Our House Plans

Ethan and I have spent a lot of time talking about what we will do for housing on the property we are purchasing - assuming all goes according to plan.

We decided that it is easier to get land and then build a nice house later on, rather than getting a nice house and then getting land later on to go with it! Because of this, we are looking at building a pole building and finishing it off into a house, with the intentions of building a stick house sometime down the road.

We found a kit from Menards for a pole building that caught our eye. Although we probably will not get it from Menards, this is kind of what we are looking at for the exterior.

I found a free program online that allowed me to design the inside to scale, as well as add furniture according to the size and colors we have. It was a lot of fun!

For the inside, we will finish off the majority of the building, but we will be leaving some unfinished for storage on the left side of building. It will be accessible from the outside.

On the right side of the building will be a mudroom with a storm cellar underneath. Very important when you live in Iowa!

As you walk into the house, you will immediately come to the bathroom with an attached laundry room. With farm chores being done, this is something I wanted to keep mud (and other stuff) from being tracked through the house!

You will also see the mater bedroom and kids' room on the back of the house.

If you are a guest of ours, you don't have to use the mudroom to enter. We would have a front entrance that would welcome you into the dining room/ kitchen and living room. If you notice, the kitchen has very few cabinets. This is on purpose since cabinets can really eat away at a budget! Instead, we will have our sideboard and then a large pantry (in the hall on the wall behind the kitchen) to store all of that extra kitchen stuff.

The last room is a small office that will serve for business purposes and an extra nap room for afternoon naps. I'm a big on getting young kids a GOOD afternoon nap!! :)

A few other things that might be of interest: We will be heating with wood. The wood stove will be on a half wall in the middle of the house. This will allow the heat to radiate though the house. We will have some baseboard heaters as backup heat for when we are gone or for times where we can't get wood in the stove, and we will use window air for those really hot days. Our house will be an all electric house, which will get us a discount from the electric company. Also, all of the plumbing will be on one side of the building for budget reasons, as well as for future plans for the building.

Check back for my next post, and I'll write a bit about what we might do in the future with this building if these are the plans we go with.

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