Rethinking the Rear Yard Access

With such a narrow lot, my driveway to the back yard has had to fight with the width of the house and the local building codes to hold it's own. Code requires the house to be 5 ft off the propertly line, and the floorplan I came up with uses 35 ft of width. That's left me with a 10 ft driveway.



But that 10 ft isn't really a full 10 ft of useable space. The chain wall takes up 8 inches of it, and by the time I install posts on both sides for a gate, I wind up with around 8-1/2 ft. This measurement is pretty small compared to other driveways I've seen. This might be okay if the garage door would be straight back from the driveway, but it's not. To get in and out of the garage, you'll need to make a quick S-turn once you get to the backyard (see shaded path on the graphic).



So my mom & I went to the lot this week to measure out this part of the yard and do a test. We measured out where the garage would be and marked it with stakes. Then we measured where the back corner of the house and the width of the driveway would be. I test-drove it with my small Toyota RAV4. We didn't have perfect test conditions because the lot is still all sand, and I can't drive too close to the chain wall. (The sand is too soft & I started to get stuck!) That, and it's hard to see the corners you have to avoid from inside the car. You'd really need full-height walls (or taller stakes) to show you where the borders are.



Getting in was no problem. I'd hate to have to do that all the time with a huge vehicle, but it would probably still work. When trying to back out, I thought I might be able to do a 3-point turn and come out forward instead of backing out, but it's too tight. I didn't actually do a test back out because of the difficulty in seeing the boundaries and the danger of getting stuck in the sand.



But the test showed me that I needed to make some adjustments. I'm shortening the depth of the garage by 18 inches and widening it by 2 ft. I'm also shaving 6 inches off the width of the house and adding it to the driveway. These aren't major changes (I don't have room to make major ones), but I think I'll be happy that I made these minor ones!

Rest Before the Battle

While the blueprints are being worked on, and I can't do anything yet with permits or lining up subcontractor bids, it was a good time to go on vacation. Friends of mine have a timeshare in Orlando, and this year I had the chance to spend a week with them there. It was a good time to get the R&R in before the bulk of my planning and work begins with the house.



One really cool thing I got to do was to ride a Segway device. You might have seen these two-wheeled personal transporters that look like a pogo stick with wheels. They are electrically powered, and a computer uses gyros to keep you balanced. We signed up for the Segway tour at Epcot Center in Disneyworld. They train you indoors for up to an hour and then lead you outside around the countries in the World Showcase for the rest of the 2-hour tour.



The Segways are really neat to ride. To move forward or backward, you simply shift your weight. The computer senses the change in your center of gravity and moves you in the direction you want to go. To turn left or right, you lean the steering column to the left or right. The first couple of minutes are weird because your brain is adjusting to the new method of motion. But it all feels quite natural once you get the hang of it. The whole trip was a great diversion before the challenge ahead of me

Never Too Early to Sweat the Details

Home Depot really stinks! I'm talking mostly about their customer service, or lack thereof. Lowe's seems to do a much better job of recognizing that you play a vital role in their receiving a paycheck.

Now that the blueprints are being created, I recognize that there are details I need to think about now that I thought could wait until further down the road. Maybe it's not vital that I settle them now, but it will give me a greater comfort factor. My kitchen is one of those areas where I decided to work out more details before the blueprints are finalized. To that end, I decided to take advantage of the service offered by both Home Depot and Lowe's to design a kitchen on a computer by selecting cabinet modules. Then they print 3D views for you.

This is going to give me a better idea of the spacing of the appliances and the overall size of the room. I want to have a window in one wall of the kitchen, and an archway pass-through in the other wall that will be an opening into the family room. I wanted to be sure that I could arrange cabinets around these openings using the stock sizes available. The resulting sketch from Lowe's is shown here.

If you go to one of these home improvement stores for this purpose, be sure to bring accurate dimensions of your kitchen. I made the mistake of printing a portion of the blueprints showing my kitchen without preserving the exact scale of the drawing. So it wasn't exactly 1/4 inch or 1/8 inch scale. This forced us to guesstimate on the exact dimensions. I was still able to learn enough to space things correctly, but it's not exact. Then again, the blueprints could change before they finalize, so it wouldn't have been exact anyway. If you go to have this done, a close-up view is better, such as 1/4 inch scale, because it lets them get more precise.

My complaint about Home Depot comes from the shocking attitude I got from the employee who I got stuck with. (But then again, this is New Orleans. Maybe I shouldn't have been too shocked!) I called ahead to make an appointment, just as they ask you to do. They said no customers were there right now, and I could just come in. Well, I wasn't planning to drop everything and go (that's why I was making the appointment), but I wrapped up a few things and went in anyway.

