Big projects to simple ideas

Tract house

Three beds, three baths, 1345 square feet.

In 2007 I got curious as to how small I could design a 3-bedroom 3-bathroom house. I called it a tract house, since you could stack them into a development, the way builders seem to be doing these days. I did a TurboCAD drawing and placed some furniture to see how it would lay out. With 1345 square feet, it had no garage. I figured it would be great to get a real house with the footprint of a mobile home. It comes in at 52 feet long by 26'-4" across.

I wanted a bathroom for every bedroom because, well, civilization. I put the bathrooms as the entry to the bedrooms, which really bothered my friends. Thing is, now there are three bathrooms that guests can use, and they never have to enter a bedroom to use it. The bathrooms are also a noise buffer from the kitchen and living area, which is a large single room. The bedrooms are large enough to have a desk to do work in private.

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The floor-plan, flipped around a bit from the 3D view, shows the entry and great room on the left. There are two laundry rooms to the right of the two adjacent bathrooms because, well, civilization. So two of the bedrooms have a private laundry. It makes more sense to me than putting the washer and dryer out near the garage where you have to lug your dirty clothes across the house to use them. The adjacent bathrooms have both a shower and a tub. I show queen-sized beds, though a king-size would fit.

. For those living where you can have a basement, this TurboCAD drawing shows a basement staircase at the front right.of the view. Before I did any CAD, I sketched the floor-plan of the house and got a feel for the overall layout and how things would work out.

Here is a drawing with a four-car garage. Since a garage does not count to the square footage of the house for tax purposes, it seemed a good idea to make the garage huge. I also did a version with a four-car garage and a workshop. If the workshop does not have HVAC ducts, it won't count to the square footage of the house.

. Here is another sketch from 2007 showing some ideas for the tract house. Here there are only two bedrooms and they are much smaller. I figured the house could be made with regular stick-built construction, but now that I live in Florida I would make it concrete block with roof trusses.

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Tract house

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