Thank you for maintaining a wonderful website to support one of my all-time favorite books. Dyan E., Lexington Park, MD

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1,000 hours isn't enough

Posted to do-over-house by Gary in Roseville, CA on 4/25/2007

Well here we are two months later. Should have the final plans this week, that's what we have been told.

We spent our 1,000+ hours planning the design, picking interior and exterior finish, electrical and plumbing, heating, siting the house, etc.

Getting ready to start, need an access road. Hire a guy with a dozer and put it in - right? Wrong, need an access permit, but I have one - county says no I don't. Trip to county (no small thing as I live 600 miles away). Backtrack through paperwork and there it is, tell them I'll be starting very soon. Now I'm ready to go. 

Go home, hire a blade man to start, and he wants to see grading permit. No one said anything about a grading permit. Well that's because the access permit is a land use thing and a grading permit is a build dept. thing.

Now to get a grading permit I need to dig test holes near the building site, and the inspectors want easy access to check on them. The problem is that the building site is 700' off the road and it would be really handy for everyone (including the inspectors) if I could rough in a road. Would be, isn't going to happen.

The point of this post is that if the 1,000 hours of house planning doesn't cover the building permit process, figure on at least 200-300 hours more if you are building in Washington County, Oregon. 

Another rule of thumb my wife pointed out is that for every week I let things go by themselves it seems to delay the project by a month – regretfully I must agree.

Cool things I've found - wood look tile flooring, looks like distressed wood, comes in 5”x18” comes in different finishes (darker -> lighter) current price about $2.75 sq. ft. delivered. The other is a pre-finished siding that really looks like wood, take a look: 

Siding: builddirect.com/Fiber-Cement-Siding/house_siding-Summer-Wheat

Flooring: builddirect.com/Porcelain-Tile/ceramic_tile_driftwood-Bleached-Oak

Hopefully I’ll have more news sooner rather than later.

SIPs or ICFs - our first big decision

Posted to do-over-house by Gary in Roseville, CA on 2/12/2007

This is our do-over house. Do-over because we are building this house on five acres that we own just south of Portland, Oregon. My wife and I are semi-retired and our plan is to end up in Washington on the Kitsap Peninsula where we will build this same house again. We will have the experience building the first house here, plus the advantage of "if I did this again, I'd" make whatever changes and correct oversights from the first house.

We are working with an architect and the design is in its final stages. We chose the architect because of a recommendation from the SIP manufacturer. This will be a single-story house.

We will sub out almost everything (perhaps I'll rent a 'Cat or backhoe and do the prelim site work myself). 

Now we aren't sure if we want to stay with SIPs or go to ICF's.  The final determination will be cost.

We are still in the planning stage, but we got the acreage cleared last weekend and hope to get the surveyor out in a week or two.

We are looking for a builder who is experienced with either SIP's or ICF's, and any other tradespeople that folks have had a good experience with (I know never use a preposition to end a sentence with)  ;->

Until we break ground, my posts here will be sparse.