Sparks LS-42001

Photo Tour Of A Finished Sparks

These are photographs of a Sparks that has been built, not renderings. The scale is the thing an elevation drawing cannot convey: the working half of this building runs the full sixty-foot width and most of its ninety-foot depth, with the living quarters occupying one end.

The Sparks Floor Plan And Elevations

The Sparks LS-42001 is a single-story metal-shell barndominium with 1,526 heated square feet on a 60 by 90 foot footprint. Two bedrooms, two full baths and a half bath, an open living, dining and kitchen area with a central island, a laundry room, a front porch, and an attached garage with a tack room. Concrete slab foundation, a 4:12 main roof pitch and an overall height of 18 feet.

Ceiling heights vary by zone, and that is worth picturing before anything else. Nine feet through the living quarters, ten feet in the tack room, and fourteen feet across the garage and the enclosed alley way. Exterior walls are 2×4 framing at sixteen inches on center with R-19 batt insulation, plywood sheathing and metal siding. The garage carries 4×12 glulam beams on ten-inch square posts, with fire-rated drywall required across every garage wall and ceiling.

Read the proportions before anything else, because they are the entire point of this plan. The living quarters occupy a single band across one end of the building. Everything beyond them — the full sixty-foot width, running back most of the ninety-foot depth — is working space: an enclosed alley way with floor drains, a garage bay served by three ten-foot by ten-foot overhead doors, and a tack room with its own half bath so nobody tracks through the house from the shop.

This is not a house with a large garage. It is a working building with a house in one end of it.

One caution on the designer’s published square footages. The plan lists unheated areas totalling 5,559 square feet. Added to 1,526 heated, that would exceed the 5,400 square feet enclosed by a 60 by 90 foot footprint, so those figures appear to double-count overlapping zones. The heated area and the footprint are both dimensioned on the drawing and are reliable. Treat the unheated breakdown as unconfirmed and ask the designer before you build a budget on it.

What Does It Cost To Build A Sparks?

Finished barndominiums generally run $65 to $160 per square foot. On 1,526 heated square feet that is roughly $99,000 to $244,000 before land, site preparation, well, septic and utility connections — and that figure covers only the living quarters, which are the smaller part of this building.

The working half carries slab, framing, roof and three overhead doors, and none of it appears in a per-square-foot estimate run on heated space. Budget against the whole 60 by 90 foot footprint rather than the 1,526. Unheated space is genuinely cheaper per foot — no insulation, no drywall, no HVAC, no interior finish — but a fourteen-foot ceiling across that span is a serious structure, and the fire-rated drywall the plan specifies throughout the garage is a real cost most people do not anticipate.

A plan that is mostly clear-span working space is a strong candidate for a metal building package. Kit shells run about $20 to $35 per square foot with another $10 to $15 per square foot to assemble. Your local labor market and whether you act as your own general contractor will still dominate the outcome. Get county-level bids before you set a budget.

The plan set is $849.99.

Is The Sparks Right For You?

The 60 by 90 foot footprint is the first thing to check against your lot. Sixty feet of width is manageable on anything that would take a wide single-story house. Ninety feet of depth is the constraint people miss — with front and rear setbacks you want well over 130 feet of usable depth. That is rural acreage territory, and on a standard subdivided lot it will not fit. No modification changes that.

Where it is genuinely excellent is the working space, and the fourteen-foot ceiling is why. Three ten-by-ten overhead doors and fourteen feet of headroom clear most work trucks, trailers, tractors and a two-post lift. Floor drains through the alley way mean you can wash a vehicle or a machine indoors. A tack room with its own half bath says the designer expected the owner to be working in here, not parking in here. Very few stock plans pair that much genuinely equipped covered area with finished living quarters.

The living quarters are compact and you should treat them as such. 1,526 square feet with two bedrooms and an open main area is comfortable for a couple, a small household, or a working property. It is not a family house with a shop attached; it is the other way round, and anyone expecting the living space to feel proportionate to the building will be surprised.

Two bedrooms with two and a half baths is a generous ratio at this size. The master has an en-suite and a walk-in closet, the guest bedroom sits beside a full hall bath, and the half bath off the tack room keeps shop traffic out of the house. Both bedrooms have egress windows. What you do not get is a third bedroom or an office, and there is nowhere to add one without taking it out of the shop.

A 4:12 pitch at 18 feet overall keeps a long building visually low, which matters more here than on a compact plan — a steeper roof running ninety feet back would produce a far taller and more expensive structure. It also keeps the roof cheaper to build and safer to work on.

Sparks LS-42001 FAQ