Sunset's Cabin Plan Book

Edited by RALPH P. DILLON
Illustrations by NORMAN GORDON
Cabin Renderings by CLEMENS FRIEDELL
PUBLISHED BY SUNSET MAGAZINE SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
COPYRIGHT 1918, LANE PUBLISHING & CO. FIRST EDITION PRINTED IN U. S. A.
Every Westerner wants a “vacation home”! Perhaps it is the nearness to pioneer days that makes us so alive to mountain forests and ocean sands. Sunset’s Cabin Plan Book is primarily for those who are still in the “talking stage.” However, there is much valuable information in its pages for those who already are enjoying the pleasures of a “second home,” where they spend week-ends and vacation days, living comfortably though simply at any time of the year, while enjoying our Western heritage of the great outdoors.
The planning of a mountain cabin or beach cottage deserves just as careful and thoughtful consideration as the planning of a real home, though the actual construction is likely to be on a fairly simple scale.
The size of the cabin, whether it is built of logs, stone or finished lumber, depends upon what you intend to use it for—a week-end cottage for yourself and your family, a hunting lodge, a vacation home, or a little place where you can go off and examine the state of your soul in the quiet of the woods. You should consider the number in the family and the number of guests likely to be included, for “week-end cabin” should not be a synonym for active discomfort. Crowding may be jolly for a few hours or possibly for one night, but seldom longer than that.
The collection of cabin plans in this book is representative of what we believe to be the best in Western vacation-home designing. The floor plans embody features that may be shifted from one to another, since these are not necessarily working plans, but suggestions around which you and your architect or contractor-builder can create a cabin to fill your own needs. The same holds true of the cabin sketches themselves. You need not sheathe your cabin in bevel siding just because it’s that way in the picture. The same plan can be used for a shingle house or one of board and batten.