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The Pretty Good House

prettygoodhouse.org

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Re: The Pretty Good House

#41

Post by JumpCrisscross »

galenko wrote: post #16
carabiner wrote: post #11

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…

No. That’s still a lottery and you are basically saying I’m paying more, so I expect a better service. This does not guarantee results. At all. What you want is a third party. Someone who understands the trade and the codes and will check in on the building site daily and will make sure everything is being done correctly. And if it’s not, will stop work and put everyone in their place. I frankly have no idea what the…

> have no idea what the term for that is in America

It varies. Mine's a designer, though she's also a licensed architect.

Re: The Pretty Good House

#42

Post by georgeoliver »

carabiner wrote: post #11

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…

IMO, yes. I'm probably biased because this is basically our business. Key is finding a good build team (this could be independent architect and builder, a design-build firm, etc.), and critical that they have good trade partners (plumbers, HVAC, electrical, etc.). Do not shirk checking references and doing the legwork, but the good builders are out there.

Re: The Pretty Good House

#43

Post by carabiner »

kilburn wrote: post #26
carabiner wrote: post #11

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…

We tried this approach and ended up with the same kind and amount of problems that everyone else plus a mark-up on the price. Our conclusion was that you absolutely must be on top of things or you'll end up disappointed.

Ok, I figured. Yeah honestly some of the new homeowner subreddits make me glad to be in an apartment. Apartment isn't perfect but it basically works and I never have to think about maintenance, vs. some noobs where it becomes 5-10 hours of work per week.

Re: The Pretty Good House

#44

Post by carabiner »

nextos wrote: post #40
galenko wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. That’s still a lottery and you are basically saying I’m paying more, so I expect a better service. This does not guarantee results. At all. What you want is a third party. Someone who understands the trade and the codes and will check in on the building site daily and will make sure everything is being done correctly. And if it’s not, will stop work and put everyone in their place. I frankly have no idea what the…

Why not trying a high-end factory-made house, such as https://www.huf-haus.com/en-uk In a nutshell, they are manufactured into standard components and assembled onsite. The number of defects is small. The level of quality is incredibly better than what most builders can produce. They are not cheap, though. There are several alternative manufacturers. They are a great option for a bungalow.

Looks cool, wish they were in the US. Here we have "kit homes," like this First Day Cottage that I really like: https://www.reddit.com/r/woodworking/comments/sibihx/first_d...

The company that makes the plans is http://www.firstdaycottage.com/

Re: The Pretty Good House

#45

Post by carabiner »

poutine wrote: post #17
carabiner wrote: post #11

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…

You might have trouble finding good builders for such a small job. Depends on the market I suppose. Also you'll run in to restrictions on some land, some areas will not let you build really small places that are out of proportion to the neighbourhood. Depends how fancy you're talking. But doing a really nice small space is a great strategy for saving money. You can use nice materials since you dont have a lot. Doing…

Thanks! Do you have thoughts on kit homes like First Day Cottage? This one FDC looks incredible: https://www.reddit.com/r/woodworking/comments/sibihx/first_d...

Re: The Pretty Good House

#46

Post by tibbon »

galenko wrote: post #16
carabiner wrote: post #11

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…

No. That’s still a lottery and you are basically saying I’m paying more, so I expect a better service. This does not guarantee results. At all. What you want is a third party. Someone who understands the trade and the codes and will check in on the building site daily and will make sure everything is being done correctly. And if it’s not, will stop work and put everyone in their place. I frankly have no idea what the…

A good architect will be this third party and hold the GC's feet to the fire. The GC might not care about you and repeat business, but they will likely care a lot more about keeping a good architect & firm happier with a decent reputation. Plus, the architect is used to helping this process.

Re: The Pretty Good House

#47

Post by carabiner »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #22
carabiner wrote: post #11

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…

1000 square feet is so small there isn't much to do and only so many ways to design it. IMHO you could easily find a small bungalow of that size, have the interior ripped out and taken down to studs, then totally rebuilt to exactly the layout you want and still be way under the cost of commissioning an architect to design something from scratch.

This is a good idea. What I've run into is that bungalows like this exist in my area (Greater Seattle/Tacoma) but look like shit and were built 80-100 years ago. My research has shown that older homes have all manner of issues with plumbing, electrical and so on. So rebuilding it from its guts looks like it could take care of a lot of that.

Re: The Pretty Good House

#48

Post by fy20 »

nbar wrote: post #12
dankolbert wrote: post #8

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.

Not exactly the same, but my city is retrofitting a lot of Soviet-era apartment blocks to bring them up to modern standards. They are made out of concrete with no insulation and were built when (natural) gas was basically free.

The bulk of the work is wrapping the building in 25cm of rigid foam exterior insulation, replacing windows and making sure that they are fairly air tight. They aren't adding mechanical ventilation, as installation would cause too much disruption to residents who are living there. Heating systems are being upgraded to newer units if they are old and inefficient (still powered by gas or district heating, no heat pumps).

The main issue with older buildings is often you want to maintain the 'character' so wrapping the building in external insulation and replacing the facade isn't always an option. However if you have a building made of masonry this is the best way to insulate it, as the masonry then acts as a thermal mass to keep temperatures inside more stable (in both hot and cold weather). These apartment blocks were ugly concrete that nobody wants to ever see again though, so it's not an issue here :-)

Re: The Pretty Good House

#49

Post by georgeoliver »

trgn wrote: post #38
8bitsrule wrote: post #21

Time to throw in a mention for the homes of Lloyd Kahn. https://www.shelterpub.com/ 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.…

He's great. Sidetracking a little, I wish someone(s) could develop a complementary vision for the urban context. This escape to the woods ethos does not scale. Yet, it's the only one that - at least in my impression - has crystalized in some truly homely aspirational bitesize aesthetics, that seems in reach, if only one would just commit. The closest thing I can think of was maybe "the loft", you know, think 80s cool…

It's happening with DADUs (detached living units), with one critical issue -- they're way too expensive for the average person. I'm curious what the distribution of DADUs are nationwide with respect to cost of living.

Re: The Pretty Good House

#50

Post by danans »

constGard wrote: post #28
dankolbert wrote: post #8

A friend told me about the post. Thanks for the kind words. Glad you’ve all found it useful.

I might get a better answer on GBA, but any building performance folks you'd recommend connecting with in the SF Bay Area? I'm not in the building industry at all, but love hearing talks and daydreaming about changing careers. Finding some material for folks outside of the PNW, New England, and the South West would be amazing. Temperate climates like the bay seem especially challenging to get specific info for, so ma…

> I might get a better answer on GBA, but any building performance folks you'd recommend connecting with in the SF Bay Area?

I'm halfway down that road, having completed a high performance remodel in the Bay Area, and contemplated a career shift into some adjacent field.

High performance building is not as organized a movement here, but instead a patchwork of architects, contractors and consultants that I had to assemble for my project. Assembling a team that was willing to work in a high performance modality was probably the hardest part. It's still unfamiliar to many customers and professionals.

I also did a good amount of the high performance work on my house, so I got to know the principles and practicals pretty well. It was a lot of work, but I enjoyed the process and the learnings (and living in the result).

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