housework: bidset, interior design

Been a busy week for my working and non-working lives, so very little time to blog (I still haven't finished with L.A.!). But we've reached a milestone: (near) completion of the bid set, the set of the construction documents that are hard biddable! To commemorate this milestone, we had a meeting with the architects and the builder this past Friday to pass the bidset to the builder (autocorrect changed "bidset" to "bidet". Now THAT would have been a real interesting meeting!).

The bidset includes a number of things we hadn't seen before, including:

• an updated site plan,
• updated elevations (interior and  exterior),
• engineering plans for the foundation (a beautifully blocky taster above),
• plans for the roof framing,
• diagrams of the McMansion tent,
• structural cross-sections through key parts of the house,
• certain construction details, and
• updated electrical plans. 

Not much has changed: refining, refining, refining. Learned/discussed in the passing of the plans:

• Companies that recycle construction waste have all gone out of business and that to get more than a one star rating from the city requires recycling of construction waste (I offered to pick up beer cans on site every once in awhile, but that doesn't seem to be enough to tip the scales).
• The builder is a big fan of Mitsubishi ducted mini-splits, something I consider to be the Cadillac and had given up on because they're unconventional. Builder says they only cost a wee bit more than a mid-range efficiency HVAC. We shall price both and see... 
• Based on our concerns on thermal bridging, the architects have spec'd EIFS for the exterior (exterior insulation finishing system, something the cool kids call "eye-fuss"). Side benefit: nicer shadow lines on the windows.
• The builder is worried about overhang weatherproofing, in part because he recently had weatherproofing on a six-year old house fail. The architects will take a closer look at the weather-proofing details...
• Architects spec'd a Clopay aluminum garage door with clear windows (to see little cars). The builder ooo'd with pleasure. 
• Operating storefront windows are expensive, like $600 to $800 a piece expensive. Again, pricing  and then picking.
• The architects envision a wood ceiling extending from the entry and living to the overhangs in the front and rear. A nice detail and, it turns out, the reason the supporting members for the cantilever are on top of the roof instead of underneath as shown in the conceptual realization. Not  sure which woods can be used to do this and be OK indoors and outdoors.
• Wood: Architects have spec'd cedar for the art wall, ipe for the window sills (for warmth), and we've spec'd hickory for the floors on the second floor. The builder asked the question of the architects: "Are you really planning to use multiple kinds of wood?" which is a good question. Seems better (and more Modern?) to use one type of wood consistently through the house, so that will be a topic of future discussion. The bride and I are pretty cold-hearted, so we don't know about this warmth business... And if we go consistent with the wood (which I think we need to do), would hickory work on the ceiling, or be too dark/too distracting? And the bride is worried about the art wall in hickory (too busy?). So much for having the wood decided...
• Permitting: Builder encouraged us to push now on permitting. We want to wait until his bid comes back in case we have to make changes, although we don't anticipate substantial changes (although we do anticipate a higher cost to build than previously discussed, it's a question of how much more...).
• Financing: The builder suggested we start talking to banks now and that to have comp data to present to the banker when asking them to look at the plans and appraise the house. As the builder put it, to paraphrase: "You're not building an $80 a foot house. You don't want them comparing your house to an $80 house." 

So next steps: Wait for the builder to get back to us in two weeks (which prompted a side philosophical discussion on why two weeks always seems like a good time frame: Far enough away to procrastinate but not so far away to cause someone concern they're getting put off...).

In other news, we've signed up an interior designer to help us on making choices on (1) countertops, (2) backsplashes, (3) isthmus pendants, (4) tile, (5) what flavor of white paint to use (really), and now, probably, (5) wood. Hope to meet with her to discuss in, you guessed it: Two weeks!

a chat with the builder

We sat down with the builder to go over his estimate and discuss material choices and whatnot, and that was great fun. Builders have a lot of practical experience that can be real useful. And given that this builder has a lot of experience and appreciation for Modern architecture, we don’t have to listen to ”Get the plans from that there architect and we’ll even out them windows during the build and put a real roof on that house.” or “What the hell!?!?! You building a house or a Jiffy Lube!”

