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Getting Started / Home Site Pictures

Bryan in Siloam Springs, AR — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:08:22 GMT

Stephanie and I are finally in a position where we can consider building a home on a hill in rural Arkansas on some family-owned land. The property is currently covered in trees and on top of an 1100 sq foot hill with views of rolling pastureland for 360 degrees, if the trees were removed. The home is going to be located here. We've gone back and forth on how many of the acres we wish to buy from Stephanie's mom, but are leaning towards 9-12 right now.

Stephanie and I sat down and listed a few of the things we wanted in our new home. We wanted the home to be energy-efficient. Projections of energy costs rising dramatically over the next decade seem both likely and frightening to an accountant such as myself. I believe paying up-front for energy efficiency can help hedge against the financial risk that energy costs are going to rise significantly and increase my monthly variable expenses substantially. We're currently strongly considering using SIPS for the roof, the floor, and the exterior walls, with a crawlspace foundation.

We also wanted a home that more accurately reflected our more modern sensibilities, took advantage of our great views, and had a large enough great room/dining room/kitchen to host a large family gathering or party comfortably. Stephanie is an awesome cook, so we anticipate the kitchen being a focal point for entertaining. Some of our other preferences...I want a kitchen island with bar stools around it, which is just a design and seating preference of mine (that's possibly related to my bad back), we also need a dedicated office space, since Stephanie works from home.

The house is going to be about 1500 feet away from any utilities, so we're going to have to pay for the electrical hookup, but will probably eschew the natural gas hookup (which would likely cost thousands) in favor of propane. Stephanie thinks we can get the propane tank buried, which would be cool. We only really need it for starting our fireplace and grill, since we'll be using electric for our hot water and induction/electric for our cooking.

We finally found a plan that suited our needs (with some adjustments needed) here . We particularly like the upstairs master suite with multiple rooftop decks, including one that just seems made for a hot tub.

Using this we went out to the home site and stepped off and taped to get a general idea of the likely layout of the house. Here's the pictures of the site...

Window Shopping

Mary in Lititz, PA — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:59:54 GMT

We spent the better part of an afternoon looking at surplus windows for the shop. Since I had done plans and elevations for the shop, I had a good feel for the windows we wanted. Prior to setting out, I researched our target sizes at a Big Box store so we had that info as a reference to compare against the surplus pricing.

The first store appeared to have bulk selections of new white vinyl windows with the surplus store's name stuck on them. Most of the windows were for new construction with plenty of windows in each size. There was also a small section of replacement windows. In comparing their prices with a BigBox store, I didn't think the suspect quality was worth the few dollars in savings. Of course I'm no window expert, so maybe the quality was OK... but to me they looked cheaply made. The second store had a random collection of windows of all sizes, shapes, colors and specs. Ninety percent were replacement windows and a few were new construction. There didn’t appear to be any organization to the way they were stored, and their published inventory list with window locations was useless. But the people in the store were pleasant and helpful and willing helped load our truck, too.

It took a bit of looking, and some flexibility on the design, but we managed to get seven new-construction windows to meet our design requirements for $561. This may not be auction bargain pricing, but I think we had a decent savings. The two large windows are moderate quality, and the five smaller ones are better quality than I would have gotten if we bought new.

And to Michael and Jeff on this forum, thanks again for the input on new vs. replacement windows. We got lucky and found new-construction surplus windows. And aside from the easier installation, we thought the flanges on the windows offer some additional resistance to wind-driven rain.

Beautiful wildlife

mark in altoona, PA — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:42:58 GMT

This is a photo taken on our trail cam behind our foundation. We hope they stick around for a long time. What a beautiful sight to see all the wildlife right in your back yard!

Waiting for the Logs

mark in altoona, PA — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:31:56 GMT

We now have the foundation completed and are waiting for our logs to come. The east coast had three major snow storms in February which pushed back the delivery of the logs from the beginning of Feb. to the middle of March. In the mean time, we installed our underground piping for our electricity, phone and cable. We are always going up to the land to look around and enjoy the beautiful scenery. We put a trail cam in the back of the house and have gotten some awesome pictures of many deer on our land.

In the beginning...

mark in altoona, PA — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:17:31 GMT

We were driving down a quiet country road in Altoona, PA in the spring of 2006 and noticed a "land for sale" sign posted on a piece of ground. We had been looking for some time for the perfect place to build and this was it. We closed the sale of the land in July 2006.

After battling with the department of transportation for one year about giving us a right of way to our land we were permitted in July 2007. We began the long aginizing process of obtaining a construction loan and were to close in October 2008. A week before we were to close on our loan the economy went in the tank and we backed out. After searching through many books and magazines, we made the decision to build a log home. We have been married for 30 years and have always dreamed of someday owning our own log home. Our families are all tradesmen in different parts of construction. Mark's family has a plumbing and HVAC business, Lisa's father is a plaster, drywall and stoneworker, Our brother-in-law and his son are electricians and our son is also in construction and has a good deal of experience in block work and woodworking. After we backed out of our loan, we began construction on the foundation with our own money. We finally obtained our construction loan in October of 2009.

