Getting ready to build a new house...any advice?

[JDY]

Everything is ready to go all we need to do is sign a contract....

Any advice on building a new house?

 

[FTWFAN]

Congratulations!!!!!!!

We moved into our almost finished log home in December. Only some trim left to put up and a little painting was left. We really wanted to be in by Christmas!

I guess the best advice I could give you would be to be confident with your contractor. Be sure he/she understands exactly what you expect of him. Be sure that he follows through on exactly what you want. I was told several times by our contractor that what I wanted couldn't be done, only to find that he didn't want me to do it, because it was more work and expense for him. TOUGH!! We turned in our plans and discussed everything with him, told him exactly what we wanted and he gave us a price. I am sorry if he didn't give himself a little room on the quote. Some things we did change after the buidling was started and those extra expenses we did not mind. But, don't quote me one price, find out it is going to cost more, and just expect me to pay the difference. That is why a person gets bids BEFORE a job is started.

I don't mean to ramble here, but as you can probably figure out, I have a few issues with our contractor. DH has actually been on the phone with him tonight about a problem we keep having. I don't want to scare you, I just want you to be confident with your contractor.

Good Luck and Happy Building!!!!!!!!

 

[mum4jenn]

Go to the work site as often as possible to make sure things are being done correctly. That way if there are problems they can be corrected as soon as possible.

 

[TigrLvsPooh]

Take a loooooooooong vacation! LOL

We had a great builder, but we still ran into problems. You will definitely want to swing by the building site OFTEN! One day I dropped by and they were installing the wrong type of door off the great room... another time the electricians were putting switches in the wrong place. It's good to keep right on top of things to avoid mistakes.

Be prepared for something to go wrong. The timing is so crucial and the weather can play an important factor too. I guess you just need to be flexible but don't let the builder walk all over you.

The hardest part for me was all the choices. Prepare to spend hours picking out faucets, toilets, sinks, stain color, siding color, shingle color, cabinets, door knobs, drawer pulls, brick color, lighting, flooring.... oh boy it's a big job. You'll find that the trunk of your car will be FULL of color swatches and tiny little samples!

In the end it's worth it though. You get the house you always wanted and everything is perfect. Just try not to get too many gray hairs in the process.

 

[TigrLvsPooh]

Oh, another thing, plan to go waaaaaaaaaaaay over the builders set allowances! LOL We went about $60,000 over the bid price for our house. Every little thing adds up!

 

[Laurabearz]

In order to help cost overruns... think about not having them finish the basement IE drywalling.... that is always something you can do later, after all you will have the next 100 years to complete it.... Maybe have them ruff plumb in a bathroom but not complete it... again it saves on the intital out lay of money and again, it can be done later.....

Our next house will be one we have built for us and we plan on using the money we save on them doing finish work, and adding square footage to the whole house. Over time we will finish the stuff ourselves, but adding on is way way $$$$$.... DOes that make sense....

Of course if your about to sign the papers all the above has been discussed....

Other have said....... stop by the site often, bring the guys cookies and coffee.... Show them pictures of your kids.... what ever it takes so they know YOU.... Plus remember it often takes a while to order some things, Our kitchen was held up 3 weeks becasue the builder failed to order the back splash tile in time

Have fun, stay calm, and try your best to enjoy the whole experince (the good and the bad)

 

[Judy from Boise]

My tip is for way early in the process.
Really examine the lot for how the sun travels at different times of the day. Sometimes you can angle the house 15 degrees on the lot, and get nice North/south exposure. If your house will get western exposure and your garage the eastern......have the builder "flop" the plans.

I see so many house where no one considered that the blazing western sun was shining directly into their living spaces, when the "cure" would have been so easy.....or a different lot could be selected.

 

[The Mystery Machine]

Next month it will be 2yrs in our new home. Lets see I will give you things we would have changed.
More windows. Yes, I now realize that furniture can go in front of a window. (kicking ourselves)
We built a 2-story. Should have did the double units ac & furnance.
CARPET I should have put out the extra bucks to put in real carpet. It is crap after 2yrs. The $1.00 upgrade we did .
BRICK. Should have done brick. We did siding to save on cost but DH and I are wishing we did at least some brick. DH is kicking himself for NOT doing the taller garage.

Things I love we did. We upgraded all of our kitchen stuff to top notch and I do NOT regret that. SOD...ah yes. Budget that in so you will have instant grass. We have a 3 car garage with an extension in back for storage. We measured the trash can (yes we did that) so it fits perfectly in a spot in the garage.

OH and you can hire an inspector that will check up on them. We came everyday and watched the process.

Good Luck and Congratulations!

 

[pollyanna]

Hire a Contractor....don't do your own sheetrock hanging,painting etc.

Two houses started in our neighborhood last December....one (with a contractor) moved in their house in April....the other(do-it-yourself) are STILL at it,and unfortunately are right across the street from me....grrrrrrr!

 

[dianeschlicht]

BE sure you have a contractor who LISTENS! We shopped around for 8 months before we found the contractor we wanted to use for our new log home. I feel very confident with him. Yesterday he had me come out to the site to reset the house stakes, because he wanted to be sure the house was faced EXACTLY as we wanted it.

