Planning and budgeting your house construction

16 years ago

Does anyone have data regarding percentages of cost participation of all the different areas/stages of the project? Like house cost breakdown into framing, foundation, roofing, etc....For example - it's known that the budget for kitchen should not exceed 15-20% of the house value... I am just interested to learn some industry statistics regarding planning and budgeting. I am open to any interesting advice regarding these areas. We are first time home builders in Southern Arizona so all comments and advice are welcome.

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Comments (8)

beware
16 years ago
You might take a look at the site building-cost.net

From their calculator you might get useful information.
persnicketydesign
16 years ago
www.ownerbuilderbook.com has tons of fantastic information for OBs. I included a link below to their "download gallery" which includes some great templates for budgets, schedules, etc.

Here is a link that might be useful: Owner Builder Book Downloads
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house plan - constructive criticism wanted! please help! pic heav
Q
Comments (11)
I like your plan a lot! But I'm not so sure about putting it on a lot oriented like yours...especially not one up in the northwest. If your kitchen sink faced south or west, I'd say the design was pretty much perfect but... Like you I love lots of natural light and while your plan does a nice job with allowing natural light from two directions into most of the main rooms, I too would be VERY concerned with whether the covered porch will block the light into the Great Room...especially since you're building in Oregon. If I'm understanding you correctly, the "kitchen sink" corner of the house faces due north or very nearly due north. That means the elevation that is labeled the West Elevation really faces northwest, not due west. And the elevation that is labeled "North elevation" really faces northeast. And so on. Remember that in North America, the sun always rises somewhat south of due east and sets somewhat south of due west. And as you know, the further north you are, the further south the sun appears to be. And in the wintertime, the sun moves even further toward the south. Depending on exactly where you are in Oregon, the sun will be something like 21 to 24 degrees to the south at the summer solstice and about 67 to 69 degrees to the south at the winter solstice. Thus, what you refer to as the "hot western sun" is really the "hot westsouthwestern sun" LOL. The summer sun won't strike the northwestern or northestern facing windows of your house except, perhaps, at a very oblique angle in the early morning and in the late afternoon. And in the winter time, those sides of the house will be in shadow all day. Here's what I recommend you do. Get a big cardboard box to represent the kitchen, great room, and dining room of your house. Cut holes in the sides to represent the windows. Then, cut a small hole in the top that you can look thru and see the interior walls of the box. Try to make the window holes approximately proportionate in size to the box as the size of your windows to the actual house - but you don't have to get them perfect. Take a second piece of folded cardboard (say from a cereal box) and tape it in place to represent the covered porch roof. (It would be good if this piece could be made easy to remove and reattach.) Pick a day that is supposed to be nice and sunny and take the box out to your property before the sun comes up. Orient the box so that the edges face the direction your main walls will actually face. I.e., the corner where the kitchen sink will be should point north. Spend the day and watch how the sunlight strikes the window holes and lights up the interior walls in the early morning, at noon, and again in the late afternoon. (When looking into the box, be careful not to stand so that you block the sunlight.) Actually, unless you currently live a couple of hundred miles or more from your new property, you can actually do this experient at your current house so long as you use a compass to orient the box correctly. The minor changes in latitude and longitude won't have an appreciable affect on the angle of the light entering thru your "window holes." But, it is more fun to do at your new property and, if you have large trees that will shade your house, you will want to take them into consideration. Besides, IMHO everyone should spend several full days at their new property before they start building! But, back to my point. The sun reaches its northermost path in June (Summer Solstice) so right now (in late May), you will be seeing almost the maximum amount of direct light that will enter your house though windows in the northwest and northeast faces. In the winter, the sun will move further south so even less light will enter windows facing northwest, north, or northeast. I suspect you'll quickly be convinced that you should either leave the roof off the porch entirely or that you need to put skylights into the porch roof so that more light can bounce around on the porch and help light up the Great Room. I also think that the deck on the "west elevation" will make portions of the walkout basement seem really dark and dismal. You're not going to get ANY direct light into the basement bedroom window because of the rec room bump out and the floor of the covered porch. You also won't get much natural light in the media room. Unless you use very light colored paving stones under the deck so as to bounce around as much light as possible and leave fairly large gaps between deck boards, the area under the deck (especially where the bedroom window is) is likely to feel like a rather dismal cave. If it were me, I'd think about swapping the media room and bedroom/bath and adding a window or two on the northeast face ("north elevation"). Media rooms are typically kept fairly dark anyway and a bedroom window in the "north elevation would at least get oblique morning light in the summer time. Just my two cents.
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Advice on Master Bath Plan for New Construction Home?
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Comments (33)
