Cabin-style barndominiums are the new hot thing in the south. I was recently browsing a national chain bookstore in my local area, also in the south, and surprisingly ran across a book on designs and floor plans for building your own cabin. I’ve included a link to the book here in case you may be interested in more information on cabins in general. This book named simply “cabins” by Phillip Jodidio is chalked full of relevant information that you can take and use on your very own cabin-style barndominium build. Buildmax has made things even easier with our very own take on designing a cabin style barndominium house plan, that will appeal to almost any family when looking to build a cabin. The Plan I’m referring to is our BM2472 and at 2400. There’s plenty of space to live and entertain family and friends, Buildmax also makes it simple to customize, tweak and alter these floorplans, and with our assistance this takes the hard tedious task of altering the house plan to your specific requirements out of the equation. Maybe you want an attached garage, wrap around porches, more or less windows and doors, maybe you have specific interior plans for the home and need the walls arranged in a way the house plan wasn’t originally designed for. Our technically trained staff can build a custom floor plan for any of our barndominiums. A full custom design will cost substantially more money as well as take far longer to have ready and in your hands than one of our stock house plans, that you can buy today and get started on your project immediately. Our customers were constantly asking for material packages for our house plans. We can now assist you in arranging the material package to build your home, and we can even send out a crew to your job site to build the home.
Buildmax is mainly a house plan company, but if we can help our customers get into their custom dream home, that’s our main goal. You can get your materials in wood or my personal choice, cold form steel. A steel frame cabin is obviously more robust and rigid than a traditional wood frame and will ultimately last much longer with literally no maintenance at all. If you decide that a steel frame is overkill for what you want to build, you can build with wood in a post-frame configuration or post and beam or just wood frame it out on a slab like a traditional home. Post-frame or post and beam are different even though some people use the terms interchangeably, this involves around a 4ft hole in the ground with a post inside and backfilled with concrete for stability this is very popular in the south and a common way to build barns and barndominium homes, there are endless youtube videos, articles, step by step how-to instructions on properly installing post-frame construction components just in case you need to gain more detailed knowledge on the subject in preparation for your own post-frame build it’s good to know what you’re doing or at least help you gain a solid understanding of what is being done every step of the way during your build.
When it comes to building with steel, the advantages are pretty obvious out of the gate. The process is generally quicker when it comes to erecting the steel structure than traditional wood and takes a smaller crew of only a few men to position and raise the metal beams and fasten them into place. The barndominium kit will come on flatbed trailers and resemble a gigantic erector set; it will actually go together in the same fashion, with nuts and bolts. All components for the steel kits are engineered, manufactured and loaded in the south, making the shipping cost much cheaper if you live in the southern United States; however, we do work nationwide and ship materials anywhere in America. The Quality of the steel packages we provide is second to none; I have personally toured the facilities with our owner and inspected and handled the steel myself; I have been inside homes built with the cold formed steel framing and if I wasn’t paying close attention I wouldn’t have known it was a metal frame building. Using steel allows for large wide open expanses, this is ideal for large homes like our BM5550 and even better for a garage the strength of the beams allows for much larger free span without many additional support beams. This makes for large spacious areas that can look and feel much bigger than they actually are.
Back to the cabin aspect of the barndominiums we design, you can design any interior of any, home in america to resemble a quaint cabin like atmosphere it’s a bit more difficult with the exterior styling of a home, faux wood siding, or actual wood siding, as well as custom shutters and window planters can go a long way in how your home appears from the road or the outside in general. There’s a movement in America in which a mass exodus out of major cities is taking place due to overcrowding, small expensive cramped apartments that just aren’t ideal for growing families. Instead, they are taking a different approach and getting back to nature, re-discovering an amazing fulfilling and simplistic lifestyle that is more in line with an environment they want to raise a growing family in. As Henry David Thoreau, an American author and poet once said “ I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front all essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” This is a powerful quote from a man who understood getting back to nature at a fundamental level.
Migrating out of the city and into a barndominium, designed somewhere out in the country, is a positive lifestyle change that we highly encourage here at Buildmax. What many families come to realize early on in the process is that they can afford a much more spacious home than they ever imagined. Rent is very high in almost every major city in the US, resulting in both spouses typically working full-time jobs simply just to make ends meet and to break even at the end of the month. Once you have determined what you can afford then it’s time to start the search for land, a cabin is best built-in or near the woods. The atmosphere and look of the property are almost as important as the styling. Placing your home on a piece of property that allows you to follow the styling you are shooting for. This will help really make the customizations to your home pop and ultimately tie everything together with the specific cabin styling that you desire. Everyone has their own taste in styling and by building your own barndominium you are getting an opportunity to put some of your personal taste into the exterior and overall styling of your new home even before it comes time to decorate the interior of the home. No matter how you want it built and no matter if you decide to build it with wood or steel, Buildmax will be there every step of the way to guide you into the cabin of your dreams.
