Victoria with addition and bumpout

[EPriesing]

     My husband and I have been lurking for a half a year reading the site.  We bought the Victoria Cottage plans and have moved a few things around.

    It will be built Hampshire county West Virginia.  We have alittle over 13.2 acre's in two plots side by side.  The smaller 4.2 acre's has a well already there, but before 1985  no paperwork on file, so we need to pump it out and test it.  We have a friend who is doing a perk test for both properties as soon as the ground is ready.  The properity next door and all those in the area perked at a level 1, so we are hopeful.

    This cabin will be built so we can move down and build a house for us on the bigger plot and use this as guest house or one of our kids can buy it. We will be using a crawlspace as foundation.  Our 16 and 20 yr old daughters will be use be using the upstairs lofts.  I have MS so the bath door will be a pocketdoor for when a wheelchair is used.  I just noticed that I should have the tub facing the opposite direction for ease of turning it off and on.

     All doorways are atleast 36".  The cabinets will be made by us, so sizing can be smaller or larger as needed.  The porch along the length of the cabin is 12' deep.  We are trying to keep an open feeling to the cabin area, at the stairs the platform area will be open(with railings) into the kitchen, so the only full wall area in the main section of the cabin will be directly under the top of the stairs with a closet door.  

    The porch will be a shed roof wrap around.  The little dining area will be inclosed under it.  The back bumpout  that has the bath and utilities will also be a shed roofed addition.  We plan on using a metal roof throughout.  The main house will have the 12' walls and the bedroom addition will have 10' walls. the plans have written in mch room on porch for propaine, but that will be different.

So do you see any problems with this floor plan?

[John Raabe]

I did a quick overlay with some ideas to consider.

I'm a little worried about natural light with the deep porches on three sides and the back wall solid. Could some of that be open decks?

You have ventured a bit away from the Victoria structurally. Nothing that can't be worked out, but you will want to work with a local home designer as the framing for the lofts and the size and supports for the ridge beam will have to be revised.

* One idea you might try... Do either a shed or hip roofed porch over the 8' deep porch at the front (right side), then have the center porch along the length of the house be an open deck. It can be any depth. This can give you light all along that side with french doors or sliders connecting the inside and outside. Then at the rear porch have a shed or hip roof again.

[EPriesing]

Hi John

     Thanks for the reply!   I see what you mean about the stairs and I have been going back and forth on that. Wish I could add on to the length and get a bigger livingroom, so 11' will have to do....   Kitchen size, usability and storage are more important in my mind.  The covered porches are part of the over-all plan for me.  I'm required to stay out of the sun and I don't like wet stuff.  We will use this area with table and outdoor furniture. I have considered putting in skylites over the main center section to add light into the interior of the cabin.  I'll fool with the stairs and upload it later with the porches.

We have a 8' covered porch on our house now facing the same direction as this will and I love it.  In fact adding the 2' to make a 10' porch will make this a more useable outside living space.  We have a back deck and patio here in NH and its never used, except for the grill.  So I guess I will either have to  dis-connect them and make 3 or make them all 10'. Something to think about.  Not even sure if the porches would be put on at first, depending on money and time. 

    The back section of this cabin will be facing a gentle hill and the right boundry of the smaller plot and our larger one next door.  The long porch looks onto a more scenic piece and will be the used area.  The road and driveway will be on the left (kitchen) side of the house and the cleared septic will be on the right (livingroom) side.  The sun basically comes up left to right....east to west .   At some point a Pavillion will be built with an outdoor kitchen and hopefully a wood bread oven! (cross my fingers!)  My husbands brother lives down the road with about 22 acres and get togethers include a lot of people, food and drinks!  We are thinking about this cabin as a perm campground, eat cook live outside as much as we can.  Considering how much we camp up here in NH all summer we should get alot more time outside in a warmer climate.  We are those campers you see out in the rain under a canopy, placing some game while everyone else packed up and left.

"You have ventured a bit away from the Victoria structurally. Nothing that can't be worked out, but you will want to work with a local home designer as the framing for the lofts and the size and supports for the ridge beam will have to be revised."

Will those two things generally be all that would need to be resized? What about the beams that will span the crawlspace foundation and posts?  Hoping to get away with not having to have an arch re-du.  Who generally.. would you suggest we look for? ....(least amount of added $$) We will be building this ourselves with the help of his brother and family.  They are just finishing up building a new house for him, but from full plans, so they have some expirence as well as several are in contruction doing either roofing or genreal contracting.  Russ my husband has general do-it-yourself experience building decks, sheds, porches, walls, roofing,  plumbing, electrical our house is about 30 years old, seems like we are always fixing something they did strangely.

thanks
Betsy

[Don_P]

It gets a good bit more complicated figuring but you can build different width porches with a hip, called a bastard hip. I'm not sure it wasn't the guys framing it that called it that. You normally have to slide the hip itself around the corner and it no longer forms a 45 degree angle. Basically draw it from the gutter line and work backwards to the house from there. I've noticed that porches get used more than decks and they also protect the house where decks tend to accelerate weathering due to splash. The diaphragm formed by the porch roof sheathing also reinforces the walls, but it is subject to wind uplift, so a mixed blessing there.

