Question for those who have built a new house.

[Mom-to-3]

DH and I were going to build a house. We read books, perused magazines, and spent an initial $1000 deposit for custom plans.

In the end, we decided not to ruin our marriage.

Every time one of us came up with an idea, we were miffed if the other one didn't want to do it. And DH hated it when I pointed out flaws in his floorplan drawings.

I learned a lot from the Not So Big House books by Susan ???. Basically, put your square footage into the rooms you will use the most and try to make many of your rooms dual purpose.

One thing I had insisted on was NO WESTERN EXPOSURE in the kitchen and family room. I had this years ago and it made dinner and family time miserable.

 

[stinkerbelle]

Originally posted by Mom-to-3
In the end, we decided not to ruin our marriage.

LOL!!!!

sadly you are right though.

DH and I built at the worst time possible time in our lives...6 months before our wedding. Yep...totally nuts.

 

[dianeschlicht]

It's great fun, Tami! We are building our third (as you know), and I have to agree with putting your money into the rooms most important to you. Also, you will need to think about "kid friendly" things for the future!

This time I made sure I got the sun room I have always wanted! I also made sure we had more than a "1 butt kitchen". I think a house that is well family oriented has a kitchen and family room that are open and accessible to each other.

PM me and let me know what builder you are planning on! Again, CONGRATULATIONS!

 

[Figment22]

Congratulations! There is nothing like moving into a NEW house, one that you know no one else has EVER lived in. It is a great feeling and it feels like such an accomplishment because you put so much of yourself into it.

You have gotten lots of great advice already but I'll add my two cents. I definitely second the idea of tile. We upgraded to tile in the entry foyer, kitchen and all the bathrooms. Many of our neighbors who originally stuck with the linoleum are now having tile installed.

I also agree on getting as much extra square footage as you can. We extended our second bedroom to meet the back of the house and also made the garage bigger so DH can have a work bench area. We have an attached garage with access into the house; we love this as we didn't have direct access to the house at our old home in NJ. You may also want to consider a door on the side of the garage so you're not always having to open the garage door to let the kids go in and out on their bikes, etc. Better to have less wear and tear on the garage door itself.

Really sit down and consider where all your electronics are going to be placed and go for the high end wiring if you can. Plan out your telephone and cable jacks. For example, we have one of those small under the cabinet TV's in the kitchen so I planned out a cable outlet in that area.

On your HVAC system, consider an electronic air cleaner. They work much better and can somewhat protect against mold problems that can follow new construction. Also, you're not constantly having to buy those cheap filters. Additionally, we installed a gable end ventilator, which is a fan in the attic area that is set to come on when the attic reaches a certain temperature. It can cut down on your cooling costs.

My last suggestion is my pet peeve. We have a big, beautiful master bathroom which is great. There is a separate tub and stall shower. Well, the stall shower is my big FEMALE problem. There is no way to shave your legs It drives me nuts. So if I had it to do all over, I would have made the stall a bit larger and put in some kind of shelf so I'd have someplace to put my foot up!

Enjoy designing your new home and once again, congratulations!

 

[luv2nascar]

upgrades we love and couldn't live without our family room gas fireplace. It is gorgous and so warm. Our beautiful dark and rich looking cherry kitchen cabinets. Love them and added brass knobs and drawer pulls necessary for us. Bought quietest dishwasher available LOVE IT. Did I say I LOVE IT. open kitchen and family and it hardly makes a distracting noise at all.
We put cable, phone, overhead light/ceiling fan outlets in all bedrooms and that was money well spent. DH installs ceiling fans for us as needed. Light overhead in master shower stall is great. I use it everytime I shower. I have no idea why that is not standard.

Wish we had finished basement and added deck and put that in mortgage but we really just could not afford it.
Our builder's paint is shot after 2 years. We are going to have to start repainting yuck.

Best $1000 we ever spent was on the movers. We just had so much stuff we could never have done it ourselves. I would gladly pay them again if I had too.

** updated to add vaulting ceilings are great add so much more room to our masterbedroom and family room. Would not change them for anything. Heating is not a problem for us.

 

[JayCT]

tkyes - Thanks for starting this thread. DW and I discussed building a house last night and she agreed to let me look into building. The problem will be finding the land. Our town has gotten so expensive and there are few lots available. Anyway, I have my eye on some vacant property on a short deadend "lane". I am going to contact the owners to see if any are willing to sell. I am printing this thread out to keep for future reference.

Oh boy

 

[Nutsy]

What would we do different??

We would get the outside done first.............lawn, garden, driveway etc..............

We however, did it the opposite & have regretted it...........we thought that by getting where we lived done first & then doing to the oustside was the best move. But it wasn't..............what we didn't realise was that we were walking all the dirt & grime inside all the time.


