floorplan of a small cabin: loft

Creating a simple shelter - and living with it!

Floorplan
Kitchen
Master Bedroom
Loft
Gear room
Bathroom
Mud room
Livingroom I
Livingroom II
Deck
Entrance

Floorplan of a small cabin:

Loft/Kid's Room


Cabin Intro Cabin Images Building the Cabin Brief Building Story Heating Floorplan FAQ Construction Diary Pre-Building Notes

Clearly the domain of our son, the loft is a large, comfortable room with warm colors and the only finished floor in the cabin.
It is about 14' by 15' measured inside, but with standing headroom only along the ridge. Still, it does definitely feel big and roomy. We'll see how it will work for a teenager some 7 years down the road.
There is lots of storage in built-in bins along the rake walls.
Two large windows across from each other on the north and south gables turns the loft into a nice breezeway on hot summer nights.

Access used to be a ladder to a hinged hatch in the middle of the floor. This was determined by an early downstairs floorplan, that didn't really work out. After much sketching, planning and discussing we decided on a major remodel, after just 2 years, to remedy a few issues, among them, but not only, loft access.
The result, which is shown on these pages, is so much better. Lesson learned: Be flexible, because what looks fine on paper, doesn't always live up to expectations. Our problem was that we thought a staircase would gobble up way too much square footage, and simply discarded the idea without trying.
Later we were forced to reconsider, and in fact it the stairs shown on the right are less obtrusive than the ladder/hatch setup, and far more practical. The steps are only 2' wide and 8" deep and had to have a 90 degree turn worked in to shoehorn the whole thing in place. Again the huge amount of planning paid off.