20x30 cabin as permanent house

[TBoss]

I'm just curious how many of you have built a 20x30 or 20x40 cabin as a primary residence?

My family consists of me, my wife, and two boys; 3 and 11.  We have entertained the idea of making one of the above our primary residence for at least 3-5 years.
This would allow us to pay debt, student loans, then build a bigger house down the road. 
Any thoughts or comments on this?  For those using as a primary residence, with a family of 4, I'd be interested in hearing your comments about size and how its worked over time.

Thanks
Tboss

[Steve_B]

I am about to start on my 20x40 with 1.5 floor plan from the site here in the beginning of 2013

We are a family of 5, myself and my wife, and three kids ages 15, 12, and 7

I have been researching the idea for about a year now through other sites and reading, and see no reason why it can not be a permanent house for the 5 of us.

Heating will be done with a wood stove or pellet stove, and cooling will be done with 2 or 3 small wheeled portable AC units,

Should be roughly 800sqf downstairs and dual lofts would add roughly 400sqf


Sooooooo tired of living the rat race and spending every dollar on living and paying back more then double for a mortgage.... I've owned large houses in my life, and all they do is cost you more and more money. Going to build this over 2 or 3 years and fund the build completely out of pocket and move in and never pay anyone again!

We have always been a close family so the smaller space will be ok, plus the 2 lofts allow for some "alone" time for any of us

Floor plan attached just to show you what you can do with a mere 20 x 40 space

[TBoss]

Thanks Steve.

What software did you use for the plan you attached?

[Steve_B]

That floor plan was done with the FREE version of "Sweet Home 3D"

It is very easy to learn and gives yo aerial views and first person views of the house... you can even import almost anything from the Google 3D Warehouse into the program to use it!

[PorkChopsMmm]

We built a 1.5 story 24x32 cabin for our current family of 5. It works well for us -- it is paid for and we like the concept of not paying for or heating/cooling space that we would never use. Our kids are 5, 4, and 1. My 2 suggestions would be to carefully plan the interior to maximize space and to design/build/frame walls for future expansion.

We built a small baby room that can later be another bathroom or home office. We did NOT however plan expansion with exterior walls and wish we did. For example, we want to add on to the West side of the house but the stairs are there, woodstove, etc. and cutting in a new entrance way for an addition would mean moving and changing that entire side of the house. I have seen others pre-plan for this expansion and it goes much easier.

Hope this helps,
Peter

[flyingvan]

For what it's worth, as our kids start to leave the house one by one (it goes by really, really fast!)  we realized it's really only a few years we needed the big house.  We're looking forward to the day we can downscale into the one we're building now.   We had 3 kids over 6 years.  Off to college at 18, that's only 12 years we had to house all 5 people, now we have a 2800 square foot house to vacuum, heat, and pay taxes on.