Also, I think if we ever built again, I would like all the bedrooms to be down the back of the house on their own. Instead we have the main bedroom at the front followed by the rest one by one down the hallway.

 

[dianeschlicht]

Those of you with wood stairs - do you have small kids? For some reason the thought of wood stairs and little kids scares me, maybe I'm just being silly. I think that's a pretty expensive upgrade, but I'll have to look.

Actually, Tami, they can get hurt just as badly or worse on carpeted stairs. I blame our carpeted stairs on our son's fall that broke his wrist in two places. Carpeted stairs are much more difficult to get a foot hold on. I have had them for 25 years, and NO MORE! All the stairs in the log house are wood.

Another suggestion is to make sure your main living area (family room, kitchen etc) is in an area that gets good light. I have had an east facing family room and west facing kitchen at this house, and I really wish I would have had good southern exposed windows for the long winter months. Our new house has huge windows to the southeast and northwest. You also do NOT want your garage facing north in this climate! We have had a terrible problem with ice in front of the north facing garage.

I second the idea of upgraded flooring all around. Ceramic and quarry tile or stone where needed and the best grade carpet you can afford in areas where you want carpet. Upgrading to the best quality items in the kitchen is never a bad idea either. It offers the best resale value as well.

Just another word about heat for this climate. If you can afford it, radiant in floor heat is WONDERFUL! Our new house has no furnace. We are using radiant in floor heat everywhere, so we only have a HUGE hot water heater. The sub floors are "warm board". This is a product that has the grooves for the heating tubes in it and is covered with a thin alluminum skin to spread the heat. We are using a combination of wood and slate on the floors with area rugs. In floor heat warms by warming the furniture, floors, walls etc rather than moving air. It is so much nicer than forced air in this climate!

 

[onecoolmama]

Thanks for the thread. We are in the process of meeting with builders and there is some great advice on here! Good luck!

 

[Pembo]

We would get the outside done first.............lawn, garden, driveway etc..............

We moved into a new house last summer. All that dirt tracked in for the first 3 months until our grass came up was HORRIBLE! I still have nightmares.

 

[stinkerbelle]

JayCT - Where in CT are you looking?

And about getting the outside landscaping done first...in THEORY it's a good idea...but you gotta allow for trucks driving all over your property for a time.

We closed on our house in November...and we still haven't gotten our lawn yet...our builder refused to lay it when we closed (it was too cold - it would have been useless) and he's coming back at the end of this month to finish the landscaping.

can't wait to have grass....

 

[C.Ann]

Originally posted by AllyandJack
When I built, I went with almost everything "standard." I added a deck and a water line (get the water line for the fridge since it's great to have ice and water out of the fridge!). I got the standard flooring and fixtures. Not only was it less out of pocket, but it has been so much fun making the house into what we wanted it to be. Of course, my husband is in construction, so installing hardwood flooring has been easy. The builder wanted about $10,000 to upgrade to hardwood. We have been able to install it for about half that ourselves. The builder wanted double what the fixture cost to install it. Plus, if you ever sell the house, you can just stick on the generic fixtures and take the good ones with you to the new house! Again, if you're not a handy person, you probably don't want to take on the endeavor. We're painting and putting in ceramic tile now - again, all for half of what the builder wanted. We're extending the deck and having granite countertops installed. I think we saved a lot of money up front (especially since we were paying for our wedding at the time) and you really don't know what colors you want until the furtniture is in place. Plus, it's a lot of fun to be able to take your time and make the decisions and it's fun to spend a Saturday "working on the house." Home Depot is my favorite place in the world. Although it would be nice to have everything done, I know I would have missed doing this work myself (or at least helping my husband do it!). Everyone is different and this has been my experience....if you either can't afford, can't decide or simply don't want to spring for the extras, all is not lost. If you get the standard stuff, it is always possible to not only make it what you wanted, but you might find that it could turn out better!

Good luck and have fun!

--------------------------------------------------------

My son-in-law is toying with this idea right now as he just can't seem to find a house that will meet all of their expectations and needs..

Fortunately he has been in the field of home construction in the past (is an engineer/architect/project estimator in the field of commercial construction now) and knows exactly what to look for (ie: quality of materials; workmanship; etc.).. If he can find a decent size lot (would prefer at least an acre) in an area that is suitable, he is considering hiring the best contractor in this area to put up the standard package house and then he will take it from there..

 

[manchurianbrownbear]

Trees!

This may not be as big a deal to others as it is to me, but I really like having trees on our lot (except for a couple weeks at the end of October!).

When we were in the market back in 2001 we looked at several places in newer communities, but ended up in New Hope because of the mature trees (among other things).

If we ever have the opportunity to build, I'll make sure we invest in some decent size trees.

Heated floors really sound good to me too!

