Kit Home Index › A-frame
Jamaica Cottage Shop
A-frameCan be orderedJamaica Cottage Shop ↗
Jamaica Cottage Shop is published at $17,159 to $35,954 for the kit and covers 240 square feet.
Jamaica Cottage Shop does not publish a wind rating, a snow load or anything about fire for this model, so 75 percent of the fields we score are blank.
None of that tells you whether it works on your land. Wind, snow, seismic and flood performance are site specific engineering, so the only useful answer comes from running this kit against your address.
Completeness
25 percent of the fields we score are backed by something Jamaica Cottage Shop published. Why completeness is never part of the grade.
The thing nobody else will tell you
This kit cannot be scored on its own. Nothing on this page tells you whether it works on your land.
Wind, snow, seismic and flood performance come from your address, not from this kit. Put in an address and the gates run against the real requirement at that point.
Score this kit against my land
Free, and it stays free.
The Kit Home Finder Grade
| Buyability weight 25 | Not rated Not enough published to rate ordering. We need to know whether you can place an order, plus at least two of the price, the lead time and where they deliver. |
|---|---|
| Cost honesty weight 25 | 50 publishes a price, publishes a range rather than one misleading number, itemises 1 of 14 build stages |
| Materials and carbon tier weight 15 | 100 timber frame or mass timber, once biogenic storage is counted, a lower embodied carbon class |
Rubric v1.0, August 2026. Site fit is not in this grade, because it depends on your land rather than on the kit. Every weight, and what we refuse to grade.
What the maker publishes
Everything here came off Jamaica Cottage Shop's own pages, cited at the bottom. A blank is a blank: we never fill one in.
| Build type | A-frame |
|---|---|
| Structural system | Post-and-beam framing with 4x4 posts, 60-degree gable/A-frame roof |
| Finished size | 240 sq ft |
| Bedrooms | Not published |
| Bathrooms | Not published |
| Wall R value | Not published |
| Roof R value | Not published |
| Foundation types | Not published |
| Lead time | Not published |
| Delivers to | Not published |
| Country | United States |
| Build difficulty | A small crew, no crane Panels or timbers are lifted into place. Most people hire help, but it is not specialist work. This maker says an owner can put it up themselves. Read from the maker and the method. |
What the maker says it resists
Design capability as published. Not a certification, not a rating of your house, and not proof against anything.
| Engineered wind speed | Not published |
|---|---|
| Roof snow capability | Not published |
| Seismic | Not published |
| Fire | Not published |
Price
$17,159 to $35,954
This is the number the maker publishes. What it covers is in the line below, and it is almost never the finished cost of a house.
| What that number covers | Total kit price for shell-through-4-season, 0-2 dormer configurations. Not per-sqft. |
|---|
What else we found
Long-established (since 1980s) Vermont precut kit maker selling nationally as DIY kits and pre-cut plans; only one A-frame footprint offered (12x20) with dormer add-ons.
Questions to send this maker
Generated from what they left blank. Every one of these is a thing they could answer today and have chosen not to publish. Copy them into an email. If they answer, tell us and we will update this page with the citation.
- What design wind speed is this model engineered to, in miles per hour, and at what Risk Category and Exposure Category?
- What ground snow load can the roof carry, in pounds per square foot, and is that the ground load or the roof load?
- What is the roof assembly's fire classification, and are the vents ember resistant?
- What Seismic Design Category will you engineer this model to, and is that included or a paid upgrade?
- Which foundation types does this kit support, and can it sit on piers above a base flood elevation?
- What is the wall R value, and is that nominal insulation or a tested whole assembly value including thermal bridging?
- What is the roof R value, and is it nominal or whole assembly?
- What is the lead time in weeks from deposit to delivery, right now?
- Which states will you deliver to, and which will you not?
Across the whole Index, the average kit publishes about a quarter of what a buyer needs. This maker is at 25 percent.