Even more tile!

Adam in Southport, NC — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:30:48 GMT

Will the tile ever end? No, I don't think it will. I'm not sure who talked me into the whole hopscotch pattern in the master bath, but I may need to have a heart to heart with them before this is over.

At any rate, here is the guest bath mostly tiled. I forgot to measure and make my cuts early on, so I will have to go back in a day or so to fill them in.

Also, here is the progress on the master after about an hour of layout and 2 hours of laying. Me and Ang are beat, and we have a long way to go. We will tackle it again tomorrow night and try to make a dent in it.

A few decisions made.

Phil in Asheville, NC — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 15:42:26 GMT

Well, we are back from our little trip to the mountains and we have made a few decisions. Think we have found an Architect to work with. He will give us the drawings we need to pass code and permit and at a reasonable cost. We got a few Ideas from the various people we met over the weekend and these are also being incorporated in to the house plan.

Well and septic people looks to be all but decided too. The well & septic permit application should be in the mail this week. Again some steady forward progress has been made.

More floor, ready for the hot water heater

Brian in Dome-ville, central, FL — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Another day, another 10 sheets of plywood! We're a little more than halfway finished with the second floor plywood. First pic is most of the floor, second is where the water heater will be (up against the sloping part of the dome roof). Next weekend First Choice plumbing will be back again to do the HWH and the gas line we decided to put in. My youngest kept putting bandaids on my knuckles, I guess I forgot how to use a hammer. At least I didn't hit myself with it. We got a lot done and stopped by Daytona BikeWeek area to get some t-shirts.

By the way, we got a 3 foot piece of 3/8" rebar and bent a 2" hook on one end, and bent a handle on the other end so there was about 2.5 feet of rebar in between hook and handle. Holding the handle, you can put the hook under the edge of the plywood and pull up and drag the plywood anywhere you need it without bending over. It worked GREAT!

Some Decisions Made

Mary in Lititz, PA — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:07:59 GMT

It seems like the planning has been taking a long time, with a lot of looping back over the same issues, tweaking things, changing things up to see if it works out better. When I first started serious planning in Jan. 2009 I thought this would all be settled by March 2009 and we would break ground that summer. No way! We got far enough along in the planning to put in the first part of the driveway in the fall of 2009. And here it is, March 2010 and we’ve finally seem to have got it settled.

We have site plan, house plan and farm shop plan. All of these were done by yours truly in Chief Architect. We started the process of getting construction drawings from a professional, using our plans and elevations as a fairly detailed starting point. Overall, I feel really good about the house plan. Its been a long time coming, but I think it will suit our needs well. At 2,300 sq ft it’s bigger than I had originally wanted. But when I added in space for accessible, aging-in-place features and room for out of town family it just kept coming up to the 2,300 mark.

We’ve been planning a farm shop and we’ve decided to build this building first rather than start with the house. It will give us (me) construction site experience and then serve as a storage and launching pad to do the house. Of course Hubby is thrilled that the shop is going up first. In his mind, the shop with a bed in the corner is all that the property requires. But I’m pretty sure we’ll still need to build a house. ;-) We’ve finished the plans for the shop and just need to get construction drawings, which should be a quick thing to do as it is a pretty simple building.

And after several more attempts at computer designing and then actually laying it out on the site, I believe we have the site planning settled too. It took a lot longer than I thought it would but in the end I’m actually glad we were forced to spend the extra time on site. For each iteration we would layout the buildings and connecting driveway and then actually drive it, and walk it and stand there and think how the wind was going to come through and would it be comfortable, and how would the daily chores work out and where were the views and on and on. The weather conditions were very different each time we happened to be there, and it was good to get a feel for the layout on a nice sunny day last Fall versus a brutally windy day in January. Over the several iterations we were able to make tweaks to the plan that I think will really improve the daily living on site.

Our goal is to break ground this spring… or summer...

Floor layout

Cheryl in Ft. Collins, CO — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:59:59 GMT

Floor layout is pretty much complete, I may replace the shower with a bath tub shower though. I thought about how convenient it would be to have a bathroom in the garage workshop area. There was already a plan to put the laundry facility in the garage area along with a deep sink so putting in a toilet under the stairs next to the deep sink would not cost much more. The framing plan is also complete and I will be shopping it around for quotes on a timber or timber hybrid roof truss package next.

Meanwhile...

Keith in Jeffersonville, GA — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:40:53 GMT

I spent the winter in another cabin, which I did NOT build, merely remodeled... added window, installed insulation, drywall, installed entirely new stovepipe, grounded said pipe, built shelving, a bed, planted daffodils- no, I didn't build it! I was VERY fortunate to have this opportunity arise when a neighbor told me he had a unfinished cabin on his nearby large property I could live in, if I'd fix it up. And luckily, he won't be moving back from Missouri any time soon, so I'm doing quite well in it so far. I am so thankful to have a warm place to stay, nice and insulated, with woodstove heating! Included are a few pics of the tiny (12'x12' with a 4'x8' L-shaped screened porch) cabin.

