So weather you are building your first home, you’re an empty nester building a small retirement home or are home designer building a spec house, you will find a great selection of small home plans in this collection. When you start building your house you should also consider small house plans. Until recently, unless you could afford naturally rot-resistant wood species like redwood, teak, or red cedar, your options were limited to treated wood or untreated wood, which require maintenance. The push to recycle combined with modern technology has created an array of new, high-tech decking materials that eliminate most maintenance and all finishing chores. They’re also splinter-free, cost a bit more than pressure-treated wood but less than the expensive species, and remove the headache of finishing, maintenance, and repair.