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We've just completed building our new house. It took 7 months, but we've gone from this:  to this:  We signed contracts April 10th, actual construction started July 30th and they finished work November 14th. Our new home is a 3,000 square foot, 4 bed 2.5 bath two story with a walkout basement, and was built though a custom home builder. We were able to select our lot and floor plan and customize many things, but not everything. I'd be happy to discuss all aspects of the steps involved and general progression of the house. We were careful to document just about everything. If you're thinking about buying a home, building is a nice way to make sure you get something that fits your needs exactly and where everything will be brand new and require very little maintenance for the first decade or so.
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Nov 17, 2014 16:45
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 22:04 |
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I'll start with a month by month replay of the build. This is what went on in August 2014. Step 0 - Dig a huge freaking hole. They did this in one day, which is pretty incredible.  Step 1 - Form and pour the footers. You'll note they have a grove in each footer, this allows the walls to lock into them. They also pour some columns to provide additional support to the slab later on. These are located where the steel columns will be eventually.  Step 2 - Before they move on to pouring the slab, drainage pipes will be placed inside the footings along with a radon reduction system, and then the footings will be filled in with gravel to level and support the eventual slab. You can also see the support for the eventual garage in this picture.  Step 3 - Pour the walls. This took several days and was completed in two phases. modular forms were placed and supported with lumber, wood was anchored to the inside of the frames and foam was used to create holes and attachment points for windows and doors to be installed later. Once the walls were poured, they brought in a crane to lower the support beams in place, and they leveled them with steel columns.  Step 4 - After pouring the basement and garage slabs, they moved on to building the walls. Amazingly this only took a week. The sub floor and floor were installed in one day, and all the first story walls were built over two days. They built the exterior walls first:  Then the interior walls.   A week later they were ready to start working on the second floor.   And the second floor exterior went up pretty quickly. This was the end of day 1 of the second story exterior walls, and by the end of day 2 they were complete.  The last thing they accomplished in the first month was installing the rafters, which also took only a day.   The most frustrating part of this month is that we had no stairs at all. Until the roof was complete and covered, they left the stair well open so they could sweep water and dust off the subfloor and into the basement where it could be easily squeegeed into the lot. We could walk around and take pictures and appreciate the first level but had no access to the second floor at all until well into month two. At this point we had all the exterior walls complete, some windows cut, some interior walls complete, and every interior wall braced. I was pretty shocked by how fast this all got done, but really impressed with the work. Dietrich fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Nov 17, 2014 |
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Nov 17, 2014 18:06
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Did you have any requirements from the town/community as to what style house you could build? When you say you "chose" the floor plan and whatnot, was this from a pre-selected series of home types, or did you come up with it yourselves or work with an architect?
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Nov 17, 2014 19:20
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LogisticEarth posted:Did you have any requirements from the town/community as to what style house you could build? When you say you "chose" the floor plan and whatnot, was this from a pre-selected series of home types, or did you come up with it yourselves or work with an architect? We built in a subdivision owned by two custom home builders. They already did all the groundwork in getting their designs approved and signed off on by the relevant authorities. For us it was just a matter of picking between 14 or so home designs that would fit on the lot we wanted, given the lot size and topography. There were also some rules about not building two of the same model next to each-other, or picking the same brick, siding, roof, or accent colors so the community wouldn't feel like a cookie cutter community. Customization wise within a floor plan, you can pick things like 1st floor laundry with 2nd floor loft or 2nd floor laundry with first floor mudroom, living room or study, to add additional doors, to go with pocket or standard doors, to add on a morning room/breakfest nook, and so on. Depends a lot on the model of home you're going with what options are available. Some of the models we were considering had living space in the attic that could be a bedroom or loft bonus room, or could have the living space extended over the garage for a bedroom or bonus room, for example, but the model we went with didn't have these options. Each model has a listed "starts at" price that differs by subdivision. This is with the default options for the floor plan and the base upgrades for each and every feature. Different subdivisions will have different requirements that can effect this- for example in our community, you had to have 1) a side entry garage, 2) brick on the front elevation of the first floor, 3) a specific landscaping package or better. The community will also effect the price for the lot. As a result, the community we ended up building in was 15k more expensive at the base than another community we considered which was about 15 minutes further away from the city.
