A new bid, and yet more proposed changes

Been a little while since I posted but it feels like a lot has happened.

On Wednesday 2/24, we met with Mark and Jamie to go over the revised bid based on the changes we made. We had really hoped that the changes we made would reduce the cost quite a bit (dropping the vault size, reducing the beamwork, dropping tongue-and-groove, squaring up the garage, etc). However, some other things crept in that pretty much canceled out that gain.

For one thing, they did a detailed look at the site and realized we were going to need some more excavation that we thought to pull off the walkout. Also, with the changes we made, we actually ended up with a little more foundation, and more deck than the original bid. So when it boils down to it, we are at about the same number. We can make it work, and there are some things we can tweak to bring down the cost.

OK enough of that talk...we spent some time pouring over the plans and making changes. Feels like we have done this 100 times over the last few months. At first it was fun, but we are really ready to move on to the next step of actually building this thing and picking stuff out. This will be long, but its easiest for me just to cut-and-paste the email I sent the designer explaining our proposed changes. If you see anything stupid, please say so!

MAIN LEVEL:

1. Bedroom 2 & “Hers” Office: Move the small south facing windows “in” toward the east slightly. Enough to leave about 2’ of space on the south walls between the windows and the corner. Reason here is that opens up the corner for something like a bookcase or toy chest.

2. Bedroom 3: Instead of 2 smaller closets, make one large 8’ closet and move the door east to the corner. (unless you have a better idea for this room, we couldn’t come up with anything else) We thought the double closet was more that needed and reducing it and moving the door over opened up just a little more room space.

3. Master Bath: We’ve been debating shower size and arrangement and here is what we have come up with. not sure how feasible this is. Want to end up with a fairly “enclosed” shower of about 3 ½ by 4 ft. Want to move the north wall of the toilet area more south. In my drawing I’ve taken away a some of the wall “jutting” out to the north of the fireplace, allowing the toilet area to shift south a foot or so. That gives us more room to play with for the shower, and would allow the arrangement pictured in attached plan sketch. Entrances would be narrow (I was thinking 20 inches?) to help hold in the heat (we are planning no shower door). This also puts a small linen closet back in the bathroom.

4. All non-walk-in closets need to have 2’ interior depth (applies to lower level too). From the look of the plans this is probably true.

LOWER LEVEL:

1. Rec Room: move the window to the west in order to center it on the exposed interior wall. Think this will look better from the inside. Realize this will result in window not being centered on the exterior, but its under the deck and rear facing anyway.

2. Bedroom 4: Move door east to corner of room

3. “His” Office: move closet to north end of room, recessed into mech room. Lengthen to 8 feet. Flip entrance door to office to open into the south wall.

4. Put a utility sink the Mech room

5. “Hers” office move window over (as mentioned above)

GARAGE:

1. Return the storage stairs back to previous design. This also moves the entrance to the house back to previous location, and puts mud room back to the prior configuration as well. Place the stairs as far right (west) as possible while avoiding having the two doors (storage access and back door) conflict with each other. Have them open as pictured in diagram.

2. Change stairs leading from house to garage to simply step down walking northward, instead of having the large platform.

3. Move the east door on the garage back to its location nearer to the house entrance. Leave 3 feet of space between the door and the south garage wall to accommodate garbage/recycling cans in that corner.

4. leave utility sink under the storage stairs…close to the entry door for enough clearance.

5. Place a window centered on the south wall of the workshop. We are thinking a rectangular awning window about head-high so you can see out of it. Nothing huge…enough to let in some light on the south facing wall. Maybe 3 feet wide or so.

6. Move the door leading from the main garage to the workshop a little further north…far enough so there is 3 feet of wall space on the diving wall between the door and the south end of the garage. This will allow for ample storage area on that south wall.

7. Still talking about that same door to the workshop. Is there such thing as a slider and/or pocket door we could put here? If not, I would have the door open as pictured in attached sketch.

8. Clarification on the workshop big garage door…the plans say “9’x10’ door, but it’s actually 10 feet wide, 8’ tall right?

MAIN FLOOR CHANGES:

LOWER LEVEL CHANGES:

GARAGE CHANGES:

New Plans (version 3) are already in our hands!

Well you can't complain about a 12 hour turnaround from your designer! Heather sent us these updated plans this morning.

This is very very close. Some things we need to think about are:

• Guest bedroom door/closet configuration. I don't really like the door in the middle, but Heather moved it there to not conflict with the closet door.
  
