Any of you gents ever build a house?

It's time to start planning for the next step in life. The house we are in is great, but it's not where I want to be in 5 years. 

The family has property about an hour south of Charleston where I plan to retire in 10-15 years. To that end, I'm ready to start thinking about building a house. Other than a few requirements, I'm open to ideas. 

Requirement 1, A wrap-around porch. I spend a lot of time sitting on my porch at home. It's probably my favorite place to be. The new house site will be even better for sitting outside. On the water, better views, better breezes, no neighbors beyond family within a mile, no city noises. 

Requirement 2. Efficient. I don't want to spend all of my money heating and cooling the place. There will probably be some solar involved, but I don't see electricity getting any cheaper over the next 25 years. 

Something like this appeals to me. A nice mix of living and shop space. Right at 2000 sqft living, about 2000 sqft of shop. If I was building it I would probably take the porch on around the rest of the house. 

I would like y'alls input. What do you look for in a house? In a shop? Do you prefer the shop to be separate from the house? Do you have a set of plans or a drawing of your dream house? 

What is the one thing that your next house just has to have? 

My thoughts are to plan as big as I can dream and then pare it down to budget and reality. 

So, tell me about your dream house. 

I built my own house... and you have been there!

The build was 22 years ago, and I'm looking forward to doing it again in a year or two. 
 

My only real mistake was designing it myself and then having a draftsman draw up the blueprints. I should have paid an architect  to do it right, or bought an existing set of plans. There are so many little things that are easy to overlook. Pay a pro to get those things right. 

Also, carefully choose how you want to orient your living space (and your backyard) to the sun. 

In reply to Woody (Forum Supportum) :

I'll be buying a set of plans or having someone else do the design. 

As to the layout on the lot. That is going to be dictated by the water's edge and a couple of significant trees that will be staying. One is a 60' tall magnolia and the other is a large live oak. 

A few things on my list if I ever get around to building.

1) Double door front door (looks like your plans already have this)

2) all 36" interior doors, as you get older, someone may end up in wheel chair or walker.  wider doors will help. 

3) 10' ceiling heights

4) separate his and hers walk in closets (this may just be me not being happy with my messy wife)

5) insulation in interior walls, tired of hearing sounds between rooms.  especially bedrooms

6) attached garage for daily's but separate shop for toys and projects.  Always keeps your wife's car inside and keeps sounds and smells away from the main house.   For attached garage, make it oversize to allow full size pickup with room to spare. 

7) 2x6 exterior walls and triple pane windows if you really want to

8) if this is your final home make sure laundry room is large enough to move around in wheelchair

9) walk in pantry (your plans already have this)

Yes, from cards...

Road & Track's Peter Egan wrote a column about him buying a house and garage in SoCal.  It was wacky.   He wanted a giant garage and ended up with a small one.  

I've built several including my own. What I want in a house is odd so it won't be helpful to you but I'll throw in a couple of observation.

The bathrooms, both of them, seem a bit small. 

Cathedral ceiling specifically and high ceilings in general aren't great for efficiency.

If you think 2000sqft is a great number go 25 percent bigger 

Insulation between the garage and house is a great idea.

36 inch interior door is a great idea especially if it's a final home as mentioned before.

Make your garage bigger than you'd think you would ever ever need

Make the entry from the garage AND the front door ADA compliant (or easily adapted to be), as well as the living room, powder room, kitchen, pantry, and master bedroom, bathroom, and closet. 
 

EDIT: ADA compliance is not for homes, so the above isn't quite accurate. But you get the idea. Some of it will need adapting; you probably wouldn't want wheelchair accessible counters, but make it so that if you need to, all you have to do is replace the cabinets and bathroom vanity/toilet. 

Small details--

• run hot and cold water to shop and garage, with floor drains if permitted by local code
• locate power outlets appropriate for bidet toilet.  My wife is ticked every time she uses one without those features since I put one in the master bath. 

Good thoughts so far. Keep them coming. 

I've done it several times. 
 