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Nov 17, 2014 19:54
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When you were first setting off to start this epic project, how did you go about picking a company for the contract? Were there multiple companies bidding for the contract? Just curious to the process since I have never been in it or heard anything about it. edit: forgot to say, really really nice house 
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Nov 17, 2014 20:21
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What happened in September 2014 (A huge amount of stuff). Pretty much all of Month 1 was work being done by one set of contractors at a time. When we got to Month 2, we'd have 2 or 3 contractors working simultaneously, so things happened much faster and in parallel. First, they finished the roof and put in windows:  Now that the home was much more water-proof than before, they finally put in the stairs, so we could see the second floor of the house.  My daughter was very excited about her room.  Since the structure of the house was complete and the windows were all in, the wall bracing all came down. The inside of the house pretty much all looked like this at this point:  While that was going on inside, they extended the roof over the front gables and put on the front porch.  And we got our gas fireplace installed.  The first utility to go into a new house is the HVAC. This takes up the most room and, unlike plumbing or electrical, HVAC needs to be installed in a very specific way to achieve maximum efficiency. The plumbers, electricians, and low voltage all have to wait for all the HVAC runs to be completed so they know what room is still available inside the walls and between joists to do their thing.  HVAC took 3 days in total, then the electricians and plumbers did their thing.  They also finished the roof and trim and we got our brick and stone delivered.  At this point, you get to have your first "Walk Through" with the construction foreman. This takes a couple of hours, during which you review all the switch and light placement, the wire runs, the plumbing location, and approve the project to move forward. If you are ever building a house, make sure when you get to this phase you take LOTS of pictures. We went in and took a panarama of each and every room as well as reference shots of all the pipes, wires, and ducts with a yard stick. If I ever need to hang or mount something on a stud, I can go back to these pictures and know exactly where things are in the walls. If a pipe ever breaks, I can show these pictures to the plumbers so they can minimize damages to the drywall. We spent a few hours documenting everything. We also caught an issue with the floor plan at this stage- the pocket door between the mudroom and the hallway was installed in reverse, which would have reduced the usable floorspace of the mudroom if they had gone forward. At walkthough we were able to get them to reverse the installation and correct the issue. Once we had signed off, they moved on with:  INSULATION! This went up in two days. All exterior walls were insulated, and we paid a bit extra to have the interior walls between the laundry room, garage interior walls, and bathroom interior walls insulated as well. Hopefully this will cut down on sound and the gas bill. As you can see, once insulation goes in, you aren't really gonna be able to tell were the wires, pipes, and vents are.  Outside the house they started with the brick work. Note: Do not walk near brick scaffolds. These guys would leave lots of bricks up on the scaffolds when they left the job site, real falling hazards.  Inside the house they started dry walling. Dry walling took a good week. After hanging the sheets they taped the seams.  And then mudded all the screw and nail holes.  Meanwhile they finished the brick wrap- the back of the house was the last to go.  And the siding guys started doing their thing.  While siding was going up outside, the inside started getting paint. When you're building a house though a builder like we did, you get to pick one paint color and one trim color. We went with a dark beige which would be neutral without being too boring. Eventually we'll paint some rooms a different color but at least we don't hate this. And this is where the house was on Sept 30th. Siding up, shutters installed, some exterior trim painted.  
