CREATE EFFICIENT SPACE WHEN DESIGNING FLOOR PLANS

When designing a home a person is often faced with the need for MORE space in a given room [e.g. the kitchen].  A floor plan is much like a jigsaw puzzle in that you are trying to arrange rooms that flow together and FIT together in a space that has a straight border.  So the rooms on both side of the kitchen are adequate size but the kitchen is a bit too small for your purposes - what do you do?  Aside from reshuffling the arrangement, it is possible to merely increase the size of the kitchen [assuming you have the space on the lot] by creating a jut in the outer shape of the home - lets say we need 2 more feet in width to really make the kitchen work well - should we merely push the kitchen out and create the jut, say the kitchen is 16 feet long - that is adding 32 sf to the home.  Unless there is some property constraint, you are probably better adding 2 feet to the entire depth of the home - perhaps 60 feet deep or 120 sf more space to the home.  Because of the tremendously increased costs encountered in creating the jut, you can get the 120 sf of living space for about the same real dollar cost as the 32 sf of the proposed jut for the kitchen - thus reducing the COST PER SQUARE FOOT OF LIVING AREA while spending no more in total dollars.  You get MORE home for the same money and upon resale you will be paid for the footage.  Juts absolutely do have their place in construction.  It is important to have a great looking front elevation but side of a home is rarely seen from the street and thus has little visual impact.  No one particularly wants to live in a box, but this is very smart, inexpensive footage that makes complete sense.  

When designing multi-story homes, particularly waterfront homes or coastal zone homes that tend to have pilings at every corner, the cost differential for a small jut is staggering!