update on costs...

I've written about what it costs to build in the past and how much more it costs here in Austin now that bust quickly turned to boom, but here's a neat update from the neat folks at BUILD LLC in Seattle. I know, I know: Austin ain't Seattle. But I've found that what BUILD had said about building costs associated with their level of Modern (which is one to two steps better than our build) seems to apply here as well.

In 2009, BUILD estimated that it cost $250+ a square foot to build in the pacific-northwest area. This estimate doesn't include architectural and any other associated fees, permit fees, or landscaping. They recently updated their estimates and now say that it costs $250 +/- $50 a square foot to build and that "flawless perfection" adds a minimum of 40 percent to the cost. By my calculation, flawless perfection starts at $350 +/- $70 a square foot. Youch.

It's kinda neat BUILD stuck that perfection cost in there, because I reckon that all clients (especially newbies) expect flawless perfection regardless of the price point of their project. I'm paying a lot of money for this house, right? I know that it was hard to see imperfections in our project as it progressed. I had to keep incanting to myself "Entry-level Modern. Entry-level Modern." If you're building Modern, your price point and how it fits in the spectrum of flawless perfection is something to keep in mind...

bonus related mini-post! 

Yapped with a friend last night who lives in the greater Austin area about an addition to their 1980s ranch-style home. Several years ago the project was priced at $150 a square foot. They delayed the project when a new baby surprised them, but are now back on track to build. The cost for the same addition now? $200 a square foot.

another bonus mini-post!

The good folks and BUILD LLC wrote a post about the "iPhone syndrome", the expectation of perfection in the building trade. They note that going from 90 percent perfect to 95 percent perfect adds 30 percent to the cost of construction and that going to 99 percent perfect doubles the cost! They also note that the modern houses you see in national magazines (often the 99ers) start at about $800 a square foot.

office x-mas parties (and the impacts of coming out of a recession on building costs)

The architects' swag rag featuring our home.

The architects were kind enough to invite us to a holiday shindig (back amidst the holiday season late last year) at a nice new restaurant they designed called Haymaker. At the shindig they were showing off a new swag rag that included our house as the first featured project!

During imbibitions and chatting with one of the architects, one of the architect noted that construction costs have increased substantially since we built out house. His guess was that our place, built today, would cost 50 percent more. Holy 2x6s, Batman!!! I'm not sure I believe that, but I certainly believe costs are higher. A lot higher. When we were closing out our construction loan, the banker, building a house of his own, was having to pay 10 percent more to keep subs on the project, and that was six months ago.

Headline in yesterday's paper.

Since then, like a Formula 1 race car hitting the back straights, the housing market in Austin has kicked into a bee-buzzing high gear. As we headed down the path to build our house, the banking crisis hit, which made getting financing to buy a lot and build a house a bit of a challenge. On the negative side, buying a lot and building was a risk: Would the market recover? Was this going to be a disastrous decision? Would the real estate gods smile on us again? On the positive side, if we could get financing, the lot sellers (of the spec building kind) would be anxious to dump there lots and the builders would be hungry. That could save money (and ultimately did: I estimate our lot is now worth at least 80 grand more than when we bought it).

Now that the market has swung the other way, costs have apparently gone sky high. Not surprising if you think about it. The build market before the banking crisis was pretty hot, so the building industry grew to accommodate that demand. The banking crisis brutally reduced that build demand, so the building industry shrank considerably. Now that demand has come back like zombies starved for cerebral matter, there's a great deal of demand for new construction with a low supply of builders to do it. And prices go up. Economics 101.

This is something to consider if you're thinking of building during the early stages of boomtown. At some point building capacity, and thus competition, will increase and prices (may) come down. Our builder works with the same subs on his projects, so they are less likely to walk from a job, jeopardizing future work with the builder. Perhaps that something to look for when choosing a builder. And although we didn't have to worry about it when quoting out our house, it might be good to include an "appreciation cost" when soft bidding. In a hot building market with several months between soft bidding and building, costs may increase beyond your ability to cover.

