Probably one of the first things you will do when you decide to have a go at a “Self Build” project is to grab a couple of sheets of paper and start to jot down your ideas for your new “Dream Home”. – That’s fine, as long as you realise that once you find your land you might have to change you designs considerably!

Doing some initial sketches helps to give you an initial “target” for what you are hopefully going to be able to “achieve” by the time everything is finished.

You will also be able to get a rough idea from these sketches things like: What is the rough “square footage” going to need to be? / How many bedrooms do we need? / How many bathrooms? / How many cars do we want to park in the drive / or the garage? / What size of garden would we hope for? Etc.

 You can take these ideas with you as you start to look for building plots.

As you look at each plot you will then be able to assess it on the basis of “Would it be suitable for what we need?”

Assuming now, that you have found a plot which looks like it will be “suitable”, and you have either made, or are considering making an offer, now is the time to look at design a bit more “seriously”

Ideally, you should not commit yourself to buying any land before you know that it is going to be suitable for your purposes. – That means that it should

a) Be able to take the building you would want to construct.

b) Be acceptable by the Planning office for the type of development you would want to use it for.

As long as you tell the seller that your offer is “conditional” on you “getting the Planning Permission you require”, then, you will have some time to “set about” getting your final designs and drawings done and submitted for Planning (i.e. while all the “legal process” is going on for the purchase of the plot).

Taking your initial drawings as a “base to start from”, and, if possible a “scaled” plan of the plot, you can start to create your final layouts.

If you read previous sections of this guide, they talk about possibly contacting “designers” of one type or another to draw up your final designs for submission to the Local authority. – You should do this, (if possible) AFTER you have come up with your own “scale sketches” of at least the layout you would like for your new home (this enables you to decide on the layout rather than your designer coming up with sketches which you simply make minor amendments to).

Start by doing some research. - There are many ways to do this, but the best way is to actually walk round houses which are already built, using them as guide.  – If you make notes on each property you look at, you will be able to pick up on the things you like and the things you don’t like!

For example: You could start with your own house.

You may have been living there for a while, and will have got to know “What you like” about it, and “what you would change”.

Stand in each room with a clip board and pen, and start to list the “goods” and the “bads”.

 – I could go on for pages (but I’d still miss some of the things that are unique to YOU)! – Just try and pick up as many things as you can, so you can bear them in mind when you start to come up with your new designs

If you can also look around other people houses, and do the same thing that would also be a good idea. - Ideas that other people have already put into practise can spark new ideas in YOUR mind which could match your plans (and your family) perfectly. – I’m sure that your friends and relatives wouldn’t mind you turning up with a clip board next time you visit!

Once you have done some research on existing properties, maybe read some of this guide, and possibly looked at some of monthly publications / internet sites etc which deal with house design, you will be ready and prepared to design just the sort of layout you have always wanted.

At this stage you don’t NEED a professional to help you, if you are confident enough to “have a go” at the design yourself, you should go for it! - Even if what you can produce is only fairly “rough”, and is not accurately “to scale”, it will still be YOUR ideas rather than how someone else “Interprets” your ideas. (However, if you simply don’t have time to spend doing the research and initial design, there is nothing wrong with bringing a professional designer in right at the start. It will just add cost to the project).

Let’s assume for this exercise that you are having a go at the initial designs yourself.

Where do you start? – If you have done what I suggest (above), you may now have

·         A number of sheets of paper with lots of measurements and facts scribbled on them, about your own and other people’s homes.

·         You initial sketches from before you started to look for plots

·         Your “plot plans”

Now, read all your notes again, and put them to one side (just in case you need them). – You are now going to start with a blank piece of paper! (The action of walking around and thinking of all those individual “likes” and “dislikes”, will have built up a picture in your mind which will now come in very useful. – You don’t really need to use all those notes as you start your design -  you will naturally tend to “bear in mind” everything you have considered without having to keep referring to it. – When your design is finished, then is the time to have a look over the list to make sure you haven’t missed anything important.)

 A couple of “practical hints” first of all:

 To help you to design and draw something that is going to be useful to you and to your “Designer”(who will need to be able to convert your ideas into a set of “Planning Application” documents):

Try to “Draw to scale”. – I have lost track of the number of times I have had an initial meeting with new clients who bring with them “Their design drawings”. - Which are to put it mildly “less than helpful”!

If you don’t draw to scale, (without going into the detail of why not), the chances are that your design won’t work in “the real world”. If your designer has to basically start over “from scratch”, then the whole process will take longer and cost you more money.

1) An A3 pad of paper (preferably tracing paper (so you can copy outlines through to the next page without having to start each new page by re scaling the outlines).

2) A hard surface to draw on (a table, drawing board)

3) Tape (to fix the paper down so it doesn’t slide about while you draw).

4) A suitable pencil, 2H or 3H (HB is going to be too soft, and you will end up making a mess of the paper by smudging the lines as you draw).

