I'm so glad that I read The Owner-Builder Book before I started all this - every single thing I've experienced I've expected ahead of time - I read it in the book. Barry in Gilbert, AZ

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Visit with bank

Posted to HiddenInOhio by Jason in Elyria, OH on 4/1/2011

Yesterday we went to a local bank 20 minutes away that specializes in O-B loans. One of the only two local ones that still do them. Fortunately, there is a place semi-close to home that is willing to do these. Two friends who I have mentioned previously who owner-built their homes both did their construction loans through this bank. I went in and asked for all the information that the Book says to. I was nicely given a packet with all the information that they require, and they are going to email me their lien waiver forms and a couple other things, as they did not have them at the office. Next week we will visit the other local bank for their forms. 

Bids finally almost done

Posted to HiddenInOhio by Jason in Elyria, OH on 3/21/2011

The last month has basically consisted of being on the phone 24/7 and having subs coming to our place to pick up plans to bid our future project. A lot of these subs have came as word of mouth references, and some others out of the local home builders' association. I am proud to say that I did not use the Yellow Pages for even one sub. The way things are going, we will end up having on average 3-4 bids for each part of the project.

We had four G.C. bids just to get an average on what it would take to have someone build the house. This was the real eyeopener. All four were local G.C.'s, which we wanted because they know the local market more than anyone. Their bids were all over the place. To do mostly the same things, we had bids ranging from $560,000 all the way up to $963,000. We were baffled, but then some funny things started happening. Upon getting my takeoffs back from all the lumberyards, we were informed about how those contractors had already been there to get the takeoffs, which is understandable because they have to get the lumber and whatnot from somewhere. The silly part is, on the proposals from the builders, they quoted us for everything that we asked for, however, they changed multiple things behind the scenes (window brands, generic shingles, swapped the Hardie board with upgraded vinyl siding, 15 lb. roof felt when we asked for 30 lb., changed all of our insulation requests to plain fiberglass, 5/8 plywood on the roof to 7/16 OSB, 2x6 exterior walls to 2x4's, and the list goes on and on). The worst part is they were charging us ungodly amounts for the materials that we requested, yet were going to install absolute builder grade everything. The average uninformed person would probably never know and pay out the wazoo for something they never got, but, give me a break. And all four builders did this too, which was the real eyeopener.

Things like this make contracting our home an even better idea!! As far as all of our sub bids, most are within a couple thousand dollars of each other for each portion. The biggest difference thus far has been framing and HVAC for the geothermal. Framing bids were from $22K all the way to $35K, and the lowest bid was from a very well-known guy who did three of our friends' homes. Geothermal and ductwork ranged from about $25K all the way up to $40K.

Hopefully in the next week we will have the rest of the bids in and will make our decision on each trade. In the meantime I will continue working on the proposals for the bank. Dropping off our plans for permits next week as well. It's getting closer and closer to breaking ground!!

Busy getting bids

Posted to HiddenInOhio by Jason in Elyria, OH on 2/12/2011

So the last week and some change consisted of us meeting with multiple subcontractors. It's crazy how much time you can spend on the phone, and also in person with all these tradesmen. All seem to have a lot of knowledge in their field. I am starting to enjoy the interviews with all these guys. It is interesting seeing all of their opinions and such as I ask them all the questions.

Plans in hand

Posted to HiddenInOhio by Jason in Elyria, OH on 2/3/2011 10:55:55 AM

Last Friday came the much anticipated day of picking up our blueprints from the printer. All of our changes were made, so we could finally get them. It's amazing how a simple thought turned into all of this. Needless to say, my wife and I were ecstatic that day.

That same weekend, I called five different GC's to see if they would bid our plans. Most of them only had a house or two going up due to the slow economy, so they were all welcoming of the opportunity. I only had an issue contacting one of the five, multiple extensions to dial, and being transferred time after time only to never reach my source. I felt this was a huge inconvenience, and if we actually used this contractor, this was what it would take to actually do business. No thanks. So I will only be getting four different GC bids on our plans which we will use to start our budget and schedule.