Handicapped accessibility- this is mostly about square footage. Make sure your bathrooms and laundry are large enough to have a 5' radius clear of obstructions. Make hallways wider- 40" or more. 36" doors are often recommended, but that depends. It's actually about the door swing area. A 2'-8" door usually works better in a residence, and is easier to close behind you from a chair. 
 

I disagree with the earlier comment about high ceilings. Low ceilings are more efficient in the North. High ceilings work better in the South. Heat rises. 
 

STRONG preference for a detached shop. Noise, dust, tracking crap in...

Even if you buy plans, pay an architect to review. 

Exterior doors are E36 M3.  All of them, regardless of quality of install and material, have something to fail and let water in.  Make every exterior door covered with a roof.  
 

attached garages are one thing, and I hate them.  Attached shops are an even worse thing, do you want to be doing painting or welding in a big room that's essentially part of the house? Shops are full of hazardous and flammable stuff, including cars, and I want some distance between that stuff and my sleeping/breathing family.
 

future proof it.  1 floor, nothing in the basement you can't live without, wide doorways.  
 

Go 10' projection on your porch.  You'll thank me later when your designer wanted to go 8' which becomes 7.4' after railings eat some space and then you can't walk around the table you put out there to eat at without moving chairs around.  Not enough people put enough thought into the porch, and it will become one of the most used living areas if you design it right.  Decks are dumb, covered outdoor living areas are where it's at.

Built our current house in 2004. I made up the plans based on a previous house because the design worked well for us. Made a couple small mistakes with the garage, like I could have had an additional 8x8 room for toolboxes/benches. 

Outlets are huge and lighting. We didn't put a light in the pantry and that was a mistake. 

If there is a forced choice of sq ft or nicer finishing touches (tile vs vinyl, laminate counters or granite) go with the sq ft. All of those other things are stuff you'll replace in a few years and can upgrade then. 

In reply to Antihero (Forum Supporter) :

Efficiency of high ceilings depends some on location. For heating - you're right. But he's in South Carolina where heating is less of an issue and high ceilings are common for cooling efficiency with keeping warm air away from occupants.

I agree with keeping the daily driver garage and the project shop/garage as separate buildings to keep the smelly and noisy things away from the living areas.

Does the site have any elevation change? The one thing I'd want in that floor plan is a basement so I could have a music room (or rooms). Preferably with high ceilings so I can sound isolate from the living space (a cranked Plexi into a 4x12 cab is loud). A walk-out basement is nice as well. 

I agree the bathroom look kinda small, but I can also understand wanting to keep them as small as possible for easier cleaning. 

Edit: one comment about the garage shown. The large through-door bay looks like it's designed for an RV.  If that is in the plans, then make sure the space allows for parking with the (assumed) slides out. And be able to walk around the RV with the slides out. 

BTW, regardless of how many rules and guidelines you follow, there are some things the ADA (and others) can't solve. 
 

Example: 

I did an addition for a man who had had a stroke. He was paralyzed on the left side of his body, and it had affected his cognitive reasoning. 
 

There was one spot in the house he struggled with. It was a left hand turn through a doorway. No matter what he did, he couldn't negotiate it. There was a slight rise in the floor (less than 1/4"). It met all the rules of what should be a good layout. I couldn't figure out why he was having trouble. 
 

Finally, I asked if I could sit in his chair. I tried the turn and had no trouble at all. Then I realized I was using 2 hands. He only had 1. When I tried it with only my right hand, the slight rise in the floor plus the turn made me turn myself into the wall. I needed an enormous amount of strength to make the turn, which he didn't have. 
 

The answer was really simple. He needed a hand grip on the door jamb at exactly the right height so he could grab and pull with his right hand to negotiate the turn. 
 

He wasn't able to reason out the solution himself. 

1. No finished floors (polished concrete + throw rugs).  Real hardwood would be the backup for 2nd levels, etc.
2. No drywall - stone, concrete, or wood walls
3. South facing windows for passive heating
4. South facing solar thermosiphon for solar hot water & aux. Heating/radiant floor heating.
5. Minisplit a/c or other option - no ducting
6. No baseboards
7. Solid wood cabinets
8. Minimum use of doors and door jambs
9. Passive lighting

While we are discussing accessibility...