[John Raabe]

Another alternative on the porch is to keep the same pitch on the middle section but just push it higher up the wall. Then the two 8' wrap around porches would bump into a bit of sidewall at each of the sides of the house.

As for your plan alterations - the foundation plan would need to be redone as you have a different shape and different stretches of the main bearing walls that are carrying the loads. You could use much of the structure I show but the foundation needs to be properly laid out for your house shape or lots of money can go down the drain. You also need to have elevations with all the windows and doors accurately determined and located. And there are a couple of other drawings that will be needed to properly visualize the structure. You haven't mentioned what you want to do with the loft or any open areas. That needs to be worked out too. For instance, any upper floor bedrooms will need windows of a proper size and height to provide emergency egress. We don't now know how those windows and the porch roofs are going to work out yet.

I think you would be well advised to spend the $1,000 or so to work with someone to get the house you want with specific plans that are accurate. Several CountryPlans members have had new plans produced from their modified drawings for that price. Prices vary considerably so ask around and get referrals at the lumber yard or even the building department. (My inspector used to keep a pretty good list of local designers and engineers.)

If it works for you there is money to be saved by doing the main building using the Alternative Cross Section (Sheet 1) and the Studio House floor framing plan (Sheet 3). Those use simpler construction but don't have all the handsome exposed beams and timbers that are in the standard Victoria plans.  One advantage of using that structure is that you are not then limited in length. If 2' more added to the length works better in the living room you can do that since there is not a big beam to be considered. If you have good road access to your site you can have a truss company design and deliver roof trusses to the loft floor rather than using the stick framing diagram shown in that cross section. Your inspector will like it better and it may save some money too. It certainly speeds construction.

You can give any of these plan details to your home designer and they can use them as needed. Your designer can also help with the stair and the porch options and better knows the local materials and code issues. Some builders can do such drawings as well and many people find it helpful to have a local builder available for help and advice for the owners. See The 5 ways to Build a House number 3, "Owner-builder partnership".

[EPriesing]

Hi John

So...hmmm    We would rather not pay the extra cash for that..   

So I'm thinking that what you designed is just right We are planning to build a house on the next lot over later on, when we have the money.  No mortgages this time.   But we do have to fit a code stair in and 3 bedrooms.  WV code stair has an 8 1/4" max riser h and a tread depth of 9" max, all the other #'s stay the same. Again we will have a crawlspace foundation.

So if we keep with the Victoria Cottage look..with bump and addition, but build with the studio house framing(no ridge beam, but with collar ties and truss), does this change any engineering?  We would just follow what is called for in the bump out beams and post sizes?  We will have 2- 12foot lofts on either side over the kitchen and livingroom.  The L-staircase on the 1st floor is just to the right of the bedroom door.   If we use the studio version the length would then go to 32ft.

We will add the porches later.



thanks
Betsy

[John Raabe]

Betsy:

That layout should work.

If you keep the same size and spans on the bump-outs you should be able to use the same posts and pier layouts. However, in some cases you will be adding weight to these beams as they are carrying more of the roof load than before (when there were ridge beams). These beams should be resized for the heavier loads (usually made deeper). Alternatively you could shorten the spans by adding a pier or two. This should be checked by someone who can do a load trace after you have the full layout done. Since you need to do this anyway, you may decide to resize the bumpouts. Note, this is not an expensive consultation.

[poppy]

Betsy, that's an interesting plan.

I would consider shifting the kitchen island to the right by at least 5".  That would still give enough space for bar stools and walk through on the right and give more space on the left for working space.  Don't forget that most refrigerators (even so-called counter depth ones) are quite a bit deeper than the standard counter.  Right now, it looks like a "one butt" galley set-up.   

I agree with John on the stairway entry point.

The add on spaces for bath/laundry and bedroom seem to waste a fair amount of space.  One thought might be to move the BR door to the left (after changing the stairs) and making a walk-in closet on the right.  Another thought would be to make the add on 12' all the way across so that the BR closet could be part of the bath/laundry area.  Maybe the bath could even have 2 entrances. 

[EPriesing]

Hi Poppy,
 
thanks for taking the time to respond to my post.   Its seems that we are going to follow John's Victoria plans pretty close so the floor plan that I was thinking off got put to the side.

I do agree that if we stayed with that plan we would have had to make the island a wee smaller and the walk-around area bigger. My thoughts on the utility hallway area were centered on getting a big enough space for a wheelchair and having the other areas useable if the bath was occupied.

We have decided to build  next after the cottage a guest cottage that will be fully wheelchair accessible.  I have need for one, only in really cold weather, one of the reasons we are moving down from New Hampshire to West Virginia....shorter cold spells.

Our septic guy is going out to do some tests this week...hope they test like the other plots in the area!