Postnote: A little bird told me that even previously loyal subs are bailing out on their loyal builders. oof.

Postpostnote: Here's one. Had a friend have an architect bail on their project for a better and bigger one! At least said architect didn't charge them for services rendered, but my pals were still out their time invested up until that point.

Postpostpostnote: Another one of the architects told me that it would probably cost 25 percent more to build our house today than last year. I find that more believable  than the 50 percent more quoted by one of his colleagues. Still kind of a shocker, though...

week 30: eyebrows on the roof, drywalling

Slow progress on the drywalling, eyebrows on the roof, and misc. loose ends.

drywalling

Was hoping to see the skim coat on the walls this weekend, but just the taping and floating got done. Was noticing that the drywall compound was looking wettish last weekend, so wondering if the weather hasn't been dry enough (or perhaps the house is too closed in to let the moisture escape). When we visited this time, we noticed that several of the windows were cracked open, and the compound looked dry. Since stuff is supposed to be painted this week, they gotta get after it Monday!

Master bedroom.

Living room.

Bookcases.

Dining "room" and kitchen.

Detail of the metal post running into the ceiling.

Guest bathroom.

Windows in the upstairs bedroom.

The drywallers have done a great job. And to their credit, they're great at cleaning up the site, always a good sign, we've decided. There have been only three things we commented on to the builder: (1) the upper elevation on the windows in the over photo not being level, (2) the doorbell box being drywalled over, and (3) the fan in the master shower being crooked. They've taken care of #1 and it looks like they're trying to address #3:

Don't think we've shown the inside of garage all gussied up:

It'll be nice to have the garage all finished out!

eyebrows on the roof

If you recall, the design calls for what we've all been calling "eyebrows" over certain second story windows:

Eyebrows on the front of the house shown in yellow. There's one more round back.

The eyebrows are here, but they are currently on the roof:

The builder originally thought he would do these out of aluminum instead of the specified 3/8-inch plate steel, but the aluminum turned out to be too expensive (it must have been real bad since he didn't ask if we wanted to pay the delta). I was envisioning these things being metallic instead of white, but we'll go with white and see what they look like. Can alway paint them later something different if need be...

They look heavy as Rosanne Barr after a Luby's binge, so we'll see how they go up...

how much wood would a woodchuck chuck...

Whelp, turns out that we can't get the cypress without the v-notch (the one on the left in the photo below). Tried out a different source, but their cypress was uber-notty. So.... faced with lower quality cupping, but wide-planked, cedar and higher quality uncupping, but v-notched, cypress, we went with the v-notch. Compromises, compromises...

marking territory

The architects finally put up a sign!

if the car fits...

The bride parked her bug-a-boo under the car port. It fits!!! And she looks good with the house (the car too!).

closet design

We're not getting real complicated:

 scaping

Been spending some time figuring out the landscaping and looking for ways to cut costs. Here's where we're at:

Hopefully that puts a dent in the seven grand in stones...

moment of bliss

This could be my favorite shot (of a detail) of the house...

week 29: limestone, tape and float, cedar or cypress, Grumpy Cat

Progress continues: Limestone, taping and floating, cedar or cypress?, tile choices, curb shock, a gift, and Grumpy Cat.

limestoned

Whelp, the limestone is (nearly) finished on the front of the house, and it looks awesome.There's some fill-in work to do next to the window, and they still need to grout the panels. After a brief discussion, we're going to grout with grout that's the same color as the panels but leave it an inch back from the front plane to keep a nice strong shadow line. The setback of the grout line is called the "rake". We be getting a deep rake.