Don't use standard residential entry doors. They all have thresholds which are hard to roll over. Use flat thresholds. 
 

I'd also have a zero step entrance, but I would go a little further. Guidelines would recommend a pitch not to exceed 1:12.  This is fine for a wheelchair, UNLESS you lose the use of one hand. Then the max you are gonna negotiate unassisted is 1:18.

These things don't seem important, until they are. 
 

It's easy and almost free  to build them from from the start. It's really hard to fix later and very expensive. 

In reply to Ian F (Forum Supporter) :

I disagree about small bathrooms being easier to clean. It's much easier to push a mop in a big space. 

In reply to SV reX :

Hmm... perhaps.  There is probably some sort of space to cleaning time ratio.  Granted, I really hate cleaning bathrooms. I'd go with a wall mounted toilet if I could.

I'll disagree with a bunch of people here about the separate workshop.

My old house had an attached garage, but in my current house, the garage is separate from the house. I preferred the attached garage because I noticed that my projects are not being worked on as much with the separate garage. With the attached garage, I would sometimes go and do a little 10 minute task in between some house chores, or watching the kids. Those 5-10 minute tasks really add up. With the separate garage, I'm less inclined to go especially if it's cold or rainy outside. And if you don't want smells and fire hazards from your shop, it has to be build far enough that the weather will matter. 

Also, while it's true that it would sometimes smell in the house, it was a pretty rare occurrence and it's easily dealt with if you have some ventilation in the shop. Which you should have no matter where it's built. 

1. Think up front whether you will ever be selling the house. We built our dream house and it has 1 bedroom and an office which could be a second bedroom. It's a bigger floor plan(2600sq-ft) and everyone scratches their heads as to why it doesn't have 3 or 4 bedrooms. There's just 2 of us, no kids, no grandkids, no nieces/nephews who will ever visit/stay over, so this floor plan works perfectly for us. The problem arises should we decide to ever sell the place, it will be difficult at this price point with only 2 bedrooms. 
 

2. WIDE steps and hallways! Our last place had 58" wide steps and 52" wide hallways. Super easy to get furniture up and down steps and into doorways.

3. 36" doors or double-wide doors as previously mentioned.

4. Low thresholds into walk-in showers so a wheelchair can easily maneuver over them. We did this and it was a great idea. We don't need them now, but who knows what the future may hold.

5. A closet off the front entrance and a bench off the doorway from the garage(a place to sit and put on shoes).

6. A bathroom(toilet & sink) in the shop or at least a slop sink to wash your hands.

7. Hot and cold hose bibs next to the garage doors inside.

8. If building on a slab, I would 1000% do radiant heat in the floors! Try to make the house as efficient as is financially possible. Think ahead and spend a little more now as the return could be huge.
 

9. LOTS of can lights. I tried explaining this to our electrician but he didn't get it at first. I can make 12 ceiling lights as bright as 4 with a dimmer, but I can't make 4 lights as bright as 12. We have 3 rooms with "tray ceilings" which have 3 lights on each side(12 total) vs the plans which called for only one at each corner(4 total).
 

"IF" we build another one, I would:

- buy the most thermally efficient windows possible.

- 2x6 walls.

- two-thermal heating/cooling.

- spray foam attic with sealed soffit area.

- ceiling fans in all rooms.

There LOTS more too. Makes me want to build another one after reading this!!!!

GOOD LUCK!

Ian F (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to SV reX :

Hmm... perhaps.  There is probably some sort of space to cleaning time ratio.  Granted, I really hate cleaning bathrooms. I'd go with a wall mounted toilet if I could.

There is a slight chance the bathroom ends up fully tiled with a floor drain and a hose bib. 

If you have good aim bathrooms are simple to clean

In floor heating for the garage.

Multiple 220v outlets in the garage.

Thicker section in floor for a lift.

Stain proof the garage floor ASAP somehow. 

Switched outlets in the ceiling for extra shop lighting.

Extra outlets in the kitchen and pantry. 

Heated bathroom floors. 

Extra height ceilings in the garage.

Garage doors open to extra height 

Taller garage door openings 

(Can you tell I'm focusing on the garage?)