Random things we talked about:

1. Stucco: The builder said that stucco with imbedded pigment will crack (which freaks some folks out) and that painted stucco with elastic paint is less likely to crack (and easier to "fix" [seal and paint over] if it does crack). We’re prolly-definitely in the ”freak out” category, so based on that information (and our previous good experience with painted stucco), we’re thinking painted stucco. However, the architect was thinking two layers of the standard stuff with a topcoat of elastic stucco with embedded color to deal with the cracking issue (and lower the maintenance). The builder and the architect will discuss…

2. Outside walls: The architect specified 2x4s for the outside walls. The builder says he hasn’t built a house with 2x4 exterior walls in seven years. Given that his pricing assumes 2x6 exterior walls, we’re going to go with 2x6 walls. We feel better with 2x6ers.

3. Geotechnical: Now’s the time to get technical done!

4. Roofing: The architect specified TPO for the roof. TPO (thermoplastic polyolefin) is white (reflective = green) and typically used in commercial roofing. The builder says that TPO is top of the line, and, if we can afford it, go for it. Otherwise torchdown (sheets of fiberglass, polyester, and bitumen that are melted together with a torch) can be had for a bit less. We can afford TPO. And with a sizable part of our roof visible from the second story, white is even better.

5. Cladding on the garage: Stucco is expensive, so the builder suggested Hardie on the garage as an alternative. The architects thought this was a good idea as long as they could clad part of the house (where the laundry room and master closet are) with Hardie as well to better visually connect the garage to the house. Makes perfect sense with the added bonus of saving even more money on stucco.

6. Drywall finish: The architects specified light orange peel. The builder noted that a smooth finish can be had for 20 percent more. We’re considering smooth in the public areas of the house (something a pure modernist would shudder at since one Modern tenet [at least among some…] is to have consistent finishes throughout the house; we just won’t invite them over for dinner!). Smooth is sweet.

7. Dishwashers: The builder loves Bosch dishwashers. We spent quite a bit of time talking about ’em. We will disappoint him if we don’t get a Bosch dishwasher.

8. Central vacuum: A la Corbu, we demand a (central) vacuum cleaner. The builder says they run $1,400 installed (and are quite handy).

9. Orientation of the garage roof: We want the garage to be solar ready. The garage roof is currently oriented toward the east. The builder says that although it’s possible to orient panels on a roof sloping the ”wrong” direction, it’s better to orient the roof in the right direction in the first place (makes a lot of sense...). His suggestion was to slope the garage roof at the appropriate slope (which seems to be 45 degrees?) rather than orienting the panels to the appropriate slope. We’re amenable to that if the architects think this would work compositionally with everything else going on with the house (see helpful sketches we provided to the architects below; we provided those so they knew we were open to a non blocky roof line if it “made sense”). He also said that fixing solar panels to TPO is a little "disconcerting" (my word to describe his discomfort). He recommended attaching them to standing seam metal. Bonus: Standing seam is 35 percent less expensive to install! Since it appears that you can get 1 kW of capacity per 100 square feet, our ~500 square-feet of garage roof might-could support a 5 kW system.

10. Neoplastic walls: The builder said that footings (just the freakin footings!) for garden walls run $140 a foot. That means my dream of neoplastic walls will run us at least (let’s see here, that, plus about that, plus [squinting] about that, times 140) 20,000 bucks. Gulp.

11. CMU sound wall: The builder says this would run about $8.50 to $10 a square foot (area facing you). So that’s about 5 to 10K. Hmmmm…

12. Building time: The builder thinks he can build the house in 7 months, start to finish! Wow!

In other news:

A. We decided we would rather have the storage space in the laundry room than the ”special spot” for the grill. The loss of storage space plus the (shockingly) high prices for built-in grills (think thousands) prompted this decision.

B. After we staked the footprint of the house out on the lot, we ”looked out” the windows of the house and now think that the over-the-counter horizontal windows in the kitchen would be better up high (where we can see the neighbor’s trees and the sky). Otherwise we’ll be looking at fence.

So there you have it. Builder input. 

first Passive House Alliance--Austin Chapter meeting this Monday!

From Nicholas Koch, President of the Passive House Alliance--Austin Chapter:

This is a free informational meeting for anyone and everyone interested in Passive House hosted at the office of E Green Group.  This informal meeting will consist of a brief presentation, time for questions and discussion, and a social portion with snacks and refreshments.

Monday's presentation will cover:

An introduction to the Passive House building system

Challenges and Benefits of the Passive House Building system in Austin's hot southern climate

Cost Comparisons of Passive House vs. the competition

Join us at 7:30 at 2415 E 5th St. Bldg E.