Questions people ask about the Jamaica Cottage Shop
Answered from what Jamaica Cottage Shop publishes, including the answers that are "they do not say".
How much does the Jamaica Cottage Shop cost?
Jamaica Cottage Shop publishes $17,159 to $35,954. Total kit price for shell-through-4-season, 0-2 dormer configurations. Not per-sqft.
What wind speed is the Jamaica Cottage Shop engineered to?
Jamaica Cottage Shop does not publish a design wind speed for this model. Only about one kit maker in ten publishes one. Note that "hurricane rated" has no legal definition in the United States, so a page using that phrase without a number has told you nothing.
What snow load can the Jamaica Cottage Shop roof take?
Jamaica Cottage Shop does not publish a snow load for this model. Around one maker in twenty does.
Can you actually buy the Jamaica Cottage Shop?
Yes. Jamaica Cottage Shop takes orders for this model today.
What foundation does the Jamaica Cottage Shop need?
Jamaica Cottage Shop does not publish foundation options for this model. That matters more than it sounds: in a FEMA A or V flood zone the finished floor has to sit above the base flood elevation, and a kit offered on a slab only cannot get there.
How well does the Jamaica Cottage Shop stand up to a hurricane or a wildfire?
The honest answer is what it resists, and under what conditions. No kit home is proof against either, and any page telling you otherwise is selling. "Hurricane rated" has no legal definition in the United States, no house can be tornado rated, and whole building certifications like LEED, Passive House and HERS all require a built, sited, inspected home and cannot be attached to a model from a spec sheet. What a maker can honestly tell you is what the design resists and under what conditions. For this model, they publish nothing at all.
Will the Jamaica Cottage Shop work on my land?
Nothing on any spec sheet can answer that, including this one. Wind, snow, seismic, flood and soil requirements come from your address, not from the kit. The Kit Home Finder runs every kit in the Index against the published hazard data for your point and shows you what survives and why the rest did not. It is free.
Compare
Nothing here is ranked by what anyone pays us, because no kit maker has ever paid for placement on this site.
Other kits from Jamaica Cottage Shop
Vermont Cottage (Post and Beam)
Documented19% Jamaica Cottage ShopVermont Cabin 20x30 Pre-Cut Kit
Documented38%Other a-frame kits in the Index
How it compares
It documents less than the average a-frame kit, 25 percent against 31. Against the 11 a-frame kits with a comparable published price, it sits above 0 of them, and the middle of that group is $45,000.
Computed across all 514 kit homes in the Index, 15 of them a-frame. Recomputed on every build.
News, reviews and video
Gathered from outside this site and linked so you can check it yourself. None of it moves the Kit Home Finder Grade, and that is deliberate: the grade is computed only from what the maker publishes, so anyone can recompute it by hand. The grade tells you what they will tell you. This tells you what happened to people who bought one.
Reviews 4
What buyers and reviewers reported
Complaints and disputes on record 1
Filed with consumer bodies, regulators or courts. We report that these records exist and link them. We are not endorsing the allegations in them, and a complaint is an allegation until somebody decides otherwise.
Sources
| Where these values came from | https://jamaicacottageshop.com/jcs-models/a-frame/ |
|---|---|
| Maker's site | https://jamaicacottageshop.com |
| Last checked | 13 August 2026 |
Values are what the maker published on the date above. Makers change pages without notice. If you find something out of date, write to hello@kithomefinder.com and we will recheck it and re-cite it. Members can dispute any figure on the page, and the dispute and its resolution are both published.
Membership
75 percent of this page is blank. Members get the contact and the questions to fill it in.
The narrowing is free and always will be. Membership is for the part after you have your shortlist, when you need to act on it.
- Delivered cost by build stage, so you can see what the published number leaves out
- See it on your land. Your parcel with the footprint dropped on it to scale, setbacks checked
- The questions to send makers who publish nothing, written from their own blanks
Everything membership includes
$47 once, for life
No subscription. No kit maker has ever paid for placement here, at any price, and none ever will.
Become a member