We Make It Easy to Get House Plans in Freeport, Maine

How an addition is drawn to look original

The village here is Federal and Greek Revival stock, which means the houses were built to proportions that were conventional at the time and are conspicuous when broken. Getting an addition right is mostly arithmetic, not taste.

The addition should be visibly secondary. Older New England houses grew by adding smaller pieces to a main block, each one a little lower and a little narrower. A wing that matches the original in height and width reads as a mistake, because no house was ever built that way.

Match the roof pitch or deliberately drop it. Copying the original pitch reads as intentional. Landing a degree or two away reads as an accident, and the eye catches it from across the street.

Keep the window proportions, which matters more than keeping the window style. Older sash tends to be taller than it is wide by a consistent ratio across the whole face of the building. A modern opening of the same area but a squarer shape is the single most common thing that gives an addition away.

Hold the horizontal lines. Where the water table, the sill line, the head of the windows and the eave land on the original are the lines an addition should continue or clearly step down from. Drawn elevations are how you check that, because you can lay a straightedge across the sheet.

Set the connection back from the front face. A wing that steps in from the main block reads as a later addition in the traditional way. A wing flush with the front reads as a bigger house that somebody got wrong.

Repeat the trim rhythm rather than the trim itself. Copying corner boards and casings exactly can look like a reproduction. Continuing their spacing and weight looks like the same house.

Draw the existing and the proposed on one sheet. This is the drawing that settles the argument. Side by side at the same scale, every one of the decisions above is either obviously right or obviously not, and it costs nothing to change at that stage.

The best compliment an addition gets is that nobody notices it. That outcome is designed rather than built.

Where a new wing meets the old house

The junction is the part that gets least attention on paper and causes most of the trouble on site.

The old building is not square and the new one will be. On a house of this age that is a certainty rather than a risk, and the drawings should say how the difference gets taken up. It usually gets absorbed in the connecting section rather than spread along a wall.

The floor levels will not agree. Older ground floors sit at heights nobody would choose today, and a step between old and new is often the honest answer. Deciding that on the drawing is far better than discovering it during framing.

Plaster over lath is what is behind the interior wall you are opening. Freeport's village stock carries the same interior construction as Portland's older neighbourhoods, and any opening cut between old and new is a plaster repair as well as a framing job. Put it on the drawing so it lands on the quote.

Ask the town about review before you commission the design. Freeport's village centre carries a design review overlay tied to the district's historic character, and its scope is a question for the town rather than for me. The Town of Freeport will confirm whether your address is inside it and what they would want to see.

Out toward Wolfe's Neck and South Freeport the constraints are different. Those are shoreland lots, frequently on well and septic, and there the envelope is set by the site before the design gets a say.

Get the review question answered first either way. An addition designed and then reviewed is an expensive order of operations. Reviewed and then designed is a cheap one.

Who gets house plans in Freeport, ME

Owners of Federal and Greek Revival village houses adding a kitchen wing or a family room. People extending an older house who want the result to read as one building.

Owners out toward Wolfe's Neck and South Freeport designing inside a shoreland envelope.

What does the job cover here?

A full set with existing and proposed elevations drawn together: plans, elevations, roof plan, foundation plan and the schedule, with the massing settled before anything else.

On a Freeport village house, add a window proportion study to that list. Getting the opening shapes to agree with the original face of the building is what makes the addition disappear.

When should you start drawings in Freeport?

After the review question is answered and before anything else. In the village that ordering is not optional if you want to draw once.

For a summer build, autumn is right, and earlier if the town confirms your address falls inside the overlay.

Why is Freeport different?

Because the village stock is old enough and consistent enough that a badly proportioned addition is genuinely conspicuous. In a town of postwar ranches you can get away with a great deal.

Here the street does the checking.

A statewide fact for your comparisons: Maine does not license general contractors or builders, and only plumbers and electricians hold state licenses. There is no credential at all for sympathetic design, which is exactly why you judge it on drawings and on work you can go and look at.

What questions come up most in Freeport?

How do you make an addition match an old house? Keep it visibly secondary, match or clearly drop the roof pitch, hold the window proportions, continue the horizontal lines, and set the connection back from the front face.

Should an addition be the same height as the house? Usually not. Traditional New England houses grew by adding smaller, lower pieces, so a matching height reads as wrong.

Does Freeport review the design of an addition? The village centre carries a design review overlay. Ask the town whether your address is inside it before commissioning drawings.

Will the old floors line up with the new ones? Often not, and a step between old and new is frequently the right answer. It belongs on the drawing rather than on site.

Permit-approved guarantee block. Renders from _guarantee-block.md.

An addition on an older house usually wants the detailed tier, because the junction between old and new is exactly the kind of thing a construction detail exists to describe.

The elevations are the sheets to spend your attention on here. On a new house people study the floor plan and glance at the elevations.

On an addition to a village house it is the other way around, because the floor plan affects how you live and the elevations affect what the town and the street see.

Ask to see the existing and proposed drawn together before you approve anything. If that sheet looks right, the rest usually follows.