Monkeying with Victoria's Cottage

[Ailsa C. Ek]

Believe it or not, we're actually getting closer to building.  We're inheriting some land up in northern Maine which is currently woods and cow pasture, and we're liking the idea of putting the Victoria's Cottage on it.  I've been monkeying around with the basic floor plan in PhotoShop and have done a little basic switching around, like moving the woodstove and chimney off the exterior wall and changing the small front porch into a larger screen porch off the MBR.  Problem is, I'm not sure how having a code staircase would alter things and if it would throw my plans off.  How does this look?  (I'm also going to have to rework it to make it wheelchair-friendly, but I'll deal with that later).





The upper floor is there not because I've done anything much to it yet, but because I needed it to be able to see where the open space above the living room would be with the full upper story (and because the file is a work in progress, and I know I will be making changes to it).  My idea is to make the place less cottage and more New England farmhouse, kind of like these:

   


'Course, I'm also not a builder yet.  How difficult would changing the trim details on the cottage be to make it look more like that?  I'm pondering actually buying the plans maybe, but writing a check means we're serious, not just pipe-dreaming, and is probably one of the hardest steps.   :-/

[glenn kangiser]

Changing the trim should be no problem.  The basic shape is there and you just adjust the features and trim it to your liking.

[Redoverfarm]

I agree with Glenn on the trim. Sort of like a suit and tie.  The suit is the basic and you can change the tie several times to get the look you like.  Just stay away from the pok dots.

[glenn-k]

...and...  I never trust anybody in a suit. :-/

[ailsaek]

Mulling, mulling.  Spent a couple of hours tweaking and I'm not too sure about the results.  I like the side porch, but the kitchen has too many doors and the bathroom needs to be bigger if it's to be wheelchair friendly.  And I know people like kitchen sinks looking out windows, but wouldn't it make much more sense to run the plumbing up the middle of the building so the pipes would be less likely to freeze?



I've grafted the guest house right to the main house to go for the New England extended farmhouse look.  I'm planning a walkout basement, and the front of the house will be facing west, with the walkout on a south-facing slope.

I enclosed the kitchen, by the way, because my dream kitchen includes being able to debone chicken without cats underfoot or do deep frying or candymaking without worrying about small children underfoot.  Open concept is nice, but I want doors that close.

[John_C]

A few comments in no particular order.

I don't think there is enough room for an inswing door in that dining area.  An outswing would be very tight as well.

There is no closet in the bedroom.  Extending that wing a few feet would allow room for a closet and could also add some space to the bathroom      

If you are building where there is a code you will need to allow space for the full code stairs.  Might as well do it early in the process as they may intrude on something else.

You could separate the library - workshop from the main house by 10' or so and have a nice summer living area, like a dog trot.

[ailsaek]

Currently beating my head against a kitchen & bath remodel.  I may end up putting the wood cookstove against the outer wall anyway.  It's the only thing that seems to work, and all the cookstoves I can find are capable of heating rather more space than the Victoria cottage anyway.

Noted about the summer living space, but that's what the screenporch is for.  The house site is an hour north of Bangor, Maine.  Heat in the summer is a brief annoyance, but the winter cold can kill you.

[Redoverfarm]

Alisa

You should try to make more space in the dining room as 6'X7' apx is not going to be enough room with two inswing doors and a 48" table. Either that or put a door from the other room to go out onto the porch so you can sit on the one end next to the outside wall. No seriously if the two inswing doors were even 30" subtract that from the rooms width and think of a table with chairs.  You could probably downsize the room adjoinging and the size of the porch to give you a couple more feet(move the wall).

[MountainDon]

In-swinging doors are a problem, as a space robber in small buildings. There are special hinges made for out-swinging exterior doors. The hinges have pins that are retained/locked by one of several different methods. Not real common but they are available. If you choose an out-swinging exterior door though, there is one thing you will have to give up. That is, no screen or storm door.

Inside, between rooms, a pocket door might be used, if you like them. I don't like them if they're used a lot. I have one space here where I used a bi-fold door because of cramped space in the utility/laundry room. Not everyone's cup of tea but it works well for us.

I do wonder about that small dining room too. If it was me and/or my wife, we'd forgo the dining room and make the kitchen larger. We have little if any use for a separate dining room. OMMV.

As for the kitchen and it's window and the pipes, I've seen kitchens without windows above the sink. They've mostly been in an apartment or condo situation where you don't have 4 exterior walls of your own. So, yes you could do the same in a single family home. Making that exterior wall thicker, at least 2x6 framing, would allow for extra insulation and a reduction in the possibilities of freezing.

I also like closets in bedrooms. The home I grew up in was an elderly structure. My bedroom had no closet. Until I was about 16 all I had was a chest of drawers and an inexpensive wardrobe. The first major building thing I ever did was to build a closet into one corner. I built in some shelves and installed some drawers as well. The wardrobe and chest of drawers were removed and left me with a much cleaner look; bed, desk and chair, bookshelves built into a wall and the closet.

[ailsaek]

OK, here's Mark 3.  I wasn't planning on leaving the dining area in that corner, I just hadn't gotten around to erasing it yet.