This is really hard. At least you have some choices. I personally do not mind NOT having a toilet room. (I have one now, but not in the last house). If you can fit one in, it may appeal to a few more people. ( When we sold, we had 3 people wanting our home and it had no toilet room). Our tub sat under two corner windows with a wonderful view. So if you would rather a big shower than a tub, make sure you get the shower you want. I like Mongot's 2nd option, but would leave out the linen cab next to it. Hang your towels and add a small bench there. Supposedly, the door on the toilet room should swing out, but the one on house that we own now does not. If you leave it closed all the time, it does not matter. If you like it open, it will block your window. Also I noticed that on some of your drawings, you have lost 6 inches of your 9 foot 6 inch length. That space would make your shower much larger. Of your drawings, option B appeals most to me. Option A closes up your space and C wastes too much space. If your shower can be enlarged to 42 in or 48 in by about 5 feet, that would be really nice. I added a couple of other ideas. I personally like two vanities better than one. The cost should be similar if the total size is the same. Option A1 cuts back on vanity size, but you get a linen and toilet room. A2 has 2 vanities. I still like stand alone vanities for the style. Option 3 gives you more vanity space on one wall, but I don't know if an angled door is the best option. I'd probably do drawers on the end of the long vanity by the window. More light.
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Budget-friendly house plan revisions
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Comments (16)
A steep hip roof should be significantly more expensive to build than something like a 6/12 gabled roof. You won't save money going to a hip roof. A steeply pitched roof in country that doesn't require one is a design fad. A few months ago, someone posted something like, "What current fad will scream 2009 twenty years from now?" I think it will be the needlessly steeply pitched roof and the gables galore syndrome. Both drive up the price of the build, increase the cost of maintenance, and probably will hurt resale in years to come. This is just my opinion, so take it for whatever you will, but there is no way I would build a "buried" screened porch like the one in your plans. A screened porch needs to be in the open as much as possible in order to get that outdoors feeling and some breezes. There are other problems with yours as designed as well. As designed, you will have to build and insulate three exterior wall portions common to the porch, instead of just one or two. That is going to increase costs. You are also building an outdoor environment over your basement. That is an invitation to leaks and adds additional insulation costs. Your terrain shows a very steep slope due to grading in a manner that brings the land up to the screen porch level. That will require a retaining wall, another expense. If you don't grade that way, your screened porch will have to have a 36' railing, which will add to the closed in feeling of a three walled porch. If you really want a screened porch, redesign the house so that the porch is only dependent on one exterior wall and is not over the basement, but on decking, like our build (not yet screened). You don't have to extend the entire roof to covered the screened porch, which is essentially what we have done. You can always add a shed roof over the screened porch. That seems to be the most common way it's done. If the deck extends beyond the screened porch, the corresponding screened wall will not require a 36" railing. The deck railing will meet the code requirement instead. It's something to keep in mind. Lastly, orient the house and the screened porch so that it is shaded or sunny as you desire at the right time of day. The wrong orientation can ruin the functionality of the porch.
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New Construction - House Plans
Q
Comments (39)
Hi K F, thanks for your kind words. Your writing reveals that you are a centered, loving and intelligent individual. I hope you forgive me one last intrusion. I just get excited thinking of how lovely your home will be, specially given the location. So, I am adding an additional revision of the plan showing that (1) you could take the pantry all the way to what would be the south wall, and (2) a possible treatment of the play room (the den). Imagine that the eastern wall features a large round window mounted on a thick stone wall and at night the LED projectors cast "magical" light effects on the woods nearby. The room also features a wooden platform with drawers and two twin mattresses that will be used as sofas and nap beds and are on the ready for adult overnight visitors. The more storage you can built-in in this room the better to deal with the children's toys, books, etc. Remember also that the plan can be flipped so you have the morning sun in the entry way and the evening sun in the living room, or as it shows now, where the morning light streams into the living and kitchen space and the sun sets the opposite way (of course!). Cheers!
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fayemarie
16 years ago
Owner buider is a great site but the best thing you can do is look at your area
and see what homes are selling for and what features they have . You don't want to overbuild . For instance , put a million dollar home in an area of 500,000
homes . If you are using a builder - you should contact a few and get a general
idea of what the per square ft. cost to build is . They will give you a very general idea , esp. if you don't have prints . If you already have your prints and are owner building - take your print to local HD or menards and ask them to bid out the lumber , siding , insulation , windows , doors , etc. This will give you a good start on your budget . I figured all my material costs and then added on 30% for labor . I knew I could do better with labor but it's better to figure high and make sure you can afford the house and it is comparable with the area . Good Luck
kkaty
Original Author
16 years ago
wow, thanks you guys. it's all very useful information that you gave me and the websites are very interesting too, I am just starting to explore them. Let me ask you this. We are at the point of deciding if we are going to be O-B for our house or we will hire a GC. Would you say that doing your house by yourselves was worth the time and effort? Both my husband and I work and we don't want to get overloaded.... ?
persnicketydesign
16 years ago
Kkaty....DH & I will be OBing our house. Today is the one year anniversary since we bought our property (hooray). We spend several hours every day towards getting our house built. As of today, the lot still hasn't been cleared. LOL We're getting very close to starting now, but know that the time we spend now in planning and preparation will serve us well down the road. My first bit of advice...don't rush into it blind. Talk to everyone you can and research everything!

