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House Plans - Building Your Own HomeHaving your own home is everyone's dream. Building and planning your own home can be both a dream and a nightmare, depending on how you handle it. If you are buying a home from a tract builder, you will likely have minimal input and choice over basic floor plans or options, but not much. However, if you are designing a home from scratch with a builder, you can create and floor plan or house plan that suits YOUR needs. If you want a guest wing, you get a guest wing (you also get to pay for it!). If you want a deck outside the master bedroom, you plan it and design it into your homes blueprints. The first step to take in planning your new home is to pick up a few books and magazines that focus on house plans and floor plans, or visit some of the house plan websites. Below, we will list the best house plan websites and give you ideas where to pick up books or magazines with blueprints and floorplans to look through.
House Plan Websites - Select from 100s of Floor PlansEPlans.com is a great starting point for looking over potential house plans and designs. They have coastal house plans, luxury home house plans, walkout basement floor plans, narrow lot designs, ultimate kitchen plans, and architectural styles like bungalow plans, colonial, contemporary, country, craftsman layouts, mediterranean plans, neoclassical house plans, ranch, southwest, split level, and victorian. They have pictures and blueprint style layouts you can browse - if you find something you like, you can purchase the actual reproducible masters (building blueprints) for around $600-$2000 - these will have the details you builder needs to actually work on the house. Here's a sample of a vacation house plan: "This Southern tidewater cottage is the perfect vacation hideaway--easily blending into the seaside scenery. The Key West style boasts a charming stone and horizontal siding exterior. The wraparound entry porch is relaxing and inviting. Double doors open into the foyer--the study with built-in cabinetry is placed to the right and the formal dining room is to the left. An octagonal great room with a multifaceted vaulted ceiling illuminates the interior. This room boasts a fireplace, a built-in entertainment center, and three sets of double doors, which lead outside to a vaulted lanai. The island kitchen is brightened by a bumped-out window and a pass-through to the lanai. Two walk-in closets and a whirlpool bath await to indulge the homeowner in the master suite. A set of double doors open to the vaulted master lanai for quiet comfort. The U-shaped staircase leads to a loft, which overlooks the great room and the foyer. Two additional family bedrooms offer private baths. A computer center and a morning kitchen complete the upper level, before opening onto the outer deck. A two-car garage/basement completes the plan. Primary Style: NeoClassical, Colonial -- Main Level: 1,855 -- Second Level: 901 -- Total: 2,756 Sq. Ft". It includes measured, detailed drawings of each floor and exterior etchings or paintings of each - great site, our favorite for house plans online.Houseplans.com also offers free house plans online for browsing - just like Eplans you pay for the master design blueprints (also around $500-$2000), or you can buy a Cost To Build Report for $29 to get an idea of what the house might actually cost. They also offer a good selection of plans: Adobe style, italian, greek revival, tudor, log home plans, santa fe, cottage house, colonial, georgian, etc. You can search by specific square footage or room requirements, floors, size of garage, etc. to narrow down your search. Many of the house plans have color images of the home exteriors, although usually only from one angle. Finally, check out DreamHomeSource.com - home to over 17,000 plans! "Welcome to Dream Home Source, one of the largest collections of house plans, floor plans, and garage plans online. You can save thousands in architects’ fees by purchasing a stock home plan, and with our customization services, truly create the unique home of your dreams!" Prices are similar to the other sites, so you can browse for free and not pay anything until you find the design you want. As to what's included when you buy a house plan, this is the quote from their site: "Our blueprints include:
Eplans also offers a few books of house plans, like "The Big Book of Home Plans", "1001 All Time Best Selling House Plans", and "Dream Home Source - 350 House Plans", each priced at $12.95. You can also search Amazon.com for "house plans" - you'll find titles like "One Story House Plans", "The Ultimate Book of House Plans", etc. If you have a particular type of home in mind, like one story, beach houses, budget houses, etc. you can probably find a specific book for your niche, but we recommend you pick up 2 or 3 different books with different styles, as you will sometimes find a particular element in one plan that you can use anywhere, like a screened porch with balcony, a special walkout basement layout, or a certain look with a shed roof or dormer windows over the garage. Fiberglass ladders are not quite as light as aluminum ones, but they do not bend, do not rust or corrode in the elements, and do not conduct electricity. The next ladder selection criteria is size. Do you need just a 6 foot step ladder for in home use, or a 10 foot step ladder for reaching a first story roof, or an extension ladder for reaching a second story roofline to clean gutters, hang lights, etc? Keep in mind when selecting a step ladder, the maximum height you can reach is normally 4 feet above the height of the ladder - for example, a 6 foot ladder will let you reach a maximum height of 10 feet. Ladder also come with specific weight ratings, from 200 pounds to 375. Keep in mind a load of shingles weighs 70 lbs, while 5 gallons of paint weighs 60 lbs. Home Design Software - 3-D House PlansIf you want to make your own home design or visualize 3-D walk-thrus of a house plan, you want to look into some 3-D home design and modeling software. Google offers a free downloadable house plan program called SketchUp - you can use it to create mockups of buildings and simple interiors, and see what they look like in 3-D. Or visit BlkMtnSoft.com for Floor Plan Design Software call Fast Plans - draw houses, offices, whatever with simple CAD layout tools, and the software automatically adds dimensions, adds doors and windows, lets you drag and drop rooms around and recalculate everything around, etc. The sample version is free to try, and $45 to purchase. Better Homes and Gardens offer a variety of house design programs, ranging in price from $59 to $459, at HomeDesignerSoftware.com. You can start from over 1500 starter plans, then customize, choosing everything from wallpaper and carpet colors to flooring materials. You can then visualize your home in 3-D with detailed room renderings and virtual tours - this comes in real handy for people who have a hard time viewing 2-D drawings and "seeing" what the end result will be in their heads (ie, most of us!). You can choose design templates for interiors, automatically generate roofs (which is tough if you've ever used a 3-D design program!), build decks and stairs, and much more.
Do you have a quality site or product that belongs in this guide? We are always happy to evaluate or review new products and websites. Feel free to contact us at the email address below and let us know about you. If you have a demo product you'd like us to look at, please contact us before sending anything. Thank you.
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