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Rural-suburban Japan: In my area, land is more like $50/square foot. Less convenient neighborhoods are far less. A typical 2000sqf home lot is about $100,000, but most Americans expect more yard than that. New houses hover around 1300sqf. Also I'm from Mountain View, California where poo poo is bananas rn. I'll make my own thread sometime today. peanut fucked around with this message at 01:52 on Mar 25, 2016 |
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Mar 25, 2016 01:33
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Baronjutter posted:So you could build a big ol' 2,000 ft house for about 300k ? But how much is the land? Another 300-400k ? Around here, a 12,000sqf lot in the suburbs runs around $80k-$100k. My 2 acre lot just a couple miles outside of the suburbs is worth around $150k unimproved (and I'm guessing Gounad's is similar). Drive 50 miles north to the City of RacistHicksville and you can get lots for under $25k.
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Mar 25, 2016 02:07
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Zhentar posted:My 2 acre lot just a couple miles outside of the suburbs is worth around $150k unimproved (and I'm guessing Gounad's is similar). My lot was worth a bit less than that with the dropoff and wetlands, but same ballpark. It had been on the market for years (but not really advertised). Location-wise, we're about 45 minutes west of Boston. You travel 15 minutes closer and the price would double, get another 15 closer and... well... I couldn't afford it. peanut posted:Our budget is much less than yours, but if you're just regular people with regular jobs, I think it's better to match the house to your budget, not raise the budget to match the house. The new budget is still within our means. I'd consider us regular people with regular jobs too, but it's amazing how different "regular jobs" pay depending on where you live. It helps that we've been saving for 20 years plus have equity built up in our current house, the loan we'll need is far lower than the price.
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Mar 25, 2016 13:15
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For reference, property values in the San Francisco Bay Area have literally doubled over the past ~8 years, and you better believe that's not because the houses on them are worth twice as much. In fact if you get homeowner's insurance, it's typically just for the value of the improvements on the land, not the land itself -- because what kind of disaster is going to destroy your land?
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Mar 25, 2016 15:56
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:because what kind of disaster is going to destroy your land? The kind that puts California into the sea.  Property values are always funny though. In my area values can triple over a few blocks if you're by the right lake or if you feed into a particular school.
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Mar 25, 2016 16:15
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We built our 1474sqft house + 462sqft garage + 0.6 acres of land for quite a bit under 300k euros. The land itself was 11k of said budget. County is selling cheap land to attract people to live here, lots of construction going on here. Row houses and individual homes. Of course we did not have an architect designed house but chose from a house building companys catalogue and then tweaked it to suit our tastes. I'm skeptical towards fancy architect houses, simpler shapes, esp. for the roofs are more practical, less joins and less potential places to develop problems and it keeps building costs down. I'm also a big believer in rain screen style facades over anything else ever. And wooden paneling, if anyone tries to bring over vinyl to Finland I hope he gets eaten by a bear. His Divine Shadow fucked around with this message at 08:09 on Mar 26, 2016 |
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Mar 26, 2016 08:06
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His Divine Shadow posted:We built our 1474sqft house + 462sqft garage + 0.6 acres of land for quite a bit under 300k euros. The land itself was 11k of said budget. County is selling cheap land to attract people to live here, lots of construction going on here. Row houses and individual homes.
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Mar 28, 2016 14:29
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Yall can argue siding options in my new chat thread 
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Mar 28, 2016 23:18
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Met with the other architect today. Price was something like this: Site Survey: TBD Initial Schematic: $7000 Construction drawings: TBD Project management: TBD So we were kind of excited. Maybe they'd be affordable. Surely they would list the big-ticket item, right? No. All-in they said it'd be $32k-$50k - I don't even know why they bothered to list it that way originally. Oh well. So we spent the night scouring online plans again. Found this one: http://www.eplans.com/house-plans/epl/hwepl73590.html What do you think? Almost covers everything we want, and the pieces it doesn't cover aren't worth $50k. It's on the high-side of our desired size. We're having a quote done up to modify that in a few minor ways, and I spent $30 on a build price estimate that I should get back in a couple days. If that goes well, it's probably our plan. If not, it's first architect guy. Either way we decided to make a decision this week.
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Mar 29, 2016 01:57
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Edit: And a basement too? I forgot basements exist. You might be happier without one. Edit2: Excellent stuff. Go for it. peanut fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Mar 29, 2016 |
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Mar 29, 2016 02:03
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Living room probably as a play-room for the kid until he gets older. The bonus room will be the wife's studio space. I need to understand the ceiling heights there more, but one of the modifications we're looking into is skylights there. This is New England, we do basements.
