In this day and age, with economic uncertainty and rising energy costs, many people are looking to alternatives for their heat. This has caused a resurgence in the use of woodstoves and outdoor wood furnaces. The new wood heating appliances are more efficient and clean burning than ever. It is imperative, however, that properly seasoned hardwoods be used as fuel in order to achieve the highest efficiency and bang for your buck.

Depending on how seasoned your wood is when you purchase it, it may be necessary to let it continue to let it dry before burning it. The best wood will be dried for over a year. Drying wood is not as simple as throwing a tarp over a heap of logs. Wood should be split-stacked and left to dry in a covered but open space. Covering wood with a tarp to “keep the rain off” is a very bad idea. It keeps the water in the wood from evaporating and causes the wood to dry very slowly. A woodshed is the best option. These usually consist of a roof and three sides. This allows plenty of airflow but keeps off the rain.

If you are planning on using wood as your heating source, you are probably handy and would consider building your own woodshed. Make this process easier with a set of plans and some preliminary planning. Decide where to position your shed based on ease of access. When having firewood delivered you want the delivery truck to be able to get as close to your woodshed as possible. This will make the stacking job easier on you or the delivery man. The woodshed should also be close to where the wood will be burned. Often a compromise has to be reached. I prefer to err on the side of having the wood closer to where it will be used. It may be harder to stack, but this happens once a year and not all year long.

While having a woodshed in itself will help to prevent critters from moving into your wood pile, don’t place the woodshed too close to your house as animals and insects are always a possibility. Building a floor or putting down gravel can help keep unwanted guests out of the woodpile. Digging through a solid floor or several inches of stone is always a deterrent.

Once you decide on the location and design, take your materials list to several suppliers. Do not just rely on the box stores. Often you can build a relationship with your rep at an independent supplier. They are usually more knowledgeable than box store employees and will be happy to answer questions or help out if you hit a snag during your project. Have a good set of woodshed plans and spend some time planning before you start your project. You will save time, money, and a lot of headache during the construction process and for years to come.

The small home is making a big comeback. We can point to several reasons for this. Economical reasons head the list but people are keenly interested in efficiency, environmental responsibility, and ease of upkeep.

What do you really save by building a small home? Let’s look at this logically to see if building smaller is, in fact, economical.

Small House Plans vs. Bigger House Plans

To be fair, the size of your home is dictated, in part, by the number of people to occupy it. But, strictly from a standpoint of preferences, there are a few cost advantages for building bigger.

BUILDING BIGGER HOMES

Larger homes often cost less per square foot to build:

• Contractors are already on the site and on the job and additional work while they’re already there is cheaper
• Bigger doesn’t always mean more rooms, bathrooms, kitchens, etc. Simply expanding the size of rooms is relatively inexpensive
• Materials purchases can cost less per unit, the more you buy and deals for quantity purchases also help

BUILDING SMALLER HOMES

Building from a small home design house plan has its advantages:

• Shorter building times save interest charges on the construction loan
• Fewer bathrooms, windows, doors, fixtures, and other costly items
• Less expensive home design costs, lower taxes, and smaller permit fees

Comparing the Costs of HomeBuildingYour small home is likely to cost more per square foot to build if we assume equal quality, materials, and labor. Ten percent more is typical. So, let’s say a 3,000 square foot home will cost $100 psf for a total of $300,000.

To compare, if a 1500 square foot home can be built for $110 psf, that would cost $165,000. Obviously, even though the cost per square foot is substantially higher, the overall cost to build is considerably less. But, there’s more to it than the upfront costs to build.

Life-Time Value of Small Home Designs

The lifetime value of a home considers the cost of maintaining the home over the years. Here are some of the other economical advantages of a small home:

• Smaller homes can be more efficient/less wasteful
• It costs less to heat and cool a small house
• Replacement costs are less
• Utility bills are significantly less
• General maintenance requires less time and money
• It uses fewer natural resources both in construction as well as for your ongoing living needs

If a small home fits your needs, you should pursue the idea wholeheartedly! For the do-it-yourself “professional”, the choice of a smaller home is a particularly wise one. The more you can do yourself with friends, the more you’ll save and the better off you’ll be.

