We are building the Summerlake on a basement. We are trying to come in at $270,000 and that is with the cost of lumber and roofing down. We also are not using a GC and we added sf to the Summerlake. We will let you know how it goes as we progress.
We are located in GA and they say it should cost about $85 a sf now.

I think $270k was the mid range estimted cost for building summerlake in the south. But without a basement, just a crawlspace, so you're doing good!

I should add that we're looking to keep it under 3000 sq ft.

Found this 2447 sq ft, 4br, plan on one of the plan mill sites.

It is a much simpler design than the Summerlake (simpler roof lines, etc.) so I suspect it would be less expensive to build and it meets your criteria:

* 4 bedrooms (master and a guest bedroom that could be converted to some other use downstairs)
* bonus room over the garage
* side entry garage
* separate laundry room

Might not be your style at all but I think it one of those simple classic country-house styles that look great almost anywhere and certainly fit in with the styles one sees throughout much of NC. I personally think the rooms are a little bit small. But, if you generally like it, I think the plan could be enlarged a bit while still saying under 3000 sq ft.

BTW - what part of NC are you in? If anywhere near Wilmington area, I can recommend a great custom home builder... knowledgeable, HONEST, and careful! My own dear Uncle John in fact. If I could have, I'd have transported him out to Texas to build my new house.

Here is a link that might be useful: Country house plan

thanks bevangel. I'll have to study it with DH and get his thoughts.

We'll be building in greensboro/oak ridge area of nc.

Greensboro is way too far from my Uncle John's building area. One of the things he insists on doing is personally visiting the build-site of every single house he has in progress on a daily basis.... well, except for Sunday's which my aunt makes him take the day off for church and family.

Even if no work is going on at a particular site on a particular day, he still stops by long enough to make sure that everything is ship-shape and, if possible, locked up tight. Wish my builder was 1/2 as conscientious. SIGH...

I want one like him! Don't know how to find that yet,since we're in burlington and I don't know much about gso builders

Hi 'will work for roses' -

I saw your question and the estimated 'cost to build' the Summerlake plan by Frank Betz (I assumed it was the Betz plan) and as a builder/Realtor in Western NC - Rutherfordton to be more precise, I don't see how the low bid was $240k unless they assume you are going to be your own GC and do a good deal of the labor yourself.

With the bonus room added to the other heated sq.ft. that brings you to 3,284 ft. and I haven't had a single home we've built come in at cost of under $80/ft and that is using vinyl siding, carpet in most all rooms, vinyl in kitchen and baths, etc. Obviously, we sub almost everything out being these are mostly spec homes, but to build the Summerlake Plan in a way that appeals to the tastes of most of the members here on this forum and the buyers I work with on a daily basis, I'd say you'd be estimating entirely too low at $240k even as a bare minimum cost to build with you as your own GC.

$80/ft (excluding land cost) would put you at $260k and I as 'builder' if talking to a homeowner wanting to build this house as a custom build would think the prices would start with just the 3,284 on a crawlspace with hardwood floors in living areas and kitchen, tile in baths & laundry, carpet in bedrooms, hardie siding and maybe some stone accents or an all brick would have to begin the pricing at $110/ft cost and then add our '+' percentage on top of that.

I'm attaching a link to a few photos of a few houses our company has built or been involved with in some way (some of our agents have built their own homes and have acted as their own GC and one is of a personal friend's house who acted as his own contractor, so I'll use their cost experiences as well) and the ones labeled "Dec 17, & Lot 38a" were at least $105/ft raw costs excluding land and my friends was more around the $85/ft but that was almost 2 years ago and he did some additional work himself since he's in the construction business as well.

