This will be a short post, but I wanted to come on and let you know why we’ve been so quiet. It’s been over a month- we’re so sorry to neglect you. We went on vacation last week and came home to immediately start the packing and moving tasks of getting into our rental so we can get out of this house. Then we can crush it to rubble and have it hauled away. Is anyone as excited as I…
A key part of our overall logistics for this project was to build the new garage in advance so we could use it as storage and staging space during the main house demolition and new construction. As we were a little slow on the draw getting it started last summer and a very wet October put the foundation on hold, the whole garage build has been elapsing in slow-mo. Amy, my brother Neil and I put the roof on back…
…but planning is everything.” –Dwight Eisenhower It probably won’t surprise you to know that when building a house you need house plans. I posted some pretty ones up here a little while back. But the ones that tradesmen use aren’t nearly so pretty. In fact they are usually cluttered and nearly indecipherable. Looking at examples online is enough to make your eyes cross in double-knots. One of the most thorough, readable (and high resolution) versions I could find was from…
Because we have to leave our house to build the new house, we were in need of finding a rental. It’s been so long since we rented anything we’re a little out of the loop. We’ve been homeowners for over 15 years, so we’re a bit unusual and not your typical renters. I’m hoping this translates to ‘better’. For awhile now, I had been keeping my eyes open for what the rental market looked like in our town. Most rentals…
How are we planning on involving the kids? Do they get to pick their rooms/paint/carpet/etc? What do the kids want from the house building experience? Those might be questions you’ve been asking yourself. Well, we have answers! We also have some general beliefs about how much exposure our kids have on this great big internet now that we have a blog. This is not something we have decided frivolously. In fact, Jim and I started from pretty opposite corners in…
One of the decisions we made to start the whole house project was to build the garage first. There were a couple of reasons why we wanted to tackle just a small part of building before going whole-hog on the house. It allowed us to test out some of the contractors we’d need for the house. It was as much a test for them as it was for us being the GC’s for this project. We had to make different…
Serving as your own General Contractor (or GC, in the common parlance) can save you a fair bit of money and it lets you build things just the way you want them. But it also involves doing all the work that a GC would usually do for you, like contacting subcontractors to get bids, answering all their questions, and following up on them to be sure you get what you need. This is the part I have been least looking…
A little update to keep our single subscriber (Hi Aubrie!) and maybe a few other readers up on news around here. Jim started calling contractors (but not even all of them) and that’s been consuming a large chunk of his time. It feels like we’re really beginning something. We’re getting some good leads and hope for bids to come in soon. This might lead to some questions about the time frame for all this work. We started by trying to…
Last week we posted some of our larger goals in building the house and said we’d post our house plans along with some explanation of them this week. The plans are in the post below, so now we’re back with some discussion of how we tried to design the house to meet those goals. Goal 1: To build a well-appointed home custom designed for the way we live One of our primary design goals was to follow the trend set…
Here’s a rundown of the new house plans as they stand today. First floor: Second Floor: Basement (just for good measure): And a few vanity shots in 3D!