How much did you have planned before you built?
Toni S
5 years ago
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Patricia Colwell Consulting
5 years agodoc5md
5 years agoRelated Discussions
What Did You Do Before You Built?
Comments (11)Other than financial, the primary home-owning responsibility is upkeep. You can get a taste of that by taking over the chores your parents presently do: regularly cleaning their house inside and out; shrubbery, lawn and garden maintenance; and regular inspection of the structure to be sure there are no leaks or other damage. If you are not paying them cash rent for your room, then whole-house upkeep is usually considered a fair exchange and exhibits maturity and readiness to take on you own place. (It also helps that they can give you guidelines for the best way to do things, from cleaning the tile to washing windows.) One thing to remember is that a house's upkeep is not a once-off done occasionally, but is ongoing in spite of other demands on your time and energy. My first very-own house was purchased after renting for several years. I did the usual: cheap rent while saving like mad (each of us had 2 jobs and 85% of the earnings went into savings), then buying small and then larger. I try to never comment on other folks' financial choices, because I am weird enough to believe in not financing more than I can pay, and I really hate paying banks... yes, that means that I don't owe money for anything to anyone. In today's economy, one should learn everything possible about all the various methods of financing before indulging in promising your future income to a bank or trust company. At the least, be prepared -- cash on hand (CDs, bonds, etc) -- to equal at least a third of the expected total cost, and don't be surprised to have the expected cost go over expectations by 20%. As mentioned above, stress can be extreme when building and even long-time, well-established marriages hit the rocks (I've read that about 20% of first-time builders divorce before the house is completed, which is a sobering thought.) Now is the time to learn how to communicate, so go ahead and start studying house plans. While planning for the future is always a guessing game, the more detailed your plans are the less likely an unforeseen hatcheting-detail will attack the marriage -- or at least you will both learn what is really important to the other. You may also learn a lot about your own tastes and preferences, especially during discussions on flooring materials, window placement, and who really does most of the cooking. It's always better to know all that BEFORE you sign a contract....See MoreHow did you clean before you moved in??
Comments (12)For the walls we used the jumbo microfiber dust mop by Quickie that we got at Lowe's. It's the red one with the yellow cover that's made for floors/tile/walls. They pick up tons of dust and can cover a large area very quickly. Be sure to pick up a couple of extra covers so you don't have to quit working when one gets full. I think it was $15-20 for the mop & cover. The extra covers were about $6 each. We also purchased 50 microfiber cloths on eBay for $30. They worked like a charm for getting the dust off of the woodwork. Toss them in the washing machine when you're done. I use them for cleaning the house now and you just can't kill these things! I bought a Steam Shark for the tile floors which also uses microfiber cloths. It takes a whole 5 minutes to clean all of our tile and the cloth gets thrown in the washing machine when you're done. It's my favorite gadget. :o) Be sure to have a good vacuum for after you move in. New carpet gives off lots of fuzz. I used a plastic window scraper, scrubbies and Bar Keepers' Friend to get the drywall mud (and later the paint splatters) off of the tile & tubs in the bathrooms. I used the large scrapers & blades for the windows. *tip* Spray the windows with glass cleaner and let it sit for a few seconds before you scrape. It makes it soooo much easier. I prefer Weiman's or Sprayway window cleaners that come in the aerosol can (no hand fatigue from pumping the spray). They also seem to clean much better! *Extra tip* The same glass cleaner is hands down the best granite cleaner/shiner that I've ever run across. :o) Don't forget to change your air filters!!!...See MoreHow long are/were YOU on the market? How much did you reduce?