I hope you can get your Summerlake plan built (if you choose that particular one) for somewhere close to $240k as you'd have a great deal of equity in that house right from the start. Hope this helps and if you have other questions or comments I'll be happy to help in any way I can. My suggestion, find two or three houses you really like, ask who built them and take them the simple plans from Frank Betz's site and have them give you a quick estimate based the houses you liked that they built for someone else. Then ask how they handled the cost of building (whether it was a contract price or a "cost +" and then ask what their "+" was to figure out an estimate of what the house cost to build. If they are a reputable builder, they shouldn't mind sharing what the true costs were, because fudging the numbers isn't going to help them in any way if you should choose to use them if you don't choose to act as your own GC.

Have a great day!

Here is a link that might be useful: Click here to View Home Pics

athomewithchuck - I'm not building the summerlake plan, that's cheriepres. I'm still looking at plans. I was trying to gauge how close their estimated pricing was on the home plan web sites. The summerlake plan I saw with an estimate for this region of the country wsa $240k for low estimate, and $270 for mid estimate.

I need to decide on a house plan first, and then I'll take to some builders for estimates. But I am trying to be informed while looking at the houseplans, such as many gables = more to build, squarer footprint = less to build, etc.

Sorry, I misunderstood the wording of your post. I just saw Summerlake and the pricing and didn't digest the meaning of the example. Still, from the pricing you mentioned for what they estimate the Summerlake, I would say stay away from using their price to build as a rule of thumb.

Are you going to GC yourself, or hire a GC for a contract build or cost + build? This will help me determine what you should expect to price your build at based on most plans, unless you want one very complicated, which after re-reading your post doesn't seem like what you are after.

It seems as though you'd like an efficient plan, but also one that has some style and a good layout. I would suggest looking at the O'neal plan by Don Gardner as a start (it is the picture of the house in the link I posted earlier with the title "December_17_2008_006 & .._007" with the big front columns and beautiful natural stone.

The O'Neal is a great layout in my opinion and the only difference I see in your requests and the plan itself is that the laundry is a walk-thru, but this could so easily be fixed/modified by switching the location of the laundry and the second bath on the main level and then turning the second bath by 45 degrees so you open up a walk-way/entry from the garage to the kitchen/bed hallway.

One of my best friends just finished this house and it is gorgeous inside and out. He was his own GC and built the house with the bonus room for a total of just over 2400 sq.ft. w/ unfinished basement and spent just over $100/ft (excluding lot price) with real stone on front and rear (house faces 5th tee of a golf course and looks just as good from the back with tons of large windows from the back as well) hardie plank and brick exterior, real hardwood thru entire first level, custom shaker cabinetry w/ granite in all bathrooms, ceramic tile in all baths, built-ins beside rock fireplace, etc. The master bath and closets are laid out very well too and the walk in shower is very sweet. They did remove the angled bar in the kitchen and put in an "l-shaped" island in the breakfast area with an oversized bar instead of having a traditional small breakfast nook and it turned out great and really opened up the kitchen.

I can get you more photos if you'd like, but look at the two I have posted in the first post I made on this site and then look at the photos of the ones on the Don Gardner site and you'll get a good feel (also look up Luxembourg on Don Gardner's site as it is almost identical plan yet slightly smaller but has same layout and lots of finished pictures of custom homes to view. Hope this helps.

Also, you can view the picture titled "luxembourg_southmountain" in the link on the first post (http://www.charlesburgess.net/homepictures) and I've uploaded another photo other friends built of the Luxembourg house with poplar siding and gorgeous stone, etc.

Talk to you soon. Good luck with your searching!

Here is a link that might be useful:

athomewithchuck,

We have a 2700 sf minimum. For example, the O'Neal you referenced, it has the gables in the front. Doesn't that add to the cost or in the grand scheme of things it's not enough to worry about? I've seen plans for houses with the same square footage, but with estimates of $50,000 difference between the two. Which I take to mean things like gables, extra sq ft on 1st floor, etc.

Hi Athomewithchuck,

We are currently planning to build, and we are actually considering the O'Neal or Roxbury by Don Gardner. Both are very similar, but the layouts are a little different. We may end up doing a hybrid of the two...