 

[CJMickeyMouse]

Use Myknobs.com for your pulls/knobs... they are wayyyy under what you can probably find for retail locally.

Be on site ALL THE TIME. Otherwise things will get messed up in a hurry. If you are available for questions (treats in hand) they will be happy to discuss things with you.

Go the extra mile. Do it NOW. Our feeling was if we put it off we would never do it. We decided to fully finish the basement while we had the builder on site. So, we saved and waited to build until we could do what we wanted.

White bathroom fixtures are a whole lot cheaper than colored!

We went with neutral colors throughout the house, so we can accent with different brights and change as often as we like with minimum 'physical' changes.

Shop around. The same item may be on clearance one place, full price at another. Do your homework and you can win!

Think about the furniture you have, and what you want to get. Don't build a home that you can't live in. We have wood and tile, but I have already made up my mind I am not going to have a coronary if the dogs come in and scratch the wood, or the kids drop a glass on the tile and it shatters into a bazillion pieces.

Have fun. This will be difficult at times, but keep things in perspective and keep your expectations high.

PATIENCE PATIENCE PATIENCE PATIENCE!!!! There will be times you feel like progress is at a snail's pace, but then there will be the day your jaw drops because you can't believe they accomplished so much that day.

Good luck!!

 

[rbuzzotta]

All the above advice is wonderful.

As a wife of a builder, who is building our house now, please remember to talk to the General Contractor about any changes and not the sub-contractors!!! The last house my DH built, the people asked the sub-contractors to change things and my DH was not on-site for the majority of the day and when he got to the house, the change was not in accordance with building regulations!!!! It was half a day to change and then half a day to put it back to code!!! My DH was not happy, the soon to be home owner was not happy and made for a sticky situation!!

Once it was explained about the violation, the soon to be home owner understood. This change ended up costing the soon to be home owner $250. in materials. DH didn't charge him labor!! (I would have!!!).

Read all you can about kitchens, baths, etc. Talk to friends about appliances, what they love about their homes, what they would change etc. This will be our 4th home Dh has built for us and I am changing things all the time..........This time I think I have it right.

If you have any ?'s feel free to PM me!!

 

[brerrabbit]

Congratulations of the new house. We had ours built in 1993 and I agree with everyone else who says visit the site often. Not getting into your business but who has the construction loan? In 1993 we were anxious to get our house going and were working with a small builder who had essentially maxed out his line of credit on other homes. In order to start ours he suggested that we do a Mini-Perm loan. We would qualify for the construction loan and he would make the payments during construction and turn it into a mortgage after completion. Well it got our house started but problems soon followed. It seemed the builder liked to live a fast lifestyle and took to much money out of the business.
As a result he was forced to use "draws" (cash) from our loan to complete work on other homes. This delayed construction considerably. It was sort of like a pyramid scheme in that one home could not be finished until he had a contract on the next one to take money from that loan to finish the first one. We fortunately got ours built after numerous delays and before the builder got into serious trouble with this scheme and wound up facing numerous criminal charges.

 

[UrsulasDaBomb]

Congratulations!I wish I had something to add but everybody else has given such wonderful advice,I don't think I can add to that.
I wish I had thought to check exposures on our lot before we started building.We have a wonderful easterly exposure in the backyard and with big windows in our master bedroom(which face the backyard),we get sunlight in our eyes EVERY day.Oh well...no need for an alarm clock with that,eh?

 

[BonnieA]

Here's some tips I will give you. Based on experience.

Get everything in writing and don't loose it!! Keep copies of all correspondence.

Have a good lawyer that will back you up if need be.

On your final walk thru before closing, make sure you note EVERY little problem. It may come back to haunt you. And make sure the builder signs the walk thru paper acknowledging all the problems. You may need it later.

Get your house inspected by a qualified home inspector before closing, or better yet, have him check the house during construction. It's worth the money believe me. We didn't do that thinking that the builder had a year to fix any problems. He didn't fix them. We hired a home inspector before the year was up and he found numerous building code violations. The home shouldn't have even been certified for us to live in.

Keep a record of all the people the builder sends out to fix the problems, name, dates.

Talk to others who have houses built by this builder. Certainly wish we had. And I so wanted to tell others about this guy because he is still building in our neighborhood. But our lawyer said I couldn't tell them anything unless they approached me and asked.

If you end up going to court (we did), bring the papers. Something that really helped us was a video tape of the defects. We won our judgement. But it took 2 years for this to end. And guess what, we still have problems.

I will never, never, never buy another new house. Better to buy used. At least then the problems have been fixed (or you at least know what they are) and you don't have to deal with a crappy builder.

Please take some of this to heart and spare yourself the agony. I know there must be good builders in this country, hope yours is.

 

[llp479]

In addition to the great advice already given, I have one other comment - phone jacks and cable jacks. Put them in every bedroom! Much easier to add them while building than after. We put them in all the bedrooms, learned the hard way in our old home. Most of our neighbors took the two standard jacks the builder gave them, and now they have wires running up the outside of their homes, and had to pay a lot more to have them installed after the fact.

Think about all the things that are difficult to change after the fact. Make sure those things are exactly the way you want them.