Hi all, Just wanted to chime in on this thread. I am starting my 3rd self-built home project. (Yes, I need to have my head examined) I run a remodeling company so it's not completely insane. Previous comments about kitchens and baths being core expenses are right on the money--- so to speak. They are expensive. Building one in an apartment and then a new one in your finished house is really shooting yourself in the foot. Try this instead. Build with the foot print of a 3 car garage, say 38 x 25, but only utilize the space a two car garage would generally take up as garage space--- 25x25. Use the 25x10 part to put your permanent stair, a foyer and your permanent kitchen in. Now you can think of the space over the garage as a second story of your finished home. You can get 2-3 bed rooms and a bonus out of the space with a hall bath. Unless you really need an apartment this approach can save a bunch of cash. Someone was asking about standing seam metal roofing. If you use the commercial folks you see on TV expect to be asked to pay $65 a square foot. I had one come out and give me a quote just to check it out. It was a real manipulative "hard sell" with all these "bonuses" and "programs" available "if you sign today." Be very careful. No matter how you slice it it's a rip. Either HD or Lowes will special order metal roofing for you. Its's not hard to install. (Be careful, wear sneakers and don't bend down on your knees, it is really slick.) If this is your forever house, install 40 year architectural asphalt. It looks nice and will likely outlive me. Good Luck and Be careful out there! Bruce

Well, I have put 11 years of hard work and training into him, and he is cute, so I hate for all of that to go to waste. :) I haven't told him that I had made the final decision for the brick red. I'm not sure if it matters to him anyways. The only thing his has cared about is getting his outdoor kitchen! I think you should order the red windows behind your DH's back! Once they are in, not much he can do about it.:) My DH is the same way. He has a hard time "seeing" what something different could do for the home. But, I have an advantage that you don't. He is colorblind! So all I have say to him is that he has no place commenting on anything regarding colors! Oh, I hope I have made the right decision. I can just imagine my MIL asking why in the world did I put red windows on the house....then my husband saying he thinks it looks evil....

Well first to the lot size, they are good sized lots. There is definitely room inbetween. The smallest lots are about 1.5 acres, most of the lots are 2.5-3 acres. The lot we're thinking about buying is almost 6 acres. The neighborhood itself is rather bland, as far as the land goes. It is just a large former pasture, turned into a neighborhood. So the majority of the lots don't' have any trees except for the rear property lines. The lot we're considering is the most attractive lot in our eyes. Since its a corner lot, it is fairly narrow at the front but widens out (pie shaped) to a fairly wide lot at the rear. So if we back up the house enough, we'll have nothing but a view of mature trees on the back of our lot. If we build this specific house, we will be the biggest house in the neighborhood unfortunately, by about 800 sq ft. The largest home in the neighborhood currently is about 4,000 sq ft. The rest of them are 3300-3700 with a couple around 2900. I know it isn't the best policy to be the biggest and/or nicest home in the neighborhood, but unfortunately that is most likely just going to be our reality. This house is probably going to be our last house we live in before we retire (and we're a good 25-30 years away from retiring). So I am not going to fret too much about that aspect of it, as its just a reality for us with a town this small. I still hesitate to put the street and city just because I'm a little paranoid that one of the homeowners would find it and see that we're criticizing the neighborhood, and their style of homes before we even buy a lot! Maybe that example I posted isn't completely accurate. Most of them are attractive houses, however, I'm sure there are a few that would get torn apart on this forum :) They are fairly typical for this part of the country, just regular ranch and country style homes. Part of our problem is in our particular small town, there are 2 (literally, two) neighborhoods of middle to upper/middle class style homes. We currently live in one of them. Our current neighborhood is the smaller of the two with slightly smaller homes and only 1/2 acre lots. We're thinking of moving for a few reasons, the first being we want a pool (can't build one on our lot, just discovered that about 2 months ago) and we want a little more room to perhaps build a detached garage/shop on our land, and just have a little more room to stretch out and not be directly next to our neighbors. So we are extremely limited on our options if we want to live in a neighborhood. So its either this neighborhood, or we find some acreage in the country and build there. We still like the idea of being in a neighborhood. Plus this particular one is outside the city limits, but just barely. So its probably 2.5 miles to the grocery store, school, church, restaurants, etc. Thanks all for the tips so far!

I like the idea of a click-together floating vinyl tile in a bit of a checker pattern (tone on tone will look very handsome). It will keep the idea of your current flooring without actually going out and finding the same tile. Now, the technical side of this gets super interesting. The garage slab is DIFFERENT from the house slab. That means weird things will need to be done to get everything all ready for flooring. Shall we assume you have already leveled the garage floor with lots and lots and lots of new concrete? Excellent. Garage slabs are notorious for being dirty and "wet" (they allow HUGE amounts of moisture to move through them because they were never designed as living spaces. You are welcome to "float" a floor over the properly flattened slab. You will have to use a vapour barrier (I'm assuming you did not go whole hog and pay a SCHWACK of money to have the garage slab sealed and then flattened). The plastic vapour barriers are easy and low cost. And for that reason the click together variant would be your best bet. To get ANYTHING to "glue down" to an old garage slab is a huge technical slurry of problems that need expensive fixes. Because everything will be refloored in a few years (kitchen and pantry) I suggest you work with cheap and cheerful vinyl click tiles and keep going with the rest of the project. Please do not expect the LVT you use today to be available in 5 years from now. Traditionally these man-made floors only have a 24 month shelf life and then they are gone - never to be seen again.