21–30 of 339 posts
There's plenty to discuss about houses (if you've got time on your hands), but give me a pretty good home. Green? Where I grew up you could drive around in the woods and see old abandoned log houses turning back into land and a few rocks, all on their own. A worthy goal to work towards.
Lloyd's still kicking and blogging. https://www.lloydkahn.com/
I'm looking at building a home as a first time home owner in the next few years. One thing I'm wondering is how many headaches can I avoid if I just choose an expensive builder and not try to haggle or save a buck at every turn? I just want a 2-bedroom, 1,000 sq ft bungalow and am willing to pay 60-70% more than the average $/sqft in my city if they do a good job. I'd rather have a nice small place rather than a huge…
I'm looking at building a home as a first time home owner in the next few years. One thing I'm wondering is how many headaches can I avoid if I just choose an expensive builder and not try to haggle or save a buck at every turn? I just want a 2-bedroom, 1,000 sq ft bungalow and am willing to pay 60-70% more than the average $/sqft in my city if they do a good job. I'd rather have a nice small place rather than a huge…
A friend told me about the post. Thanks for the kind words. Glad you’ve all found it useful.
Dan do you ever talk about retro fitting old houses at your monthly talks. It would wonderful to learn what can be done to existing (my home is 1880’s) buildings to improve their performance.
I'm looking at building a home as a first time home owner in the next few years. One thing I'm wondering is how many headaches can I avoid if I just choose an expensive builder and not try to haggle or save a buck at every turn? I just want a 2-bedroom, 1,000 sq ft bungalow and am willing to pay 60-70% more than the average $/sqft in my city if they do a good job. I'd rather have a nice small place rather than a huge…
Our conclusion was that you absolutely must be on top of things or you'll end up disappointed.
- wood
- waste
- lifelong high expense
- manual
- 3D printed houses (https://communityimpact.com/austin/georgetown/housing-real-estate/2022/11/17/3d-printed-homes-in-georgetown-offer-new-approach-to-building-communities/)(https://www.3dwasp.com/en/3d-printer-house-crane-wasp/)
- revival of the modular home (really to many to list https://www.dwell.com/article/prefab-homes-austin-texas-f734ce25)
- prevalent home centered tech
- open source communities (https://www.opensourceecology.org)
- remote work
- decreasing solar cost
- increasing last mile internet access
A friend told me about the post. Thanks for the kind words. Glad you’ve all found it useful.
Love the book by the way; it's what I wish I'd had when I was looking to buy my first home. I'm going to be gifting it to a few people in my family over the next few years.
This is one of the areas that ML robotics companies should look into. Prefabs for whatever reason do not seem to work for the American market. Enough is enough, time to start throwing ML robotics models at zoning and building code regulations, instead of those silly game environments that DeepMind use for their RL demos. Replace those overpriced and incompetent tradespeople and builders. They do not have enough real…
I'm looking at building a home as a first time home owner in the next few years. One thing I'm wondering is how many headaches can I avoid if I just choose an expensive builder and not try to haggle or save a buck at every turn? I just want a 2-bedroom, 1,000 sq ft bungalow and am willing to pay 60-70% more than the average $/sqft in my city if they do a good job. I'd rather have a nice small place rather than a huge…
Find a good architect that knows the building codes and is at least educated in structural engineering.
Second, you can hire someone to manage the quality of the work. This can cost between 8-12% of the project bid. They make sure work is being done to a proper standard and will can deal with the contractor if something is lacking.
It is just going to take time. You can't build until you have permits. You can't get permits without a structural engineer drawings. You can't get a structural engineer until you have architect drawings. It all just takes time. Not to mention Our contractor was a year out.
Also, availability is still difficult on a lot of items. The windows we wanted were 26 weeks out. Our tile unavailable. If you like off the shelf junk from Home Depot, then you can avoid some of that waiting, but otherwise you have to simply wait.
Good luck!