I came across this site and The Owner-Builder Book early on. I gained a lot of valuable information from the book and this site. Jim Cleaver

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DONE (mostly...)

Posted to TheBeachHouse by Tami in Shoreline, WA on 1/16/2010

We are done!! Well, to be more accurate, we are as done as we are going to get for the next who-knows-how-long! We moved into the house on July 1st, 2009. Yes, that's right, SEVEN months ago! 

I can see the end..sort of

Posted to TheBeachHouse by Tami in Shoreline, WA on 4/6/2009 10:35:07 PM

I would have posted sooner but I crawled under a rock and didn't bring my laptop.   After brushing off the dirt, I finally feel capable of posting.

We are actually almost done.  Since my last post the interior has had it's primer coat of paint, final paint on the ceilings, 90% of the millwork, 75% of the tile installed, wood floor installed, and almost all cabinets installed. Whew!  That is a lot of stuff!  Oh, and the exterior is painted as well. 

We could probably have been done a couple of months (okay, maybe one month) ago but due to owner-builder inexperience and inability to make a decision (just choose beige) in a timely manner really killed us time wise.  I seriously spent over 20 hours looking at TILE.  Tile for crying out loud!  In the end I feel as though I just closed my eyes and picked.  I was exhausted and just pointed and said "that looks good, I'll go with that".   

One of the bigger issues over the past few months is that our permanent power to the house was not connected.  (Have I mentioned before that I REALLY dislike our electricians?)  Anyway, the issue was the city was forcing us to take our power underground.  Aesthetically we preferred underground but because of where the power comes to the property it really didn't matter too much, so we wanted to go the less expensive route, which is overhead.  We lost that battle with the city so we promptly hired someone to dig a trench for the power cables.  After the trench was dug we called the electrician to come check it out and lay the lines.  The electrician comes out, says the trench is good.  Excellent.  Next call is to the city to come approve the trench.  City claims the trench is too shallow.  Fine.  We are pressed for time so we let the electrician hire someone to dig out the balance of the trench. (Don't ever, ever, do that!)  It cost us as much to dig the final 10% of the trench as the first 90%.   Fine.  Whatever.  When is our power coming?  7-10 days claims the electrician.  It took another 5 weeks to get our permanent power, and it only happened because we basically took matters into our own hands and spoke with the city directly and handled the final digging myself.  I had a very frank talk with our electricians and let them know, in no uncertain terms, how unhappy I was with them.  Now that they are trimming out the house, I do wonder if that was the best idea! 

 As a side note, we disliked the electricians so much that we got quotes to have another company trim out the house.  Everyone, including the other company I wanted to hire, suggested we try to stick with the original company because of potential future issues. 

Posted by RogerC in Phoenix, AZ on 4/13/2009 RogerC's Forum Posts: 54 Interview Answers: 3 Average Forum Rating: 3.36 Randomly Selected Image 4/13/2009

What an unpleasant experience your electrical has been...  I feel for you.  But I'm not sure I follow the logic of sticking with someone you know isn't providing the best cost nor quality.  What 'future issues' would you expect to have by going with a new contractor? I haven't even started my build yet, but I've already had one unexpected dissaapointing issue come up with the electric.  Before I purchased my land, I contacted the power company (Arizona Public Service) to get an estimate on the cost of bringing power to my land the last 300 feet from the nearest existing pole.  They sent a crew out to do the measurments and a few weeks later reported back to me that, because my land was within 1000 feet from the existing line "there would be no charge" to bring it the rest of the way to my lot.   So...  a couple of months later, after I purchased the land, I call them up to get things moving...  then they tell me "the rules have changed".  It's gonna cost around $10,000 to bring it over now!  arg!  If that wasn't bad enough, they tell me if I had actually had them start the work order back then, regardless of whether or not they actually had installed it by now, they'd 'grand-father me' under the old rules.  Wish they had let me know that back then.  :(

Posted by Ross in Hillsboro, OR on 7/12/2009 Ross's Forum Posts: 15 Journal Entries: 22 Interview Answers: 165 Average Forum Rating: 3.69 My Construction Website Ross's Selected Image 7/12/2009

Hi Tami,   We are looking to do a similar teardown to our airpark home remodel.  I purchased the home 3 years ago, and we were planning on getting a construction loan, build, then sell our existing home and move in.  With the economic downturn, it has made us pause a bit on the funding.. I'm only now considering getting back on the funding bandwagon.    Some of the bids I have for materials now are terrific... if only I could afford to save ;). --R

Drywall ends...

