Don’t laugh too hard at the title, you may find yourself in a similar situation someday where you’d be thankful to have such wonderful accommodations. If you find your options limited and a mother-in-law suite seems like a potential solution to all your problems, just take a few minutes to explore some additional options that are along the same lines. Enough of the talk, let’s take a look at some alternatives to adding a mother-in-law Suite modification to your house plans.
Guesthouses are an old concept and have fallen out of favor with builders since the 80’s probably on account of the size of homes today being built large enough that a guest house was just old news and there was little need for a guest house anymore. However with the recent uptick in barndominiums, cottages, and steel frame homes going up across America and the trend in houses being smaller in stature than previous generations of homes coupled with the ease of customizing or modifying your house plans being as easy as a phone call conversation with the house plan company, the movement has really brought the Guesthouse back from the Ashes in a fabulous kind of fashion. A Guesthouse is essentially a tiny home in your backyard, back in the ’60s the term tiny home hadn’t been coined yet so the Guesthouse was adapted. Most guest houses are equipped with all the amenities of a standard home, usually, one or two bedrooms is common or sometimes just a loft and in some cases, a breezeway or short path will connect the guest house and main house together as the guest house was never meant to be far from the main home. A Guesthouse will also add value to your property when it’s finished giving you added incentive to build an addition onto your existing home or consider adding a guest house modification to your existing house plans instead.
I ran across the term Granny flat or Granny pods and giggled the first time I read it. However it turns out it’s really a thing, these elderly widows are buying small one-bedroom cottage-style dwellings or building them rather in many cases but the concept is utterly simple it is essentially a tiny home that looks like a small home. Everything inside is set up for ease of use from the position of the cabinets to the height of the windows, everything is customized with an elderly woman’s stature in mind. A tailor-made tiny home designed especially for a mother-in-law. Brilliant!
Park model homes are amazing little mobile homes that are brand new and have everything included that a standard home would have and they come in any color and configuration you can imagine, some of the luxury park models are absolutely stunning and will leave your jaw dropped. They honestly look like miniature custom homes and what better option for a mother-in-law than something like a park model, The only issue would be once she moves in she’s there to stay because I personally wouldn’t move out of something that nice. Many park models come equipped with wrap-around porches and decks on top of the roof to serve as a sun deck. Where you place the park model can make or break it, along a lakeshore or next to a pond would be ideal to complement the tiny size. If a park model piques your interest I would encourage you to go do a walkthrough you may fall in love with one of these little homes.
Tiny homes are another option. Being a broader term gives you a little bit more wiggle room to determine what’s a tiny home and what isn’t, I typically say anything under 600sqft is pretty small of a house and considered a tiny home in most books. There are pull-behind camper-style tiny homes that have become popular in the last few years, and also Texas-style tiny homes that are built on a foundation of your choosing. There are many styles to pick from and for a single person, it’s more than enough to call home.
Additions are historically the most popular option when incorporating a mother-in-law suite into your barndominium you can add an addition to an already completed home or add an addition to any house plan before breaking ground. Any home plan company that does modifications can add any size addition you like to your plans. Buildmax.com can modify any plan on their site to accommodate a mother-in-law suite and is as easy as a phone call as Buildmax works every day with customers on their custom barndominium plans to adjust and tweak the plans to the customer’s satisfaction. Many standard additions include a full bath, kitchen, living room, and single bedroom essentially you are designing and building a home within a home and this is common and can be done easily with the correct planning.
With so many choices on the market nowadays it’s easy to get overwhelmed and not know what direction to go, if you planning on building my first call would be to a custom house plan company like Buildmax they can take your ideas and put them all out on paper in a way that the builder can follow to construct your dream barndominium. The professional architectural designers working with Buildmax have years and years of experience designing barndominiums for their customers, their prices are very reasonable for custom house plans, they have stock barndominium house plans on their site as well and those can be purchased without a phone call if you happen to see a barndominium that you fall head over heels in love with and you want it just like it’s shown or even with a simple addition for your mother-in-law it can all be put on paper with ease.
Designing your own barndominium can be an exciting process but nothing in comparison to when the building process begins, each day is nothing short of exhilarating just knowing your design is becoming reality really brings some powerful emotions and feelings to the surface it’s an amazing process and I hope everyone who’s dream it is to build gets the opportunity sometime in their life.