Second bit of advice...make sure that you're doing it for the right reasons. If you are trying to OB to save money, chances are you will not. It can be done, but the savings from some areas are used to upgrade others (you know how it goes). We had several estimates from GCs that were all very good and came highly recommended. I'm sure we would have been very happy with a home that was built by any of them, however we found that we enjoyed the entire process so much that we wanted to be more involved. Eventually, it has morphed into our managing subs for the entire project. Sure, we'll save the $$$ that would have gone to the GC as profit, but it will take us longer and there will be more bumps along the way (translates to more $$$). We expect MANY obstacles, but are looking forward to the challenges.

As for the time invested by us...I'm a housewife and DH works 12 hour shifts, so he's off 4 days a week. One of us will be on the jobsite every day. It might not be enough....we're still expecting to be overloaded. LOL

If you would like some more links to OB websites I've got bunches of them. Just let me know. :o)
fayemarie
16 years ago
My situation is very different - I have no set time frame that I have to finish .
I am a stay at home mom and my DH only works 7 monthes out of the year.
I am kind of a control freak and my project is kind of unique - so I don't think
it would've worked had I hired a GC. The amount of money I am saving would
equal about 2 yrs . salary - so financially it's worth it for me. I have had a few
bumps but I REALLY enjoy it . If the real estate market ever rebounds - I might even build a few spec homes to sell when mine's done ! LOL
Good Luck with whatever you decide - Faye
kkaty
Original Author
16 years ago
Well, persnicketydesign, thank you very much for all the points to think about. How nice of you to give me all that advice. You know, I was born in POland and moved to US not so long ago and I am always impressed with how friendly and incredibly helpful to each other Americans are. (that was just a side comment:)) It's nice how you approach the project with anticipation. We need to figure out if we have the right type of personality to think that way. I think we can do it and we are spending a lot of time learning and figuring things out. Let me know hos things are going for you when you get started. We need to finish working on our house plans first to even start getting estimates... Good Luck with your project and I sure will contact you after I explore these website enough to crave more information.
minnt
16 years ago
I am GC on my house. I have never done this before, but I have two brothers who build houses in the other part of the state. They encouraged me to do this and offered to help out if I needed it. So far, I haven't needed it, except for a bit of hand holding. I think the builder you hire is very important. I worked out a deal with mine, he builds what he can build (he is a gem and does nearly everything from concrete work to framing, to siding and roofing), uses his subs if I don't have anyone to use and he charges me for his time. He orders what he needs to get the job done, within a few parameters. I used our lumberyard to help design our house and I have spent the time to choose styles, colors, etc. I schedule all the subs as needed. I handle all the payment of the subs, the lumberyard and other items like plumbing and lighting fixtures.

I am at the job site everyday, 9-5 and beyond if I have subs there in the evening. I do everything from making decisions on the fly to pounding nails side by side with the crew. There are times when I have nothing to attend to and cannot participate in what is going on, so those days I spend on phone calls, on the internet looking for fixtures, etc. This is a full time job+++++ for me. As a previous poster said, attention to detail, control freak, demanding, all describe me. I am not sure how much I am saving by not paying the builder a general contracting fee, but I am sure it is significant. I don't think it would be as nice of a house, it wouldn't meet our needs or expectations if I wasn't there daily. I talked with my builder and he said that it would have worked, but he would have made many more decisions on his own or else had to wait until I arrived to make some of them. He said it was much easier to have me there during the day.

Planning and budgeting your house construction

Comments (8)

beware

persnicketydesign

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kkaty
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persnicketydesign

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minnt

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Planning and budgeting your house construction

Comments (8)

beware

persnicketydesign

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fayemarie

kkatyOriginal Author

persnicketydesign

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kkatyOriginal Author

minnt

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