Build your cottage with country home plans
Designing & building for yourself

Build your own cabin, cottage, or small home!
Our Plans & Tools can help.

  • The 5 ways to build your house. OR  How to Modifiy Plans.
  • Quick visit? Go here for the FREE stuff!
  • Or, visit the Latest Posts to the Forums
  • Update: 4/24/08
3DHA Update  CA Cabin Creswell Cabin

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Plans

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Little House Design Kit

Expandable Cabin Design Kit

16' wide Victoria Cottage
1 Story 2 Bdrm Volks Cottage
1 Story 2 Bdrm Grandfather Cottage
20' wide 1-story cottage plans
20' wide 1-1/2-story cottage plans
20' wide 2-story cottage plans
24' wide 2-story solar saltbox plans
Glazing plans for sunrooms & skylights

Sunkit site tools

Have fun builidng your house!


Practical Home Design & Construction

Design & build your own expandable small home, cottage, cabin, or addition. You can modify our standard plans to fit your site, budget and building style. Our Plans and home design tools will get your home building project moving!

What
to Do
Next?
happy house
• Click SEARCH above and find a topic in the thousands of pages on this site and in the Design/Build Forum
Customize a stock plan - Such as our plans on the left
• Click a FORUM TOPIC at RIGHT
Better Business Bureau accredited business

20' wide 1-1/2 story cottage in Alaska
20' Universal 2-story cottage
16x24 owner build cabin
Most Popular Houses: The houses at the left are three of our most adaptable and easy to build plans. The top and bottom photos link to the owner's story. In each case they modified simple house plans for a customized project.

Don't think you could really build? Get Inspired!

Other fun links: Our Tiny House (200 sf) Design Contest has spurred many ideas! The Earth Sheltered Home Tour is a popular stop. 

Our free Forum has over 2500 members & almost 50,000 Q&A posts on building smaller homes. 

Many of our members and visitors also find our sister site PlanHelp.com to be of interest. This is a subscription site most useful for it's planning and home design downloads. The site also includes template floorplans for many of our houses. Once you have the compatible software program, these templates allow you to edit a floorplan, rearranging walls, doors, windows and even kitchen and electrical items. You can view your layout in 3D and then print out scaled floorplans that can be pasted into your paper structural plans.

Quick Clicks go directly to: • Plans Order form •  Books to FindWeb linksAuthorFinding LandDesign Ideas3D Home Arch tutorial • Maps200sf Design ContestVintage plansBolt Together houseGlenn's Underground cabin •  EcoCottage Plan  Finding Land & Building a Homestead. • Browse PDF toolsShed Roofs •  Stock Plan Templates •   

Articles of Interest
Customizing a Stock Plan — How to get what you want when the plans aren't quite right.

Looking for Land — find and evaluate property; a buyers checklist. Great map links.

Post and Pier Foundations — This easy and inexpensive foundation may be just what you need for your building project - if your soil is right.

What it cost to build — A simple construction cost estimator and how to work with the inspector.


Thought Experiments - How to build a house in your mind.

Small Alternative House - A photo tour of a 3 buildng post & pier compound under 1000 sf.

Solar Saltbox photo tour — 24x36 w/ attached sunroom.

Building Trust - How most owner-builders really learn to build. It's not how you think.

Design Contest - Winners of the under 200 sf house design contest. How small can you go?

Cabin and cottage plans you can customize & build for yourself
Learn how-to build inexpensive easy-to-build structures
Free How-To printouts: • Browse these PDF files •  Built-up beam, Shallow foundations, Plumbing guide, • No-Cost Green Building,

Forum Topics

cabin and cottage design build public discussion group
Questions?

Visit the free Discussion Group. A few recent posts of interest.

Why People build their own house
2 story Universal - 1
2 story Universal - 2
Electrical & Plumbing tutorial
Cordwood House
What fuel to heat with?
Glenn's low cost garage
Costs for the 20' wide Universal
Framing the 1-1/2 story
Pier footings in cold soil
How to use stock plans
Making frame walls rigid
Indigenous Housing - learning from the natives
20x32 1-1/2 story
Victoria Cottage Project
SIP panels
Finding a builder & working for yourself
Insulated headers
What type Foundation
Frost proof foundations
Owner-built 20x24 cottage (w/ pics)
Underground Cabin Update (fun!)
Tiny cabin built for $1400 Tiny cabin built for $1400.

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