Building a Custom Home! Give me all the tips/tricks you have to offer!
Brea Albritton
6 years ago
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Mark Bischak, Architect
6 years agoRelated Discussions
Tips, tricks and lessons you have learned
Comments (31)I enjoyed re-reading all of these. I have a couple more tips. If you don't have a full 8 hours of full sun, but do have 4-6, and you want tomatoes, plant them anyway. Your yields won't be as good, but I've found this year that if you prune the plants, you will get a decent number of large tomatoes. I'm not preserving my tomatoes in any way, so this only applies if you want a few tomatoes to eat. There are a lot of lovely veggies and edible plants that will grow in partial shade, so do your research and you can still grow veggies and edibles without a full-sun spot. Eat your sweet potato leaves. They are yummy. The tender tips are good raw and the older ones cook up well. The tubers will still form, even if you use some of the leaves. Most ornamental sweet potatoes don't have edible leaves (they taste horrible). I use regular sweet potatoes as ground cover just so I can eat the leaves. I never dig the ones in the ornamental beds, and they come back every year, providing ground cover, food, and a never-ending supply of slips for the edible beds. If you have earthworms, cultivate them by giving them lots of organic matter to eat. If you don't have earthworms, get some. They are nature's little fertilizer factories. You can buy red wigglers from just about any bait shop, or go out into the woods early in the morning and dig some up. They are abundant here in FL. Grow flowers! Even in veggie beds, they attract pollinators and better than that, they feed your soul. That's all. Lots to do today since we're having what I hope is our last freeze tomorrow....See MoreHelp me plan for building a new custom home FAST
Comments (41)LAURA12:: You didn't see your name at the top of two of these replies in bold, to the right of a pink star, one response each for your two posts? :P This forum has provided me with some great feedback, but the layout, search features and almost everything about the website itself could be improved and made more user friendly. 'Skeptical', maybe. Maybe 'ignorant', 'naive' or 'just starting' plus 'stubborn' (or if we're gonna be friends, 'determined') would more precisely describe my mentality lol. I saw FHA, new construction and other very affordable down % and took that into my want for a custom home, not realizing that the custom requires more up front. Your cost breakdown is quite helpful and the $150/sqft mark makes sense when I consider the prices I've seen for houses other than ticky-tacky. This one here we're currently renting sold last April sold for something like $91/sqft, and the more I'm seeing, the more I realize how good a deal that purchase was. I'm now more strongly leaning toward more of a mass construction and I'll be sure to keep asking about any kinds of alterations with regards to resale value. You mentioned something about affordable contractors in the area?...See MoreTips for Buying Land, Designing and Building A Custom Home Part 1
Comments (7)The one thing I would add is don't let anyone (realtor, builder, brother-in-law) tell you that a lot is 'OK'. It's very important to do as much of your own due diligence as you can when considering your future home. We were once showed a home across the street from a sewage treatment plant. It was an ideal location for us, being very close to our son's school. We were assured by the realtor that there was 'no odor problem'. Over the next 11 years, we had the opportunity to drive by that neighborhood every day as we brought our son to school. It reeked! Outdoor activities would have been impossible many days. The realtor either didn't know, or outright lied to us. There are many tools available to check out the neighborhood. Many areas have a GIS site (Geographic Information System) to check things like flood zones, topography, crime stats, even soil types. You can zoom out to find out what else is in the area, such as a hog farm you didn't know existed. It's not a bad idea to check with the local city/county to see what kind of future plans they have for the area. You don't want to find out about the new Interstate or airport after you've built your dream home. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I never consider a parcel unless it has a current 'perk' (percolation) test for a septic system. There are work-arounds, but they are expensive, and sometimes downright ugly. Who wants a mound system in the front yard (because there wasn't room in the back)? If the lot is on city sewer, then it's not a consideration....See MoreTips for Buying Land, Designing and Building A Custom Home Part 1 of 3
Comments (18)So odd...! If I scroll down to Page 2, where both recent postings are currently listed, and click on each one, each comes up for reading. And when I click on this posting for the last post, Part 3, for example, it comes up for reading. Clearly the Houzz Gods are not favorable to this posting...bad juju!...See Moremushcreek
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