5) A proper drawing pen is a good idea (“0.3mm” should do if you only use one pen, or “0.1mm, 0.3mm and 0.5mm” if you get a set). But, if you don’t have one, then a good quality fine biro will usually do (to go over the “pencil” design once it is done).

6) A long ruler (if you have a simple drawing board which has a sliding “bar” you won’t need this. This is just to draw “longer” lines.

7) A “Scale Rule”. – Very important. – You may want to draw in different scales for different bits of the design, so a normal ruler is not really good enough. – “Scale rules” are usually 6” or 12” long.

8) A “Set square”, so you can draw 90 degree angles. If you have an “adjustable set square” it will also allow you to draw any angle.

9) An eraser!

I normally start with the “Ground floor plan”. - Once you have this, it gives you the basis from which to design everything else.

If you use a scale of 1: 50 for your initial plan, it will give you a drawing with enough detail to see what you need to, -and most house designs should easily fit on an A3 page.

Using you pencil, “lightly” draw a line “left to right” a couple of inches above, but parallel with the bottom of the page. - This is what I call “the base line” and it represents the front of the house. (Line “A”)

It doesn’t matter just now how long that line is, but if you draw it “lightly”, it’s easy to rub out later without leaving deep “scores” along the paper.

Now, take your set square, position it near the left hand edge of the paper, so that one edge of it runs along the line you have just drawn, and one edge goes up parallel with the edge of the paper (about 1” – 2” in from the papers edge (Line “B”).

What you have just drawn is your front wall, and your left side wall. This is your starting point.

Don’t worry! - I am not going to try to take you “line by line” through the full drawing progress. It would just get very confusing. – I’ll just set you up with the basics.

From those 2 lines, plus a few more “marks” on the paper, you should have the basics from which to take all the ideas you have researched, and come up with your own design, as long as you “think your way” through “the process”.

What your aim is, when designing your new home is to get as much of “what you want” into a design which fits sensibly onto your plot.

You should know what the size of your plot is by now, and have the measurements “to hand”.

If, for example your plot is 15 metres wide by 30 metres deep, you need to make sure that whatever you design in the way of a “structure”, is going to fit nicely on the land. You will probably also want to get access down either side to the rear garden.

So, bearing in mind that you need to leave at least about 4’ (1.2m) each side of the house for access:

If you measure from the bottom left hand corner where your 2 lines on the drawing meet, along the bottom, at a scale of 1: 50,the distance of 12.6m, and make a small pencil mark, you know that that is as “wide” as you can sensibly go with your design.

If you have a plot of 30m depth, you can “play about” with the depth of the house, depending on how much area you want “in front” and “behind” the house in the way of areas of “driveway” and “garden” (watch out for “building lines” which exist on some plots, behind which you HAVE to build. This could affect the positioning of your house and therefore how deep you can make it – see other sections of this guide for more information on building lines).

If you decide (for now)  that a “depth” for the house, of say 9m, would suit the plot size and the approximate size of house you would like,-  you can then scale 9m up the line on the left edge of the paper, and make a pencil mark. That point will give you a reference point as “about where the back wall should be”.

What you need to do before you carry on, is to draw in the “thickness” of the external walls, so that your design is an accurate presentation of how it will eventually be. If you don’t do this, you will risk it “not working” when your professional designer comes to try to draw it up properly.

If you lightly draw a line 300mm (scaled down) “inside” the two lines you have already drawn, this will, in effect give you an “external wall” on your drawing (300mm shouldn’t be far off the “actual” wall width, and this will be accurate enough for what you are doing now).

Before you start to position rooms on the drawing, think about where the sun “rises and sets”, and whether that will affect anything as regards room layouts and window positions.

Also think about where your garage will be positioned. If it’s going to be “external” (i.e. detached from the house itself), will it have an effect of creating “shadows” or cutting down the light getting to any part of the house? If it is internal, where would you like it to be positioned within the structure of the house?

Decide which room (living room / dining room / garage? etc) you want to have at the front left hand corner of the house (where the 2 lines you drew intersect), and draw it, using the scale rule (If you are using a pencil, and drawing lightly it doesn’t matter if you make mistakes, just rub the lines out and do it again).

Now work your way out from that room, remembering all the things you liked and want to try to include in your design on the ground floor

As you start to “form” the rooms, the position of the back wall will become clear. When it is, draw it in (remembering to give it the 300mm thickness).

As you go ahead with your layout, you will need to bear in mind the “mark” you put on the drawing denoting the maximum width of the house. - If you are in danger of going past the maximum width, you need to go back a few steps and have a rethink (shrinking rooms where necessary so the building fits in the space you have.

You also need to add internal wall widths to you drawing, - just the same as you added external wall widths. If you allow 100mm for the internal walls, you should generally be ok (There may be thinker walls around “internal garages” (for fireproofing), or under “support walls” (for extra strength), but your designer should be able to make minor amendments later if they are needed).

One important position to mark is where the stairs will go (obviously not if it’s a bungalow you are designing!). A standard set of stairs, when drawn on a plan like the one you are doing, will be approximately 900mm wide and will be shown “on plan” as being about 2.7m long. That is based on you having a ceiling height of 2.4m (this is about an average ceiling height and suits plasterboard sizes ).

