Hi Brettski,
I'm curious about a few of your plans for the land and your expectations for living there.
You mentioned that this building will be a temporary home until you build your real house, and then this one will be converted into a workshop type space. If I understand your logic, the long term use for the building is as a shop. I know you like to work on woodworking projects and that will become more and more important to you the more you do and the more you live there.
What are is the need for the extra two bedrooms? Will you have company over or will you be having kids and want them to stay in the downstairs bedrooms? In the time that you've had the land, how often have you needed those two extra bedrooms and would a futon or inflatable mattress on the floor have worked?
I think you are planning this building backwards. It seems that you are focused on the living space of it, and not what it will end up becoming. While I realize that it will be years that you are living there, in time, it won't matter because then you will have built your dream home and this will become your workshop.
While it looks like you put allot of thought into your plan, especially with the layout and how it all ties together so nicely without any wasted space, I think you should scrap it and start over again.
Plan your workshop space first. How much room do you need for tools, storage and open area for working on projects? Mine is 24ft by 30ft with 12 foot walls. It's a good sized space, but I'm also limited to how many projects I can do at a time in there. Bigger would be better, but smaller would never have been enough.
When you get that figured out, then decide what you want for a living space. Two stories will always cost more then one. You waste allot of space and money on stairs. Flat ceilings are cheaper and more efficient then vaulted ones. For a weekend cabin, do you want to spend $200 a foot to build or half of that?
I built my house and shop for $30,000 cash. I hired out the concrete slab and HVAC system. I have 1,000 sq ft of living space plus the shop and other storage areas. It's small, but cozy. It's also paid for without a mortgage. One day we're going to build our dream home, but first the land and then when that's done, we'll build that home. Until then, we live in a nice, but not fancy, small home.
If you decide to stick with that plan, there are a few things that jumped out at me. The garage is so small that you might find it difficult to open the doors of the car after you get it into there.
The roof will be expensive to build because you are spanning the entire distance with large lumber or engineered lumber. You will need a very strong, very expensive ridge beam to support the load of the roof, plus snow. The longer you do this, the more it costs.
Adding dormers add allot to the cost of the house. On shingle roof homes, it's usually a $2,000 per dormer extra. Cutting and fitting them together never ends. From the framing to the finish trim, it's all very time consuming.
Using wire mesh in concrete is a great idea and if done right, is better then rebar. Unfortunately, it's almost never done right. It's cheap and fast, but it has to be held up in the middle of the slab to be effective. If you watch them pour and spread the concrete, they step on it and push it to the bottom. Then they try to pull it up to center it while walking on it at the same time. Some will have a stick with a hook on it to help pull up the wire, but it doesn't work. Do you have to have a permit to build? If so, figure out what they require in rebar and leave the wire mesh alone. Rebar always stays where you put it, it works great and you will never regret using it. Some contractors will tell you that the wire will work just as well, but is cheaper and faster to install, which is true, but they are lying if they tell you it will stay in the middle of the pad. Ask around and everybody who's cut into a slab will tell you that the wire is always at the bottom, sometimes not even in the slab but under it.
Anyway, with your degree of planning, it will be fun to see what you come up with and follow along with it when you build it.
Good luck,
Eddie