Anywho... Do you mind sending us some pictures of the O'Neal? We haven't been able to find very many online, so it was amazing to hear that you have some. Thanks so much!

will work for roses -

The gables in the front will cost more than not having any gables in the front, but any house over 2000 sq.ft. and on two levels will "need" a few gables and "juts/cuts" in the roof line or it will look very awkward in my personal opinion. I will tell you that of some of the more complex plans, the O'Neal is a fairly medium to medium-high complexity for the roof and foundation layout compared to other homes with similar curb appeal in my opinion. Many builders would tell you that it will be too expensive to build, but that's a relative term. There are 18 corners in the foundation which isn't all that many for a house this size when you compare it to say the "Harmony Mountain Cottage" plan by Garrell & Associates which has over 30 foundation cuts in a 2300 sq.ft. design (see it here: http://houseplans.designsdirect.com/disp_pic.asp?sf=GAR%2Frenderings%2F06110FrntRndrng1.jpg&planid=5995&planName=Harmony+Mountain+Cottage&viewName=First+Floor+Plan&filename=GAR/floorplans/06110FrstFlrPln1_f.gif).

You can easily have more than 20 in a 1500 sq.ft. house if you start picking out plans that have tremendous curb appeal. Another higher cost in this plan will likely be the hipped roof design versus a traditional gabled end design, but that debate is one that should be saved for another day b/c a gabled roof and a hipped roof have two very distinctly different looks and it all depends on what "look" you want overall for the house. I personally would like the O'Neal and Luxembourg much much less if it were a traditional gabled end roof design. Anyways, I'll move on from that. I would say look into roof trusses and see if the truss company your builder uses (if they even use them at all) can truss the roof you want as it will save you money and time versus traditional framing and you can use attic room trusses in a lot of instances and what can't be trussed can then be stick framed on site by your framing crew.

As for the potential savings, I look at it this way: your garage gables are going to be the same on almost all plans (some may only have one large gable, but adding the 2' bumpout doesn't add that much to the cost of building, at least not enough to not do it on a house like this as the added appeal is well worth it in my opinon.) So far so good! You'll also likely have another small gable like the one over the bathroom window on the O'Neal somewhere on the plan, so still no real additional costs. The gable over the front second level bedroom is going to be there on almost all two story plans that have a bedroom over the dining room or else they look very funny. Even if no bedroom on the front of the house in the second level you'll likely still have a couple of dormers or one large oversized gable highlighting the two story foyer.

Still not going above and beyond in my opinion. The large columns and the additional gable/pitch over the entry is the "knock-out-punch" on the O'Neal and Luxembourg plans and if you lose those you change the entire appeal of the house. Yes, it will cost you more than not doing it, but to tell you how much it costs would be nearly impossible. Your builder will be the one to ask based on your finishing materials. It would really still be a "it depends" answer. B/c it depends on if you do the columns in stone and the exact way the plan calls for like in the Luxembourg_southmountain.." photo in the link I posted above, or if you buy pre-assembled columns made from pvc or other similar material like the ones in the picture of my friends house that is labeled "December_17...". The front entry my friend built will likely cost a good deal less than the other, but he spent a good bit on the real stone for the front, which is awesome and so he hasn't really sacrificed the look by doing the pre-made columns. I just think it's important to keep overall scale in mind when choosing the columns b/c you can make a big house look very awkward very fast by changing the scale of important features like these bold front entry columns. You could always lose the arched window over the front door that illuminates the grand foyer and reduce the height of the arched gable over the front door to save money, but without drawing that out I wouldn't be able to tell you that would look okay, although I'm sure it would still look nice. If I were building this house, I'd keep the big archway above the door just like it is, not just for exterior looks, but for the massive impact it has from the inside as well.

