The Devil's in the Details

So much to think about when designing a floorplan. Brain hurts! Grey matter oozing...

It's very early in the process, and I know it's nothing compared to down the road when I have to pick out cabinets, light fixtures, appliances and tile. But putting together the floorplan requires you to decide many things. You need to be able to imagine yourself living in the space. How will it be waking up and going through your morning routine? If you want an open floorplan, are you prepared to adjust the TV volume everytime someone turns on the kitchen sink or gets ice out of the freezer? When you come in with groceries, how easy will it be to get everything into the kitchen?

What angles will the sun shine in through the windows in the morning? What about the afternoon? I thought about this a lot. Here in south Louisiana, it gets downright hot (and humid) in the summer. And we're lucky if we have four weeks worth of mild "winter" weather out of the year. I thought about the hottest part of the day (around 2-4 PM) when the sun is bearing down. Do you want it coming through a window in your living room or office where you might be at that time of day? I've lived in a house where my computer is setup near a window that's not energy efficient. The afternoon sun makes you sweat inside the house.

For the family room where my TV will be, I didn't want a completely open view to the kitchen. I like the open floorplan idea, but in practice it can be aggravating. Any noise from the kitchen disturbs whoever is watching TV. So I have a wall planned between the two areas, but the wall will have a arched opening. This will let some sound through and also light coming from the windows in the breakfast area. But the sound won't be as loud as it would be otherwise.

For the hallway bathroom between the two bedrooms, I thought about having one of those bathrooms with a door into each of the adjoining bedrooms. But I didn't like this idea. Siblings coming from one side to use the bathroom would want to lock the opposite door to avoid being walked in on. But when they leave, they may forget to unlock it. Then the other person would have to go all the way around.

Oh, one other BIG issue for me was having no water pipes running through a bedroom wall. No shower pipes are between the bedroom and bathroom. Noise from the running water can bleed into the bedroom even with insulation in the wall.

It didn't work out this way, but I would have preferred the backdoor to lead through the laundry room and then into the house. This would have allowed the laundry room to act as an "airlock" to keep dirt, insects, and even some of the warmer air outside of the house. That's how it's setup at my parents' house. It's also nice because you can step in from the backyard and use the utility sink to wash off a lot of dirt, etc. Even though I'd have preferred it this way, I'm satisfied with the way it turned out.

Floorplan Time, and More HGTV Than You Can Shake a Stick At

People have asked me where I got my floorplan. I'm happy to be able to say that I made it myself! It's a result of hours of reading and searching through other floorplans available online and in print. My lot is narrow (50 ft by 150 ft). Since I want a driveway for rear yard access on one side, and the parish requires 5 ft of clearance on the other side, I'm left with a width of 35 ft for the house.

It almost feels like a shotgun house (which I don't like), and it took almost 20 full revisions to get it away from that feeling. I knew I wanted an attached garage and an office at the front of the house. I wanted either the kitchen or the family room (or both) with a view of the backyard. A kitchen with some kind of island was a must. I also needed a small room for keeping a server and all my A/V equipment out of the way. This media closet will also have panels for all the structured wiring (network/telephone/cable) in the house. All bedrooms, and even the office, will have walk-in closets. This means the office could also be used as a bedroom in the future.

Besides all the reading and looking at sample plans, I've found that I'm watching HGTV more than I ever thought possible. All of a sudden, I care about home renovations, designing a house to sell, and the things that people look for in a house. It's like a whole new world!

Ahhh, Yes: The Chain Wall!

Let me tell you about the adventure of putting up the chain wall. Well, for those who don't live in Southern Louisiana, we're mostly below sea level down here. And even though the house is going to be in an area that's relatively high compared to the surrounding area, the Parish is still going to require the floor of the house to be elevated relative to the street.

To help with that, people build up their lots with sand or dirt. In order to contain the dirt, you need a chain wall (sometimes called a retaining wall). In my case, the chain wall has my fence posts encased within. Since my neighbor to one side already had his chain wall in place, I only needed to do the rear and the other side.

It's not big construction, but it requires a building permit where I live. And as luck would have it, I went in for the permit a day or so after new codes went into affect. The new codes were overly strict in order to protect the parish from lawsuits after Katrina. In order to get around the ridiculous codes and still build a solid wall, I had to get an engineer to stamp an alternate design so I could get the permit. The design is shown here.

The first step was to dig post holes and install all the fence posts. I thought this part of the job would never end! We rented a post-hole digger for this, and it was soooo worth the money! There were still several holes where the digger couldn't get through some roots. And my design required post holes that were oblong. So we still had holes and portions of holes to dig manually. Especially one huge area of roots where the big tree had been along the property line. The posts were completed in October, 2006.

Then it was time to put forms up for the rear segment of the wall. Here's where we made one msitake that cost us lots of time: The height of the wood we were using wasn't tall enough to reach between the ground and where we knew the top of the wall would need to be. So we made a fateful decision. We decided to build up the ground under the wood instead of cutting another strip of wood to make up the difference at the bottom.

The design of the wall also called for a 6-inch trench where the wall would be. So we found ourselves trying to build a levee of dirt next to a ditch. It was very difficult to pile up dirt without having it fall into the trench. We spent way too many hours shoveling, compacting dirt into a levee, and cleaning out the trench. But finally, the deed was done! The parish inspected the forms, and by late November I had a conrete wall across the back of the property.

One lesson learned here was that we didn't have enough wooden cross-braces going across the top from one side to the other. These were supposed to keep the width of the wall constant and not let the forms bulge out under the weight of the concrete. One of our cross-braces was too thin and came apart under pressure. So there's a 10 ft egg-shaped bulge in the middle of the rear segment. I can live with it, but I'm not happy about it! On the side wall, we made double sure that this didn't happen again.