Is a small home design for you?

Building a home is not an overnight job. There’s a lot of planning, preparing, analyzing, scheduling, buying, organizing, and execution. It can seem endless. What you thought might take a few months can take more than two years!

But, what about a small home? Can that be done more quickly? Absolutely! And you can still get what you want and enjoy a beautiful home when you’re done.

The Benefits of Speed

I’ve coached hundreds of people in their home building projects. I know first hand how long it can take to build a home. And I know first hand that the longer it takes, the harder the process becomes and the chances of failure increase.

Look at these benefits of building a smaller home and building it faster:

• Smaller homes require smaller crews to build
• Small house plans require far fewer building materials
• Small homes encounter fewer problems, challenges, and slow-downs
• These homes are less complicated and costly to prepare/design
• They require less engineering for the structure
• Smaller foundations and rooflines are much quicker to build
• Faster building times mean smaller loans and less interest charges

Long drawn out building times are discouraging and tax your patience and enthusiasm diminishes. It’s difficult to over-state the advantages of a shorter time frame for building a home.Can You Get What You Want in Your Small Home Plan?

If you have to give up the things you want in a home just for the speed, you’ve made the wrong choice. Small homes and speedy build times are great goals but you’ll want to be sure you get what you want.

To be sure you do, prioritize your list of wants and convey this to your home’s designer. Take your time before you begin building and before you get any loan. Preparation is critical. Knowing what you want is the key factor. You will likely have to make compromises but with patient preparation, those compromises won’t result in losing things you truly want.

Small, Fast, and Well Coached

You know what you want. You’ve planned it all out. And you’ve created a small home design that can be built quickly. I recommend one more thing. Use a home building coach to keep you on track and spot any difficulties that may arise.

For a small fee, you can hire this construction management advisor who will be just one more arrow in your quiver to ensure a successful and *speedy* home building experience.

Now, go build that small house plan!

The vacation home is not the out of reach luxury item reserved for the super rich it once was. With proper planning and budgeting your family can have a second home in your favorite vacation destination to enjoy for generations to come. You can make your home comfortable and stylish on a budget with these simple steps.

Step one is to decide on a location. Take into consideration your family’s lifestyle when selecting a location. It should be a place that you have visited in the past and have enjoyed returning to time and time again. Unlike staying in hotels, it is harder to change your mind after your new vacation home is built. Make sure activities that the whole family enjoys are nearby. And try keeping your home a short driving distance from your primary residence to keep down on travel time and expense.

Step two is to decide on a home style. The location you picked in step one above will play a significant role in determining the style of the house plan you choose. You probably don’t want to go with log cabin home plans if the site you select is on the beach. Blending in with the surrounding environment and neighboring homes can be both a budget saver and keep you in good standing with the community.

Step three is to research stock and semi-custom home plans that you can take right to a builder to slightly modify or start building from. There may even be free loghome plans or significantly low cost plans for a multitude of home styles available that your builder can customize for a nominal fee. These are great budget savers.

Step four is to budget. You can never run the numbers too many times. And when they do not add up there is nothing wrong with saving up for another year before starting your home or reconfiguring the budget to make it work. You don’t want to decide on that perfect cabin cottage home plan vacation house only to never be able to complete it or not have the funds to maintain and enjoy it for many years.

Step five is to build and enjoy it. Be involved as much as possible in the building process to be sure you are getting just what you want. Ask questions whenever you do not understand something. Visit the site as often as you can to make sure everything is going as planned. This is your investment and your family’s future retreat; make sure it is what you want.

Just when you think you have one simple choice to make to outfit your new home, think again. Today’s showers are available in a variety of shapes and sizes, and can be outfitted with amazing features to provide the most luxurious shower imaginable.

Showers can be stand-alone bathroom fixtures or be a part of a tub combo. The two main factors determining the type is you available size and budget. If space is tight, all you may be able to fit is a stand-alone shower stall. With a little extra space, and the need for somewhere to soak your stresses away, the shower/tub combo is the right choice. For those new homes equipped with plush master suites and the ranch house plans with two master bedrooms that are becoming more common, a separate stand-alone shower is ideal because there is plenty of room for a soaking tub on its own.

