04-27-2008, 04:04 AM
For porches to be useful twelve feet is almost minimum. You'd probably like to have some seating of some sort on your lanai with some tables and such. Generally you'd also like some room to walk around so twelve feet makes for room enough. If the seating is built in then a narrow lanai can be made to function better but it is still not as useful as a wide enough one. Fourteen to sixteen feet wide is better. Eighteen feet wide is very roomy. Once you get to twenty to twenty four feet wide then you start needing multiple sets of lanai furniture but you'd also have room for huge parties.
Lanais do add fairly inexpensive square footage to a house since it is generally just a floor and roof with perhaps a railing and the materials aren't usually as fancy as the interior house portions. They are also a nice transition between interior and exterior spaces and folks around here spend a lot of time outside. Covered lanais are also a great place to be "outside" yet out of the rain.
If you have a tendency to fill a house with excess junk then build a warehouse of some type as part of the project. Perhaps under the house storage areas, or huge closets or even a separate storage building. If there is a storage place to put excess stuff then you can live an uncluttered and easy to clean life.
Each house should be built to serve the needs of the folks who will occupy it. I once noodled out a rough plan of a "perfect" house for me and my DH and it had a twelve car garage for my DH and four sinks in the kitchen with an interior garden area for me. It wasn't anything we would ever build, though, but it was fun to plot out. Hmm, come to think of it, there should have been a barn in there somewhere, too. Oh wellos! It sure wouldn't fit on our lot.
That's another good starting point for a set of plans. They should address the needs of the folks who will live in it AND they should be set to a specific lot. Each building lot is different and the folks living in the houses are different so each set of plans should match the peoples needs and enhance the characteristics of the lot.
Lanais do add fairly inexpensive square footage to a house since it is generally just a floor and roof with perhaps a railing and the materials aren't usually as fancy as the interior house portions. They are also a nice transition between interior and exterior spaces and folks around here spend a lot of time outside. Covered lanais are also a great place to be "outside" yet out of the rain.
If you have a tendency to fill a house with excess junk then build a warehouse of some type as part of the project. Perhaps under the house storage areas, or huge closets or even a separate storage building. If there is a storage place to put excess stuff then you can live an uncluttered and easy to clean life.
Each house should be built to serve the needs of the folks who will occupy it. I once noodled out a rough plan of a "perfect" house for me and my DH and it had a twelve car garage for my DH and four sinks in the kitchen with an interior garden area for me. It wasn't anything we would ever build, though, but it was fun to plot out. Hmm, come to think of it, there should have been a barn in there somewhere, too. Oh wellos! It sure wouldn't fit on our lot.
That's another good starting point for a set of plans. They should address the needs of the folks who will live in it AND they should be set to a specific lot. Each building lot is different and the folks living in the houses are different so each set of plans should match the peoples needs and enhance the characteristics of the lot.
Kurt Wilson