Anyone with good advice on building a house?

"Unlucky 13 wrote:

Housing prices vary a lot depending where you live of course. In my home town in wv, you can buy a 2000 square ft house for 100k. The same place would cost 500k in some areas closer to where I live now.

My house and acerage would likely cost a million bucks just 20 miles from here in the city, but we paid less than 40% of that.

Yeah, we're in a similar situation out in the country in a $400k home on 5 acres. If I were in a major town, it would easily be $1M+. It's incredible how much value there is in trading a little bit of a commute for a much larger home.

"KeyFin wrote:

Yeah, we're in a similar situation out in the country in a $400k home on 5 acres. If I were in a major town, it would easily be $1M+. It's incredible how much value there is in trading a little bit of a commute for a much larger home.

Its true. My wife and I would struggle to live in the worst parts of the fairly small city where she works, but we have a great house about a 20 minute drive away. Real estate is weird.

"Unlucky 13 wrote:

If you include the partially finished basements square footage, then about 115/sq ft. If you dont, then more like 150/sq ft. That includes the four acres of land, and some of the costs included in preparing it.

That's an awesome price! Our house is being built for $410/sq ft. And that didn't include the 4 acre lot we are building it on. :confused1:

"danmarino wrote:

That's an awesome price! Our house is being built for $410/sq ft. And that didn't include the 4 acre lot we are building it on. :confused1:

We worked hard to minimize cost while maintaining quality, and literally spent years doing research and getting familiar with things beforehand. We also renovated and expanded our old house ten years ago, so we had some experience going through the process. All of the doors, windows, mouldings, baseboards, the fireplace mantle, and similar things are just standard grade. I'd have liked some improvements, but we chose to stay inexpensive.

But we found good deals on all the flooring and saved from the builder's cost estimates there, same with the lights and kitchen fixtures. And our builder has a good relationship with a local stone business, and because we bought the kitchen granite, they threw in all three bathrooms for free.

We've also found, over and over, that we apparently have cheap taste, and the things that we like the most are among the least expensive. :lol:

"Unlucky 13 wrote:

We worked hard to minimize cost while maintaining quality, and literally spent years doing research and getting familiar with things beforehand. We also renovated and expanded our old house ten years ago, so we had some experience going through the process. All of the doors, windows, mouldings, baseboards, the fireplace mantle, and similar things are just standard grade. I'd have liked some improvements, but we chose to stay inexpensive.

But we found good deals on all the flooring and saved from the builder's cost estimates there, same with the lights and kitchen fixtures. And our builder has a good relationship with a local stone business, and because we bought the kitchen granite, they threw in all three bathrooms for free.

We've also found, over and over, that we apparently have cheap taste, and the things that we like the most are among the least expensive. :lol:

You're lucky! (No pun intended) It never fails, my wife and I will get shown 4 different items with no prices and invariably pick the most expensive one. lol Our builder, and his family, have become really good friends with us and as such he has really helped out on prices and cutting costs when possible.

This will be our forever home and I keep telling myself that it's just reallocating money. It's an investment! We are not wasting money. At least that's what I keep saying...

We have 5 kids so that factored into a lot of the build. Not necessarily for them now, but when they get married and have kids we want something that they could bring their families to and be comfortable. If none of them move away that won't matter, but better safe than sorry. We want to see out grandchildren and kids as much as possible.

"danmarino wrote:

You're lucky! (No pun intended) It never fails, my wife and I will get shown 4 different items with no prices and invariably pick the most expensive one. lol Our builder, and his family, have become really good friends with us and as such he has really helped out on prices and cutting costs when possible.

This will be our forever home and I keep telling myself that it's just reallocating money. It's an investment! We are not wasting money. At least that's what I keep saying...

We have 5 kids so that factored into a lot of the build. Not necessarily for them now, but when they get married and have kids we want something that they could bring their families to and be comfortable. If none of them move away that won't matter, but better safe than sorry. We want to see out grandchildren and kids as much as possible.

We're similar. My girls are 7 and almost 5, and they'll be living here full time for the next ten to twelve years at least. And we basically didn't have any extra space for guests in our old home, so once we finish the guest bedroom in the basement we can have my parents or sister visit when they like with no issues.

haven't updated in awhile...

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The second picture is our view out back from the great room.