 

[The Mystery Machine]

If you want a swimming pool, build it then and include it into the mortgage. Saves ALOT of $$$ and headaches.

 

[JayCT]

stinkerbelle - We live southeast of Hartford, maybe a little further out, but not too far.

Mystery - Swimming pool....

Jay

 

[WeirdEyes]

This is what we did and it was very easy to build our house because of this: pick out EVERYTHING before you present your house plans to the builders. That way you will know exactly how much your house is going to cost you upfront. Also, get at least 2-3 bids. I didn't have to change a thing when building because I already picked everything out. I got top quality carpet, hardwood, tile, higher grade paint, lighting & fixtures. It took our builder 4 months to build our house.

My neighbors didn't do it this way and they fought with their builder the whole time AND it took way longer to build their house because of the conflict. Their builder wanted to put in builder's grade stuff and they wanted upgrades that weren't covered in the price.

There are a few things I would change now (almost 4 years in house). I would've put my fireplace in my great room in the corner and had windows along the back of the room instead of fireplace & windows. I would've built a bigger kitchen because every time we have people over, we always hang out in the kitchen.

Have fun! If my DH would let us build again tomorrow, I would. It was sooo much for for me. Good luck!

 

[JayCT]

Utt - Oh - DW is having second thoughts.

She drove out to the street I was thinking about and did not seem too impressed. There are few other houses on the street and she could not picture anyone building there (she has trouble conceptualizing things). She questioned where the kids would ride their bikes. It is a short narrow "country lane" off a somewhat busy state road. We currently live in a neighborhood with sidewalks and other kids. They can ride their bikes around the block here, not that they do that that often. We had talked about the advantages and disadvantages of both our current neighborhood and if we moved. We had also discussed what we did and didn't like about our current home. The one thing we both agreed was we needed a larger lot. Our kids love to play baseball and it is difficult on a 1/3 acre lot. I have nightmares of the problems we will be having soon with our neighbors (who we strangely do not know, so much for a family neighborhood) as the boys get bigger. One baseball through a window and we will have a lot of trouble. I am still going to try to contact the owners of the property I am interested in, but may also look in other towns nearby. Wish me luck. Jay

 

[stinkerbelle]

Jay - I PM'd you by the way.

Best of luck! Trust me - when I first saw our lot I had NO IDEA how the house was going to be situated on the land, what anything was going to look at...even when the footings went down - it took a while for me to "see" the big picture.

Best of luck convincing the DW!

 

[tkyes]

good luck Jay!


We meet with the builder tonight to go over some pricing and revise our "wish list". They have you make a wish list of things that you want and then we'll see what we need to cut to make everything fit in our price range.

Rough estimate is that we would be done in September. This builder has never missed a closing so once they give us a date, that should be it.

No pool for us. There are a few mature trees around the lot and the builder will put in some boulevard trees as well.

I don't think that wood stairs, or in-floor heating will be in our budget, unfortunately. I would like 9 foot ceilings, but I'm not sure if that will happen either, it depends on how much stone we put on the exterior.

There is a gas fireplace in the plan already, we are toying with moving it and making it a see through fireplace to seperate the dining room and living room. We will be doing maple throughout the house. We walked through a model that did have alder wood for kitchen cabinets and they had them stained to look very similar to cherry. Anyone familiar with alder wood? We'll probably stick with maple, but I want to see how "warm" of a finish we can get on it, I don't want it too light.

There is some great advice on this thread! Thanks!

 

[stinkerbelle]

Originally posted by tkyes
There is a gas fireplace in the plan already, we are toying with moving it and making it a see through fireplace to seperate the dining room and living room. We will be doing maple throughout the house. We walked through a model that did have alder wood for kitchen cabinets and they had them stained to look very similar to cherry. Anyone familiar with alder wood? We'll probably stick with maple, but I want to see how "warm" of a finish we can get on it, I don't want it too light.

There is some great advice on this thread! Thanks!

We have maple cabinets in our kitchen with "red oak natural" floors...the floors are much "warmer" than the cabinets...but we liked the look of the lighter cabinet against the countertop/stainless steel appliances. so keep all aspects of the kitchen in mind when looking at the wood you plan on putting in. Our maple cabinets have a bit of yellow undertone in them - we put on brushed silver hardware- look great.

Can i just say - i LOVE my gas fireplace! Ours came with a freakin' remote control! I can be sitting on the couch...brr, I'm chilly. *BINK* fire roaring. heheheh (plus - we can have it not blow out heat - so you just get the flames and the astetic (sp?) of it.

Oh - and going back to our hardware in the kitchen - basically the biggest hidden cost in the world. We didn't have our builder install these...we put them in ourselves. (bought them at Lowe's and DH took an hour or so to put them all in). Yeah...we fell in love with the $5 handles...for 25cabinets...yeah, do the math. Lowe's loved us that day! heheh