On Mon, 31 Aug 2009 10:41:24 -0700 (PDT), Cindy Hamilton
wrote:

On Aug 30, 6:30*pm, aemeijers wrote:


Chuckle. That is one lesson my father the house designer always tries to
impart to his customers- they get the most bang for the buck when they
design the house around standard material sizes. He likes to design
houses where the floor decking and roof decking use full and half
sheets, the joists never need trimming, the foundation only uses full
blocks, etc. Wasted materials annoy him.

My husband has a friend who's having some space bumped out of her
2nd floor--the standard giant shed dormer kind of thing. The original
plan was to have the side wall come out to the existing wall, which
would have carried the load nicely. She has some other friend who's
an architect, who said that the dormer would look better smaller, so
now the builder has to transfer the load a couple feet out to the
existing
wall. The net addition is about 15% smaller than the original plan,
and
she was surprised that the quote didn't come in at 15% less. She's
lucky it isn't more.

IMO, the architect is right. Shed dormers that go all the way to the
outside wall look dumb. My last house was designed like that, but at
least it was in the back. Whether the "wasted" space is worth the
looks is a matter of opinion. If appearances didn't matter houses
would be windowless cubes.