Comments (18)We listed in May of 2007 with a local realtor with a good reputation who had been in the business for a few years. Our asking price was $10k less than the house two doors away which was a bit smaller than ours and did not have a new kitchen, bath, and other features ours had. We saw three houses that were in our neighborhood, one listed at $5k more than ours and the other two listed even higher sell in the first 3 months we had ours listed. I'm very realistic and just knew that ours wasn't being marketed effectively. Also, I could look at the good and bad in our home and knew ours was in much better condition and in a better location than two of the three that sold. Two of them were on a busy street while ours was on one of the most desired streets in our town. We ended up cancelling our listing after promises similar to yours of people who were "really interested" never materialized. We were going to forget about moving for awhile and relax about the whole selling situation. However, I saw an article in a local paper the week after our listing was cancelled about a real go-getter in the RE business. She didn't promise to sell in any specified amount of time but this woman sold houses that others didn't, even after being listed for months. Two months after listing with her and having had three times as many showings as we had in 7 months with the other realtor, we sold our home. The couple who bought our house wanted to look at it after driving by, they hadn't been looking in our area but our home caught their eye. Their realtor called ours after hours and they saw the house at 9:00 P.M. on a Saturday night because they were scheduled to fly home the next morning. When she asked me if I would leave the dining room drapes, I knew we had sold our home. She said she walked in and knew that was it. We had come down in price about $40k, but it was only 5% of our original asking price so I was happy to sell when we did. We had also cancelled a contract we had on another home that we were going to build when our home didn't sell with our original realtor. In the long run, we ended up getting a bit less for our home, but we also bought our new home for less than we would have and received even more builders' incentives so in the long run, things worked out for the best. I know that is hard to hear but I kept telling myself that everything happens for a reason and it is true. We just need a lot of patience to believe that and keep telling yourself that whatever happens is meant to be. I'm not making light of the situation for those who have to sell and haven't been able to but I really do believe everything happens the way it's supposed to in life. If you're not happy with your realtor, evaluate the situation and think about finding a new one if you don't think they are doing their job. Take a good, hard look at your home with a critical eye and ask your friends to tell you what you can do to improve your home. We had friends offer excellent advice but because we lived with it on a daily basis, we never saw our home the way others did. Most of all, your home has to be priced right. I've noticed in the area we left, homes have come down an average of 5 to 7% since we left and some of them were on the market at the same time ours was. If it's not priced right, it won't sell, no matter how nice it is. Good luck to everyone and may the new year bring you a buyer for your home!...See MoreHow much planning have you done pre-construction?
Comments (21)For my husband and I we started looking at older homes in the area last Sept., took only a few weeks to realize we wanted to build new, another few months to figure out that we're not the type that can just go with the typical spec home. We chose a design-build firm in November, met with an architect in December to modify a plan that we sort of liked, and closed on a lot in Jan. Then we made all our tentative selections for allowance items and had them priced out, which added about $30k to the contract price.It took about 3 months to get enough of an idea of allowances that we felt comfortable signing our contract (during this time I also redesigned the front elevation and the kitchen layout). That said, I probably spent 40 hrs a week doing research and planning our house during that time. Most of this was finding the things we had in our heads, trying to find/draw pictures for subs, and doing historical research, as we wanted to give the house a fairly authentic early 1800's feel, while not losing all of the things we love about new builds, and keeping the project remotely affordable. I've done pretty much all the design work since we just went with a design/build firm. They're one of the more detail-oriented in the area, but not enough so for us. Next time we would probably just hire an architect to manage the entire project. It would be a lot less stressful. We've also changed quite a bit as the build has progressed, and we get a more coherent vision of the house, and a better idea of standard specs in the midwest (we're not from around here and that has made things interesting). That added another $30k or so to the project, but we easily could have added another $100+. Most of these changes were on non-allowance items, like mouldings...actually pretty much all of them were architectural details. That seems to be the expensive stuff: detail and anything not made of plastic or mdf. Combine a love of well-proportioned details and natural material, and costs jump up pretty quickly. Be prepared. I found that a lot of our subs didn't want to get into much detail with us until there was a hole in the ground. And I think with good reason. There are some things you just can't fully plan until you're almost ready for them to go in. And some things, no matter how much planning you do, won't go the way you want. Word of advice: don't feel bad about changing your mind! After all, you're the one funding the project. One of the most helpful questions for our subs was "If we do it this way, how hard is it to change it to another way in the future, and how will doing it this way limit our choices?" We were really surprised sometimes at how easy some things were to add or change later, and what things really needed to happen at build time for them to be worth doing. We're in the home stretch now as flooring is in and cabinets are being installed. Just picked out our slabs of marble for our countertops today. We don't really expect anything new from here on out. We also are leaving a few things to do later on, like finishing landscaping and closet shelving, so we have a better idea of what we want. Now I stop by the house a few times a week, just to see how things are going, but mostly to just jump up and down and be excited. All this being said, I'm the kind of monster that will spend an entire day drafting 15 scale drawings of potential kitchen cabinet layouts so my husband and I can choose one when he gets home from work and send it to our carpenter. We're also really decisive people who already had a pretty clear idea of what we like, how we live, and our priorities. The hardest part was finding what we wanted given our resources. I think for most people, if you really want to be able to specify all the little details and don't have an architect that can do that for you, you'll want to give yourself a lot of time and really think hard about how you live, and how you want your home to feel. On the other hand, if you don't really care about the little things, you might not need much time to plan things out at all. Like your friend, you could make all your choices for finishings in a week and be done with it. It took us over a month just to find tile that we liked. Either way, do go into it having thought about your home enough that you know where you fall on that spectrum....See MoreVirgil Carter Fine Art
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5 years agoMissi Smith Design Co.
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