So now we have the back hallway out to the north side of the house as a full pantry with the chest freezer at one and.  the washer/dryer stack is kind of hanging in midair at present cos I haven't figured out where to put it.

The black, orange and yellow thing, by the way, is a wood cookstove, plus necessary clearances.  The black rectangle is the cookstove itself, the orange is the minimum clearance to heat shielded materials, the yellow is the minimum clearance to non-heat-shielded materials.

The bathroom is just an empty hole because I haven't started on it yet.  I'm probably going to have to lose the bathtub, which bothers me a bit, but handicapped accessibility is more important than me being able to take an occasional bath.

Oh, an important note: the front door, i.e. the one leading into the living room, is going to have one of those shelf-bracket style overhangs like in the pictures posted above and a couple of granite steps going up to it, and will probably never be used.  Why have it then?  Well, because it has to be there.  Beyond that, it's really hard to explain.  You probably have to have grown up in New England to understand.

[MountainDon]

... will probably never be used.  Why have it then?  Well, because it has to be there.  Beyond that, it's really hard to explain.  You probably have to have grown up in New England to understand.

Rural Manitoba was like that. The old farmhouse front door, that led out to an enclosed, windowed warm weather front porch was never used either. But it would have served as an emergency exit in case of a fire or whatever.

[Redoverfarm]

Don the farm that I grew up on had the enclosed porch. It's main function including a bench was to take off the milking parlor footwear, hooks for taking the winter coats. It was usually always cluttered by everything that you would associate with the farm that you didn't want to freeze or wasn't allowed to bring into the house. There was always an old hog leg stood up in the corner either for protections usually critters or butchering.

[MountainDon]

....including a bench was to take off the milking parlor footwear, hooks for taking the winter coats....

The Mud Room! This was around the other end of the house, the back, off the kitchen. Big enough to hold everything you mentioned and have room to setup up the galvanized steel bathtub once a week (Saturdays) and have a bath with water heated by the wood burning kitchen range on the other side of the wall.

[ailsaek]

Here are some tweaks to the design based on the fact that I'd initially put the cookstove somewhere it couldn't possibly go and that I'd utterly forgotten which way north was.  (The nice thing about knowing exactly where you are going to build something if you ever get around to building.)  I'm fairly pleased with this at present, so I might get to work on the second floor and the walkout basement now.



I forget, was there a consensus here about what's the best backup heating system to get if you never plan on using anything but wood, but want to make the bank happy?

[Redoverfarm]

Others who are off the grid can probably answer your question about backup heat.  In my house the backup is wood.  Not much more basic than that. Primary is heat pump and gas furnace.

[glenn-k]

We like the Toyo or Rinai type oil heaters - we burn diesel in it.  Monitor is a no-no.  Ours worked good for about 7 years but is now unrepairable.  The Toyos per Al's heating in Brunswick, Maine are a real company that cares about their product and customers.  We bought our new Toyo for the other house from Al - service was great.  He is opinionated because he knows what he is talking about.

He repacks so there will not be as much chance of shipping damage and gave us a better price than we could get anywhere else.   Ours arrived in a few days even clear across the US. They are over 90% efficient - must go near an outside wall - fan forced - require a little power - may not be for off grid.

http://www.alsheating.com/

[MountainDon]

I see backup as three-fold. 1. If you're having a lazy day as far as wood goes. 2. You have an unexpected absence... something that keeps you from returning home on time. 3. Vacation time (a day or two, a week...), without the hassle of draining the pipes, etc.

In my book the best backup heat if your primary is wood, would be a direct vent, blowerless propane fueled wall heater(s). Some of them can also be fitted with a blower for better distribution of the heat, but are designed to need no power. You can leave it sit there with it's thermostat set low, but high enough to prevent freeze damage. With a large propane tank you'd be all set and safe for an extended absence.

[Ailsa C. Ek]

We like the Toyo or Rinai type oil heaters - we burn diesel in it.  Monitor is a no-no.  Ours worked good for about 7 years but is now unrepairable.  The Toyos per Al's heating in Brunswick, Maine are a real company that cares about their product and customers.  We bought our new Toyo for the other house from Al - service was great.  He is opinionated because he knows what he is talking about.

http://www.alsheating.com/

He sounds great.  And Brunswick is wonderfully convenient too.  Now that you mention them, I remember them being discussed on here.  If they burn diesel, would they burn SVO, do you think?

[glenn kangiser]

We are probably pushing it going to #2 diesel out here.  These are pretty sophisticated machines and I don't think they would like the thicker SVO oil.

In the cold NE I think you would need #1 Diesel or the proper fuel oil for the temperature.  These stoves are pretty well totally clean and nothing like the old oil burners we had when I grew up.  They were more of a smudge pot.

Al will call you bac personally and talk to you about your requirements and make his educated recommendations.  These only require a space of about 1 1/2 feet x 2 feet with about a 2" combination intake air and exhaust going through the wall at about 6" above floor level.  They even reclaim the exhaust heat so the exhaust pipe is pretty cool.

Double check because I don't know what the bank will think about these but they are programmable, self contained and about the most efficient you can get no matter what type of heater it is compared to.