There's a funny, but cool, story attached (quite literally) to this cabin. It was originally designed and built SOLELY as a heated foyer for a massive RV (Wonderlodge size). The RV pulled in close and "space-docked" with the doorway in the cabin (now replaced by a window). The owners did this only so their menagerie of exotic parrots would have a warm place to live during the winter!! The "screen porch" was built narrow and small, because it was designed as a outdoor birdcage!! I live in the Birdhouse Cabin! LOL!

MY GOODNESS- How the time flies!

Keith in Jeffersonville, GA — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:19:28 GMT

Hello, friends!

I apologize for leaving this journal without an update for so long! I forgot I was even registered here until I got an email.

Anyway, the cabin project has been through the wringer (financially, physically, every way you can think of) until it finally stabilized as a single-story cabin of 420 sq feet, with a log beam shed-type roof. I am still in the process of getting the roof completed. The last entry was posted when I was only planning the home. Now it is 80% complete... all of it constructed by yours truly, working almost entirely alone. I intend the finish look to resemble what Julian May fondly refers to as "munchkin Tudor." I'll post some pics up here soon!

Peace,
Keith

More cabs and tile

Adam in Southport, NC — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:45:16 GMT

Me and Ang worked late this weekend and got the tile down in the utility room. It still needs grout, and tile experts will catch one obvious mistake if they look, but we are pretty happy with it for our first-ever tile project.

Robert and Mom worked tirelessly on cabinets, and now we have pretty much all of the boxes complete. They started on drawers yesterday, so the end should be quickly approaching regarding cabinets. There is a massive amount of cabinetry in this house. I don't know how we talked Mom and Robert into this one :D

Bank Inspection & A Problem

Steven in Colorado Springs, CO — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Today was one of those "good news, bad news" kind of days.

Of course the good news is the "pat on the back" kind of good news, whereas the bad news is more of the "this is probably gonna cost you money" bad news.

Sigh. Never seems to work out the other way, does it?

First the good news. After the aborted run a couple of days ago (things were just too slick and messy) the bank inspector went up today with Builder Dale and Colleen to do his more-or-less monthly inspection. It's been great working with both my bank and this inspector, in no small part because he seems genuinely excited by the Tanglewood project. It's a good sized house and we're located in a truly spectacular area, and he enjoys coming up to see our progress from time to time. This visit went well--the snow has been melting steadily since Monday and while the roads and work area are muddy you can start to see a bit better now how things are going together. He was excited by the progress that's been made so far with the trusses and was of course glad to see that Colleen and I hadn't skipped off to Aruba with the bank's construction money. That all went very well.

Now for the not so good news. While looking at the crew's progress from yesterday Colleen and Builder Dale realized something at nearly the same time--the trusses in the living room are wrong. Just plain wrong. They are supposed to be scissor-trusses since we have an open ceiling towering up in the living room, but instead (as you can see in the snapshots attached below) they are the standard "triangle" shaped trusses.

General chaos ensued once Builder Dale and Colleen noticed this, and there was much consulting of plans. The crew had generically wondered why the trusses were this way but they work on a lot of different houses so they didn't know what the plan was, and the blueprints are definitely mixed in terms of what they say. While they appear to say "open to above" fairly clearly, what they allegedly don't explicitly call out is something like "Here Be Scissor Trusses!". Whether or not that should have been caught by one the half dozen folks who have been looking at the plans, or whether the blueprint should have been more explicit, is apparently a subject of some debate.

There's a meeting tomorrow with the truss crew to figure out what to do--or more precisely where the fault lies. The trusses have to come out and new scissor trusses will have to be built. There's apparently also some confusion over the roofline adjacent to the computer room tower that nobody seems to have noticed in the 142 other reviews of the plans, so that's got to all be worked out too.

I quite honestly am not a happy camper and I'm sorry for my bad mood showing. Experience has shown me that this kind of thing nearly always somehow gets dumped back on the hapless owner, whether or not he had anything to do with it or would have even recognized it if he'd seen it. Taking responsibility for goof-ups like this is not something I've seen much of out of most subcontractors and apparently nobody thought to ask about these trusses at any point in the last couple of months. (Lest one think that every subcontractor is to be mistrusted that's not the case--there have been a couple that stepped up on somewhat lesser mistakes and they're very much on my To Be Admired List). Now I'm afraid I'm going to have to look over every single thing that's done from here on out before somebody runs out and builds a frame that's 2" short or a countertop that's 1' wide just because of a typo on the plans....and that's just going to slow everything down as I become a one-man bottleneck.

Not fun. Not something I want to do. Probably going to be a nasty hit to the discretionary budget.

Don't see a way around it.

Sucky day.

Steven in Colorado Springs

"Upstairs" has been created...

Brian in Dome-ville, central, FL — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT

It's interesting how you see things. We have been working for months on the second floor joists and support structure. This weekend we got the joists finished and started putting down plywood. Although there's only a few sheets put down, I suddenly realized there was a second floor now when there was NOT a second floor earlier that day. We got 4 sheets of 3/4" plywood put down, and both of us pulled muscles in our backs...there's got to be an easier way to move plywood other than bending over and tugging at it.