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Nov 17, 2014 20:54
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rus0 posted:When you were first setting off to start this epic project, how did you go about picking a company for the contract? Were there multiple companies bidding for the contract? Just curious to the process since I have never been in it or heard anything about it. We considered 3 different home builders and 4 different communities. Two of the communities were one builder only communities, and two were mixed, so you could build with either builder, although some builders have claim to some lots. We did a few things to help decide on who to go with. 1) Tour a couple of model homes from each builder. Model homes are always gorgeous and decorated by someone with a PHD in interior design or something, but they give you a good idea about what high end features a builder can offer. 2) Tour a couple of houses from those builders in the secondary (resale) market. We found some people selling a 2-5 year old home from each of the builders and went to their open house. This let us see how the homes aged (were there lots of popouts in the drywall? How were the drywall joints? Straight or Wavy) and get a feel for the what the homes look like when decorated by an actual person. 3) Research the communities/HOAs. We didn't want an HOA all up in our business, but we did want an HOA keeping people from putting camper trailers on the street in front of their house for months at a time (like in our last neighborhood, long story), or letting their houses fall to poo poo because they can't be bothered to maintain the yard and property. I mean HOA's get a bad rap, but they're there for a reason- to protect your property's value. When your neighbor has their deck falling off the side of our house, like it or not that makes your house worth less money. We initially were going to go with a different builder and community, but after touring a few of their homes in the secondary market we ruled them out- the work looked like poo poo and the houses all felt tiny compared to the model homes. The builder we settled on has a higher reputation for quality and the couple of secondary market houses we looked at seemed in tip top shape. Plus the communities the first builder worked in had like 20' long driveways with front entry garages, so you could really only park 4 cars off the street at a house, and the houses were much closer together and had no back yard. Let me give you a breakdown on how the whole buying process works. 1) Select a builder and community. 2) Select a model of home. 3) Select a lot that will fit that home in that community. At this point, you can put down a deposit to hold the lot for a week while you 4) Start pricing out your house. This means selecting what level of upgrades you want for all your various features. Generally home builders will have everything priced on a tiered "upgrade level" system. So Level 3 cabinets means you have oak or walnut cabinets with one of these 4 door designs in one of these 10 stain colors, while level 4 means you get cherry or whatever wood with one of these other 5 door designs, blah blah blah. Level 1 carpet might be your generic short fuzzy stuff while level 3 might be a little bit of shag with more color variation and softness. The difficult part is that you really have no idea at the time what your exact options will be at any given level, but it's important to price in upgrades so that you have an idea for what your home will end up costing after Selections. After you make your initial option selections, they'll put it all in a computer and the computer will spit out the final cost of the house. Generally they'll take 10-25k off the cost for "division incentives" at this point. We ended up getting 40k off because we opted not to take the free finished basement they wanted to throw in for us. 5) Go under contract, which means putting down 1% of the house value. This means that you've agreed to build a specific house with that specific builder on that specific lot. You can still change your options after this point, but you can't back out of the deal without losing your deposit. Now in our case, we went under contract with a contingency. We hadn't sold our existing house yet, so they agreed to hold off on building the house or anything else until we sold it, and if we couldn't sell it after 120 days, they'd give our money back. Luckily we managed to sell it. 5a) Get approved for the house. Your builder will have you get approved for a mortgage of the agreed amount through their preferred lender. You do not have to get your mortgage though this lender, but they want to make sure before you go any further that you can actually afford to buy this house. If you don't pass this check, you will get your deposits back. 6) Go to selections. This is an 8 hour appointment at the "Selection Center" Where you will pick out everything for your house. Bricks, roof, carpet, hardwood, cabinets, doors, door knobs, faucets, sinks, dishwasher, microwave, oven, furnace, fireplace, water heater, windows, trim, lighting fixtures, ect. The lady who helped us here had all sorts of stories about couples who couldn't handle selections. One couple actually had a huge blow out fight and just walked out, and the builder never heard from them again. At Selections you can and will most likely change your option levels on a few things. We went up in a couple of places and down in a couple. At the end of selections, you will get another price for your home including whatever you changed at selections. You'll also have to put in another deposit of 1%. 7) Go to your site walk. You'll meet your construction foreman who will walk you through the plans on the lot so you can see where the house will sit, where the driveway will be, where the sidewalk will go, ect ect. 8) Go to final sign off. This is yet another 8 hour appointment where they will have your final blueprints which take into account a site survey. At this point you can review things like switch and outlet placements, external hose bib placements, deck placement, window placement, ect, ect. You can move things if desired. You also will get a final chance to make any adjustments to your options. You put down the final 1% deposit and they get the permits to start construction. This could take anything from a week to three weeks depending on how fast the municipality moves. 9) Go to your pre-drywall walkthough. You'll get to double check that all the switches and outlets are in the right place, the plumbing is in the right place, and so on. 10) Go to your final walkthough. You'll get to inspect the whole house. You can mark any spot that does not live up to your exacting specifications and they will correct the issue. We had 68 issues (mostly paint and drywall spots). 11) Go to closing. You'll have to put down the rest of your downpayment (at least 2% more since you've already given them 3%), and pay all the various prepaids and closing costs associated with buying any house. Congrats, you own the house.