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Mar 29, 2016 02:12
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Just say no to fake shutters.
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Mar 29, 2016 02:15
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I don't see the secret passage...  Or is that the point...
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Mar 29, 2016 02:18
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Trap door into the garage so she can fast rope out of there.
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Mar 29, 2016 03:02
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Gounads posted:Met with the other architect today. 50k is just ridiculous in my book, I don't know what kind of mcmansion crowd they're banking on there. That design you linked, however, is just  Very tasteful exterior, great organization of space, and that upstairs bonus access to the garage is fantastic, especially with the extra bathroom that won't wake everyone up with a midnight trip to the bathroom. Speaking of bathrooms, I'd add a rough in for a toilet/sink in the basement, in case you ever wanted to finish it and add a bathroom down there. There's no such thing as too many toilets. Only downside is the formal dining room, that's a fairly obsolete concept, but it's a nice bonus room and the kitchen looks big enough to accommodate a full table in there. I'd personally expand the kitchen a tiny bit into the dining room, and maybe add a kitchen bar to sit and eat at. First floor laundry is excellent too, though I'd highly highly recommended adding in a laundry chute right above it in the upstairs hallway to the garage. Just think of how many trips that would save hauling dirty laundry. Can't wait to see how it turns out!
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Mar 29, 2016 04:48
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Baronjutter posted:Just say no to fake shutters. My other project over the next year is getting our current house in better shape to sell. One of the items on that list is to add fake shutters to 4 windows to dress it up. Quick question on that design I posted... if we were to move the garage doors to the left side, any thoughts on how to dress up the then-empty "front" of the garage area so it doesn't look like crap?
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Mar 29, 2016 12:44
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Plant some trees in front of it?
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Mar 29, 2016 12:47
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Some lumber yards will help you with a plan if you are buying from them. The plans out of the book never seemed designed with basements in mind, and had one or two weird issues. I really like there one you linked, but it only has a two car garage for instance (maybe this is ok?). Nothing hard to add, but then you're into shuffling things around Edit: moving the garage doors may not be easy. They are on a gable end right now, on the side they will need a decent beam to support the roof as well. Which in turn will probably add a heel and raise up that side of the roof.
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Mar 29, 2016 13:00
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Gounads posted:
Might be structurally difficult to move the door, but add a few windows on the first floor of the garage in lieu of blank space, and that'd solve your problem as well as let in some natural light. My parents house is very similar to that, and that's how theirs is done. You can never have enough light.
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Mar 29, 2016 13:46
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OSU_Matthew posted:50k is just ridiculous in my book, I don't know what kind of mcmansion crowd they're banking on there. That design you linked, however, is just I already went over this before when it was first brought up... that's entirely reasonable and within the averages for architects. And the people that complain about the prices have usually never set foot in an architect designed home. MrEnigma posted:Edit: moving the garage doors may not be easy. They are on a gable end right now, on the side they will need a decent beam to support the roof as well. Which in turn will probably add a heel and raise up that side of the roof. Do you think garage doors are put in without beams? There's a beam/header no matter where it goes. It won't matter which side based on that old 80's drawing. Both exteriors would be bearing and it's just where the opening is going. Gounads posted:Price was something like this: Some architect's do it that way so they can firm up the cost once the plan is set and they know the scope of work fully. The bulk of cost comes in construction drawings (40% typically). $7000 is right on for schematic of a $50K fee. Schematics is usually 15%. If that's how they listed their proposal it's a bit off industry standards. There's usually 5 phases... sometimes more in larger or more detailed work. It's usually: Schematic Design, Design Development, Construction Documents, Bidding and Negotiation and Construction Admin/Management. Schematics is usually a plan and elevations, maybe a section if there's a special space. Design Development is firming up the major systems of structure and other engineering and usually the point of no return for major changes. You get more sections and plans. Construction Documents is the bulk and lots of stuff the home owner usually doesn't understand like head-jamb-sill details, wall sections, and schedules. Bidding and Negotiation is giving a bid package out. It will include the Construction Documents, contracts (which include the rules and bonds required if your contractor is a bum), and bidding requirements to ensure when comparing bids that they are apples to apples. Construction Admin is when a contractor get questions they're forwarded to the architect and it is answered. They also should send submittals, which are samples and products they'll be using. It would be big things like roof material to tile samples. Unless you plan on being up the contractors backside dictating these things, this will ease your burden and ensure they aren't cheaping out. I may just be banging a gong for no one listening here though...