Posted to TheBeachHouse by Tami in Shoreline, WA on 12/11/2008

Drywall is almost complete and it feels like we have a real house now.  Up until now it has seemed like a finished house was so far away and we were going to have this massive money sucking construction thing forever.  The past two weeks have been great because there is very little to do in the house while the drywallers are there.  It has almost been like a little vacation!

The bummer right now is I am scrambling to schedule our paint and hardwoods.  At this point I am planning to paint the interior of the house myself (feel free to call me crazy, everybody else does...).  I feel a little panicked and overwhelmed now that we are moving on to finishes.  There are (again) so many decisions to make.  I dropped the ball on ordering our cabinets because I just couldn't decide!  Now, we will have to wait about 4 wks longer than we should have for them to arrive.  Big oops because, as we all know, time IS money with construction. 

The deck railings are beginning to be installed today.  I am very excited for this to happen as our decks are scary without the rails.  I have all the doors leading to decks taped well to attempt to keep people off of them.

Garage doors should (finally!) be here next Friday.  I also ordered those very late due to indecision.  We went with a very cool garage doors and I am excited that it won't match everybody else's.

I'll try to update with pictures promptly. 

Photos

The exterior showing the installed siding.

another angle of the exterior.

About to Drywall

Posted to TheBeachHouse by Tami in Shoreline, WA on 11/20/2008 1:55:48 PM

I still stick with a previous post, building a house is tough!  I'm usually too tired to write about construction after I get home at the end of the day. 

The siding is on and it is beautiful.  We went with a combination of cedar shakes, HardiBoard, and board and batten.  It took exactly two weeks for the siding.  We hired a labor-only crew and supplied material.  Ultimately it worked out well financially, but I was constantly running for caulking, flashing, or something else that was underestimated when it was ordered.  

I have spent the last week pre-wiring the house for sound and with Cat-5.  I have known all along that I wanted a whole-house audio system, but I kept putting it off until now.  I am wiring the top two floors (4,550 sq ft) for sound everywhere.  I have broken the house into zones and there will be a volume and source control in each zone.  It will be very cool in the end, but it is kicking my behind right now.  It is a lot of work. 

Insulation starts tomorrow and drywall starts on Tuesday.  These are (like so many others) behind schedule.  In part due to me because my whole-house system is not done and more so due to the fact that our sprinkler company sucks and has taken two months to install a system that should have taken two weeks.  That being said, our sprinkler system inspection will be this morning, quickly followed by our general framing inspection. (which the city would not do without the sprinkler system being done) 

It's always something

Posted to TheBeachHouse by Tami in Shoreline, WA on 10/3/2008 12:46:45 PM

Today our five fireplaces were supposed to be installed.  Two of the five were installed.  One fireplace was the wrong size and two fireplaces had venting issues.  Great.  We already had to move a wall in order to fit one of the fireplaces that now can't be vented.  Ugh. 

I'm considering turning off my phone and going to see a movie.  Is that really an option though when you choose to owner-build?

More photo's finally...

Photos

The view from the master bathtub.	The house about 6 weeks ago. Nearly done with framing and no front porch yet.	Front porch
View looking down toward the garage and the water.

Posted by Grant in Blacksburg, VA on 10/3/2008 2008, 2009 Merit Award Winner Grant's Forum Posts: 363 Journal Entries: 20 Interview Answers: 164 Average Forum Rating: 4.05 Grant's Selected Image 10/3/2008

The view from the MBa tub is simply gorgeous!

Nearing the mechanical end

Posted to TheBeachHouse by Tami in Shoreline, WA on 10/2/2008 8:28:01 AM

Have I mentioned yet that this is hard? 