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Nov 17, 2014 21:23
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Did building end up being similar in cost to buying one of the comparable 2-5 year old houses in the area? Did you opt for any fancy energy-saving options, like geo-thermal HVAC?
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Nov 17, 2014 22:00
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SamDabbers posted:Did building end up being similar in cost to buying one of the comparable 2-5 year old houses in the area? Did you opt for any fancy energy-saving options, like geo-thermal HVAC? It was about the same price. We got a high efficiency gas furnace and upgraded the insulation. The builder we went with gets every house they built energy star certified so they already had a lot of things rolled in.
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Nov 17, 2014 22:20
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Hello fellow house builder (also got a thread), interesting to see how it's done elsewhere. One thing I spotted is this exertior plastic cladding you put on your house. What is the purpose of this? Edit: Also how much insulation are you putting in the walls, what type? Do you put a vapor barrier on the inside afterwards? What of the roof? His Divine Shadow fucked around with this message at 09:46 on Nov 19, 2014 |
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Nov 19, 2014 09:26
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His Divine Shadow posted:One thing I spotted is this exertior plastic cladding you put on your house. What is the purpose of this?
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Nov 19, 2014 10:21
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Never seen that kind of constructution here, seems to be the opposite of the way we build walls. Here it's usually an outer facade (almost always wood paneling) and then an air gap, then usually drywall, then insulation (rockwool or fiberglass wool), then a vapor barrier. The point of putting the vapor barrier on the inside is to prevent moisture from moving outwards from the warm air and condense into the insulation and ruin it over time. But perhaps the outer barrier has an entirely different purpose and you also have an interior barrier?
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Nov 19, 2014 10:32
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His Divine Shadow posted:Never seen that kind of constructution here, seems to be the opposite of the way we build walls. The thermo-ply is a 1/8th inch thick foam water/vaper/air barrier that is pretty much all you need in this part of the world. For insulation the entire cavity between the studs is filled with fiberglass insulation- can't remember the rating, but I can try to look it up, then the sheetrock/drywall goes on the inside of the studs. The basement is a different story, I'll get a picture of that up when I get home. Temperatures in this part of America average in the mid 90s in the summer and average in the mid 20s in the winter. We get some really cold days with below zero temperatures and a few hot days in over 100 but only a few a year. We just had our first snow the other day. 
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Nov 19, 2014 14:45
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I'd be curious to know what kind of energy expenditure an average american home uses for heating, you mentioned you use gas (how do you measure this? Gas is almost non-existent here except for propane grills), and we use electric so we measure ours in kilowatt-hours, and we use about 500kWh per month, but thats all electrics, heating is just a part of that, an unknown part. Looks pretty nice though, I like the window shutters, do they serve a practical function, like do you get extreme weather?