Showers are either found as prefabricated units or completely custom built to fit your space and style. Prefabs are best suited for standard stalls that are either square or circular units. Custom built units sometimes become necessary when those country style house plans you have been working on need something more tailored to fit any nook and cranny available in your bathroom.

No matter what style you are looking for, showers are available in a multitude of materials. The most important thing to ensure is that the material chosen is waterproof and durable. Prefabricated units are typically made of fiberglass-reinforced acrylic, plastic laminate or synthetic marble. Custom shower stalls can be created using any number of materials, including ceramic tiles, stone, marble and granite. Using these materials takes a step further in aesthetics and offers the most flexibility in size and shape. Whatever type of shower you are building, it is important to take in the entire bathroom environment to ensure a relaxing and stress-free atmosphere.

General shower stalls come equipped with grab bars and soap dishes, while upgrades can include benches and multiple showerheads. Showerheads come in a dizzying array, and can take the shower experience from standard to pure luxury. Choose from multiple pressure options, handheld (also with various pressure options), and even full body showerheads that act similar to a car wash. And, growing in popularity is the waterfall showerhead that has the feeling of a gentle rain. Additional extras that can be incorporated into your shower experience include programmable preferred temperatures, natural light, steam rooms and units and smart home technology.

It’s not hard to become overwhelmed with all the decisions involved in building your new home. Do you go with a traditional ranch house plan or indulge your post modern side? But with careful consideration and proper research, your dream home – right down to every bathroom – will be a pure joy for you and your family.

It can be very difficult for some people to climb the stairs safely. This is especially true of people who are sufferers of diseases like arthritis, but also those who suffer from cognitive disorders, like Alzheimer’s. In order to allow for complete access of a home, many people decide to install personal elevators, but this can quickly get pretty expensive. A stair lift is a much more affordable way to allow complete access to a home.

A stair lift is a device that is designed to carry a person up and down the stairs. For a straight staircase, there are several easy to install do-it-yourself kits available. These kits consist of a metal track, which is attached directly to the stairs, and a car, which is sent up and down the track. Usually a chair will be attached to the car, but sometimes a small platform, which is referred to as a perch, is used. Perch lifts will require that the user remain standing as they are carried up and down the track, so this option is generally only used by people who, for medical reasons, can not use a traditional chair lift.

These do-it-yourself kits can generally be installed in only a few hours, but due to the important nature of the work, it is important to carefully install the lift and follow all instructions, so it is better to take longer to install the lift then it would be to rush through it. Most dealers also have a trained installation team available, so those that do not feel comfortable doing the installation can have it professionally installed at an affordable rate.

While a personal elevator can be a nice touch, it requires a great deal of construction to the home, which can be quite expensive. The cost of the elevator is also fairly high, which is one of the main reasons a stair lift is often the best choice. A stair lift that is designed for a straight staircase is also installed much more quickly than an elevator would be. However, if you have a curved stairway, you will probably be better off installing a residential elevator.

People who have a curved staircase, might be able to install two straight stairway lifts onto the stairs, so it is a good idea to talk with a straight stair lift dealer first. Installing two stairway lifts will still save you considerable time and money when compared to a curved stairway lift, which costs at minimum 1000% more than a straight stairway lift.

If you can not install a straight staircase lift, then you might want to consider installing a personal elevator, which many times can be installed for the same price or even less than a curved stairway lift would be. Residential elevators can also usually be installed sooner than a curved staircase lift could be. Since the price of a personal elevator and a curved staircase lift is about the same, it is usually best to install a residential elevator as opposed to a curved stair lift.

A residential elevator will also retain its value and add value to the home, so much of the cost of the elevator will be retrieved when you sell your home. A curved stairway lift on the other hand does not have much value after it is sold, because it will only work on identical staircases.

For a straight stairway or an ‘L’ shaped stairway, a stair lift will be much less expensive than a personal elevator, but those that have a curved stairway, would probably be better off installing a residential elevator, because it will be about the same cost as a curved stair lift.