May 2020 Building a Home
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3 years ago
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NewEnglandgal
3 years agoTrish Walter
3 years agoRelated Discussions
January 2020 Building a Home
Comments (176)@devonfield, the pantry is 5'10" x 6'11". My husband and I designed the pantry using wireframe software -- he's a software architect so he uses wireframes to design software and we used the same software to design our pantry! We designed this with huge detail, basically deciding where everything we own will go, and then we handed it to the trim guys and they built it exactly as we specified. It turned out even better than we imagined!...See MoreJuly 2020 Building a Home Thread
Comments (500)@hummingbird678 and @Sherryl thanks for the discussion on granite. We picked our slabs last week and are going with a level 3, "Blue Dunes", but we're in the dark regarding the additional cost above the level 1 allowance. Lots of progress this past week. Most of the exterior stonework is complete. All cabinets are in except the kitchen, and interior trim has begun. We're doing SW "Snowbound" on all cabinets except the island and master bath cabinets which are SW "Stamped Concrete". Master shower tile is done as well...See MoreCustom home building - average $/sq ft cost in 2020?
Comments (72)Unless you have significant trade skills and will help to construct your own home, I think building a custom home is something for the rich who want what they want at a premium price. Most people cannot afford the premium in a custom home, and it certainly is a losing investment nine times out of 10. Reading your remarks, I think you are clearly the person who should be looking for a premium-built used home that is selling below its cost to build. Such homes can occasionally be purchased at steep discounts. I was toying with the idea of retiring to Nevada, and one home I saw had outrageous build quality. They had high-end stone masonry everywhere and things like custom arching beams. They spent about $375/square foot to build but because the neighborhood had homes with $150 to $200 build cost, the resale value of the home was $240/square foot. I would rather pay $250/square foot as an investment, and buying $375 for $250 is the way I would want to invest $250. I think the problem for people building a custom home with a tight budget is they can be easily fleeced on the home build quality without ever knowing what hit them. For example, to get costs lower the builder may switch to 2x4 framing on 16" centers instead of 2x6 framing on 24" centers. The 2x4 home will be much less insulated and will have very shallow window bays. It will feel cheaper. The odds are you would never ask about the framing. The homebuilder saves a ton of money on his material costs by switching to 2x4. You end up with a home that does not feel quite right and never know what hit you until much later down the road. Where custom home building really shines is in the ability to select high-end materials and building approaches that are never seen in tract homes. For example, when you do the framing you can use new stud designs that incorporate closed-cell foam into a truss design inside the studs. Normally a wood stud in the framing has very poor insulation and directly acts as a heat/cold sink that bypasses your home's insulation. The newer style studs (e.g., "T-Stud" is a brand) have an R-value of 20 (versus 6 for a normal stud) and have four times the strength because of the engineered design. Alternately, you can insulate the outside wall of the home and use SIP insulated panels on the roof, to directly overcome the insulation problems with normal studs. These things can greatly increase the comfort of the home, but they also increase build cost, and in any case, they are rarely done outside of a custom build environment. In a perfect world, in addition to an architect, it would be great to find a home builder that you could hire as a consultant - at an hourly rate - to help educate you about key variables in building a home, and that person could help you to understand budget impacts of various build choices, as well as help you specify things to the builder and architect. I wonder if there are retired home builders who do this on a consulting basis, even remotely....See MoreOctober 2020 Building a Home
Comments (501)@a - I can't tell what the dimensions in your kitchen are but if you can swing the changes toward your idea I like it. You could see if you could get narrower cabinets on that wall to help, I know some you can get only 21 inches deep. Otherwise you could do a wall of shelves or something, but you'd lose counter space, of course. My kitchen is smaller but I'm having a minimum of 3'8" between, the minimum recommended distance for wheelchairs. I saw how my dad struggled for 13 years in a wheelchair in an older house not built for it and I decided I'd rather not take chances because you never know. I'm still getting a decent side island. @Rebecca Delo, aren't windows wonderful? We were lucky in that the way our house is built the windows were in last year. Now it's a matter of DH and I putting the garage doors in so we can really close the place off this winter and use one of those bullet style heaters so we can finally continue working all winter. (or at least part of it, we could use a break sometime!) @Keepthefaith MIGirl, I love you're going to paint your chandelier. DH had this idea a couple of months ago that I was handy and creative enough to find some old fixture somewhere and make a brilliant (and cheap I suspect is his real thinking!) looking chandelier for our dining room. I'm willing to give it a try but I made NO promises! lol...See Moreshead
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