new guy with a question

[shawnkfl]

Hi everyone! i'm new here (thank you mountaindon and john!). I live near tampa currently and lost my job july 1st. my wife and i have decided that since we have to start over, we will be relocating out of this area (cant stand it here!). so....i have been looking for employment in tennessee, alabama, west virginia, western area of the carolinas, eastern kentucky, eastern missouri, northern mississippi...anywhere along the mountains basically. we want to live in the country but close enough to a small city to find work. i'm a mechanical design engineer and i'm hoping my wife will not work after the move, wherever it may be. we have two daughters, 7 and 13.

now, i have found a house plan that my wife really likes. it's a two story and it has 4 bedrooms, one for each daughter, one for us and a spare for her to use as a scrapbook/craft work room. plus it has a block foundation for my "man cave". it won't be very cheap to build though. which leads me here.

first question is, can one of the plans offered here have a full block basement and 4 bedrooms? i want to build the smallest home possible with these requirements.

[PA-Builder]

... First question is, can one of the plans offered here have a full block basement and 4 bedrooms? i want to build the smallest home possible with these requirements.

I believe you will find that just about all of John's plans will work with a concrete block foundation.  Just consider the block walls as the main beams that are usually called for in his plans.

[MountainDon]

Existing plans can be modified by adding to the length with almost no effort, Making an existing plan wider though requires more work in recalculating the sizes of floor and ceiling joists and rafters.

[MushCreek]

Not a direct answer to your building questions, but have you considered living outside the Greenville, SC area? Not many people know that extreme western SC has mountains, and it's a lot cheaper (so far) than western NC. There's a lot of growing industry due to large companies like BMW, Michelin, Bosch, and GE. just to name a few. We are 15 miles north of Greenville, and it's very rural, but not a bad drive to a variety of places to work. Good luck!