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Nov 19, 2014 15:06
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Dietrich posted:If you are ever building a house, make sure when you get to this phase you take LOTS of pictures. We went in and took a panarama of each and every room as well as reference shots of all the pipes, wires, and ducts with a yard stick. If I ever need to hang or mount something on a stud, I can go back to these pictures and know exactly where things are in the walls. If a pipe ever breaks, I can show these pictures to the plumbers so they can minimize damages to the drywall. We spent a few hours documenting everything. Why isn't this A Thing for all houses? It's awesome thing and would literally take 10 mins for a trained chimp with a digital camera - yet would save a huge amount of heartache later in life.
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Nov 19, 2014 15:31
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^^^Why would a builder do that? That would make it a lot harder for them to hide all their short cuts and lovely mistakes.  Its pretty much on the homeowner to document the process. His Divine Shadow posted:Looks pretty nice though, I like the window shutters, do they serve a practical function, like do you get extreme weather? Like 99% of new construction homes in the US with "shutters" have fake vinyl panels that are just nailed onto the side of the house for looks. Most newer homes, even "custom" homes end up following pretty standard architectural styles. Sort of a shame to see the same beige "colonial" homes wherever you go. LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Nov 19, 2014 |
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Nov 19, 2014 15:51
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His Divine Shadow posted:I'd be curious to know what kind of energy expenditure an average american home uses for heating, you mentioned you use gas (how do you measure this? Gas is almost non-existent here except for propane grills), and we use electric so we measure ours in kilowatt-hours, and we use about 500kWh per month, but thats all electrics, heating is just a part of that, an unknown part. We're moving in on Monday and I'm not sure yet what kind of energy we'll be using- the house gets natural gas from the local energy company which heats the furnace, runs the oven and range, the fireplace and the grill on the deck. They measure gas in thousand cubic feet used per month- there is a gas meter on the outside of the house they'll come read periodically. The power meter actually signals back via the power lines on usage. The shutters are purely decorative. The windows are water tight and double paned and sealed, they don't really need further protection as we aren't in tornado or hurricane country.
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Nov 19, 2014 16:20
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 Bam. So this is the basement with insulation. Any part of the basement within 3" of the ground gets this. Hopefully should keep it nice and toasty.
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Nov 20, 2014 05:19
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So what state are you in? I'm guessing Tennessee.
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Nov 21, 2014 02:58
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Coasterphreak posted:So what state are you in? I'm guessing Tennessee. Close- southern Ohio.
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Nov 21, 2014 16:03
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That seems like a really strange way to get a house built. Like just picking from a few pre-designed houses then mixing and matching claddings? Almost sounds like some video game with limited assets/customization. Is that part of the rules for the area, a private developer builds the roads/owns the land and forces people buying to choose from a few house plans from pre-determined builders as that's all part of the business plan? Like when you buy the lot did it come with a covenant or something that forced you into using their architect and their builders? It looks like a lot of the lots are on slopes, do the pre-set plans all take that into account or is each pre-set plan touched up a bit for each lot? This style of development / house building seems very odd to me. Is this normal for where you live? Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Nov 21, 2014 |
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Nov 21, 2014 19:54
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Baronjutter posted:That seems like a really strange way to get a house built. Like just picking from a few pre-designed houses then mixing and matching claddings? Almost sounds like some video game with limited assets/customization. Is that part of the rules for the area, a private developer builds the roads/owns the land and forces people buying to choose from a few house plans from pre-determined builders as that's all part of the business plan? This is pretty much the standard for new development around here (a lot of developers will actually give buyers even less choice.) It's primarily a suburban thing.
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Nov 21, 2014 21:21
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The near total lack of roof overhang on the sides of the house looks weird and seems to be begging for water issues with the siding.