The roof should be finished sometime next week. We have had a brutal winter and i am really impressed that the framers have been able to stay this close to schedule (They are about 10 days behind). I've been bringing them coffee and breakfast on a lot of mornings and thank them profusely for their hard work. The guys just say, "No, thank you for hiring us. We love the work during the winter." Great guys. Now maybe as soon as I leave they call me an asshole, who knows...lol

If I had to do something over, so far, I would have requested that the architects provide a 3-D rendering. I'm not good at envisioning things that are drawn in 2-D on paper. As such, we've had the framers move or tear town a few walls on the inside. Not a huge cost or ordeal, but it's all the little things that add up. We asked about a 3-D rendering beforehand, but the architect said it wasn't needed and it's really expensive so we didn't do it.

Other than the rain, the framers on my house were the biggest reason our project was slowed down. It was the first time my contractor had worked with them, and he said that he won't again. All of the trusses and other roof components, plus a crane, sat there for a week untouched in perfect sunny weather. And then it rained for two weeks straight after that. And then from that point on, I was pestering them about when we could move in, because it ended up being two and a half months later than we were promised.

"Unlucky 13 wrote:

Other than the rain, the framers on my house were the biggest reason our project was slowed down. It was the first time my contractor had worked with them, and he said that he won't again. All of the trusses and other roof components, plus a crane, sat there for a week untouched in perfect sunny weather. And then it rained for two weeks straight after that. And then from that point on, I was pestering them about when we could move in, because it ended up being two and a half months later than we were promised.

I've heard it's hit or miss with construction guys, but we definitely hit with these guys. If it's not snowing hard or -30 outside they are there swinging a hammer. Even on weekends. He said it would take him about 4 months to complete and so far he's close to that timeframe. And when I say we've had a bad winter, it's been rough out here. It was -10 this morning with -30 windchill. So cold the kids had a 2 hour delay. The kids have missed more school this year than any year in the past 50 years due to weather.

"danmarino wrote:

I've heard it's hit or miss with construction guys, but we definitely hit with these guys. If it's not snowing hard or -30 outside they are there swinging a hammer. Even on weekends. He said it would take him about 4 months to complete and so far he's close to that timeframe. And when I say we've had a bad winter, it's been rough out here. It was -10 this morning with -30 windchill. So cold the kids had a 2 hour delay. The kids have missed more school this year than any year in the past 50 years due to weather.

Its been a funny winter here, because the first three snowfalls that we had happened on Friday nights. So Saturday was the day things were stopped, Sunday was the clean up, and then Monday the roads were better. Mine have only missed two days so far, and we're in March so hopefully thats the end of it.

But the last year and a half has just been so wet. I'm thankful that last July was dry so that they could finish our house and we moved in, but its rained and rained since then. I still haven't been able to put grass seed down because my "yard" is a big mud pit. Every step that I take, my shoes just sink in and get stuck. Last year was the second wettest year on record for our area (dating back to the 1800s), and this year is trending even wetter.

"Unlucky 13 wrote:

Its been a funny winter here, because the first three snowfalls that we had happened on Friday nights. So Saturday was the day things were stopped, Sunday was the clean up, and then Monday the roads were better. Mine have only missed two days so far, and we're in March so hopefully thats the end of it.

But the last year and a half has just been so wet. I'm thankful that last July was dry so that they could finish our house and we moved in, but its rained and rained since then. I still haven't been able to put grass seed down because my "yard" is a big mud pit. Every step that I take, my shoes just sink in and get stuck. Last year was the second wettest year on record for our area (dating back to the 1800s), and this year is trending even wetter.

We are praying that the once they get the roof on there are no more weather delays. We will have a lot of landscaping to do once finished, with a few retaining walls, so hopefully it's dry when that's going on. Have you thought about sodding instead of seeding?

"danmarino wrote:

We are praying that the once they get the roof on there are no more weather delays. We will have a lot of landscaping to do once finished, with a few retaining walls, so hopefully it's dry when that's going on. Have you thought about sodding instead of seeding?

It would be incredibly expensive, and its money that I'm not going to spend on that. Our yard is about three acres, and it was seeded by the builder, but they told us at the start that we would need to suppliment that ourselves. Grass grew all over the place last august and september, but it was thin (like a guy who's losing his hair, but not all at once). And then as it got cold it died. We'll see how much of it comes back when the weather warms up, but I know I'll want more.

Front of house:

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Garage side:

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Back corner:
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Back:
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Side: (There are a lot of windows here but you can't tell because the Tyvek hasn't been cut yet)
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Its really coming along! Have you guys firmly picked out all of the exterior materials? That was one of the most fun and interesting parts of the process for my wife and I. The only problem was that the company making the siding ran out of the one that we wanted, and we had to go with a second choice.

