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You have decided to build your own house. Great!

Here are some tips for drawing some good plans that you will need.

Keep the number of sheets to the minimum, but beginners will do well to draw on smaller sheets than those used by professionals.

If your drawings are about 18" x 24", they will be large enough to get an ordinary floor plan on one sheet, or two elevations, with room enough for details without crowding.

Make all sheets the same size, with a border about a half inch wide all around the drawing, with perhaps an extra inch on the left end to give room enough to staple the sheets all together to make a set of plans.

With the smaller sheets, you can trace the foundation and roof plans from the floor plan, and by turning the front and one end elevation over, you can trace off much of the rear elevation and the other end; there will be differences, but the roof lines and the heights of the windows and the floor levels will be similar.

The floor plan should be drawn first, but it is all right to begin on the front elevation, as soon as you have a fair idea of the rooms that will be in the front of the house.

You will probably draw several sketches before you finally decide on the plan. If you are more interested in the front appearance than in some other things, you may draw this first and make the rooms fit your idea of a front picture.

You will probably find it necessary to change both the floor plan and the elevation several times before you get them to match perfectly and to meet your needs, your ideas, and the ideas of your family.

Begin by drawing small freehand sketches of both the floor plan and the front view, until you get what looks like a workable idea, then transfer it to larger paper.

It is better to begin early with a full size drawing of 1/4" to the foot, as then you will get used to drawing to that scale, and the parts of your drawing that work out right can be traced directly on the final tracing paper.

A floor plan is not strictly a floor plan, but is a plan of a house cut horizontally somewhere above the window sills, to show as much of the building as possible.

A cross-section is often very useful in showing how things are put together. Imagine that you are taking a large saw and cutting through the part of the building you wish to show in a cross-section.

Then in your mind remove the part you have just sawed off, take a square look at the part that is left, and draw the pieces that show where the saw has cut. Draw the parts as they are in relation to each other. This will give you a cross section.

A scale of 1/2" to the foot will give a cross section that is easy to draw and not too difficult for the workmen to read.

If you want to economize on paper and printing costs, the elevations and roof plan can be made to a scale of 1/8" = 1' 0", which makes a picture just half as large in each direction as the regular drawing of 1/4" scale. These small drawings will take just as long to make, but the blueprinting will not cost so much if you get more drawings on one sheet.

Cupboards are often drawn so that 1" = 1'. This gives a drawing large enough so that you can get all the necessary details in. If you want smaller drawings, a scale of 1/2" = 1' will make very acceptable working details and is large enough to show the details clearly.

Special moldings or unusual features, especially those that involve curves that are not parts of circles, are often drawn full size, as it is very difficult to reproduce an irregular curve if the size of the drawing is different from the size of the object.

Ordinarily, it is better to avoid too many irregular or unusual things, as this will make the house cost more and will not add much to the value.

Remember to make the floor plan to a scale of 1/4" to the foot as this is almost universal practice in America. Avoid odd scales like 3/8" or 3/16" to the foot, as they tend to confuse the builder when he is used to the regular 1/4" scale.

It is worth noting here that when you use a mortgage to buy property, always use a mortgage calculator to save money on your mortgage.