Building a New Home
Once you have decided to build a new home, it is time to consider what the plans will look like to ensure a home that is comfortable for you. This home will meet your needs and express your personal style. Anything that can be achieved with stick building can also be achieved in a modular home floor plans. Want to move walls, add rooms, or even tack on a whole second floor to your home? Do it! Changing any standard plan you find to fit your needs can work well with modular home floor plans.
Modular Home Floor Plans – Thoughts to Consider
Before your home can be built, the manufacturer will need to draw a complete set of plans. Even if the dealer has already provided you with some good drawings, the manufacturer will need to create its own set. Dealers often work from standard plans because they save time and simplify their job, since the design, engineering, and pricing have already been done by the manufacturer. Customers benefit accordingly; standard plans are engineered to be built economically, and the price can be estimated quickly. When standard plans do not work, ask dealers if they will help you design a custom home. If you already have a plan in mind, find out how it can be built as a modular. Some customers do not have any idea of the type of house they want to build. What then? You certainly can work with an architect. You can also visit a few model homes. Seeing a home and walking through its rooms tells you more about what it would be like to live in that design than looking at its drawings. In addition, you can create a list of your likes and dislikes.
- Do you prefer one-story or two-story living?
- How many bedrooms and bathrooms do you need?
- Do you prefer an informal family room separate from a more formal living room?
- Do you prefer an informal eating area (“nook”) separate from a more formal dining room?
- Do you need a study or home office?
- Do you want the laundry on the first floor, second floor, or in the basement?
Even if you choose to build your new home with completely unique blueprints, many homeowners find it useful to start their process by looking at pre-existing modular home floor plans. Popular modular home styles are Ranch, Cape Cod, Two-Story, Colonial, Modern, Mansion, and Green. Dirigo Custom Structures offer specials on Ranch, Cape Cod and Two Stories!
One-Story vs. Two-Story Modular Homes
There are a variety of ways to compare the advantages of one-story vs two-story modular home floor plans. In part your choice will depend on your personal taste as well as your local real estate market. You will likely also consider the distinct advantages of each.
One-Story Benefits
- More living space. You don’t need to use square footage for a staircase to the second floor, although you will need one to the basement. You might need fewer bathrooms.
- More attic space for storage
- More basement space for storage
- More convenience. You don’t need to run up and down stairs to cook, clean, keep an eye on your children, do the laundry, or get a snack
- Safer for younger children and easier for older/mobility challenged individuals. You can “age in place” more easily and affordably
- Easier to evacuate in case of a fire
- Less noise transmission, since sound does not travel through the walls of multiple rooms on the same floor as well as it travels between floors. TV or stereo on either floor, foot traffic on the second floor and stair traffic.
- Easier and cheaper to heat and cool. More consistent temperature zones, since all rooms flow into each other. Trees can provide more shade. Second story rooms are easier to heat, since heat rises.
Two-Story Benefits
- Greater separation of public and private spaces
- More privacy for second story bedrooms, which is especially valued by parents and older children
- Bigger yard
- Can build a bigger home on a smaller lot
- Easier to deliver modules down narrow streets and onto a small, tight lot, since each module can be half the length to create the same square footage as needed for a one-story
- Safer to open second story windows at night
- Smaller roof to maintain
- More expansive views from second-story
- Good exercise using the stairs everyday
- Better for the environment, since less land is disturbed during construction
Have fun with the decisions in this beginning phase of building. Take some time to consider what will make your home comfortable for you. With a little thought and attention to your specific needs, your house will become a home.