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Mar 29, 2016 14:13
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xwing posted:Do you think garage doors are put in without beams? There's a beam/header no matter where it goes. It won't matter which side based on that old 80's drawing. Both exteriors would be bearing and it's just where the opening is going. Keep in mind there is a bonus room up there, and the direction the trusses go mean the walls that currently carry the weight are the house side and the side without a door on it. You can certainly move a door to that side, but you're going to have a 2-3 foot beam above the door to carry that weight. The front wall will carry some weight, and carrying a garage door sized span usually means a 12" micro-lam. On the topic of plans. We had plans done by a local home designer (non-architect) and the lumberyard did most of the engineering/truss layout. There were a couple of small things that came up when building, but I think on a custom home that's going to be what happens (unless the build has done something very similar). Although my builder mentioned to me yesterday that some lumberyards are being sued by the home plan online/book companies, because they were redrawing some of the plans from the book and changing some things (without paying the money for customizable plan set). We found a few floor plans we liked, talked to our designer and he laid it all out after a few sessions. It wasn't completely ideal, but I think we're getting pretty close to what we want without much cost. Happy to dive into or answer any questions about that.
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Mar 29, 2016 14:45
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MrEnigma posted:Keep in mind there is a bonus room up there, and the direction the trusses go mean the walls that currently carry the weight are the house side and the side without a door on it. You can certainly move a door to that side, but you're going to have a 2-3 foot beam above the door to carry that weight. The front wall will carry some weight, and carrying a garage door sized span usually means a 12" micro-lam. The gable end is bearing as well... it provides stability and takes a portion of the ridge load. It won't be a 2-3' beam no matter what. I've designed 30' spans for the windloads down here in Florida and they weren't even 3' deep glu-lams. You also don't have to span that direction either. You can do a girder in the middle and span perpendicular. This exactly how my old place was. But this is a single 80's looking plan online, it can be done a ton of ways. MrEnigma posted:Although my builder mentioned to me yesterday that some lumberyards are being sued by the home plan online/book companies, because they were redrawing some of the plans from the book and changing some things (without paying the money for customizable plan set). It varies locally, but here in Florida we had strong protection laws. If you're offering "architectural services" and not licensed you will be reported to the state even besides the copyright issues there.
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Mar 29, 2016 15:12
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Got the building estimate back. It's a big web-app with a ton of options. Depending on where I set the quality of various aspects, the magic software tells me anywhere from $320k to $440k - so within budget. I know a web-app won't be accurate, but it gives me the peace of mind that we're in the right ballpark and I can go ahead, buy the plans, have modifications made, and get it bid on. That estimate included things like plans, engineering work, land grading, utilities, project management fees, permits, appliances. Hell, it even listed the $30 I paid to get the estimate. It seemed pretty thorough. Thanks for all the thoughts on the garage door.
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Mar 29, 2016 16:03
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peanut posted:I forgot basements exist. You might be happier without one. This is ridiculous! Basements are wonderful things. They give you a place to put all your stuff, they're always cool and comfortable in the summer, and you can put all of your mechanicals in there. They're wonderful! And speaking of mechanicals, that plan does a great job of clustering plumbing fixtures. For HVAC, you should give the bonus room it's own dedicated ductless mini split. It'll be impossible to balance with the rest of the house on a centralized system. Gounads posted:The bonus room will be the wife's studio space. I need to understand the ceiling heights there more, but one of the modifications we're looking into is skylights there. Your lot is east-west oriented, right? So the garage will be on the south side of the house?
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Mar 29, 2016 17:32
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Zhentar posted:Your lot is east-west oriented, right? So the garage will be on the south side of the house? Right, so a skylight on that side should give good light much of the day.
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Mar 29, 2016 17:39
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Yeah, it's unfortunate though - combined with your hill, you won't get a whole lot of natural light in the morning, or in winter, and in shoulder seasons you'll get too much early evening light on the west side of the house. You should probably consider additional skylights, or solar tubes, for other rooms. In particular, I'd suggest a solar tube on the east slope of the roof to bring some morning light into the master bedroom. (You could also consider solar tubes rather than skylights for the studio space - they're easier to close off when there is too much light, and they avoid the thermal challenges of skylights (also, the $$$ of good performance skylights). For the west facing windows, you should totally put in sweet exterior shades to cut the heat in warmer months.
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Mar 29, 2016 18:56
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Nitrox posted:Vinyl lasts longer than wood. With less maintenance to boot Wood panelling can and have lasted over a century.
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Mar 30, 2016 05:54
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His Divine Shadow posted:Wood panelling can and have lasted over a century.
