Plan a Home that Can Grow with Your Needs

It was common practice in the past to build small and add rooms as needed. The design above, from George Woodward’s 1867 book, Architecture and Rural Art, shows how it can be done. The finished house was envisioned from the start. The second floor, staircase, chimney and entry door were built first to remain through all the changes. New rooms were built on the outside of the old structure, and passage doors replaced windows. With careful planning of the new construction, family life was disturbed as little as possible.

Build a permanent home - or the beginning of one - at the outset. Build the home now, and though you commence with only a kitchen and a bedroom, the seasons will come and go, bringing their gifts of improvement and beauty, and thirty years hence your home will be a far sweeter and lovelier abode than any grand new house, at such a time, can possibly be.

E.H.Leland, Farm Homes, 1882