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Nov 21, 2014 21:32
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Baronjutter posted:That seems like a really strange way to get a house built. Like just picking from a few pre-designed houses then mixing and matching claddings? Almost sounds like some video game with limited assets/customization. Is that part of the rules for the area, a private developer builds the roads/owns the land and forces people buying to choose from a few house plans from pre-determined builders as that's all part of the business plan? In this community, two developer companies bought the plot of land. They sell you your lot along with the house that they build on it. There are more than just a few pre-designed houses though- all in all you've got more than a hundred possible designs between the two developers that could be built in that community, and within a single design, there is lots of variation from house to house that could result in two houses of the same design being as much as 900 square feet different in living space. quote:Like when you buy the lot did it come with a covenant or something that forced you into using their architect and their builders? It looks like a lot of the lots are on slopes, do the pre-set plans all take that into account or is each pre-set plan touched up a bit for each lot? They evaluate each lot after sub-dividing it and figure out which designs could work on that lot. You could go to the builder and say "I want this house" and they could say "Ok, it could go on any of these 12 lots, pick one." or you could go to the builder and say "I want this lot" and they could say "Ok, one of these 14 designs will fit on that lot, pick one." Once you pick out your house and your lot they do a lot survey and figure out exactly how the house will be situated on the lot and what modifications to the plan might be required to make that work. Lots on slopes are significantly less expensive than flat lots, as you might imagine. But I like walk-out basements so I don't really mind. Our particular lot levels out about 10 feet behind the house and has a small stream running behind it so we got the slope lot discount but still have usable lawn space both in the front and the back. quote:This style of development / house building seems very odd to me. Is this normal for where you live? Non-developer land owners are not likely to want to sell a small part of their lot in a developed area. If I own 12 acres, I don't want to find 30 buyers to each take .4 acres, I'd rather sell the whole thing to a developer and let them take care of the specifics. Not to mention it is much more complicated as an individual to finance and manage building a house by yourself. Going with a builder like we did, they take care of managing the project for you, and their clout with contractors means that when they need work to get done, it gets done, and when work is not done right, it gets fixed. Every issue we found with the house was corrected within a few days. Out in the country an individual such as myself might be able to afford to buy 5 acres and build a house themselves, but not where I wanted to live. Baronjutter posted:The near total lack of roof overhang on the sides of the house looks weird and seems to be begging for water issues with the siding. The siding is designed vinyl and designed to withstand water. It's not really a problem.
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Nov 21, 2014 22:01
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Baronjutter posted:That seems like a really strange way to get a house built. Like just picking from a few pre-designed houses then mixing and matching claddings? Almost sounds like some video game with limited assets/customization. Is that part of the rules for the area, a private developer builds the roads/owns the land and forces people buying to choose from a few house plans from pre-determined builders as that's all part of the business plan? You can, of course, also hire a designer, a sheet metal guy, and a mechanic to build you a car from scratch, but the price would be many times what either buying off the lot, or ordering a car would cost. It is, to me, surprising how different two houses built from the same plan can be. I suspect there could be a house two doors down from Dietrich with the same plan, but facing left-hand instead of right-hand, without the walk-out basement, different kitchen choices, wood floors instead of carpet, different paint, different landscape, laundry room upstairs instead of down, siding instead of brick... and without careful examination, you'd not know the two were "exactly the same".
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Nov 21, 2014 23:48
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What was the overall cost? I live in California, so expect me to use the lord's name in vain when you tell me.
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Nov 21, 2014 23:54
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Yeah I'm curious about the construction cost minus the land. Usually land is most of the cost and construction its self only varies a little region to region. I'm curious if buying an "off the shelf" house like this has significant construction cost savings because the builders are buying materials and hardware and plumbing and fixtures in bulk. One builder buying 3 toilets for a house is going to be paying more per toilet than a huge development corporation buying 300 toilets. This style of construction is pretty much unheard of here so I'm curious about the differences. Here you buy some land, hire an architect/designer who designs your house making sure its to code and all the insane zoning bylaws and possible city review, then the contractor you hire builds it.