We are currently in our third week of electrical and our fire sprinkler started going in yesterday.  We had a pipe leaking under the slab (plumbers' fault) and the plumbers had to jackhammer a chunk out of our slab (which will be finished living space).  I was so stressed about it that by the time we found out what it was and that we wouldn't have to pay to have it repaired, I could only laugh.  Not a belly-like laugh, more like a "I'm almost crazy and that was a near miss on pushing me over the edge" sort of laugh.   ha-ha. 

So far we have been really lucky with our subcontractors.  I think it is a bit unfortunate that the "worst" crew we had was a company that a friend worked for.  We requested our friend to run our job and now I can't wait until they are out of the house.  This crew is messier and they whine more than all the other crews combined.  It has been really disappointing to witness the complete lack of respect for our home by the one person (the friend) that I thought would really treat it well.  I still made them bid the job, and I got other bids, but in the end we hired them because of our friend.  They were not the lowest bid, but were very competitive and I trusted our friend's recommendation and our friend to do a good job.  I think they are doing a good job, but it is a bit sad to trust them less at this point than I have trusted any other company.

We had our rooftop deck waterproofed three weeks ago.  At that time the company told me we would get our remaining decks (4) waterproofed in two weeks.  That being the case, I went ahead and ordered 5 doors that would take three weeks to arrive.  I have called this company once a week since they did the initial job and they keep saying "two weeks".  When I spoke to them this Monday, they again said "two weeks".  At that point I was pretty annoyed but was really just too tired to push it too far.  I did get them to come out next Wednesday rather than the following.  The day after speaking with them, all the doors arrived.  Two of these doors are BIG doors (12x8) and I was not about to risk my doors walking off.  I called the company and really insisted that they come out immediatly or they could be responsible for the doors.  They are coming today.  Now, if the rain will just hold off until tomorrow!

Building a house is tough

Posted to TheBeachHouse by Tami in Shoreline, WA on 9/12/2008

Okay, I'm back after a two-month break.  Since I posted last, framing wrapped up, plumbing and HVAC rough-in took place, and we are one week into electrical rough-in.

As it turns out, building a house is really tough!  It is so much more stressful and time consuming than I ever imagined it would be.  Yeah, yeah, you know it's going to be hard, but until you are in the middle of it you really have no idea. 

With the rough-in of all of the mechanical systems it is amazing how many decisions there are to make.  Can I run this duct through the middle of the dining room?  (uh..no)  Where do you want the switch to turn on your island lights?   Do you want a floor plug in the living room?  If so, where will the couch be?  And on, and on, and on, and on...

We were very excited to get "dried in" at the beginning of August.  That is until the crazy Seattle summer rains came and then we realized that because our rooftop deck was not yet waterproofed, we were NOT dried in.  Enter tarp management. We had to tarp the roof deck, the master bedroom underneath the roof deck, and the dining room under the master bedroom.  What a miserable week!  I was at the house every day sweeping the water off all of the tarps.  Part of the reason this was critical at this point is we had done pre-rock (drywall behind the furnaces) and needed to protect our little bit of drywall.  It was a success, but a pain.

Yesterday we got the roof deck waterproofed so we should be basically good to go if it rains.  We still have four more decks to waterproof, but that will happen in a couple of weeks.

Photos

Largest walls in the house. Our entry and front stairway...	The beginning of the main (2nd) floor.	Garage
This becomes a house? The 2nd and 3rd floor in pieces.	Walls on main floor...

Pictures...

Posted to TheBeachHouse by Tami in Shoreline, WA on 6/23/2008 11:39:07 PM

A few pictures to bring things a bit closer to up to date....

Photos

Our lot showing the big house in front.	Framing week one. The first of three floors.	Lousy picture but it gives you the basic idea of the angle of our main floor view.

Best Moment Yet...

Posted to TheBeachHouse by Tami in Shoreline, WA on 6/23/2008

Last Thursday I got my first peek at the view from the third floor and we can see over the house in front of us! This was the BIGGEST issue for us. We are only doing this project with the hope/belief that we would see completely over the neighbor's house from the top floor. Once we were finally through civil engineering and permitting, we really had no clue if we were going to see over or not. I would ask everyone that came by the site, "do you think we will see over that house?" Almost everyone said "yes", but I just couldn't believe it until I could see it!

Today about half of the third floor is sheathed, and they have built a stairway up (thank goodness, as the ladder always leaves me anxious at the top!). Our view is absolutely incredible. I'll post pictures soon.