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Mar 30, 2016 08:57
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The norm is still longer than vinyl. It's lifespan basically indefinite as long as you paint it every decade (dilligent care, with quality paint it can be 20 years), and use good wood. It can also be easily serviced at any time and you can even make new panels yourself, who knows where you can find just the right pieces in 20 or 40 or 60 years? The factory that made them is probably not even around anymore. But wood is always available to be shaped to what is needed. Like I said, I hope the guy who brings that tacky poo poo here gets eaten by a bear. Fortunately finland is finland and wood is appreciated. His Divine Shadow fucked around with this message at 11:04 on Mar 30, 2016 |
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Mar 30, 2016 10:57
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His Divine Shadow posted:The norm is still longer than vinyl. It's lifespan basically indefinite as long as you paint it every decade (dilligent care, with quality paint it can be 20 years), and use good wood. It can also be easily serviced at any time and you can even make new panels yourself, who knows where you can find just the right pieces in 20 or 40 or 60 years? The factory that made them is probably not even around anymore. But wood is always available to be shaped to what is needed. Wooden siding and trim is a wonderful thing   You'll always be able to find replacement vinyl, it's too ubiquitous. Heck, I can even find replacement cement fiber singles for my special snowflake my wavy asbestos siding, even though the original manufacturer has long been sued out of existence. I think your guys' wood lasts so long because the primary paint used over there is that fifty year exothermic linseed oil stuff, right? Most of our wooden siding here in the US rotted out when people switched from oil to early latex paints. I could be wrong, but I think that linseed oil stuff is easier to just recoat and reapply whereas it's very labor intensive here to hand scrape and prep painted wood for a new coat. xwing posted:I already went over this before when it was first brought up... that's entirely reasonable and within the averages for architects. And the people that complain about the prices have usually never set foot in an architect designed home. No, you're absolutely right, that probably is reasonable and I have no idea what I'm talking about. Houses are stupid cheap where I live in the Midwest, so it seems excessive to me by comparison. I think that's also a good point about being an 80's design, I think newer plans get rid of the dining room altogether and rearrange room layouts to emphasize stuff like a larger eat in kitchen with little separation between living area, right? Is there anything else in the design that seems dated or points to the 80's? My parents house was built in the 80's and has a lot of similar stuff, eg big bonus room above the garage, similar master, dining room adjacent to the kitchen, kinda similar sizing and proportions. Otherwise, I think everything else like the exterior and useable space hasn't really changed all that much?
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Mar 30, 2016 12:21
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Like I qualified my earlier statement, using good wood. Most older windows here that are a century+ old (and there are alot of old wooden houses here) still have their original trim. They're made from heartwood, slow growth pine. This is an extremely durable material, treated with linseed oil paints as you said. These windows that have been maintained still have loads of life in them. As for paints, more modern paints have taken over here as well, but my parents house is still around and it always had latex paint, the facade was repainted in the 90s and it's soon time again but everything looks fine and will probably last my parents lifetime after this treatment. My grandparents house was repainted in the 80s and has the original panelling. it uses oil paint, no doubt it's far better. One key difference might be rain screen facades, basically a universal form of facades here and a superb design that prevents moisture build up. For wood facades anything but a rain screen design is basically unheard of and those that try to use anything else usually wind up with mold and rot. Also a lot of houses don't have any roof overhang in the states. It's almost always present here and protects the house a lot.
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Mar 30, 2016 13:00
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So your argument is that if everyone were to import 100-year growth Finnish wood, treated by the finest oils, it would perform better than vinyl siding? I think it's cheaper to wrap houses with actual money. I was going to look up the vinyl industry growth numbers in Finland, but "Finland" in Minnesota is screwing up my search results. Stop stealing other country's names, USA. You also have to consider that wood is very cheap in Finland, while manual Slav labor is incredibly cost efficient. Other countries are not so "lucky". Labor is expensive, so less labor intensive materials are being developed to offset that. You'll be flooded with vinyl siding the moment your installers get paid a decent wage. Nitrox fucked around with this message at 14:10 on Mar 30, 2016 |
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Mar 30, 2016 14:03
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Obviously not as I was showing how well good grades of wood would perform (and finest oils, please...) and the stuff in my parents and grandparents houses definitely isn't the high grade stuff. But even the cheapest shittiest wood is better than vinyl. Because it's not loving vinyl.