Thank you,

Nicholas Blaise Koch
President, PHA - Austin Chapter
Owner, E Green Group

Nicholas is the real deal, having built the first passive house in Austin and Texas and one of the first (second?) passive house in the south.

onward through the fog…

Well, it's been a somewhat busy week on the homefront. We interviewed a potential new architect, spoke to a couple of the builders, chose a builder, and heard from The Architect. Where to begin...

(1) A new architect?

We flirted with a new potential architect (Let’s call him Mr. Yard Dog). This fellow was our #2 behind The Architect when we started this whole adventure. He had ably architected and built a cool affordable modern for a friend of ours who heartily recommended him. We met him at an art opening “back in the day”, and he was quite pleasant.

When I contacted him last week, he had just closed up his shop and joined another one. I went to visit him and the head of the new shop with the end result that the firm he joined is WAY out of our league. After 90 minutes of describing what we were after and whatnot and the standard give and take, the bossman identified their niche as the $280 to $330 a square foot market. That’s fine, but that’s a little (actually a lot…) too rich for us (and a little embarrassing [and heartbreaking] after yapping about our project for 1.5 hours). Next...

One thing we learned talking to them was that design-build makes more sense for a high-end detailed house where the architect needs to be on-site to make sure it gets done right, something we are not in the market for. Not to mention that it seems like a lot of the design-build firms are either (a) out of business or (b) (consistent with what the bossman said) high-end. The other thing we learned, and it’s quite an obvious one, is that if they don’t show what you’re looking to do on their website, they don’t do it. I’ve had some folks suggest that, given the soft market, we shouldn’t delist an architect that does high-end stuff. I disagree. They do what they do. You can’t teach an old dog old tricks…

(2) Builder post-audit

After sending out a note to the builders about our inability to afford the house The Architect designed (and the termination of our relationship with said architect), two builders asked to visit with us. They both expressed surprise at some of the material choices “we” had made. One surprising choice was the cladding for the sandcrawler. I envisioned standing seam roofing material: metallic, cool looking, inexpensive. The Architect had the builders pricing custom metal shingles: metallic, cool looking, expensive. Very expensive. Like you-either-get-this-siding-or-you-get-a-garage expensive. The builders thought this was a bizarre choice for us to make. Except we didn’t make it. The Architect did. While he was pressing us (yet again) to get rid of the garage, he was cladding (a small) part of the house with the proceeds. Another expensive part of the house not exactly shared with us was the cost of the entries. He had a $9,000 back door and a $7,000 front door. Was this discussed with us as a potential costsaver? Nope. But that troublesome garage sure was. As the missus says these days, The Architect was working more for the photo in his portfolio than for us.

(3) In talking to the two builders, we decided on one.

Given that we weren’t finding a whole lotta choices in the design-build realm at our price-point, we knew the other option was to choose a builder up front and bring him to the design table. One of the builders we talked to had me stifling “Amen, brother!” after almost every sentence he said, not to mention that he has a long track record of building affordable modern. We know he can do it, and what he says about design choices makes a lot of sense. Therefore, we’re going to revisit our info sheet, get some surveys done, reassemble our precedents, and dive back into the dating pool with architects, this time with those recommended by the builder.

(4) The Architect sent us a note.

Not surprisingly he insisted that (a) everything was our fault (The Architect does no wrong.) and (b) he was not obligated to design a house that fit our budget. Wished we had known that going in. And if that was the case, we wish he hadn’t told us early on that a big part of his job was keeping us on budget. I guess he mistook us for folks that like to design houses for fun! Yippee! Especially infuriating was his claim that WE let costs get out of control. Huh? We were the ones begging him to design a project to fit our budget!

We’ve wondered what the heck we did wrong in hiring this guy. We thought that because he had architected several speculative projects that he would be attentive to costs. Furthermore, he had architected a project that, from all outward appearances, was in the budget and finish-out range we were looking for. One thing we didn’t consider is that the spec builders he worked for probably had good data on what it costs to build and could use their BS detectors early in the process to reel him in. In retrospect, our error was hiring an architect that didn’t have much (if any) experience working with future homeowners.

One of the builders gently suggested that this time we find an architect that we get along with. We seriously thought we had. After all, we worked with him in finding a lot, explored putting an addition onto our house with him, and hung out with him. It wasn’t until after we signed an agreement and started designing a house did things go south. And really, it wasn’t until then that we figured out he had a terrible design-killing handle on how much it costs to build as well as a lousy philosophy on damage control (pretend nothing bad’s happened and, if the client notices something bad’s happened and then asks about it, blame the client).

