Best Seller European House Plans - HPG-2001-1

After all the work that goes into building a new home, many people hope that they will stay in their dream house for years, if not for the rest of their lives. But today, we all know people move much more frequently. Of course you’re designing your home for you and your family; you have a certain idea of what you want. Keep in mind that it still pays to include those features that the general public expects these days. That way, if you do have to move sooner than later, your home will have greater resale value and you’ll generate more buyers.

One expectation is the mud room. While you may not be all that crazy about incorporating one into your new country house plans, they are essential for larger families or those with lots of pets. Typically they are informal spaces that provide a transition from the outside to the inside of your home. They include such features as simple-to-clean floors, lots of storage compartments and often even the washing machine and dryer. The point is to remove wet clothes, paw prints and debris here so that the rest of the home stays clean and organized.

Open floor plans are more common than ever. Gone are the days of neatly partitioned off rooms. Today kitchens and dining rooms are often one space and include islands in the middle and very high end appliances. They are often considered the main family room. While appliances come and go, from brand names to colors, don’t overlook the fact that when you go to sell, kitchens can make or break the sale, particularly the design of your southern house floor plans.

Closets. Today both men and women have a lot more to store in closets. As our per capita has increased, so has our hunger for more and more clothes, accessories and personal care products. With this demand, we’ve had to modify the traditional closet. Most people buying a new home want to see at least one walk in closets. Closets should be designed with comfort and simplicity in mind, too. The more accessible the items, the better.

Floors have also changed in both appearance and price. You see many more homes featuring hardwood floors today. And hardwood doesn’t mean just oak. To be more green, many homeowners have sustainable wood floors made from bamboo and reclaimed material. Even the way that the floor is installed has changed. You should consider installing your floor in a diagonal direction. It sets the room apart and implies luxury and good taste with your country house plans.

Thirty years ago or more, these considerations were typically made by the woman in the family. The wife wanted the bigger bedroom or a big closet. What you’ll find today is that many of these features are expected by everyone, rather than considered a nice extra. Even though you may be planning to make your next home your last home, it never hurts to consider resale value.

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In this episode of the HousePlanGallery.com podcast, we’ll be talking about flexible floorplan design in house plans and this episode includes excerpts from an interview that we did with Home Ideas magazine a few months ago. In the interview, we talked about flexible home living spaces and the current trends are in using more flexible floorplan layouts in residential home design.

What follows in this audio are the questions from the reporter, and my responses…

As always, you can just give us a call at 601-264-5028 or send us an email via our contact page if you ever have a question about any of our house plans, and we’ll be glad to help….

Question 1 – When you design a new craftsman house floor plans home how important is it to design a floor plan that allows the homeowner to choose how they use the spaces provided?

Its extremely important, and one of our primary considerations on every new home plans we design. Since our homes are typically in the 1400 to 2500 sq ft range, we want to make sure that the home can fit the needs of a growing or changing family, and to make sure to minimize wasted space in the floorplan.

In addition, we want to make sure that the simple house floor plans home fits the needs of, not only a family, but also retirees, empty nesters, or just single individuals in a way that makes sense for them…

In homes of this size, every square inch of the living space is needed and we’ve always tried to provide a very flexible floorplan layout where the usages of the spaces can evolve to meet the current and future needs of the homeowners…

Question 2 – How important is it for the house plan to be flexible enough that the homeowner can make changes as their life changes i.e children, empty-nest, office space, additional bedrooms (in-laws) etc.

Very important. Over time, every person’s life changes and every family’s needs change. We realize that, and thats why, in our designs, we try to minimize the “labeling” of different living spaces to a particular usage, at least where possible.

For example, in the past, we might have labeled a room off the great room as a “dining room”, and even though that room could certainly be used for that purpose, we’ve found that labeling that room in that manner is actually a turn off to many younger homebuyers.. Dining rooms are not important for many of our buyers, which are many times younger families with children, so they would much rather use the space as a kids playroom or a home office, for example.

For whatever reason, when we label that room as a dining room on the floorplan presentation, many people seem to get that usage stuck in their mind and sometimes its difficult to get that specific “dining room” usage out of their mind so they might automatically discount the house plan and move on…

What we try to do, to better illustrate the versatility of the space, is to label that type of space as a “flex space” which then implies that the space’s usage can be whatever the homeowner wants it to be… and then they can also change its usage over time…

Question 3 – Is it pretty standard to include a bonus room in a house plan?

We think it SHOULD be, however its not for many designers… We know that, especially if you have a smaller home design with a roof design that can easily allow for the inclusion of this space…typically over the garage area, we always try to include this feature because its a HUGE value-add for the homeowner.

As I had noted earlier, the majority of our designs are in the 1400 to 2500 sq ft range so having a bonus room space as an option, is a tremendous selling point for a plan.

Its a great way to get alot more space in a home for very little additional cost…

If the homeowner’s budget is tight, then they might choose to just build the stair portion up to the bonus area, and that could just be used as a convenient way to access the attic area until a time when they actually wanted to build out the space..

At the point where they want to build out the space, all they would have to do is finish out the walls, ceiling, and floors of bonus room, which is a fairly simple and inexpensive process (esp when compared to doing an addition), and they could just continue using the existing stairs…

They then have, typically, between 200 and 500 additional square feet that they can use for a kids playroom, another bedroom/bath, a large home office or anything else…

Probably 90% of our home designs include bonus room spaces, whether included or optional, and we find that probably 70% of our customers go ahead and build out these spaces initially, because its not really that much more money to do in the beginning while your building the rest of the house…

Question 4 – Most popular flexible spaces are?

Probably home offices are #1, then kids’ playrooms, then guest bedroom spaces, then dining rooms.

Question 5 – How challenging is it to design a small home that still offers flexibility?
It can be very challenging.. Again, when you’re talking about plans in the 1400 to 2500 sq ft range, every square inch counts so you want to make sure that you first have all the essentials like a large great room and kitchen, an eating area off the kitchen, plenty of storage, large closets, comfortable bedrooms, a utility room and pantry, etc.

At the same time, you need to take into consideration all the “other” spaces that might be good options for identifying as a flexible space..

Some good examples of flexible spaces in a smaller home are bonus rooms, rooms off the great room, multiple large closets in a master bedroom where one might be sufficient, sitting room areas that might be better used as storage / home office / etc.

Its definately challenging to provide high levels of flexibility in a small footprint, but we think we’ve found the balance in our floorplans…

Question 6 – Outdoor Flexible Spaces…Is there a trend to including outdoor living spaces to house plans?

For the size homes that we typically design, outdoor flexible spaces are not typically a primary consideration of our buyers.. We always include a comfortable outdoor living space which might be a large covered porch, and/or might include a large screened in porch or patio, and thats what our primary customer is looking for…

And thats basically, a simple, inexpensive design that provides them with everything they need to comfortably spend time outdoors with their family…

I would recommend your customers check out our house plans: the HPG-20002-1, the HPG-2067-1, the HPG-1752-1, and the HPG-2200C-1 house plan for examples of some of our most popular flexible home designs.

Thanks for listening to this week’s podcast. Join us for next week’s episode, where we talk about even more house plan buying tips & tricks.

And as always, we’re here to help you every step of the way to find that dream house plan for your family. You can always feel free to visit us online at http://www.HousePlanGallery.com or give us a call at 601-264-5028 if we can help you with your new house plans.

Thanks again, and let us know if we can help!