Customer Reviews

Backroad Home: Simple Country Designs of Cottages, Cabins, Barns, Stables, Garages and Garden Sheds with Sources for Blueprints, Kits, Building Accessories, Catalogs and Guide Books

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If you are a lover of old houses, their uniqueness, wonderful style and design... If you live in an old house, maybe want to add on or are going to be moving into an older home... If you are an architect, designer, builder or contractor... Or, if you are thinking of building and find yourself sick and tired of the please-not-one-more-cathedral-ceilinged-media-room-approach to home design...

Then look no further - Don Berg's "Backroad Home" is the light at the end of the tunnel. The whole front of this wonderful book provides inspiring, right on the mark designs, blueprints and resorces for older houses, cottages, cabins, backbuildings, barns, sheds and even a charming out-door shower! The back is filled with a perfectly edited compendium of resources for old house design, building and materials complete with addresses, phone #s and yes, when available, email. My copy, and it's sister "American Country Building Designs" both purchased just a few months ago, are already dog-eared, marked up, and coffee cup ringed and we have yet to move into our 1850's farmhouse! Great reading, great writing and great fun. Thank you Mr. Berg for writing a book for "the rest of us"

The Backroad Home serves as a source book of building plans for all kinds of small buildings. Each of the designs has an illustration along with a floor plan. Text is limited to a few sentences about the design and the address or web site to request catalogs or full plans from. I would have liked more text. I wanted to know more about the design styles. Many of the designs are based on regional architecture like the Amisquam Salt Box or the Pine Island Cottage. While others could be imagined in a field almost anywhere in the country. There are also plenty of barn and outbuilding plans.

A lot of the dwellings do not even qualify for the term house. They are cabins with very small floor plans and only one door. But other plans have three or even four bedrooms and aren't what I would call small.

In the back of the book are even more design sources and a Country Building Directory containing suppliers for things like weathervanes, sundials, antique hardware and brass and copper lighting fixtures. There is a convenient index in the back for referring to specific architectural styles.

I've been searching for plans for small houses for several years. This book has given me access to many new sources. I've finally found a house that's the right size for me and I might even be able to afford it!

Buying country land is the beginning of a great adventure. During the year that I recommend you observe and inventory natural conditions before you build, you will have time to decide not only where your buildings will be planted but what their form will be. Here is a book that extols traditional styles and connects you to the architects who have adapted those styles to modern codes. Architect/editor Berg has found seventeen designers who are unabashed proponents of traditional style, most of whom live the country life, so they have first-hand appreciation for what works and looks best. Each offers mail-order plans for simple but elegant inexpensive country homes and outbuildings. Here are drawings of floor plans and exteriors of 86 designs in all, from a 144-square-foot cabin to a farmhouse and Southern-style cottage with wraparound porch, each of 2,000 square feet. This is a sampler; I checked out the Web sites of the designers and found that they offer many more designs. Most offer plan catalogs.

In addition to sourcing working architects' plans, Berg connects the reader to alternate plan sources, including log homes, timber frame, historic, magazine and Cooperative Extension plans, which are hard to find but nearly free. There is also a Resources section of building codes, building book catalogs and on-line resources, plus other books on country building. The Country Building Directory has entries from Acorn Forged Iron to West Coast Weather Vanes. Happy country planning, building and living.

the book was in great shape, but I was disappointed that there wasn't more design/construction information. If you're looking for pictures to get ideas it is nice.