Photos

View from our bedroom.	Putting another large wall in place. This is for the back stairway.	The entry area.
The first part of the third floor.

Our project

Posted to TheBeachHouse by Tami in Shoreline, WA on 6/11/2008 11:02:43 AM

This is a bit out of order, but I thought I would give the basics of our project.  We are building a 6,200 sq ft house on a sloped 10K sq ft view lot.  The house is giant and we are really not happy about the size of it at all.  We asked for a house in the 3,500-4,000 sq ft. range.  Ever heard of Architects Gone Wild?  As it turns out, our architect is the star.  Ugh.  Basically what happened is that we ended up with a 4,550 sq ft house that we loved.  Because we have sloped view property with a big house in front of us, we needed a basement (or a giant crawl space) to push us up to our height restriction.  So, we added a 1,700 sq ft basement.  That is how our house grew to ridiculous proportions. Ridiculous.  At this point, the basement will be unfinished.

We purchased our property five years ago and lived in it for nearly four years.  We had initially hoped to simply add on to the existing house, but after digging in a bit we realized that it was not going to work out that way.  So, in January of this year (2008) we tore our house down.  (We actually destroyed the house in August of 2007 when we donated it the fire department for training.) 

We broke ground on our project on March 16th.  Excavation took about two weeks.  It was absolutely amazing to watch the shape of our property change with the excavation.  Weird almost.  Foundation started going in the first week of April and took most of April to complete.  We have about 120 yards of concrete in our footings and foundation.  It is massive!  After foundation we had waterproofing and then tight lines and drainage systems went in, then backfill and preparations for the slab. 

Photos

Our home for four years. It was sad and exciting to see it go.

House no more. Our lot from the front.

Posted by RogerC in Phoenix, AZ on 6/11/2008 RogerC's Forum Posts: 54 Interview Answers: 3 Average Forum Rating: 3.36 Randomly Selected Image 6/11/2008

Congratulations!  Now that you're finally building, it sounds like you're moving along at a great pace. I completely understand  your frustration with the size of your house.  I too have a sloping lot with a beautiful view.  The approach to my lot from the street is at the lower elevation and the view is at the back, on the highest point of the lot.  The house needs to sit up on the highest part of the lot to take advantage of the view behind, so I'll either have to build a two-story with the bottom floor cut into the slope and exposed only on the front of the house where the entry will be so the upper floor will be up at 'view level'.  Or if I build a single-story up on the highest point of the lot I'll have to fill-in a huge amount of the front yard to raise the entry up to the level of the house.  I think the more practical approach will be a two-story, but if I put all of the rooms that I'd like to take advantage of the views up on the upper floor, it's going to end up being a very big house. I'm actually ok with that though.  The way I see it, although it's more house than I need, it will be a spectacular home that I might someday sell, buy something smaller and have fun with the profit.  :) Good luck with getting your window problems worked out.  Keep us posted!

Posted by Grant in Blacksburg, VA on 8/9/2008 2008, 2009 Merit Award Winner Grant's Forum Posts: 363 Journal Entries: 20 Interview Answers: 164 Average Forum Rating: 4.05 Grant's Selected Image 8/9/2008

Tami, I'm my own "architect gone wild" and I am going through the exact same issues.  My lot slopes similarly to your and in order to take advantage of the views I have to build "up."  We are going to completely finish two floors and then decide whether we want to finish bedrooms and bathrooms in the attic or the basement to meet our appraisal requirements, but most of the attic and basement area will be left unfinished at the time of the build for budgetary limitation reasons. I haven't started my cost estimates yet, but as a percentage (since construction costs are quite different in Washington and podunk Alabama) how much cost increase do you have for adding the full length unfinished basement???  I'm trying to figure out how all of the additional unfinished space is going to affect my budget.  I do like that I can gradually finish the unfinished space over time and thereby greatly enhance my equity position. My draft floorplans are in my journal entries... Our houses appear to be roughly the same footprint size and I'd love to learn from your experiences.  I intend to break ground within 18 months. regards, Grant

Framing progress

Posted to TheBeachHouse by Tami in Shoreline, WA on 6/11/2008 10:29:51 AM

Framing is coming along.  Right now I think is one of the best points in construction as you see a lot of progress in a short period of time.  We are in our 3rd week of framing and they are easily half way done.  It is so exciting to see the house take shape!  After staring at it on paper for over two years, it is almost surreal to have it exist. 

