Customizable barndominium plans: what you can change and who does it

You can customize a BarndoVista plan: every plan set includes an editable CAD file (DXF) of the floor plan, so your builder, a local drafter or an architect can change it for your one home. Finishes and fixtures are the easiest changes, and moving interior walls comes next, once someone confirms what each wall holds up. Changes to the roof, the foundation, a bearing wall or an opening in an exterior wall go to an engineer.

A note on our plans. A BarndoVista plan set costs $149. It is unstamped and drawn for conventional wood framing, and it does not include structural design, engineering stamps or permits. That stays true after any change: your local team completes those for the changed plan. See what a plan set includes.

What you have to work with

The PDF drawing set holds the floor plan, 4 exterior elevations, building sections, a roof plan, door and window schedules, an electrical, smoke and CO placement diagram and a foundation outline. The CAD file is a separate DXF of the floor plan, made for your builder or drafter to open and edit.

That detail matters. The CAD file covers the floor plan, and a floor plan change is a change to several sheets. Move a wall and the elevations, sections, schedules and foundation outline can change with it. Whoever makes the change should redraw those sheets or issue new ones, so ask for the full set back, not only the floor plan.

The concept renderings show the design as drawn. They do not change when the plan does, so keep them as pictures of the original home.

Who makes the changes

You have several routes, and they combine. Your builder or a drafter you hire can make changes from the CAD file, and you can also ask us.

Which of these you need depends on the change and on your building department, which decides what drawings it wants and who must sign them. If a change is closer to a new design than a tweak, read our comparison of plan sets and architects.

Which changes are simple and which are structural

Sort every change by what it touches. Ordinary light-frame wood houses follow the code's prescriptive rules up to their limits. Anything beyond those limits is designed by an engineer. The same sorting works for any light-frame house plan, not only ours. Section numbers below are from the 2021 model code. Your state or county may use another edition, so your building department and engineer have the final say.

Walls: three questions before one moves

• Does it carry load? The USDA Forest Products Laboratory notes that engineered trusses can span greater distances without intermediate support, which eliminates the need for interior load-carrying partitions. Many interior walls in a trussed house therefore hold nothing up, but not every wall is free. Truss design drawings list the required bearing widths and the force at each support, and the code requires them to go to the building official and be approved before installation (R802.10.1). A second floor, a beam or a change in the roof shape changes the answer.
• Is it part of the bracing? A wall can carry no roof load and still resist wind and earthquake forces. The code lets interior walls serve as bracing, and where the building official requires it, braced wall lines are identified on the construction documents (R602.10, R106.1.3).
• What does it hide? Ducts, wiring, plumbing and the smoke alarm locations on your plan can all sit in or near the wall.

Trusses need special care. The code does not allow truss members to be cut, notched, drilled, spliced or otherwise altered without the approval of a registered design professional (R802.10.4).

Other code points a change can trigger

• Openings in bearing walls need headers. The code gives header tables for openings in exterior bearing walls up to its limits (R602.7). Wider or more heavily loaded openings go to an engineer, and a wall with more glass has less solid wall left for bracing.
• A new bedroom. Every sleeping room needs an emergency escape and rescue opening (R310.1) and a smoke alarm (R314.3).
• A loft or second floor. It adds a stair, guards at open edges and a floor structure. Our 40x60 guide lists the loft rules in a table.
• A shop next to the house. The wall between a shop and the house has fire-separation questions. Our shouse guide covers them.
• An open kitchen. Taking out the wall between a kitchen and a living room raises the load and bracing questions above, and the open-concept guide covers what else it changes.

What a change does to your license

Your plan license covers one home on one site. It lets you use the drawings, the CAD file and the renderings to plan, price, adapt and build that home. It lets you share the files with the builder, drafter, engineer, architect, lender and officials working on it. It also lets you modify the design, or have it modified, for that home.

It does not let you build the design more than once, resell or publish the files, share them for anyone else's project, offer them as a download, or use them in a plan catalog. BarndoVista keeps the copyright in its designs, drawings and renderings. To build the same design again, you buy another plan set. Read the plan license, linked in the site footer, for the exact terms, and see what is included for the rest of the set.

Asking BarndoVista for a change

Every home page has a "Request a change to this plan" link. It opens an email to us with the home's name in the subject line. We reply with what the change involves and a quote. We do not publish a price list, because every change is different.

A request is easier to answer when it includes:

• The change in plain words: what moves, grows or goes away.
• A marked-up page from the PDF, or a quick sketch.
• Your site's limits, such as lot shape, slope and setbacks. Our site-first guide lists what to check.
• The framing you expect to use: wood, steel or post-frame.
• Anything your building department has already told you.

You do not have to go through us. The license lets your own builder, drafter or architect work from the files.

A sensible order of work

1. Check the other plans first. The quickest change is no change. Need another bedroom? Look at the 3-bedroom and 4-bedroom collections. Need more shop? The Tinkerer has a shop nearly as big as its home, and the Prairie Works puts a home and a shop under one roof. The plans with a shop collection has more.
2. Write a change list and mark it up on the PDF. Split must-haves from nice-to-haves.
3. Ask your building department which drawings it needs and who has to sign them, before you pay for any redrawing.
4. Have a drafter update the DXF and every affected sheet, and keep a list of what changed.
5. Have an engineer review the structure and the openings. Your truss supplier produces the truss design drawings for the changed roof.
6. Get your builder to price the changed plan, not the original.
7. Finish design changes before the permit. Once documents are approved, the code says changes made during construction that do not comply with them must be resubmitted for approval as an amended set (R106.4).

Planning a steel or post-frame shell? Settle your changes before you order it, because the openings are ordered with the frame. Our kits vs plans guide explains why, and the framing guide lists what changes in each system. Or browse every design on the floor plans page.