Live and learn…

[photo by mwah; intramural fields]

general contractors (and pounds of flesh)

We’ve started “dating” builders and while we’ve gone to second base with a couple we haven’t hit a home run yet. “Dating” is probably an appropriate analogy (one we’ve previously used, I believe, with architects). There’s the first date where we’re getting to know each other and where one or both parties either realize that it’s worth a second date or that the party’s over before it started (Why won’t he return my phone calls?). There’s the gold diggers: highly attractive and world class but won’t touch you unless you drive a Ferrari (or are at least building something nice to house that Ferrari). There’s the Birkenstocked poets who promise the world but almost assuredly can’t deliver. And then there are the potential Mr. Rights who are whispering the right things in our ears but, through second dates, start revealing some potentially disturbing traits (stop reading now if you think this is starting to get a little too homoerotic…). If we could just Frankenstein the best bits of the various builders together, we’d have our man! But then we’d have quite a bloody mess and, most likely, a ruined chain saw. And without a chainsaw, how is the plumber going to rough in the plumbing?

A big sticking point is price. It costs more to build in the big city than the not-so-big city. The big city typically has (and in our case does have) more stringent requirements and codes than the not-so-big city. This adds to costs. Furthermore, building in the city generally requires true custom building: your house is going to be a one-off. Therefore, no suburban economies of scale (“We’re gonna build a hunnerd of these suckers!”) or mega-builder with his own crews and, thus, lower overhead. Then add to that green building, which is slightly different than standard building, and the costs creep even higher. While it runs 80 to 100 bucks a square foot to build in the burbs, it costs far more in the big city.

One builder we talked to, one I vaguely adore, pretty much said that he won’t touch a project that’s under $200 a square foot (I’ve noticed that the cool kids drop the “square” bit and just say “foot”. The scientist in me just can’t do it…). Gulp. And their fee, including site manager, for a house our size amounted to 30 percent. Double gulp. Yet another builder was at 22.5 percent; 25 percent if you added in charges not included in their fee (something to watch out for when comparing builder to builder).

According to what I found boogieboarding the interwebs, builder fees generally range from 10 to 25 percent with the higher end for luxury homes that are complicated and demand detail. Of course, those homes cost more as well. I reckon that the most talented and competent builders are the ones that rise to the top of the luxury market and make the big bucks, deservedly so. While our house is (hopefully) nice, it is by no means a luxury-level product. That makes it a little hard to pay luxury-level building percentages… The conventional wisdom I found describes 15 percent as reasonable and less than 10 percent as run-for-the-hills-because-that-builder-doesn’t-know-what-he’s-doing.

The other thing that’s a little disturbing about the business is that the incentives for the builder generally work against the homeowner. For example, one way to build a house is a fixed price contract. The builder bids on the project and delivers it at a fixed price. Therefore, the more cheaply the builder can build the home, the more money he makes. Not a good incentive for quality. And if things start going wrong early (i.e. overbudget), corners can really get cut toward the end of the project.

Another way homes get built is cost plus. Whatever it costs to do something, the builder then levees his percent fee on top. Therefore, there’s no incentive to find good deals on items and services because (1) it’s eating up his time (and time = money) and (2) finding a less expensive alternative cuts his pay. The builders we’ve spoken to thus far are cost plussers. One builder, recognizing the warped incentive of cost plus, fixed about half their fee at the beginning of the project and let the other half plus on the cost of the project. Not a bad idea, but the dis-incentive is still there.

Another way of getting a house built is through design-build where the same company that designs your house builds your house. The advantage here, presumably, is that the designers are working with the in-house builders to get an in-progress idea of cost and theoretically optimize the design and build process to save costs. The bad news is that you’re pretty much stuck with that builder. The good news is that your budget is built into the project from the get go; therefore, you greatly reduce the risk of a design do-over if the initial bids come in too high.

Right now, our screening bids are coming in too high. One bid is within reach, but only if we suck the soul (and the green) out of the house, and we’re not sure we want to do that. We have one more screening bid to come, so we’ll keep our fingers crossed. At least his cost plus is a more reasonable 18 percent…

{photo by mwah; of a pal's pal's house getting constructed over yonder on Shoal Creek]