This photo shows the how they did the corner:

I was hoping that they would do a miter joint such that the line would be exactly on the corner, but it doesn't surprise me they didn't: Much less room for error both in cutting and in cutting correctly. However, this looks pretty good to me.

taping and floating

With the drywall in, the sub has started taping and floating: Taping to cover the drywall joints and floating (slapping down drywall goo and goo-smoothing) to cover the tape and the nail and screw holes. They've also been installing metal edging on corners (which then requires floating).

Looking up the stairwell.

An oddly cubist corner that covers ductwork into the pantry.

Looking toward the fridge inset.

Looking from the kitchen into the dining/living room.

Looking out the big-ole window at the top of the stairwell.

Looking toward the bookshelves.

Looking toward the media wall. Top part taped and floated; the bottom part not.

Looking toward the kitchen.

Metal edging on one of the corner windows.

Looking down the stairwell (gotta be careful: no guardrails!)

Guest bathroom.

Window above the bed in the master bedroom.

Another angle in the master bedroom.

cedar or cypress?

The architects spec'd the ceiling in the entry and living room and the soffits as cedar. It needs to be a wood that works both indoors and outdoors because the architects designed the ceiling to seamlessly extend from the inside of the house to the outside of the house (an important tenet of Modernism and the whole reason for all the engineering and framing acrobatics). 

We've been in love with cypress since we saw it on a house on the AIA tour last year, so we really wanted to investigate that as an option. The photos below show cypress on the left and cedar on the right. The lower bits are raw wood, and the upper bits are sealed with no dye. 

They'd both be fine, but the finer grain of the cypress is quieter and makes for a denser and perhaps more stable wood (the cedar sample is slightly cupped). We'd get the cypress without the v-notch up the middle.

Note grain difference and cupping in the cedar.

Cost, you say? Good question. Indeed, the cypress costs more than the cedar, but only 14 percent more.

Cypress it is.

final tile choices

We've (nearly) made final tile choices. One last thing we needed to choose was tile for the bathroom walls. What we would have loved is glossy-and-bright-as-a-librarian-in-the-morning-after-a-triple-shot-espresso marble, but it is darn expensive, especially on top of our backsplash choice. Two large format (12" by 24") tiles we looked at were white ceramic and marble:

Ceramic = $3 a square foot; marble = $15 a square foot. 

Ceramic it is.

One last choice we need to make is for the backsplash for the buds-n-suds (laundry-bar) room. Same as in the kitchen? Or something different (and less expensive)?

curb shock

If you recall, we had to tear out and replace the approach and curb at our driveway (the city made us do it). The good news is that replacing the curb made it all look better by not mixing two vintages of concrete. The bad news? That all cost all of 3,400 dollars that were not in the budget. Contingency funds...

a gift!

Our sweet green neighbors around the corner gave us a magazine from the Frank Lloyd Wright inspired (he consulted) Biltmore Hotel. Sweet!

We already had the cat, in case you are wondering...

new neighbors

Speaking of neighbors, the house two lots down is going up with amazing speed. Not as green as our house (and certainly not as modern!), there it is in the distance and from the street. 

It will prolly go for a mint since the housing market here is going great googly-eyed gangbusters. Our house is starting to look like a brilliant financial move...

we saw grumpy cat!

SXSW is going on now in Austin, which allows opportunities to partake in various shades of goofiness. For example, here's a photo we took of a bunnymobile rolling about town:

We're big fans of Grumpy Cat, a nearly one-year old kittycat named Tardar Sauce or Tard for short. Tard, truly a sweetheart, was born with a permanent frown on her face. She became an internet phenomenon (a meme in webspeak) last fall when people began captioning her photos with grumpy sayings. For example, here's one I made at memegenerator.net:

For the record, we're having a (mostly) good time!

Anyway, she's in town for SXSW! So we went down and waited (wait for it...) two and half hours to meet her in all her feline (dozing) glory:

Quite frankly, she looked a little grumpy from all the attention.

Afterwards we went to the Paul Qui curated trailer food court nearby. Yum!

The Qui is arguably a neighbor as he lives in the same building as us (and we see him from time to time).