Today I dropped off plans to two of the four GC's. Each meeting ended up being an hour or two. I went over our plans with each GC, and gave them a copy of our room-by-room specs. This will help with the apples to apples comparison when they complete their bids. This Friday I have appointments with the other two to do the same. The common response is it will take a week or two to get back with us with the bids.

In the meantime, next week we are going to a friend's home who O-B'ed to view the work that their subs did. We got a majority of our references from them as well as from another friend who contracted their house out. I think maybe this weekend I will also start to contact some subs initially to start to bid that whole process.

Hopefully in the next couple of weeks, I will have most of our bids complete and we can begin selecting which subs we will use and get them under contract. Also in this time, our schedule should be created as well as our budget. I can't believe how fast this is all coming together. It's amazing how all of the preplanning and not seeing any progress has suddenly became a reality.

Photos

Posted to HiddenInOhio by Jason in Elyria, OH on 1/20/2011

Here are some photos of our land and such. The first couple are of our lot to get an idea of it, then a few of our garage that we built on our land last year, and finally some photos of our architect's renderings of our dream home (though they did not come out well when I uploaded them, but you get the idea!).

Photos

Our long wooded lot.	A different view. Our lot is between the two houses near the center. We love all the mature trees!	Starting the driveway back to our future residence.
Pouring the footer for our garage we built on our lot last year.	Me trying to lay some block!	First wall is up.
Ready for trusses.	Trusses set.	Tyvek and windows.
Shingle time.	Floor plan (sorry about the quality).	Front rendering of our Dream Home.
Rear rendering of our Dream Home.

Update

Posted to HiddenInOhio by Jason in Elyria, OH on 1/17/2011 12:08:50 PM

   Over the last couple of months, we have had several meetings with our architect. His first rendering of our dream home was spot on. It amazes us how it was basically everything that we wanted from our dream home notebook. We made a few small changes here and there, but nothing too drastic.

   To put it into perspective, our thoughts of the ranch of our dreams consisted of a home somewhere around 3,000 square feet. Vaulted ceilings in the common areas and master bed/bath, minimum 10-ft. ceilings in most other areas. A huge 'common area' consisting of a family room, eating area, and kitchen in one long span. Three bedrooms, 3 1/2 baths (eventually another bedroom and full bath in the basement), a huge laundry room, mud room, basement stairs from garage as well as stairs in the home, and also a study. We are thinking of two gas insert fireplaces (one in the study, one in the master bedroom) and a huge real fireplace in the family room. As far as utilities, we are planning vertically-drilled geothermal for the heating/air as well as radiant floor heating in the slab in the basement and also under the first floor. Debating a tankless water heater over a standard one for the time being. We have rural water so we will not need a well, and we are running a gas line from the road for cooking, and any other thing we might use it for. For the exterior, we are looking for a dry-stacked veneer ledgestone as well as fiber-cement-board shakes for the walls, and the roof will mostly be shingles and a portion of metal roof.

   As it stands, the house right now spans just over 100 feet and is 73 feet front to back. For awhile, I debated TJI's and also open-web floor trusses. Our architect has basically sold me on the open-web trusses. They seem like a great product. The only other things that we are reviewing are going to be the foundation type, a larger beam to eliminate most post in the basement, and also the type of water heater to use. Any thoughts or tips would be greatly appreciated!! We are going back and forth on block wall, poured wall, and ICF for the basement.

"Pure luck"

Posted to HiddenInOhio by Jason in Elyria, OH on 11/16/2010

After eliminating our previous architect from our progress towards our dream home, my wife and I could not seem to catch a break. We searched for an architect for weeks, leaving numerous messages to different firms and architects that we Googled or searched for in the Yellow Pages. Not one would call back. How frustrating, right? We asked everybody we knew if they could refer us to an architect, but unfortunately nobody could.

But finally we struck gold, well, in our eyes we did! A very great friend of ours nannied for a couple, who come to find out, had a beautiful O-B home on the shore of Lake Erie. One day she asked us to stop there and visit while we were out running some errands. Fortunately we did, because this house had a majority of features we were looking for in our dream home. It was almost scary!! On a whim, we asked our friend to see if she could get a recommendation for an architect from the homeowners. That night we received a call with a highly-recommended architect who was about twenty minutes from us. This guy ended up being the one!