A couple of things with regard to framing.  Once the house started taking shape we realized a couple of things.  1. Our basement is going to be a dark cave 2. We have the biggest windows in the world and some in really stupid places (a 6ft window over a bathtub and in a closet)  3. Some "view" windows have no view.  4. Some places that we didn't think needed a window have a great view and now need a window. 

We corrected the dark cave as much as possible by eliminating about a 1/3rd of the deck on the main floor.  We initially were going to have a deck across the entire back of the house.  On the main floor, we have a awesome view from both ends of the house, but in the middle we only have a view of the big house in front of us.  So we cut out the middle portion of deck.  It will save us money (to build) and it will allow more light into the cave. 

As far as windows go, we are making necessary adjustments as we go along.  We are just trying to stay one step ahead of the framers so that we don't have to deal with any change orders!  Not the easiest thing to do when you realize several of your windows are wacky.

Framing begins

Posted to TheBeachHouse by Tami in Shoreline, WA on 5/24/2008

After pouring the slab on Monday, it rained off and on all day Tuesday. I was really hoping for sunshine as our first wood delivery was due to arrive on Wednesday (may 21st) and I wanted the slab nice and hard. 

On Tuesday (may 20th) I met the rep from our lumber company and our framing contractor at the sight to go over the plans.  I pulled out the approved set of plans and Kristen (the rep) immediately says "uh oh, these are different then mine".  Trust me, "uh oh" is not something you ever want to hear when you have several thousand dollars worth of wood arriving in about 14 hours!  Actually, you just never want to hear "uh oh." Ken (framing contractor) was stuck in traffic so Kristen went through the plans and found all the differences.  Fortunately, it was only going to raise our cost a bit and it would not effect the delivery for the next day.  Ken finally arrived with the boom truck.  Silly as it sounds, it is always exciting to see progress on the house, and all heavy equipment equals progress to me!

I have not mentioned it yet, but our former GC, Brian, was not the most experienced or qualified GC out there.  This lumber "uh oh" was yet another thing that Brian had not followed up on.  I can easily blame Brian all I want (and I do ALOT!) but, the reality is that I took over this project and I should have verified that the lumber company and I were working off the most recent set of plans.  Another, "doh!" moment for me.  Aaaah, the joys of being an owner builder.

Our first lumber delivery arrived as planned on Wednesday morning.  I went over the floor plan and window changes with our framers and then basically got out of their way.  They spent most of the day moving our lumber onto the slab and just getting things set up.  Our lot is sloped, so we require a boom to get lumber in.  I'll try to post pics soon.

On Friday night they had framed about 3/4 of the lowest floor.  It is crazy exciting watching the house begin to take shape!

Slab is poured

Posted to TheBeachHouse by Tami in Shoreline, WA on 5/19/2008

After a grueling weekend digging out our footings and trying to do a final grade with no experience whatsoever, the slab was poured today!  We really didn't think it would happen.  Ron and I  spent most of the day on Saturday shoveling out dirt (to be fair, Ron put in several more hours than I did) and on Sunday my sister and brother-in-law joined us.  I have never had to scrub so hard to get the dirt off of my body! 

The pour was originally scheduled for Friday morning, but on Thursday night my slab guys let me know that I did my first major owner-builder oops.  I didn't get a final grade.  Ugh.  I thought I had it all handled, backfill and then slab.  Doh!  Someone needs to come in after backfill (as I understand it it is usually the GC's laborers)  We re-scheduled the pour for Monday and I was determined to make it happen.  When we left on Sunday night, sun burnt and exhausted, we were really bummed because we didn't think we were close enough to being done for the pour.  As luck would have it, our slab guys crew was able to finish it for us in under one hour and the pour went on as planned.  The only bummer was the garage didn't get poured today and has been postponed until later this week or early next week. 

I'm super happy because today's pour means that we can have our lumber delivered and start getting ready to frame on Wednesday!