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The Pretty Good House

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81–90 of 339 posts

Re: The Pretty Good House

#81

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…

Ever deal with an IT contractor? Construction guys are worse. You need to watch everything.

You want them always watching their back and being dissatisfied, but not enough to walk off the job. Happy contractors are usually trouble.

Re: The Pretty Good House

#82

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. You kind of have to know what to look for and still spend lots of time with the selected general contractor. My current gold standard of a good general contractor is Hammer & Hand out in the US Pacific Northwest [1]. Their attention to detail is more than what you see in the industry.

[1] https://youtube.com/@HammerAndHand

Re: The Pretty Good House

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

1000 square feet is only small in the USA. 1000 sqft is the average size of a home in Japan. 50% are smaller. There's plenty of creative ways to use 1000 sqft

I believe the poster is in the United States. So it’s small and unusual, which makes the project harder.

Re: The Pretty Good House

#84

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…

Consider a separate architect to design the place with you. They can help find a general contractor to be the "builder", but also serve as an owner's representative to oversee construction intent. They want the design done well, as well.

Re: The Pretty Good House

#85

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…

>Can I just throw more money at the problem so that I'm less stressed and offload more decisions to the builders?

Yes you can. It requires two things:

1) you need to hire a builder who has experience with commercial and/or industrial construction. Hire the same type of builder that you wanted to build a small dental clinic. Tell them explicitly that you want everything to build built with the same standards as their commercial clients. Even if they are well intentioned, you don't want to be the beta tester for a builder trying to expand in a new type of construction. Most of the work will also be done by subcontractors, so you want to hire someone with a list of contacts filled with companies who typically do high quality work for highly demanding client.

2) Hire a structural engineer and architect to check their work. If you can only hire one, the engineer is more important, a shitty finish material or bad interior lightning is easier to fix than a cracked foundation. The engineer needs to be on site to check the work at the critical moments to make sure it's done right (eg. before pouring concrete). He needs to have the authority to stop work if it's bad and/or force them to redo it. they also need to approve the plans and the product that will be installed. It is common practice in government contracts that the builder has to submit for approval the spec sheet for most of the products that they want to install.

Basically, you want to follow the same procedure a large city would use but skip some of the red tape that don't apply to you.

The contract is very important, I would recommend copying it from whatever is the most used one in your region for public work. It's probably gonna be a >200 page monster but it will cover every single situation you could possibly imagine and provide a fair way to resolve the situation.

Re: The Pretty Good House

#86
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am just about to start construction of 750 sqft home this year. We decided to go with cross laminated timber building. Manufacturer builds walls inside their factory, bring it to construction site and put it together within day or two. The main disadvantage is that it just a "bit" more expensive.

Where are you located?

Czech Republic

Re: The Pretty Good House

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm intrigued to see that you consider 1000 sq feet (100 sq m) to be "so small". It's twice the size of the first house I owned (which was also 2 bed, and pretty typical starter size here) [1] To me 1000 sq feet for 2 bedrooms sounds fantastic. So many ways you can use that space creatively. So many different layout options and shapes. My recommendation would be to start with an architect. Given a good budget and def…

In my market (smaller western us city), there are roughly 730 detached single family homes in the market. Only 25 are less than 1000 sq feet and none of those were built in the last 40 years.

It’s not that there aren’t any options that size, I happily spend the first decade of my adult life in residences that size, but dwellings that size are almost exclusively condos/apartments in the US. Others have noted some good reasons for that.

Re: The Pretty Good House

#88
> Even the best windows and doors on the market perform much worse than even an average wall

New windows here in Norway are often triple or quadruple glazed, and they have a pretty good R-value; so they are not that much worse than average walls at least.

Re: The Pretty Good House

#89
post #88

> Even the best windows and doors on the market perform much worse than even an average wall New windows here in Norway are often triple or quadruple glazed, and they have a pretty good R-value; so they are not that much worse than average walls at least.

We just refurbished our house here in Norway. New windows and 10 cm extra insulation. I am shocked how well the windows perform! Ice on the outside, but nice and warm on the inside. Amazing!

Re: The Pretty Good House

#90
post #88

> Even the best windows and doors on the market perform much worse than even an average wall New windows here in Norway are often triple or quadruple glazed, and they have a pretty good R-value; so they are not that much worse than average walls at least.

TIL quadruple glazing is a thing. Is the light noticeably more attenuated through 4 panes of glass compared to 2 or 3?
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