Universal 2 story inspiration

[jakes32guitar]

Can anyone who has built a universal 2 story plan post up photo/video tours of their build and maybe costs involved/things you would recommend or change?  I have searched and viewed as many as I can find but figure I would give this a shot too!

[NathanS]

Hi Jake, not sure if you have seen our build -
https://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=14356.0

Very happy with the house. We did everything ourselves except for excavation, pouring the slab and footing. The total cost was around 110k, and I will still place one more order for cherry wood to make more built-in furniture once I build our garage/workshop. As we progressed through construction - shell finished, insulated (which we roughly went R20 slab/ R40 walls / R60 attic - way more spent on this than most houses), windows, doors, drywall done and we knew we were in good shape budget-wise we started spending more on things like knot-free siding, hardwood floor upstairs, cherry woodwork throughout. Lots of other little upgrades too. Point being we could certainly have done it for 10-20k less than 110k if we needed to.

Main modifications - upstairs, we merged the two bathrooms into one large one. Downstairs we added an 8x12 mudroom/utility room, were able to make a larger bathroom with a large walk in shower. Happy we made these changes, I always thought we 'needed' a master bath, even a small one, cause that's how houses are built. My wife grew up with just one bath upstairs and said it wasn't a big deal, and she was right. We mostly use the downstairs big shower anyway. Of course this is all personal preference.

We also opened up the kitchen area, put the fridge under the stairwell. This gave us a lot more counterspace and kitchen storage, and makes the area feel way bigger. Really like this change, we never would have been able to do that if we weren't building and living in it at the same time.

I will try to post a couple updated pics of the house within the next few days. I did finish more of the mudroom area by making some cabinetry, which  allowed for a lot of countertop, firewood storage and stainless steel sink for laundry. I actually made the counter that covers the washer/dryer out of leftover 5/4 cherry which came out awesome. I have thought about doing a video walkthrough which I may go ahead and do when I get a chance.

One thing about a smaller house is that it's really important to optimize all your space. That means it may often be necessary to do built-ins as opposed to off-the-shelf solutions from Lowes or HD. It costs less, and is a better end result, but it does take time. I wish I had a work shop when I was building all our cabinetry. I did everything in the kitchen downstairs. It would have been nice to have a basement for that, but it just wouldn't have worked on our property.

I think I could go on and on. If you have specific questions feel free to ask and I will give my opinion.

[jakes32guitar]

I have spent lots of time looking at your build Nathan, thanks for chiming in!  I like that you used taller ceilings on the main level, I may even step up to 9' depending on how it changes our costs. I'm thinking I will use the L shape stair instead of U shaped to help get the extra steps in without making the house too narrow, as well as using an open railing on the stairs to help let natural light into the living area...  I too would make one large upstairs bath, I'm considering moving the kitchen to the right as you look at the plans to where the dining area is and having everything against the wall with a island and replacing the kitchen on the plans with a small guest bedroom/study-probably lengthening the plan to 36' or 38', I havent had a chance to sit down and draw it to scale yet.  I would then have our dining area move to the Entry area on the stock plans and get rid of the doorways and closets in that corner.  BTW this is going to be our cabin not full time residence.   I will also change the porch to the long side and enclose it as a screen porch.  I don't know if you ever said but is there a reason you used a slab instead of a crawl space?

[NathanS]

That all sounds good to me. I love the taller ceilings, even at only about 8' 4" I think it absolutely makes the rooms feel significantly bigger. 9' ceilings would be even better, I think. You could also just keep them 8' for the upstairs to save on some of the extra labor that's involved.

One thing that has been awesome about the U stair is that there is a ton of storage under it - and with 9' ceiling you'd have even more space for storage. Actually for us we have a dog now, and he sleeps under the stairs. Still space for my table saw in the back, haha. Of course that consideration is less important if you have a basement, and even the L stair will have a fair amount of storage underneath. Also for the railing make sure you know the code - this if from memory but I think it's something like a 3.5 or 4" sphere can't pass through any of the railing area. You could also always just slap something in and take down once you pass final.  I had thought about doing the spindles differently but after reading all the code I was worried about doing a lot of work and then getting told to do it over.

Also a cool idea with the kitchen location. Definitely draw everything out and make sure it will all fit. Looking at it right now, without our woodstove there and changing the windows around, you could definitely run a kitchen counter across that area.


For slab - we wanted a slab as our finished surface, and if you go that route it is cheaper than a crawl space I think. The big negative of a slab would be if you ever have plumbing problems or want to reroute things, you're gonna be in for it. Outside of that, it's going to be a little more energy efficient, very air tight, nothing out of sight collecting dust and getting disgusting from rodents. We really love the slab as the finished floor, it can take a beating. Dump disgusting firewood on it all the time, doesn't matter if stuff leaks out and sits on it. That is the kind of life we have though, and if you're not dirty like us, and you account for putting in a hardwood floor a crawlspace could be cheaper. I do think with a crawl space you want to do the current best practice of enclosing, insulating and treating it as part of the conditioned space. Another issue with where we live is that at this time of the year water could pool in a crawl space. If our foundation drain clogs up I will never know, because everything is above grade.

[jakes32guitar]

Bump, anybody else?