The neighbors behind me were very generous and let us plug our extension cord in at their house. This allowed us to use power tools throughout the chain wall job. I'm very grateful to them, because I wasn't ready to sign up for temporary electric just yet.

For a while, I toyed with the idea of hiring someone to dig up the remaining tree stumps, grub the grass off the lot, and deliver and spread sand. I got a few quotes. Most said it would be VERY difficult to get those huge stumps out and that afterward there would be huge craters to fill. And they wanted to charge thousands of dollars to try. So, being the frugal son of my mother, we rented a back-hoe to try and remove the stumps ourselves. This was a $400 mistake. Those stumps weren't going anywhere!

Around this time, I started pricing sand for filling in the lot. I found the best price in town, which was a considerable bargain compared to other suppliers. Then I found out that the price was going up after the first of the year. So I had all the sand delivered in December. This was before we had formed or poured the side segment of the wall.

And that's when the rain came...

I had taken my remaining vacation at the end of the year, and I felt we could complete the rest of the wall and spread the sand within those two weeks. But it began to rain... and rain.... and rain. It had never rained like this since I had bought the lot, so I don't know what it would have looked like before. And especially since I now had all this sand there. But the rain flooded the neighbor's back yard and the fence line. And it had nowhere to drain since the rear yards were lower than the front yards. So for at least the next two months (thanks to subsequent downpours), there was a lake where we were supposed to be putting up the forms for the side wall.

But eventually, the water dried up. (Thank you, Lord!) And in the meantime, my dad and I had built the remaining forms we needed out of plywood. And the rest of the forms went up fairly quickly. By mid-March, 2007, the rest of the wall was poured! Within a couple of weeks, I found a good deal for a guy to come spread the sand with a dozer ($275). And now the lot is ready for construction, I assume.

It Pays to Price Shop!

When it came time to get the trees cut down, I got quotes from 11 companies. Most quotes were between $8,000 and $11,000. I got one that as a whopping $19,000! No thanks. But then I got a quote for $4,000. All his insurance checked out, and he had already come as a referral from somebody we knew. So he was definitely my choice.

And it turned out to be a good deal, even though it took a few weeks for him to complete the job. (I had told him I wasn't in a hurry anyway). Some of his equipment broke down, and that took some time.

On the downside, my neighbors developed an adversarial relationship with him and his crew. The neighbors claimed they were shooting off loud fireworks, like M-80s, which they later admited to. And his boss promised that it wouldn't happen again. My neighbors also claimed they messed up some shingles when they had to get on their roof to cut an overhanging branch. Luckily, I happened to have pictures I had taken several days prior that showed the damage was pre-existing. The tree crew also managed to pull the neighbors cable line off the house... twice. And the neighbor was using cable for their TV, phone, and internet access. Ouch! Not a good way to make a first impression.

All-in-all, the tree guy was true to his word. He had promised to come back later and grind one of the stumps a bit more. I had to remind him weeks later, and I didn't think he was going to follow through. But he did come back and do it.

The moral of this story is: get lots of quotes. You don't have to settle for the first guy that comes along. And even if most or your quotes are clustering in the same range, you still may find an outlying price that's lower. Beware of the lower price, though. I lucked out here, but I could just as well have wound up with a bad experience.

If You Want Something Done Right...

I decided the best way to approach the construction is to be my own general contractor. It's called "owner-building" your home. This way, I'll have direct control over the budget and the quality of the work. After some research, the best resource I've found is called The Owner-Builder Book. It's a fantastic guide and workbook that walks you through the process.

Owner-building will allow me to shop for bargains and act in my own interest. Like I said, I'm a perfectionist. And I'm going to enjoy seeing that things are done right. Or course, I know nothing about building a house or the right way to build it. So I've been drowning myself in books on house design, construction and construction management. And I have my mom who is also a perfectionist. Only, she's been around longer and has seen the difference between good and sloppy construction. So I'm learning all around.

Yeah, I'd Say it's About Time...

Yes, I'm 33 and it's finally happening: I'm moving to a place of my own. In fact, I'm building a house from scratch! Better late than never, huh? It all began in 2001 when I started classes for my Masters in Business. I decided that I'd get a place of my own once I had the degree. I graduated in December of 2005, shortly after Hurricane Katrina visited our little corner of the world. And that event changed just about everything for everyone here...

Houses went on the market in droves. Prices skyrocketed. A real estate agent told me that prices would come down as soon as sellers realized they couldn't get these astronimical figures they were asking. Apparently, the sellers never got the point! I looked at a couple of houses, but they're all so old with their own histories (and problems) that I wouldn't know about until it's too late. And who wants to throw that much money into something that someone else designed years ago?

Then, in February, 2006 my mom and I were driving around noting houses for sale on streets that we never travel. We stumbled on a vacant lot for sale. The neighbors were outside watching their kids play. Darren & Melissa are a nice couple. We asked about the neighborhood and the lot. The really liked the neighborhood, and they explained that their new house and the vacant lot used to be one big lot. They had subdivided it and sold the other half. Now the new owner was turning around and selling it. The seller was asking $135,000 for the lot, and Darren said she must have come down on the price since the last time he had heard. I thank God for this find. I consider it a blessing.

Being the creative perfectionist that I am, I decided that I'd rather design and build my own place from scratch than to buy from someone else. I called and made an offer, and we eventually settled on $128,000. A couple of months later (and after some last-minute wrangling by the seller to get out of her signed contract), I was the owner of my own vacant lot.

So now I'm definitely moving into a place of my own. And after 33 years, I'd have to say it's about time!