Three blocks under three roofs, the way farmhouses grew: a two-story main block, a 1½-story wing beside it, and a saltbox lean-to across the back. About 5,600 sq ft above grade, a full basement under all of it, facing due south across a porch.
Block
Size
Roof
Holds
Main block, a Pennsylvania farmhouse
44' × 34', two stories
9/12
a centre hall and stair; the parlour with its Rumford fireplace, the study, the dining room and the main-floor suite; four bedrooms and two baths above
Wing, a Cape
44' × 34', 1½ stories
10/12
the great room open to its frame, the masonry heater, the kitchen with a loft over it
Lean-to, a saltbox catslide
44' × 14', one story
the main roof, carried on down
the suite's bath, the back hall and the stair down, a half bath, the pantry and the mudroom
Porch
88' × 8', the whole front
shed
First floor at +2'-0", second floor at +11'-6", the main plate at +20'-0" and its
ridge at +35'-5"; the wing's ridge at +31'-5". The walls wrap outside the posts, so the frame
stands in every room; dimensions are to the posts' centres.
SheetA1
TitleSite plan
ViewNorth up · feet
Drawn2026-09-27
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The house faces due south. The workshop stands north across a 40-ft working yard with its doors to the sun. The drive comes in off the road at the field's gate and down an alley between two orchards. The greenhouse is east of the wing, where the midwinter sun check finds almost no shadow on its glazing.
Dashed outlines are below grade: the tunnel to the workshop, the cellar and the greenhouse tunnel.
SheetA1b
TitleSite plan: the yard
ViewNorth up · feet
Drawn2026-09-27
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The hub stands about a thousand feet north, among the farmyard's existing house and garages, off the yard's lane. Its wood plant heats every building down one buried loop: the existing house and garages, the container farm inside the field's gate, and the workshop and the house, each of which keeps its own heat too. The circles are the standing conifers in the yard, drawn from an aerial photo.
SheetA2
TitleFirst floor
ViewNorth up · feet
Drawn2026-09-27
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A centre hall with the stair between four rooms: the parlour with its Rumford fireplace on the north wall, the study, the dining room open to the kitchen, and the main-floor suite, its closet and bath in the lean-to. The wing holds the kitchen, 16' × 34', and the great room, 28' × 34' with the masonry heater standing in its own 8-ft bay between them, open to the frame and the rafters.
SheetA3
TitleSecond floor
ViewNorth up · feet
Drawn2026-09-27
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Four bedrooms under the main roof, one of them over the entry and lit by the window above the front door, and two baths in the room under the wing's roof, where no window could go. The loft over the kitchen looks down into the great room past the truss ties, lit by three dormers.
SheetA4
TitleBelow grade
ViewNorth up · feet
Drawn2026-09-27
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A basement under all three blocks, with the mechanical and server rooms under the lean-to. From the back hall the stair runs on down into a 40-ft shipping container that leads north to the workshop, where a poured shaft climbs sixteen treads into its south bay. Beside the tunnel, three 20-ft containers share one concrete shell behind a tested shelter door: the root cellar, a refuge and a store for dry goods and water. A 20-ft container under the walkway leads to the greenhouse's orchard floor. The heat, water and power come from the hub, through the workshop and down the tunnel.
The masonry heater and the fireplace stand on their own footings; the wing's girders stop short of the heater on piers of their own, so the green frame can settle without the masonry.
SheetA5
TitleSouth elevation
ViewLooking north · feet
Drawn2026-09-27
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Five openings across the main front on the frame's bays, six-over-six sash, lap siding and black standing-seam roofs. East of the wing, the outdoor kitchen is an open king-post pavilion with its cook wall and oven at the back; beyond it the greenhouse's glazing and the bath house.
SheetA6
TitleWest elevation
ViewLooking east · feet
Drawn2026-09-27
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The saltbox profile: the main block's roof runs on down over the lean-to as one catslide. The Rumford's chimney rises straight to the ridge.
SheetA9
TitleNorth elevation
ViewLooking south, from the yard · feet
Drawn2026-09-27
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From the working yard the catslide's long roof comes down to a low lean-to wall, with the wing, the walkway and the greenhouse's bermed north side beyond.
SheetA10
TitleEast elevation
ViewLooking west · feet
Drawn2026-09-27
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The wing's gable, its doors to the outdoor kitchen and the walkway, and a dormer; the saltbox profile behind.
SheetI1
TitleInterior walls
ViewHorizontal sections · 2 ft of each
Drawn2026-09-27
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Every partition is lime plaster on wood lath over eastern white pine studs dried in the container kiln, the same plaster as the outer walls' inner face. Three kinds: a plain partition; a quiet one with sheep's wool in the cavity round the bedrooms, the baths and the server room; and a 2x6 wet wall where the drain stacks run.
SheetI2
TitleWhere each goes
ViewThe basement, the first floor, the second floor · north up
Drawn2026-09-27
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531 ft of partition, 19 doors and 6 cased openings, counted from the same lists the floor plans draw. No partition is fixed rigidly to the green frame: a slotted top plate and a stop bead where the plaster meets the timber, and the plaster goes on after the first heating season.
What the frame changed
The frame was built from these drawings on the design library's kit, and where it could not do what the drawings
asked, the drawings changed to follow it.
The back door moved to the mudroom's east wall. The lean-to's plate sits at +8'-5", too low for a door in
its north wall.
The great room's ties sit on the plates, 12'-6" clear, and at the loft's edge the tie is the guard rail's
top, with boards below it.
The wing's girder bears on a concrete pilaster cast on the cellar wall at one end and on piers of its own
at the heater, stopping 11.6 in short of it.
The chimneys: every header and trimmer stands 2 in clear of the flues, the heater's floor opening 4 in, and
the fireplace's back face 4 in, the stricter of Wisconsin's rule and the IRC's.
The posts are oak, 8 in square, the sills bur oak, the spanning members eastern white pine a size deeper.
The frame, Homestead House: 1,550 timbers, 34,871 board feet of
green timber and 350 oak pegs, pulled apart in raising order.