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The Pretty Good House

prettygoodhouse.org

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Re: The Pretty Good House

#241

Post by rfrey »

goodpoint wrote: post #218
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…

> 1,000 sq ft bungalow And you call that a bungalow!?

In the US and Canada, any one-story house is often called a bungalow.

Re: The Pretty Good House

#242

Post by rfrey »

Scoundreller wrote: post #193
93po wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one uses hardwood 2x4 for framing houses. If they did it'd add, at minimum, six figures to your home cost with effectively no benefit. You can absolutely choose between grades of 2x4, however, and if you're working with a builder you can specify with them.

> No one uses hardwood 2x4 for framing houses Not anymore, but we used to. Lumber was whatever trees were nearby. And cut to the size they were actually sold as.

Nobody ever did. Hardwood is completely impractical to build a house with. You'd have to predrill a hole for every nail.

Also, nominal dimensions have always referred to the as-sawn size: planed size has always been smaller by the amount of planing since small-dimension stock began to be used 120-140 years ago. The only difference is that the actual (smaller) size varied widely between sawmills until the early 1960s, when the finished size was regulated.

Re: The Pretty Good House

#243

Post by literallycancer »

itsoktocry wrote: post #147
Spooky23 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> You want them always watching their back and being dissatisfied Ah yes, don't let the proles be happy. You sound horrible to work for. Of course, if your boss did this to you at work, there would be endless complaints.

There's no reason not to want things to be done properly. Make your own build a charity project if it makes you feel better.

Re: The Pretty Good House

#244

Post by lotsofpulp »

nileshtrivedi wrote: post #232
nordsieck wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Frequent checking on the work and hounding the people to fix it. > Isn't this partially what you pay your architect for? There simply isn't a way to eliminate the principal-agent problem.

If the agent insures the quality and is contractually bound to pay all expenses for repair and maintenance, that could avoid a major chunk of the principal-agent problem.

Good luck with enforcing the contract. The cost to prove the agent made the error (and not you or the manufacturer or time) and then other legal costs would probably almost always outweigh the cost to just fix the problem.

It might be possible to materially minimize the probability of error to have 2 agents, one that checks the others’ work. But that also will get costly.

Re: The Pretty Good House

#245

Post by orthoxerox »

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…

Short answer: no

Long answer: you need someone experienced you can trust. In my case it was a neighbor who owned a construction company that had built his own house. We just told him to build ours to the same spec.

Caveat one: it's more expensive. I don't own a construction company, so our spending budgets were different.

Caveat two: you will still find things you wish you had done differently. Either because you have different priorities or because your circumstances are different. In my case, he routed all the wiring through the walls with no convenient way to access or replace them. When you have electricians and drywall installers literally at your beck and call, it's not a problem: you finish up early one day, drive the guys home with some sheets of drywall in the bed, they rip up the wall, replace or add another cable, fix the drywall and go home. When you're a homeowner with a cordless drill and a hammer, you'll want everything done with maintenance in mind.

Even if you find a person you can trust to oversee the construction, you'll still want to learn enough to understand (!) and communicate your requirements to him.

Re: The Pretty Good House

#246

Post by mderazon »

heywire wrote: post #177

If building science is fascinating to you, check out Matt Risinger and The Build Show.

I don't like that channel so much to be honest. The production value is good but it is filled with product endorsements and shiny new high-tech products

Re: The Pretty Good House

#248

Post by CalRobert »

entropyie wrote: post #164
CalRobert wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just had a house built in Ireland. Our architect was fairly cheap but it was that or nothing. It was a kit house and the builders still half-assed most things (they HATED the idea of making a house reasonably airtight for one) so I've been cleaning up their mess.

I hear you, one would expect a kit house to be fairly straightforward, without needing too much input from an architect. Sorry to hear about your builders (though not surprised). What I had in mind when I made my comment though was my parent's neighbourhood in rural Ireland. A modest bungalow in a field that is now dwarfed by huge McMansions 3x the size every 300m in a strip 10km long. Each one massive, asymmetrical,…

hah, honestly the experience has me working on getting out of Ireland. It was a mistake to move here, and doubly one to sink money in to an extension to make our cottage more livable. If it helps, I don't think we're part of one-off ribbon development since the original cottage was 200+ years old. I understand now why the heritage officer was so delighted to meet some chump who didn't realize there's a reason houses in the midlands are so cheap.... and here I thought I was an easy bike ride from a train station with regular service to Heuston, how could it go wrong?

The extension is, in my view, quite nice. We tried to get away with some crazy newfangled ideas like "eaves" and "bug screens" but Ireland shot us down there. People think we're insane not building it out of cinderblocks already.

Speaking of that tight-knit rural community, mostly I know that people can break the law with no consequences and won't talk to anyone their family hasn't known for at least 3 generations. And walking is bizarre and dangerous; the councillor thought I was joking when I asked about getting a footpath to the village 700 meters away.

Of course, if Ireland weren't kicking and screaming about building apartments in the middle of cities neat jobs, schools, transport, and amenities, it would be in a much better position.

Would be happy to compare notes! Email is in my bio.

Re: The Pretty Good House

#249

Post by CalRobert »

grosswait wrote: post #206
CalRobert wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just had a house built in Ireland. Our architect was fairly cheap but it was that or nothing. It was a kit house and the builders still half-assed most things (they HATED the idea of making a house reasonably airtight for one) so I've been cleaning up their mess.

Why did that’s hate it so much?

Well, you see, it requires effort.

Re: The Pretty Good House

#250

Post by dkarl »

Gravityloss wrote: post #236

Here double pane has been the standard for about a century and triple pane after the eighties. No problems whatsoever. I don't even know what's the standard nowadays. Newer windows also quiet down traffic well and reduce the drafty feeling. So there are really very few excuses to not use them. But I don't know what's the name of the phenomenon when someone who uses some primitive technology comes out with all kinds o…

I don't know what to call it on the consumer end, but on the builder side, it's often just laziness and greed. If they don't know how to work with a material, then it sucks. If it's hard to hire subs that know how to build something, then it doesn't meet code and won't pass inspection. If they misbid it, it will never work and needs to be redesigned.

In short, building contractors are a lot like software developers. There are some who keep up with the new materials and building systems and are excited to see new design techniques, and there are others who feel a sense of personal grievance that what they learned before they were thirty won't carry them all the way to retirement.

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