$2k for an interior designer for the building process
wishiwasinoz
11 years ago
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bevangel_i_h8_h0uzz
11 years agospagano
11 years agoRelated Discussions
Concern for chemicals in building products/process?
Comments (17)What most amateurs and seemingly all sales people fail to recognize is that in the built environment there is a dangerous accelerating convergence of decreased ventilation due to the rising cost of energy, increased use of composite materials due to the rising cost of natural materials (and their maintenance), and a staggering increase in DIY homeowners due to the ease of access to information over the internet and the traditional I-can-do-it attitude of Americans. The resulting profit opportunities for manufacturers is incredible. It is possible to find seemingly credible evidence to support any opinion you might wish to propose and there is always someone ready and willing to sell any material to you with the click of a link even if it's sale and use is restricted by law in your state. 50 years ago it was possible to ask the clerk at the local lumberyard for advice and build a house yourself without agonizing about the materials. Just as Thalidomide forever changed how we think about drugs, formaldehyde changed how we think about building materials although no one seems to be old enough to remember either of them anymore so we may be forced to learn the lesson all over again. The health risk of formaldehyde should not be dismissed with specious philosophical arguments. The environmental danger to your health that you face outside your home does not justify increasing the risk in your home where exposure is considerably longer and more intimate. And it is ridiculous to suggest the risks are similar. The concentration of formaldehyde in a typical home is about 5 times that of the outdoor air and in a home with elevated levels of formaldehyde it can be 20 to 60 times greater. My advice is if you have no long term and/or direct experience with these environmental health issues and/or feel confused by internet and retail sales hype, you should add a heat recovery ventilation system to your house for the protection of your current and future children as well as your grandchildren. I put one of them in every house I design and so far no one has deleted it. If you wish to play the priority game you should first not allow cigarette smoking in you home. Then avoid any baby crib that contains composite materials and check the formaldehyde content of any carpet in the nursery as well as toys, especially the stuffed ones. Cost should not be an issue for children. Next consider where older children sleep, and where they are subjected to poor ventilation especially near unvented gas appliances. Then apply this test to where adults sleep, then where they watch television or work at home. I wouldn't worry about plywood in kitchen cabinets but I would avoid too much particle board. However, it is considerably easier to ventilate a kitchen than a bedroom and it is unlikely to be occupied as much as a bedroom. Of course, lifestyles have also changed and kitchens are sometimes part of other living spaces so use your own judgment about time of exposure. Be especially careful about materials used in basement recreational areas because there is rarely enough ventilation in these spaces and the materials used to finish them are often the cheaper composite ones. Be careful about laminate and engineered flooring and avoid acid-catalyzed urea-formaldehyde factory coatings. Look for the higher European standard E0 stamp or the even higher E1 stamp. Buy particleboard or hardwood plywood stamped with the Composite Panel Association (CPA) or Hardwood Plywood and Veneer Association (HPVA) stamp. Look for PF and MDI resins instead of UF resins. The CPA standards are not as strict as the California standards which are not as strict as the Japanese and European standards which should be no surprise to anyone. Avoid the use of particle board as a flooring underlayment or subfloor. These issues are automatically dealt with in professionally designed homes through standardized written specifications. If you are selecting materials "by the seat of your pants" you're going to have to research each material, ask a lot of questions, and be prepared for evasive misleading answers. Good luck....See MoreRestarting House Design Process (VERY, very long)
Comments (4)marciab - thanks for the link to your story. It makes me feel less alone and, at the same time, hopeful knowing that someone else went through something similar and came away with such an absolutely stunning house. WOW!!! One important takeaway is to take the time to get the design right. We don't have anything forcing us to move, but would like to enjoy our new home as soon as reasonably possible. Isn't Greenville just wonderful? Actually, we are about a mile from the Poinsett Hwy so it is easy to get to town. Its only about 10 miles to the baseball stadium and even closer to get to Cherrydale. Timing really depends on how you catch the lights more than anything else. For a Texan, the distances are negligible. Given that I have done RT Houston-to-Austin (~190mi) in a day many times, Charlotte (~100mi) or Atlanta (~150mi) seem like a nice weekend jaunt and Ashville (~50mi) is a place I will be heading to regularly for the festivals and markets (not that Greenville doesn't have enough of their own). Uhoh, this is reminding me of just how much I want to be there in our own house. ~sigh~ Jay - I really feel for you and know how much you want to get up to TR to build that wonderful, dream cottage. We've been very lucky in Houston not to have the roof fall in on real estate as it has in lots of places in FL. But, things have gotten tougher, so we're not as likely to finish the basement of the new house as soon as we want. This prompted DH to get clever and find a place to tuck in an e-room so the 2nd bedroom can immediately be used as a guest room rather than an office. It does add about 40SF, but delays needing to work on the basement until the recent college grad DD actually does have that large family she talks about. We'll see how she still feels about that once she is through law school (GGG). Thanks for the support, y'all. This has been cathartic and y'all are such a great help. Jo Ann...See MoreSharing - new home design / building process
Comments (34)Update - using the helpful sign advice on the Kitchens forum - we made some changes to the layout. Ultimately - that resulted in the "eating end" of the island moving to the east / by the fridge, and changing some zones around. As part of that continuing discussion, DH and I decided to swap the great room and the dining room for the following reasons: We can bias the dining table back further and integrate it easier with the kitchen (less steps) We can move the great room to have better views of the courtyard and feel more "snuggled" into the main part of the house. It will also be the place we spend a decent amount of time, closer to the half bath area, closer to screened porch, outside, etc. Moving the dining room closer to the entry allows us to "create" an entry space with either screening furniture or some other "barrier" that won't dump you right into the great room (a room that will be more crowded with furniture and likely to be "less neat" than the dining room) So - thanks for the ideas, we've already incorporated others, and with the kitchen changes, I think we're getting very close to the most livable plan for us. I'll have the plans updated and then we can get our head around the changes and make sure we're not breaking something else by fixing these other issues. Hopefully, crane will be scheduled for 2 weeks from now and we'll have walls in 2 weeks after that!...See MoreStalled in our building process. Help!
Comments (43)According to the Looney, Ricks, Kiss website, the Tucker Bayou plan got an Aurora award for homes in the $1,000,001 - $1,500,000 price range. So there's that. And you don't know whether that's a real retail price, or a price less donated materials (from advertisers), never mind land, legal, permits and site development. In my neck of the woods, this plan, at the finish level shown, would easily be a couple of million. This plan is going to be relatively expensive whether it's on a basement, crawl space, or slab. The framing itself is not simple, and all the little features that make it cute cost serious bucks. Also the large, numerous windows. And lots of porches. And custom millwork, custom cabinets, lots of upscale appliances and plumbing, hardwood and tile, etc. You're in the classic conundrum of a budget that won't budge, so you have a choice between a smaller house with more detail, or a larger house that's plain. IIWY I'd revisit the sloped part of the lot. See if you can put the kids' bedrooms, lauundry, "family" room, etc. down there on a walk out. Then put the rest of the rooms upstairs. Try to make it a one story with some high ceilings, and a simple shape, e.g., a rectangle. Build simple decks or gravel terraces instead of wraparound porches. Stuff like that. The point is, to save money, the whole house should have a much smaller footprint, an overall simpler concept, and that gives you a shot at making your budget. Unless you've really got a couple million to spend, in which case you might as well give Looney, Ricks, Kiss a call....See Morespagano
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