When I got there, a customer was with one of the kitchen designers. The supervisor on duty lead me to the second guy at the next desk. The first words out of his mouth were "well, somebody else (another employee) was supposed to come in today, but I guess I can help him". So I knew the general direction this was going to take. He asked if I was interested in stock cabinets or custom cabinets. In my mind, anything you order out of a catalog is stock inventory, so I said I was here about stock cabinets. He asked another question I didn't understand, and I said I was interested in using KraftMaid stuff. "Oh, well that's custom cabinets," he said with an irritated tone. "You got a drawing or something?"

I showed him my paper with the kitchen blueprint. He complained because it was too small. Then when we determined it wasn't to a scale he and his ready-made scale ruler could decipher, he was more frustrated. He asked me more questions about my preferences and showed frustration when I told him I was here to learn about my options. For example, when I didn't know the exact model of refrigerator I plan to buy 8 months from now, he asked me how he was supposed to draw the opening for it? After all, every model has different dimensions. Using all the strength I could muster to hold back a slew of sarcastic and angry remarks, I said, "Why don't we just assume we need a generous sized opening for a full sized unit then?"

After an hour or so (that's how long it takes for one of these appointments, I'm finding out), I left with some 3D sketches, and I had learned some things. Mostly, I learned how to get a customer to leave and chose to go elsewhere. So I went home and scheduled an appointment with Lowe's. The woman on the phone actually gave me an appointment, and I asked if I would be meeting with her personally. I prefer to have a woman's input in designing the kitchen anyway. The next day, I went for my appointment, and it went much better. I could tell the woman was busy and being stretched in several directions, but she was still courteous and helpful.

Click on the sketch shown above for a larger version. Yeah, it's a pretty big kitchen! It seems like so much activity in a home centers around the kitchen these days. I wanted lots of cabinet space, and I guess I've got it! :) The opening in the wall on the right is the pass-through into the family room. The window would go on the left wall, between the stove and the corner. However, the architect tells me that parish code won't allow a window close to a stove, so I might need to do without this.

The space to the left of the fridge is a computer desk. In the corner, I've got an appliance garage. That's the little garage-door looking thing on the counter. I'll have electrical outlets inside there, and I can keep appliances plugged in, like a toaster, blender, etc. I can keep them plugged in and just pull them out when I want to use them. On the right, that's a cabinet that comes all the way down to the counter. It has a space for the microwave. I like the symmetry of it: the fridge forms a column on the left. The microwave cabinet has the same weight on the right, and the appliance garage balances out the center.

Originally, I had the stove by the archway opening to the next room, but the idea of having a wall between the rooms is to keep noise from spilling into the room with the TV. If the stove was by the opening, noise from the boiling pots and the exhaust fan would defeat the purpose. So I moved the sink & dishwasher to the island and put the stove where the sink used to be. This may mean I need to give up the window, but I have a lot of windows nearby in the breakfast area that will bring light into the kitchen.

Today, I plan to visit a window store to get a better idea of window sizes for the different rooms. More on these details later...

Management Styles

One of the most important things you're going to need if you're going to act as your own general contractor is solid management skills. You'll be drawing on the talents and experience of a variety of people. Each person you manage will be different, and they will each perform in their own way. In order to get what you need from them, you need to recognize different personality types and figure out how to treat them to get the most from them.

For example, I've given over all my information to my architect (actually a residential designer). I haven't been comfortable with the amount of communication I've had with him since my first meeting where I gave him my drawings & written room-by-room requirements and we talked everything over. Now he's given me his first draft of the blueprints, and there are some things that were changed from my original drawing. At first, I was concerned I was not going to wind up with everything the way I wanted.

I had been concerned because he hadn't sought me out with any questions or to talk over any of the changes he had made. But then I sat down with him again with all of my comments on his first draft. He was very open and receptive. He expected that I would have a lot of feedback, and he commented that "this kind of discussion is what we need to do". And he explained the reasons he had made the changes he did. He had logical approaches for all his ideas. I decided to keep some of them, but changed most of them back to what I wanted.

The bottom line here is that this guy seems to like working alone without actively seeking guidance along the way, and then he fully expects me to come and provide feedback and critical input. I suppose I expected it to be a constant cooperative effort. When I didn't hear from him for weeks, I thought maybe he was a loner that wanted to do it his own way. But I understand now that I'm going to be able to get it all just like I want. I just need to approach him with comments and guidance.

I'm sure I'll run into people along the way who need to be constantly managed, and others that listen to me the first time and do it all on their own according to plan. Others will fall in between. Some construction workers might be motivated by constant site visits. Others might respond better to the occasional pizza for lunch or just a word of appreciation. Different strokes for different folks!

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!