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Mar 30, 2016 14:09
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His Divine Shadow posted:Obviously not as I was showing how well good grades of wood would perform (and finest oils, please...) and the stuff in my parents and grandparents houses definitely isn't the high grade stuff. But even the cheapest shittiest wood is better than vinyl. Because it's not loving vinyl. I'm not going to disagree with any of that, because wood is great. And since I love the derails in this thread... There is so much against it here though. - Stigma -- (rotting, requiring lots of maintenance, etc -- some of this is from the past and not as true, but still there) - Cost -- I'm not even sure I know of a house that has had this done, much less someone to do it. But vinyl is something ridiculously cheap like $3k for a 2500sf house (just materials) - Availability - Like above, no clue where I'd even find someone to do this. Which means it's going to be a lot of money to get someone, or potentially it won't be done right since there just isn't enough experience. Ultimately being able to come in and side a house in a day or two, have it look how you want, not maintenance, and hardly pay anything, it's going to be pretty hard to get out of that. In the midwest we don't see much Stucco/Dryvit because of the climate. Our super fancy houses might be all brick or stone (or cultured stone), but a lot are at least partially vinyl.
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Mar 30, 2016 14:46
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His Divine Shadow posted:One key difference might be rain screen facades, basically a universal form of facades here and a superb design that prevents moisture build up. For wood facades anything but a rain screen design is basically unheard of and those that try to use anything else usually wind up with mold and rot. This probably is a major factor. Rain screens are starting to get more common in the US (particularly with EIFS) but I think it's still pretty far from standard practice. Most of the wood siding on my house is great, but there are a couple sections with cedar shake protected by small overhangs. Woodpeckers have been going at them, gotta figure that out this spring...
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Mar 30, 2016 15:11
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MrEnigma posted:I'm not going to disagree with any of that, because wood is great. And since I love the derails in this thread... I can see how it would be difficult in that case yeah. Still if I spent the money on an architect designed house I wouldn't wrap it in vinyl. Then I'd just buy the cheapest prefab house I could find. Looking at material costs I see anything from 3-8 thousand euros for wooden panelling. Depending on the size of the house and how complex a facade you want. I'm building an outhouse soon (5x5m in size) and will be doing all the work myself so I'll get to see how cheap I can get away with.
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Mar 30, 2016 15:16
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Zhentar posted:Woodpeckers have been going at them, gotta figure that out this spring... First time a woodpecker came to my place he went at the aluminum gutters and scared the crap out of me. 90% is a stucco box down here but whenever I design and build my own home I'm going aluminum and cypress. Down here (florida) vinyl has gotten a really bad name with it a lot of ways. The older stuff got beat up in the sun and warped window frames.
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Mar 30, 2016 15:20
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xwing posted:First time a woodpecker came to my place he went at the aluminum gutters and scared the crap out of me. Seamless aluminum siding was all the rage here in the late 90's early 00's. I haven't heard of people using it for years though. One of the issues we have with it, is that when it hails, it's wrecked. Vinyl can get damaged as well, but it can take a lot of beating generally (although if it's cold it can break easier). Vinyl technology has come a long ways. The new high end lines are really thick, sun resistant, and now they are starting to add multiple colors in, basically trying to make it look like weathered wood. As of this year there are all kinds of blends available, and they are pretty close to looking like real wood. Still a bit fake looking, but it's getting so close. Edit: It's still vinyl fakery though. Like a laminate countertop shirt for your house. Like a laminate flooring for your countertops.
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Mar 30, 2016 15:40
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I'm a modernist architect... I wouldn't fake stuff, which is a double strike against vinyl. Vinyl windows are at least gaining ground in Florida though because the new energy code requirements are making it hard to meet them and be cost effective. I'd still never spec vinyl though... I'd tell them to pony up for nicer glass and work with overhangs.
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Mar 30, 2016 16:07
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OSU_Matthew posted:No, you're absolutely right, that probably is reasonable and I have no idea what I'm talking about. Houses are stupid cheap where I live in the Midwest, so it seems excessive to me by comparison. I think that's also a good point about being an 80's design, I think newer plans get rid of the dining room altogether and rearrange room layouts to emphasize stuff like a larger eat in kitchen with little separation between living area, right? Is there anything else in the design that seems dated or points to the 80's? My parents house was built in the 80's and has a lot of similar stuff, eg big bonus room above the garage, similar master, dining room adjacent to the kitchen, kinda similar sizing and proportions. Otherwise, I think everything else like the exterior and useable space hasn't really changed all that much? The complete lack of separation in newer houses sucks balls, and formal dining rooms are awesome. Bonus rooms are never going away, because what else are you going to do with that space? I'd lose the sunken family room, though.
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Mar 30, 2016 16:22
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