I soon tried collecting as much information as I could on this architect. He was an Ohio State grad who had his own firm for a many number of years. He ended up combining his firm with three other of his college graduate friends who also had their own architectural firms as well. The four of them combined their great minds together to put out absolutely beautiful, livable homes. Needless to say, my wife and I were impressed before even meeting with the man. I called, made an appointment, and within a week, the wife, the kid, and myself were driving to the firm for our first of what would be many meetings.

Upon greeting him, we already had a good feeling about this one. He seemed to look at you in the eyes when you talked, taking in everything that you said. He nodded, gave his own perspective of things, and basically let us know that he wanted the opportunity to help turn our "dream home notebook" into a reality. What a stark difference this was compared to our first so-called "architect". And from this point on, the ball started moving again. Our O-B dream home was starting to become a reality!

One step at a time...

Posted to HiddenInOhio by Jason in Elyria, OH on 11/11/2010

The last couple of months while our house was on the market, we built a 56x48 garage on our dream plot of land. The original intention was to build a loft area in the upper part of the garage that we could move to if our house sold. By the time we had finished the exterior of the garage, we got the offer on the house and unfortunately ran out of time to build the loft area. The house suddenly selling, and the loft never getting built seemed to start a whole landslide of delays that were going to happen which caused MUCH frustration. Our first baby (Emelyn) came into the world, which brought us so much joy, but the idea of building a home was not even in reach now.

Our free time for the planning phase was not there anymore. I'm sure most new parents here can attest to that. We slowly found time to still go through more and more house plans. Yes, we had literally gone through thousands, and not one of them was anything that we wanted. We both truly wanted a custom one-of-a-kind home, and we could not find one that we liked. "Were we being too picky?", "Should we just settle?"; these were the thoughts that constantly went through our heads. Our dream home book was a thick heavy binder full of our ideas that we had acquired over the previous couple years. We knew what we wanted, but finding a plan like it was not going to happen. It was time to get an architect on board.

We met with an architect from my hometown a few times, a very nice guy who in the end seemed to want to be friends more than do business. He talked a big game and filled our heads with what we wanted to hear. But in reality, he did not want to help design our "Dream" home. He kept feeding us with "Find a plan that you like online and I will modify it to what you like", or "I can draw a house better than anybody else in Ohio". When it all boiled down, he did not have our best interests in mind. We could not find a plan we liked online, and we discussed this with him many times. He did not want to draw a house from scratch, he wanted to modify an existing plan. Our final meeting before breaking our ties with him consisted of him basically telling us that we are being too picky and the house that we wanted is not like what builders are constructing in the area. He bashed our ideas on 2x6 exterior walls, laughed at us for wanting ten-foot ceilings because "it's a waste of money and no builder does anything more than eight foot so why would we". On top of that, the plans he started designing had a covered veranda covering our wall of family room windows, totally obstructing our view of our beautiful wooded lot. Not acceptable, and when inquired on it, the basic response he gave us was "why move it, it has to go on the back of the house somewhere".

Needless to say, this man delayed our plans almost two and a half months. We could not get ahold of him at all, he would not return our calls, and giving us updates was rare. We wish he would have showed his cards in the beginning so that we would not have wasted so much of our time. His so-called "plans" for our dream home were nothing more than a butchered makeover of a previously drawn standard ranch. It incorporated very few specs from our dream home book. My wife and I were very lucky that we owed this man nothing unless we decided to purchase the plans that he had slapped together. As we would eventually learn, cutting ties with this man was the BEST move my wife and I had done thus far.

Long time coming...

Posted to HiddenInOhio by Jason in Elyria, OH on 11/5/2010

Posted by Tim in North Pole, AK on 11/11/2010 Tim's Forum Posts: 17 Journal Entries: 31 Interview Answers: 64 Average Forum Rating: 4.20 Tim's Selected Image 11/11/2010

Good luck on your project! One of the main reasons we're building our own house is exactly like you said, shoddy workmanship. There are some great contractors out there, but hard to find. Besides, I can upgrade on features, since I'm saving money. Tim