All of my designs are in pencil. There is a good reason for that.
Once we’d decided to build a cottage, the rough drawing in my sketchbook was merely the birth of the idea. Maybe a mad genius could build an entire house based on non-dimensional scribbles on a piece of paper, but that didn’t quite cut it for us. This was our first house that we were in charge of ordering supplies and constructing. Without some plan development, I wasn’t even sure how much lumber we needed.
I have at my disposal 11×17 sized “decommissioned” tracing-paper-esque graph paper. They just don’t make paper like this anymore, or at least not as many sheets as you’d ever want and for free! I pulled out a blank sheet, came up with a scale, and started drawing. First up was a layout.
Actually, first up was figuring out a size for the whole thing. We’d been looking at small camps. But with a clean slate totally up to Raven and I, we could build any dimension we chose. I decided to start with the most important thing to me: the kitchen. I measured the useable kitchen space in the yurt, squared it up, and came up with the figure of 8 feet x 8 feet. That is admittedly a small space, but one I would be comfortable with. It would actually be more counter space than I had in the yurt. And really, I’d started the kitchen in the yurt with a workbench which had to hold a water cistern, a stove, and cooking space. 8 x 8 would be great!
I also measured the bathroom and felt that a 5 x 5 space would be all we needed. With those figures and the need for a utility room, I figured a 16 foot wide by 25 feet long cabin would be great. Add a mudroom to one side, 8 x 8 to make boards and such easy, and on the other side of a full door to hide the inevitable clutter, an 8 x 25 foot porch, and a little sleeping loft over the kitchen/bathroom area – it looked like a very modest little home. At just under 800 square feet including the porch, the space would be bigger than the yurt and provide better storage.
One design feature I was determined to have was windows as close to the corner as possible. I’d been in a tiny camp years ago where large windows, the only windows in the room, hugged the corner supports. You didn’t even notice the walls or the small space. With only a fine line designating a corner, both eyes focused on the view beyond the window. The closed in space dissolved in the illusion of outdoors brought inside. I had to have that.
Raven was agreeable, so I drew windows in each corner. Then added a few more across the 16’ wall in the living room and to the screened in porch. Long windows were drawn for up at the peak of the cathedral ceiling. Raven wanted a window in the utility room. We needed to take one out to fit in the shower. Then we priced windows. We kept the double hung looking towards the porch but took out two on the 16’ wall. We did need some wall space after all!
All along, the design sheets continued to be erased, improved, and recalculated. Raven suggested extending the sleeping loft nearly the length of the building giving us another 200 square feet of living space. It is hard to argue that idea! I drew up individual wall plans showing studs and rough openings for the windows. From these, I could calculate the amount of lumber we needed. Plus, it gave me a good idea how to frame the whole thing. This is our first house, after all!
If I thought the designs changed quickly during the planning phase, it was nothing compared to the changes we made once we started building. It seemed every day spent building produced at least one new idea. Why close off the mudroom when an 8 foot carrying beam would open up the room? Last weekend produced one of the biggest: why not make the roof over the mudroom a little gable and turn what would have been a small storage space init into a small bedroom? An idea on a Sunday had us ordering more beams by Tuesday. Changing elements on the fly seems to be one of the fun things about building your own house.
I’ve given up drawing out every new feature by now. Maybe I should say that my drawings have become life sized as I realize how inadequate a scale drawing compares to a house. To end the debate on roof pitch, we put up some long scrap lumber at both potential pitches, stood back, and chose one. Then I drew the winning diagram on the loft floor to use as a template. I haven’t even worried about the roof pitch to the little bedroom. I figured we can decide when we get there. After all, the whole thing may have changed by then!
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