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

What out of square does to a drawing

Draftsmen have a temptation with old buildings, and it is to draw what the house was supposed to be rather than what it is. That temptation is where the money goes.

A room measured at both ends is often two different widths. Not by a hair. By enough that a cabinet run ordered off the wrong number does not fit, and the difference has to be discovered by somebody standing in the room with it.

So every dimension gets taken twice and both get recorded. A drawing that shows one width for a room that has two is not simpler. It is wrong, and it will be wrong at the worst moment.

Walls bow along their length. Older framing has moved for three hundred years, and a wall that is straight at each end can be an inch out in the middle. Anything long and rigid going against it needs that noted.

Floors slope, and they slope in different directions in different rooms. Levels get recorded against a single reference rather than room by room, or the drawing will quietly disagree with itself.

Ceiling heights vary room to room and floor to floor, sometimes within a single room. On these buildings that is normal rather than a defect.

Nothing is a standard dimension. Stud spacing, joist spacing, opening sizes and stair rise all predate the conventions everybody now assumes. A drawing that shows a standard because a standard is expected has invented something.

The drawing has to say where it is uncertain. Behind plaster, under a floor and inside a wall are places nobody measured, and a good set marks them as assumed rather than pretending to knowledge it does not have.

Which is exactly what a builder needs. Contractors pricing an old house carry contingency for what they cannot see. A drawing that is explicit about what was verified and what was inferred lets them carry less of it, and that shows up in the number.

Where the discrepancy gets absorbed

New work is built square because that is how modern materials arrive. Old work is not. The drawing has to decide where those two facts meet, and that decision belongs on paper.

Absorb it in one place rather than spreading it. A quarter inch spread along a whole wall is invisible. The same error accumulated across a run of cabinets or a row of openings is not. Good sets nominate where the difference gets taken up.

Furring is the usual answer inside. A new plane built in front of an old wall gives you something square to work against, at the cost of a small amount of floor. It is a decision with a cost, so it belongs on the drawing rather than on site.

At a junction between old and new, let the connecting piece do the work. A short link between an old building and a new one can take up a surprising amount of irregularity without anybody noticing.

Decide the reference line before anything is ordered. Whether new work lines up with the outside face, the inside face or something else is a real decision on a wall that is not parallel to itself.

Stairs and openings are where tolerance runs out. These are dimension-critical and they are where an accumulated error stops being cosmetic.

Two Kittery specifics worth naming. The colonial and Federal housing at Kittery Point is the genuine article, and those buildings are the least standard you will meet anywhere in my service area. The shipyard-era housing on the Foreside is a completely different problem, built to a pattern and much closer to square, and it should not be priced like the Point.

Ask the town what it wants for work on an old building. The Town of Kittery will tell you what the code office expects submitted, and on a pre-1978 house it is worth asking about lead-safe work practice at the same time, which is a real federal requirement and a verifiable credential.

Who gets house plans in Kittery, ME

Owners of Kittery Point colonial and Federal houses where nothing measures the way it looks. People working on shipyard-era Foreside housing that is older than it appears. Owners of newer inland property where none of this applies and the drawings are conventional.

What does the job cover here?

A measured set that records the building honestly: dimensions taken at both ends, levels against one reference, bowed walls noted, ceiling heights recorded per room, and assumed information marked as assumed.

On a Kittery Point house, add a stated reference line to that list. Deciding what new work squares up to is the single decision that prevents the errors from stacking.

When should you start drawings in Kittery?

Allow more time at the measuring stage than the building's size suggests. A small colonial takes longer to record accurately than a large modern house.

For a summer start, begin in winter, and budget an extra visit for anything that could not be reached the first time.

Why is Kittery different?

Because this is the oldest town in the state, so the buildings here predate the conventions that every modern drawing assumes. Everywhere else a plan can rely on standards. Here it has to rely on measurements.

A statewide fact for your comparisons: Maine does not license general contractors or builders, and only plumbers and electricians hold state licenses. Working accurately on an irregular old building is a skill with no credential attached, so ask any contractor what they have done on a house of that age and go and look at it.

What questions come up most in Kittery?

Why are old houses not square? They were built before standard dimensions existed, using materials that varied, and they have moved for centuries since. It is normal rather than a defect.

How should a drawing handle a room that is two different widths? By recording both. A single dimension for an irregular room is inaccurate and causes problems when something is ordered to it.

What is a reference line? The face that new work is set out from. Nominating it prevents small errors from accumulating across a run of cabinets or openings.

Does an old house need more detailed drawings? Usually yes. The tolerance decisions live in construction details, which is what the detailed tier adds.

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An old irregular building is one of the strongest cases for the detailed tier, because the construction details are where the tolerance decisions actually get written down.

Prices here run Seacoast rather than Maine, since the labour pool is shared with across the river. That affects what you will pay a builder rather than what you pay for drawings, and it is a reason to have a set precise enough that nobody is pricing uncertainty.

The honest summary is that accurate drawings are worth more on an old house than a new one, and they cost the same.