House Construction - Best Value Dimensions

[MacLawn]

Beltz, welcome to Appling! I cannot' believe someone else here is in Appling. It is a great place to live, and we also plan to retire there. We've had our land since '75, built a house, too small, STILL adding on! I'd say be sure to build what you want in the beginning, this remodeling to make it like you really need is wearing me out! I've done a lot of the adding on myself, but now, just too old and painful to do much of it.

That's my only advice, just make it like you really need it to be from the beginning.

 

[dmccarty]

My friends did that... bought a steel hull 3 masted schooner and sailed the world for 5 years... it was everything they wanted and more... they had a deep water dock in their backyard so it wasn't as if they were gone 5 years straight.

They sold the Bay Area home, the boat and the Cessna P210 and bought 20 acres on a trout stream in the mountains and now have a barn and Deere 110tlb.

I love to hear when a plan comes together... they are both around 70 now and enjoy the country life... who would have thought...

The barn they built was laid out to minimize any waste of material... a little forethought makes a big difference.

Many people who do the boat thing do so near retirement age, stay out as long as they can before health issues force them off the boat and/or they have done their bucket list. Seems like most people stay on the boat 5-10 years before moving back to land. I could see staying on the boat until I die as long as I can move around and on/off the boat. One reason we are thinking of The Boat is that our town has a development going in that will put 50-60K people within a few miles of the house. The town currently has about 3K people and the whole county is about 50K. Our small town and rural county will be neither small nor rural. :shocked:

So we are seriously thinking of selling out, retiring early and living on a boat in Asia until SS kicks in and then slowly traveling across the Pacific back to the states which would take 3-5 years. We build our dream home and retirement home at the same time but it seems that we will sell out and move on. This is COMPLETELY unplanned but living in a city is what we left behind but the city has followed us. There is a couple who own a boat from the same builder/design we would like to buy and they have been out for about 7 years and now wish to sell the boat and retire to 100 acres in VA. We seem to be doing this a bit backwards. :laughing:

We are serious enough about this that we met the builder and designer last May in WA and we just returned from a trip to China where we visited the boat yard.
There is a lot we have to do to pull off the boat idea and plenty of ways for the boat idea to be derailed but we are moving forward with the idea.

The boat uses a JD engine so we will still be Green. :laughing::laughing::laughing:

One of the people we met, who is in the early stages of building his boat, mentioned to always keep resale in mind. Given that the guy is in his early 50's and retired, I tend to pay attention to his money advice.

Later,
Dan

 

[Country Geek]

When I designed my house in the late 1990s I tried to keep dimensions on what I though would be economical boundaries based on building materials. My builder just laughed at that... there is very little that turns out standard in the long run.

By all means if economy is important to you design a simple house. But it's really not going to matter in the end if that exterior wall is 31' or 32' or whatever. As others have said, if you standardize for one thing like siding, and it simply changes the roof or the framing, etc. to use a non-standard size.

 

[Gunny]

Kind of off topic, but someone mentioned building the home with handicapped access in mind. Along with having wider doors, hallways and designing the bath for wheelchair access, I'd also think about putting some extra bracing in critical ares like around the commode, maybe installing a handicapped accessible shower/bath, etc. No one likes to think about it, but if (or when) you or your wife needs it, it's better to have every thing ready to go.
I built an apartment on the side of my house to take care of my father after his brain surgery and worked it out as best as I could for hand rails, room on both sides of the commode, a shower with a ramp, etc. I hope it made things easier for hi while he was still with us, but now my thoughts are that if myself or my wife gets in bad shape, we can always move into the apartment and any caretaker we get can live in the main house.

I've also heard that you get the best bang for the buck by going two story since you double the use of your footer and roof, but a two story doesn't really work well if you consider handicapped access.

 

[dmccarty]

Kind of off topic, but someone mentioned building the home with handicapped access in mind. Along with having wider doors, hallways and designing the bath for wheelchair access, I'd also think about putting some extra bracing in critical ares like around the commode, maybe installing a handicapped accessible shower/bath, etc. No one likes to think about it, but if (or when) you or your wife needs it, it's better to have every thing ready to go.

...

I've also heard that you get the best bang for the buck by going two story since you double the use of your footer and roof, but a two story doesn't really work well if you consider handicapped access.

We built our house with handicap access in mind. All doors are 36 inches wide and we have a shower you could drive a wheel chair into. We limited hallways since they are an expensive waste of space/money but the little bit of hallways we have are over 36 inches wide. We can easily add small ramps to get into the house if needed and the floors are finished concrete which would be easy to roll around on in a wheel chair.

I don't buy into the two story house is cheaper than a single story house idea. Its only cheaper if you pretty severely compromise on room sizes, usually this means smaller room sizes than one wants. For years I would graph out house designs for our dream home and getting a two story house with the desired room sizes is almost impossible. You either go too small or too large. Stairs are expensive wasters of space, as are hallways, and you almost always end up with quite a bit of hallway space, as well as landing space, in a two story house. Our house has maybe 9 linear feet or about 30 SF of hall way space which is pretty danged efficient.

