The Perfect House Plans

The day after talking to Steve, my in-laws came up to help Alan burn some brush piles on the land. It was raining quite hard the beginning of the day but lightened up towards noon. My MIL and I decided to stay at my house to pack a bit and get the girls after school then head down to the land to help burn. We started looking through the house plan books I have and one plan that I had not noticed before caught my eye. It was in the vacation type home section and was a two story plan, where we had been looking for a more ranchy type house. But I wasn't finding the floor plan that was just right and we kept ending up with cape style houses since a front porch is a MUST! I like capes, but had the thought that I'd like something a little different. We also wanted to be as energy independent as possible, and having lots of windows to the south would help with the solar aspect of heating the house in the winter. The capes had windows in front, but they were covered by the porch roof.


So this plan caught my eye, and the layout inside looked like what we had planned to do. We need our master suite as far from daily activity as possible, since Alan has to sleep in the daytime when doing night shifts. We already know we will be sound proofing our room! It has the front porch, having it open allows the sun to reach the windows. It has solar potential, but is more traditional looking.

Now that I found a plan I really liked, I was anxious to show Alan. When he got home that night, after staying down on the property til 10:00 pm to tend the fires, I showed him and he liked them too! As I was showing him the plans, I looked at the name of them, and it was BARNSTABLE COTTAGE, LOL! There's my sign. I asked him if we could make it light yellow, as there's a cute house in our neighborhood that is that color and I've always loved that little house. He said "NO".

So I think we've found our house plans! Or at least a starting point for developing a workable plan for us. I secretly was afraid that we'd be down there in two years, still living in a mobile home or camper while I was trying to pick out the "perfect" plans! After all, we've been thinking about this for 2 1/2 years already and tossed around ideas about living in yurts, or stackwood houses, to any number of small houses we can build without a large mortgage. Our two rules for the house are for it to be as debt free as possible and as efficient in space and energy consumption as possible.

One step closer!