"Unlucky 13 wrote:

Its really coming along! Have you guys firmly picked out all of the exterior materials? That was one of the most fun and interesting parts of the process for my wife and I. The only problem was that the company making the siding ran out of the one that we wanted, and we had to go with a second choice.

We are finding this process to be the hardest...so far. The bottom 1/3 of the front and sides of the house will be stone. We are having a hard time picking out what we want, though. We can't seem to find anything that we like. The upper 2/3 of the front and sides, and the entire back, will be shake siding. Similar to this:

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It's not real wood, but instead some sort of a composite (I can't recall at the moment what it's called) that allows it to be painted, but it only needs to be painted every 20 years or so. Unlike wood which would need to be painted every 7-10 years. We did it this way because we thought if we painted it, and didn't like it, we could repaint it easier than replacing siding where we don't like the color.

We went with shake siding on the upper third of our house as well. The original idea was that it would be grey, while the middle, largest section would be a strong blue, and the bottom stone. However, after we had to go with a smokey blue for the main section, there's so little difference in the colors that in certain light you can't tell that they're different. Still looks good, but not what we planned.

"Unlucky 13 wrote:

We went with shake siding on the upper third of our house as well. The original idea was that it would be grey, while the middle, largest section would be a strong blue, and the bottom stone. However, after we had to go with a smokey blue for the main section, there's so little difference in the colors that in certain light you can't tell that they're different. Still looks good, but not what we planned.

That's the same type of problems we are having. We will go to the showroom and see a stone that we like, then they will bring out a small sample to the house and it looks totally different. In fact, in that first picture on March 4th, if you look closely at the bottom right, you can see some of those stone samples. They all look the same once they get to the house and look nothing like they did in the showroom.

When we moved into our house, we chose to have the builders just paint all of the walls the same shade of beige, because that's what was included in their base price. Doing anything else, even one color, would have jacked up the price a lot.

Now, the problem is that I thought we were making that choice purely to save money, and that we'd want to repaint a lot of the house, piece by piece, eventually. Especially the living room on the main floor. However, when I brought that up with my wife yesterday, she got this "oh...." look on her face, and said that the beige had grown on her and she'd rather try to decorate the walls (which are still mostly bare) than paint. :001_rolleyes:

I feel strongly the opposite. We have beige walls, white windows, white moulding, white doors, white light switches.....which we did entirely due to cost to save money, and I agreed with at the time.....and it all just blends together and is washed out. I really want to fix it and give the house more life and character.

"Unlucky 13 wrote:

When we moved into our house, we chose to have the builders just paint all of the walls the same shade of beige, because that's what was included in their base price. Doing anything else, even one color, would have jacked up the price a lot.

Now, the problem is that I thought we were making that choice purely to save money, and that we'd want to repaint a lot of the house, piece by piece, eventually. Especially the living room on the main floor. However, when I brought that up with my wife yesterday, she got this "oh...." look on her face, and said that the beige had grown on her and she'd rather try to decorate the walls (which are still mostly bare) than paint. :001_rolleyes:

I feel strongly the opposite. We have beige walls, white windows, white moulding, white doors, white light switches.....which we did entirely due to cost to save money, and I agreed with at the time.....and it all just blends together and is washed out. I really want to fix it and give the house more life and character.

Painting, especially if you do it yourself, is relatively cheap and really changes a lot about a home. Keep trying man...I agree with you. lol

We eventually painted every single room in our old house, so we've done it before too.

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It's coming along! The weather has been great so that helps. They should have all of the framing done in about 2-3 more weeks. Then they plan on putting the windows in and once everything on the inside is protected from the elements...plumbing electrical and drywall.

That's a big friggin' house, man! Congratulations!

It really is! Makes mine look like a guest cottage. :lol:

Are you going to have any usable space above the garage?

"invid wrote:

That's a big friggin' house, man! Congratulations!

lol...Well, with 5 kids you have to have room. Well, I guess you don't "have" to have room, but it makes life easier.

Thanks!

"Unlucky 13 wrote:

It really is! Makes mine look like a guest cottage. :lol:

Are you going to have any usable space above the garage?

Dude, your house looks awesome from the pics you posted!

My plan for the garage is to have a catwalk above going down the middle so I can store things to either side and easily get to it. We initially thought about making it some sort of bonus room, but as you know, the more finished areas the much higher the cost.