Later,
Dan

 

[ultrarunner]

Many people who do the boat thing do so near retirement age, stay out as long as they can before health issues force them off the boat and/or they have done their bucket list. Seems like most people stay on the boat 5-10 years before moving back to land. I could see staying on the boat until I die as long as I can move around and on/off the boat. One reason we are thinking of The Boat is that our town has a development going in that will put 50-60K people within a few miles of the house. The town currently has about 3K people and the whole county is about 50K. Our small town and rural county will be neither small nor rural. :shocked:

So we are seriously thinking of selling out, retiring early and living on a boat in Asia until SS kicks in and then slowly traveling across the Pacific back to the states which would take 3-5 years. We build our dream home and retirement home at the same time but it seems that we will sell out and move on. This is COMPLETELY unplanned but living in a city is what we left behind but the city has followed us. There is a couple who own a boat from the same builder/design we would like to buy and they have been out for about 7 years and now wish to sell the boat and retire to 100 acres in VA. We seem to be doing this a bit backwards. :laughing:

We are serious enough about this that we met the builder and designer last May in WA and we just returned from a trip to China where we visited the boat yard.

There is a lot we have to do to pull off the boat idea and plenty of ways for the boat idea to be derailed but we are moving forward with the idea.

Well a boat can be super efficient dimension wise for a place to live.

My friends no longer own their world cruiser.

Here's a picture of it...

Millennium Falcon - 60' World Cruiser in Steel ! $275,000 | Spinnaker Sailing

 

[Beltzington]

Beltz, welcome to Appling! I cannot' believe someone else here is in Appling. It is a great place to live, and we also plan to retire there. We've had our land since '75, built a house, too small, STILL adding on! I'd say be sure to build what you want in the beginning, this remodeling to make it like you really need is wearing me out! I've done a lot of the adding on myself, but now, just too old and painful to do much of it.

That's my only advice, just make it like you really need it to be from the beginning.

MacLawn - Good to hear from you, our property is at the end of Ridge Road near the lake. Looking to build a comfortable home that will not tie up all to much cash, the world awaits.

Lesson learned from providing for two disabled parents, all doors 36" and hallways 4+ feet, bathrooms ADA accessible. Elevator dimensions built in although I hope never to use it. Drugs keeping folks alive much longer than the body should live, don't mean to be dark but quality of life was lost when beta blockers became a commodity.

 

[PILOON]

While most like to think economical, one should always consider re sale as well.
You want to perceive what Mr Mrs average want in a home.
Some items come to mind such as:
2 Bath Rms, 3 BR, LR, DR, Fireplace and storage.
Naturally some areas can be re-purposed easily but unlike some designs that can not.
A round house (seen them) while cool is terrible in layout possibilities. House with sauna sounds cool but after novelty is gone it is wasted space.
I know of probably 5-6 homes with pool rooms that have seen but a few dozen games ever played and ever notice how cheaply a used pool table sells for?
When you plan a retirement home remember as you age stairs can become a challenge: so as few as possible.
In the bath or shower area assure that the structure is capable of attaching grab rails as you will appreciate them simply to steady yourself.

 

[dave1949]

Drugs keeping folks alive much longer than the body should live, don't mean to be dark but quality of life was lost when beta blockers became a commodity.

I don't think it is dark, just reality and not one that is always easy to deal with. If an elderly person has a clear mind, is reasonably happy and able to be fairly independent then it's good.

 

[dmccarty]

Well a boat can be super efficient dimension wise for a place to live.

My friends no longer own their world cruiser.

Here's a picture of it...

Millennium Falcon - 60' World Cruiser in Steel ! $275,000 | Spinnaker Sailing

Hmmmmm, I think I have seen that boat before. I am sure there are more than a few boats named Millennium Falcon but not many will have a steel hull. I think I remember this boat because of the name and steel hull. I bet the owners on are the Cruising Forum.

We built our house to be efficient energy and space wise. I designed the house and about the only second guessing I do about the design is our closet space. It would be nice to have added a foot of depth to the closet but that extra space would have cost about $5,500. :shocked: I made the right design decision but ... :laughing::laughing::laughing:

Looking at boat deck plans has been interesting because so many of those plans waste quite a bit of space and space on a boat is very expensive and precious. People who know us ask how we could move to a boat from a house but we have looked at the space we actually use in our house and we spend most of our time in a few spots in the house. Most obviously, we spend the most time sleeping in bed, :laughing: but our awake time is mostly spent sitting in our assigned seats in the living room. The wifey has her spot and I have mine. The living room is large to be able to seat company, which we do have frequently, so the room design works and I would not change the room size but looking at the space we actively occupy we could really have a much smaller space. The boat we want has amble seating for 6 people in the "living room" depending on which layout we picked. The reality is that we would both have our assigned seats on the boat just like we have at our current house.

Many people retire, sell the larger home they had when the kids were still living at home, and buy a smaller retirement home. In effect, we are thinking about doing the same thing except the smaller home moves and is a boat.

Both the builder and designer of the boat believe that guest accommodations should be adequate but not too comfortable. You want the guests to come aboard to visit but not stay too long. :shocked::laughing::laughing::laughing: That is a design idea that make sense to me, and I think it also applies to a house design as well.

Later,
Dan