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Nov 22, 2014 00:05
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photomikey posted:Sort of like buying a car. You can buy one off the lot, or you can order one from the dealer. It's pretty much the same price, but if you order one from the dealer, you get to pick what kind of carpet, stereo, window tint, seat heaters, etc, etc, etc. These  Are  All  The  Same  House. You really get a lot of variation. photomikey posted:What was the overall cost? I live in California, so expect me to use the lord's name in vain when you tell me. 330k. We upgraded the poo poo out of it, though. You'll see when I get around to month 3. That lot was 30k of the cost, and is about .45 acres. Some of the other lots in the sub division were north of 60k, and were up to 1 acre. There were also limitations on the huge lots- you had to build a huge house on it. Some of the houses in the community are 500-600k and 4-5k sqft, but the average is 350k and around 3k sq ft.
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Nov 22, 2014 00:14
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Baronjutter posted:Yeah I'm curious about the construction cost minus the land. Usually land is most of the cost and construction its self only varies a little region to region. I'm curious if buying an "off the shelf" house like this has significant construction cost savings because the builders are buying materials and hardware and plumbing and fixtures in bulk. One builder buying 3 toilets for a house is going to be paying more per toilet than a huge development corporation buying 300 toilets. It's not just the material savings, there's also labor costs. When your building crew is just building the same few standard layouts over and over again you can streamline the building process and get it done a lot faster (look at how quickly Dietrich's house went up, and this is a relatively diverse development.) I think the big driving factor is that this style of construction mostly happens in previously undeveloped (or at least underdeveloped) land. Roads and sewer hookups are expensive. Individual home buyers typically don't have the time and money to gently caress with it, and a developer who shells out to get a neighborhood hooked up is going to want to sell a lot of houses as quickly as possible.
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Nov 22, 2014 00:33
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Gabriel Pope posted:It's not just the material savings, there's also labor costs. When your building crew is just building the same few standard layouts over and over again you can streamline the building process and get it done a lot faster (look at how quickly Dietrich's house went up, and this is a relatively diverse development.) I dunno if I'd even say that because there are many many different layouts. The main advantage is that they have the clout to get the sub contractors there when they want them there, and to stay until the work is done rather than kicking out at 2. There was rarely a day someone wasn't working on the house and many times they were still there at 6 or 7 at night when we'd come to check on things. quote:I think the big driving factor is that this style of construction mostly happens in previously undeveloped (or at least underdeveloped) land. Roads and sewer hookups are expensive. Individual home buyers typically don't have the time and money to gently caress with it, and a developer who shells out to get a neighborhood hooked up is going to want to sell a lot of houses as quickly as possible. Thats exactly right.
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Nov 22, 2014 00:48
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What happened in October 2014 - Pretty much everything else. Tile started getting laid in the bathrooms and the brick surround went in around the fireplace. The tile layer guy smoked like a chimney in our house. Wasn't too happy about that.    And we got a huge delivery of cabinets.  The next contractors to come around were the trim carpenters. They handled framing the doors, mounting the cabinets, running the floor and crown molding, and framing out the window trim. Lots of work. About a week in all.      You might notice that we're missing a cabinet. This delayed mounting the countertop and the dishwasher while they had to get a replacement sent out. Actually ended up adding a few days onto the house. Next the light fixtures and AC were installed:   While tilework continued:  And the hardwood floor was started:  The hardwood took only 2 days to be complete, afterwhich they covered it in paper to protect it for the rest of the construction process.  And we got a delivery of doorknobs:  Finally the plumber came back around to install the water fixtures and mount the countertops in the bathrooms.    Then the lumber for the deck was delivered while they dug the post holes for the deck:   That was the last major delivery, after the lumber showed up they could finally start on the concrete work while the deck went up in back. I am real happy with the work on the deck. They routed each plank to round out the top edges, and really did a nice job getting all the cuts to square.     Of course being high off the ground, we had them put in a gate for the kiddos.  Meanwhile they finished up the bathrooms:  And then the second concrete pour for the walkway, front porch, and back porch:   And, at last the carpet and porch columns went in.    My daughter really liked the carpet.  Finally, Finally, they were able to get the granite in so the plumber could finish his stuff.   And landscaping was completed on the front in a day.  The next day they did the backsplash in the kitchen:   And that's where we ended up for the month. The First week of November was the last week of work on the house. They grouted the backsplash and touched up lots of paint and dings in the walls. We had our walkthough november 7th, and they took the week of November 10th though 14th to fix all our complaints with the house. Very happy with the final product. Dietrich fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Nov 22, 2014 |
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Nov 22, 2014 05:19
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I'm in love with both the process and the house. Enlighten us... there must be at least some stuff you've already realized... well, should have done *that* differently.