The back of the O'Neal house will always need to have the gable where the bedroom is on the second level because there is no other way to get the bedroom in without adding the additional roof clearance in the gable.

The additional bump-out for the great room could be squared off to match the rear wall in the master bedroom and breakfast nook, etc. if you wanted to take out that gable to save some money. You would also take out some of the grand windows in the rear of the great room, which also makes this plan so great, but if you don't have people gazing at the rear of your house all day, every day then you may not care. As I mentioned, he lives on the tee box of a nice golf course and so more people see the rear of his house than the front so that wasn't really an option.

One way you could essentially reduce some of the cost to build this and up/meet your sq.ft. requirements would be to square off the back of the house by adding another couple of feet to the master bedroom and breakfast nook, additional main level bath and back bedroom/garage if you needed more width in garage, etc. and that would remove 2 corners in your foundation (save a little $$$) and also remove the additional gable and siding that goes on it, painting the siding or the cost of stone if you were to stone it like my friend did, etc. which would also save $$$. It wouldn't be enough to justify building this plan if you were $25k off, but each little bit you can make a little easier will help you get your costs in line.

One more thing I noticed in his plan is that he has additional unfinished and un-floored attic space over his master bedroom and master closet area because he did a tray ceiling like the plan calls for in the master bedroom. If you were to nix the tray ceiling or start with the 9' ceiling in the center and build the tray down to 8' on the sides versus the traditional way its done of starting with 9' on the outsides and building up to 10' in the middle you could have additional sq.ft. above the master that otherwise would be wasted. You already have the roof, foundation, primary wiring ran, ductwork to master, etc that you could easily tie into and add cheaper sq.ft. to get you to your goal. You would have more carpeting and sheetrock and lighting, painting, wiring, and may need a little more "uumph" in you HVAC unit for the added space which would add, but those are the cheaper things in the total cost of adding square footage. Just something to keep in mind. It wouldn't be an enormous room because of the hipped roof line, but it would add more that is otherwise unused or some might say wasted.

I'm also linking to another great Gardner plan called the Newcastle that has an awesome "overall look & appeal" in my opinion and I would consider it a milder roof and foundation design with only 12 corners in the foundation (I didn't count the window boxes either since you can cantilever the bumpout/window-boxes if you chose to instead of building the foundation around them). The Newcastle looks great inside as well and has pictures on the site you can look at. It takes advantage of the additional attic space under the gabled roof versus the hipped roof on the O'Neal upstairs and has bedrooms on opposite sides of the upper landing versus all on one side like the O'Neal which is also why you don't need the additional gables on the front & rear of the house like in the O'Neal, but like I said earlier, you still have the two dormers on the front, but not as much as that larger gable dormer & entrance archway. Again, saving $$$!!

I hope this isn't info overload, but hey, you asked!!!

Here is a link that might be useful: View Newcastle Plan

madlub -

I will ask my buddy tomorrow if he has some he can send me and if not, I'll ride over some time this week and snap a few. I have to give him a little time to recover from the Colts loss on Saturday night as he's a huge Colts fan and took the loss personally! I wish I would have taken my camera with me Saturday night since we were there for 4 or 5 hours and we could have got quite a few to share with you. I don't think he'll mind me sharing at all with you as long as you're not going to build it here in Rutherfordton :)

Please send me an email at info@athomewithchuck.com with your email and remind me to check on those for you tomorrow. If you haven't heard back from me by Friday email me again as I'll be out of town on Wed & Thur taking our dog to NC State Vet Hospital for an MRI and I won't have my computer with me and likely won't be thinking about house stuff for those days. But I will be glad to help you when I return if he doesn't have them handy.

will work for roses -

Sorry, I forgot that you said you wanted a separate laundry that wasn't walk thru to garage and the Newcastle does have that. Maybe it will give you a little better idea of what you can look for or you can play with the laundry and flip flop with powder room and put entry into laundry where powder room door is? Probably not ideal, but a thought.