good wind or somebody learning to drive the truck (oops!--or even backing up to put some firewood on the porch) can take the house off its foundations.   Lets not do that.

Take a look at John's original "little house."

http://www.jshow.com/y2k/

And while you're in that general area [ http://countryplans.com/ ], take a look at John's plans for sale--quite inexpensively.  You may not need that much room.  I'm not a big fan of 2nd stories--or steps in general--that you have to use, but it does give you more bang for your buck.  For that reason a lot of the people here are going with 1 1/2 or two story houses.

(on the other hand, it is true that some friends of mine who married in their late 40's or early 50's feel that their marriage has lasted ten years now because they have put a fair amount of space in their house for each person, he can leave pump parts ready to come back to, she, papers for a grant proposal she is writing--none in the line of sight of each other or visitors, but easy to pick up where they left off.  When they married, they remodeled his place for the two of them thinking about Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language--that is one of his patterns.  They've never measured it, but they think they do have around 1000 sf.)

By the way, John gets a small cut if you order books (not sure if it's all or just those on his list) through that website, price to you is the same.

Does wanting to build a house mean you are crazy?  Not more than the rest of us!