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Nov 22, 2014 07:26
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photomikey posted:I'm in love with both the process and the house. Well, like I said, we went under contract to build before we sold our old house. That meant we had 120 days to sell the old house or we wouldn't get the new house. At the time, everyone including neutral third parties were telling us that our house would sell like crazy because there was nothing on the market so we felt overly confident in pricing it. And we waited until after we got a few things fixed on the house before listing it. We missed the hot spot and it ended up taking 3+ months to sell and we lowered the price like 4 times. Didn't get anything near the money I expected to when I sold it. Don't think that I would do that again. I'd wait until I at least had lots of interest in my existing house before going to build a new one. Dietrich fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Nov 22, 2014 |
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Nov 22, 2014 14:32
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Dude! You totally messed up by not putting a second shower head in the master. I have a rain head as my second, and you have no idea how awesome it is. The wife and I can shower at the same time without one of us bring cold and annoyed. I actually kind of wish I had a third....
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Nov 22, 2014 16:44
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KillHour posted:Dude! You totally messed up by not putting a second shower head in the master. I have a rain head as my second, and you have no idea how awesome it is. The wife and I can shower at the same time without one of us bring cold and annoyed. I actually kind of wish I had a third.... I actually wanted a second shower head but my wife didn't. We ended up compromising as many married couples do, and did whatever she wanted.
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Nov 22, 2014 16:50
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It appears some kind of feral native species has gotten loose in the house during construction. I'm glad they appear to have gotten an exterminator to clear the infestation up.
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Nov 22, 2014 23:37
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Well, just remember to say "I told you so" when she's standing there, freezing her tits off waiting for you to wash your junk post coitus. Any married person knows exactly what I'm talking about.
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Nov 23, 2014 02:04
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Dietrich posted:I actually wanted a second shower head but my wife didn't. We ended up compromising as many married couples do, and did whatever she wanted. How can you not want a second shower head?
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Nov 23, 2014 02:40
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Bum the Sad posted:How can you not want a second shower head? You got me.
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Nov 23, 2014 05:30
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His Divine Shadow posted:I'd be curious to know what kind of energy expenditure an average american home uses for heating, you mentioned you use gas (how do you measure this? Gas is almost non-existent here except for propane grills), and we use electric so we measure ours in kilowatt-hours, and we use about 500kWh per month, but thats all electrics, heating is just a part of that, an unknown part. Gas is pretty common for heating in the US, since gas furnaces are usually significantly cheaper to operate than electric heating for something the size of a house, and the same also applies for gas water heaters and clothes dryers. Electric heat in the US is usually reserved for warmer climates or apartment buildings, since electric heat is cheaper to install and maintain for the landlord, and the tenant gets to pay the higher cost associated with it. Natural gas for residential is generally measured in cubic feet, but is billed to customers in "therms", which is a unit of measurement equal to 100,000 BTU's, or about 100 cubic feet.
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Nov 23, 2014 08:33
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