If you want a “grander” looking staircase you can make the width of the treads wider, and if your ceiling height is more than 2.4m, the “length” of the stairs might be more than 2.7m (for roughly each extra 220mm of room height you need to add another step on the staircase which makes the whole staircase longer by about 250mm)

Another important consideration for you initial plan is the internal doors. You need to show both “position” and “opening direction” of each door.

Downstairs in a 1 or 2 storey house you also need allow for “disabled regulations” with respect to doors.

If you draw door openings of 900mm width for door openings downstairs and 800mm for door openings upstairs, that should be ok for these sorts of sketches. - Think also about the direction they open: Will they open into the room or out? (usually in). Will they open onto a wall, or away from the wall? Do you want them to give privacy to the room, or to “disappear” by opening so that they are against a wall?

If your ground floor is the floor you access from the driveway, and is the main “habitable” floor, you need to allow for the disability regulations for w/c’s (I have not actually shown a w/c on the example, - I am just indicating on the sketches, the “process” rather than how you should design the layout).

I like to try to get the w/c in the hall if possible. –That way your guests don’t have to walk through what could be a messy kitchen or utility room to use it. You need to make the w/c wide and long enough to take a wheelchair. – there are actual “minimum” dimensions that you have to work to, and the door should open onto the hall, rather than into the w/c. – Bear this in mind when you position this room. – Your designer will get the exact details right, but if you “get the idea” of what you need, you can allow for it.

Windows:
You can mark on your plans the position of the windows:

Standard window widths are 600mm / 900mm / 1200mm / 1500mm / 1800mm / 2338mm / 2700mm
External doors are about 900mm wide.

As you design try to think about what you are drawing from a point of view of actually living in the building.

You should have a good idea of room sizes which will suit you (from your initial research), but also think about things like “lengths of corridors”.

A long hallway will get darker the further away from a window it gets. - A narrow corridor can seem a bit “claustrophobic”. - Will you want a door into an internal garage? – If so where will it be positioned? - Where would your internal doors be best positioned for moving from room to room?

Think about the window positions in each of the rooms you have drawn, and make sure you can actually GET a window in each room by having at least one wall as an external wall (you can have bathrooms / store rooms without windows if you wish, and you can use “light pipes” to bring light down from the roof to rooms without windows, - if you need to).

If you made a note of the positions of windows in the houses you researched, this will help you when positioning your own windows. – Getting a pleasant appearance externally on your finished design will depend partly on the positioning of your windows.

The sketch here shows a bad example of an initial design sketch:

If you have a “tracing pad”, and if you know that the upstairs will be pretty much the same size as the ground floor, you can simply place your ground floor layout drawing under a clean sheet of tracing paper and trace the external wall onto the clean sheet.

Obviously, the staircase has to be shown in the same position on the upstairs layout as it is on the downstairs, - so start your upstairs layout by drawing the stairs.

You will by now know what you hope to get from the upstairs layout (in respect of the number of bedrooms and bathrooms), so you now have to try to design a layout that will give you what you want.

As you design the upstairs, remember that corridors take up area which could be “inside” bedrooms. So, if your budget is limited, or the plot size has limited the maximum size for the structure, you may need to try to get as much room “in the rooms” as you can.

Remember to draw in the wall thicknesses (100mm) for each wall, and make sure you can get a door into the room from the landing (unless the room is something like an en suite or walk in dressing room).

If you are planning on building in “Traditional Construction”, and you want to use “blockwork” walls upstairs (as opposed to timber studs), if possible, try to line up your downstairs walls with the upstairs walls. If you don’t you will need to use supports such as steel “rsj’s” to take the weight of the blockwork

Try different layouts until you are happy with the layouts of both the ground and first floor.

Once you have finished the design itself, add some dimensions so that the designer will have a better understanding of the drawing if any of your walls are incorrectly positioned. The overall length of the house, and the depth, plus the main room sizes should be all you need at this stage.

As you go through the process of preparing these drawings you may gain confidence enough so that once you have the floor plans designed you may decide to have a go at, at least drawing the front elevation, showing window and door positions to give yourself an idea how your design could look as you approach it.

If you do decide to have a go, take a look at the section of this guide which deals with “Designing a new house – appearance”.

Once you have finished you designs, look carefully over them to make sure that “they work”. Try to imagine actually building them. – Would it be possible?

Also, you can then bring out your initial designs (the ones you did before you went looking for land) to see how your ideas have now changed and to make sure that you have included everything you wanted.

Hopefully, once you have done all that, you will have created a set of drawings that you will confidently be able to take to whichever designer you choose to use, that they will:

a) Be able to make sense of!

b) They will be able to use as a basis to prepare your “Full working drawings”.

If you can also take some sketches of how you would like the elevations to look, that would be even better!

Additional:

Here are two "initial design layouts I did recently, which were then passed over to the designer: