graywater presentation in austin oct 19 2011

info here

back to the drawing board...

Deepest apologies to our four (now three…) dedicated readers for not posting lately: we’ve been quite busy! We sold our house, held a garage sale when it was literally 110 degrees in the shade, rented an apartment downtown, washed our hair several times and…hmmm… what else…Oh yeah, I nearly forgot: We fired The Architect.

Call us naïve (and indeed we may be naïve on these architectural matters…), but we expected that after a year and nearly nine grand of our hard-earned money we would have working plans for our new home. Instead, we have nothing. Well, except the realization that The Architect isn’t real good at designing a home that fits a budget.

ACT I

We nearly (and in retrospect should have) fired The Architect back in June when it became clear that he was in a budgetary distortion zone with the design of the house. We loved what he came up with, but expressed from the get-go concerns on what it would cost to build. He assured us that he was watching cost and that part of his job was keeping us within budget. Well, OK: that sounded good. After all, he’s The Architect and that’s why we hired him. After several more design meetings over a few months, the house crept up in square footage from about 2,850 to over 3,000 square feet. I called timeout and insisted we talk budget since my simple calculations with his build costs showed that we were WAY over our allotted buckage. The Architect resisted at first: We haven’t done elevations yet! We haven’t chosen cladding! Call me demanding, but I wasn’t interested in seeing elevations for a house I was already pretty sure we couldn’t afford. After more detailed calculations, the final tally was (drumroll please…): more than 100K over budget.

ACT II

After a bizarre conversation where it was clear The Architect saw no problem with designing a house way out of his client’s budget, to his credit, he shrunk the house on his own nickel to fit our dollars at his estimated $125-a-square-foot build cost (with an additional $15 a square foot for a higher end finish-out and cost cushion). That self-inflicted redesign was a prerequisite to not canning him. After several weeks of tweaking the redesign, he thought we should start talking to builders to get estimates on build out. This was, in part, driven by a concern he had that his cost per square foot estimate was too low. He was right. After speaking to a number of builders the build cost came in at $160 to $180 a square foot: that’s $50,000 to $100,000 over budget with the higher number more likely (from a builder who can build affordable green modern). We’re not willing to live without a garage and with a house without a soul (Formica countertops? Builder grade finish out? Hardie as far as the eye can see? Pooping in recycled Folgers cans? [OK, I made that last one up…]). And because the current design can’t be shrunk anymore, we were facing an inevitable redesign.

How does that saying go? Twice bitten, thrice shy?

I think this budget business alone wouldn’t have necessarily warranted a pink slip, but the less-than-satisfactory design process left me loathing going back to the drawing board with The Architect (I was often left wondering after disagreements on cabinets, colors, cladding, flooring, green features, and whether or not we should have a garage: "Whose house is this exactly?" As one of the builders said: “It’s your house, but it’s the architect’s art project.”).

So what happened? I don’t know since we never got explanations for why stuff went wrong (these are things to be ignored, apparently, and/or blamed on the client). My theory is that while The Architect thought he had designed a house that could be built affordably (simple volumes), the crenulated design greatly increased surface area and thus the amount of cladding, windows, and framing. That greatly increased costs.

ACT III?

Currently, we’re licking our emotional (and financial) wounds, doubly deep because knowing what we know now about how much it really costs to build (and how goofy architects are), we probably wouldn’t have sold our house and done this. Nevertheless, here we are, homeless (so to speak) with a hunk of land in north-central Austin. Forward we must plod.

I mentioned earlier that we’ve ended this design process with The Architect with nothing. That’s not entirely true. We’ve earned a Bachelor of Arts in the Architectural School of Hard Knocks. Here’s what we’ve learned during our tutelage:

1. If early in the relationship the architect does something disturbing, bail. You don’t have the time (or money) to deal with it. Trust me.

2. Talk to builders early and often. Don’t trust the architect to know what it costs to build. As one builder told us: Architects often think something should only cost x instead of y, but that doesn’t change the fact that it costs y.

3. Strongly consider (a) working with a design/build firm [where, presumably, the hapless architect can wander down the hallway and ask Ole Hank how much a two by four costs] or (b) bringing a builder to the table during the design process. However, we’re getting the sense that (b) may be easier said than done with a traditional builder...

4. Don’t let the architect push you around. As a friend of a friend told us while touring his architect-designed home: You have to dominate your architect. I strongly prefer not to dominate anyone, so the need to dominate is a deal breaker. In that case, when interviewing architects, ask him about how he works collaboratively. And when he doesn’t deliver (this will be clear early), see #1 above.

5. Choose an architect with a real office. A real office, while it doesn’t guarantee competence, at least indicates the architect is successful enough to not work on your plans on the kitchen table in competition with a bowl of Fruit Loops.

6. Choose an architect and/or a firm registered with the American Institute of Architects. Again, not a guarantee of competence, but at least there’s a hoop to jump through.

7. If the architect has a huge ego, it’s a warning sign of troubles ahead. During a recent home tour, we congratulated the lady who architected the house. She blushed and explained that the homeowners and builder needed to share in the congratulations since it was truly a collaborative project. I nearly bawled.

Here’s to hoping we don’t earn a Masters degree…

[photo by mwah]

zeroHouse prairieHouse and windCatcher

Saw a blurb in Austin Magazine about the local architect firm Specht Harpman and their prairieHouse, a concept house based on a converted gas station. And while Specht Harpman have designed structures that have actually gotten built, it's their concepts that are the coolest. Their zeroHouse, a fully self sustainable structure, has shown up all over the interwebs, and their windCatcher was designed in anticipation of the coming desertification due to global warming. Cool, or rather hot, stuff. More images at their site.

[images shamelessly lifted from Specht Harpman]

urban inspiration: 183 and Burnet

Neat use of aluminum straights and cut angle "irons".

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]

cool blog: BUILD

I love love love this blog. Carefully tendered by an architectural shop out of Seattle, the good folks at BUILD, firm believers in open source architecture, share their design thoughts on everything from parapets to showers to tile. They also opine quite a bit on running a small-shop architecture firm. And while the blog is a just a wee bit pretentious (they are, after all, architects…), it’s well thought out, well written, and often funny as hell. And they are not above poking fun at themselves and architects in general, as demonstrated by a post by Annie Choi (“Dear Architects, I am sick of your shit”) and “Dress the Architect”. Plus, they respectfully and politely respond to comments and gently but firmly address detractors. If you have a bidness and blog, this is the way to do it and build your rep. And, to top it all off, they design and build wonderful (high end…) houses!

austin x design

The Austin chapter of the American Institute of Architects is striving to turn its annual AIA home tour into a month-long event of design-directed activities called austin by design. In addition to the aforementioned tour (which is always awesome), there will be the Barkitecture design contest (cool dog houses), an interior design home tour, tours of architect offices, and various other tours, presentations, and green things. Lots to do in this October!