One of the things we learned in class is that the most efficient way to make a house of this type is for it to have a square footprint. There are several reasons for this. For one, you only need one length of wall log, which makes life easier. For another, the hardest and most expensive part of the house to build will probably be the roof. If you double your floor space by making the house two stories tall, you can use the same size roof to cover all that extra floor space. This is highly preferable to making a one-story house twice as big - that would require a roof that was twice as big, which means twice as much work, and twice as much money.
The first floor is 30'x30'. The front door is at the bottom of the image, just to the right of the middle of the wall. The front will have a deck that runs the width of the house and goes out about 11 feet from the front of the house, and which will be screened in. Out the back door of the house, there will be a 19-foot-deep deck. Click on the image to see lots more measurements! The plans are a general idea of what we're interested in doing, and I will update them whenever we come up with a new idea - or I notice something that I forgot. Oh, and I think there will be a ceiling fan in Room The Smaller.
The second floor is 30'x30', with the shaded area cut out so that you can see from the ground floor all the way up to the ceiling when standing in that part of the house. The area at the top of the stairs will probably be a sewing/crafting area, open to the ceiling above. The window against the front wall of the house will actually a door/window combination, opening up onto a second-story balcony that is 11 feet deep, and as wide as the entire house. Out the back of the master bedroom there's another second-story balcony pusing out another 11 feet. And again, click on the image to see lots more measurements!
The third floor is just the back half of the house's 30'x30'. No balcony on this level, just storage and a potential guest bedroom. No water either, if anyone on the 3rd floor needs to use the bathroom they get to use the second floor's Guest Bathroom. Third time's the charm! Click on the image to see lots more measurements!
Once the plans are vaguely finalized, it's time to go on to making a model of the house...