• Configuration of garage stairs to the storage attic. This new design forces a change to the mud room flow so we'll probably go back to the other option (flip the stairs around and have the access door facing the workshop)
  
• closet in Boys Town ("His Office") is kinda clumsy
• additional window in Andy's bedroom (bedroom 2) takes away from wall space...but it gives him a south facing window.
• Still undecided on the Rec Room window....right now its centered on the entire room, but its right up against the fireplace, with empty wall on the other side. We cant decide if that will look dumb or not.
• Wondering if it would be wise to put a window in the south wall of the workshop for some natural light.
  

Main Level:

Lower Level:

Garage:

Yet more tweaks, changes, and excrutiating detail

It seems like its been a week since we got the last revision of the plans, yet its been less than 48 hours. We've been pouring over these things, making final measurements of things like exercise equipment and tables saws, and trying our best to make sure things fit where we want them too. Here's some sketches and the bullet-point feedback we sent to the designer:

Feedback:

Downstairs

• Remove “Toy Storage” closets, give that room back to the Game Room.
• Shrink the width of both the Exercise room and the Guest room by 1’6”. Give that width to the two offices instead.
• “Flip Flop” the Her Office and Guest Room closets. Instead of closets being equal size, give more space to the office closet (about 4 feet wide for Guest is enough). Can we pocket door the guest closet? Might make more sense since its behind the entry door.
• Extend the Exercise Room and His Office two feet into the Mechanical Room (I’m assuming a 10’ wide mechanical room is enough room)
• Want to add a closet to “His” Office. Best idea I can come up with is on the south wall…but don’t cramp the door too much. I think about 7 feet wide would be good. I’m open to other ideas.
• On north end of Rec Room (by card table) extend out foundation enough to create a 2 foot interior depth closet in the “nook” created by upstairs bathtub)
• Question: what to do about rec room window. Right now its centered on the exterior wall, but not centered on the interior “exposed” wall.
• Removed arched soffit from plans.

Upstairs

• Put prep sink in middle of kitchen island. Move dishwasher to left of sink. Right of sink will have pull out cabinet with garbage/recycling bins.
• In kids bathroom: leave size of room and vanity the same, go down to 1 sink with room for small built in line/storage cabinet in corner.
• Bedroom 2: add small window on the south wall (same as in the Hers Office below).
• Master bath: put a window facing east in the wall (not in the corner above the tub…in the blank wall). Same size as the master bedroom windows.
• Pocket door entrance to mud room if possible (don’t move anything around to accommodate this)
• Give 6 inches of space from the pantry to the mud room.

Garage

• Put 10 foot garage door on workshop. Place the door closer to the dividing wall (want parking spot to be far enough left (east) in order to be able to have room for workbench/table saw/etc on right (west) wall. (will this look silly from front view?)
• Did the stairs to the storage area change direction for a reason? If not let’s put them back so the door is by the house entrance.
• Plan for a utility sink in the garage. If the stairs up change back to the original design, I think the sink would go to the left (east) of the garage back door

New Downstairs Sketch:

Upstairs changes:

Downstairs changes:

Revised plans are in our hands...

Haven't had much time to look at these, but they were delivered today. They are very close! There are a few things we still need to tweak that I can see. Mark is going to bid it out as is and we'll see what price tag comes back. Should see some cost savings due to the changes we made.

Main Level:

Lower Level:

Front Elevation:

Rear Elevation:

Side Elevation 1 (this side, along with the front, will be seen from driveway):

Side Elevation 2:

First pass at changes to new plan

Leading up to our next meeting on Friday Feb 5th we had put together a 3-page (yes...3 pages) bullet point list of all the things we wanted to discuss. And with Heather and the Sams there we went through it all. Here's the bulk of what we discussed:

1) Front porch: We talked about extending it so that the front entry door is centered. Heather pointed out that would require an additional shed roof over that section, blocking some of the view of the main entrance room/beams/etc. We will have to decide which we prefer.

2) Deck/Porch. Want to change stairs from upper to lower deck to be more open (no railing). Push the screen porch down the house to open up more window viewing from inside house (corner bedroom would lose big window on that side...move to other wall).

3) Living room: talked about how we could get built-ins on each side of the fireplace, but it just doesn't work.

4) Kitchen: Need to figure out how to accommodate a non-corner sink, keep the window, and make sure enough room for big side by side fridge/freezer and desk. Heather suggested pushing the mud room wall down and using a little more space on the wall adjacent to the boys' rooms. To make up the space lost in the mud room area, the garage would move a couple feet more away form the house. Here's a rough sketch of what we are thinking:

5) Downstairs: this required a lot of work as we needed to accommodate the built-in shelving that will hold TVs, speakers, AV equipment, video games and who know what else. I wanted about 15 feet of length to play with for that. However, locating it in the central portion of the house (where we had planned) was a problem...would cause you to have a really convoluted entrance to the rest of the floor. We tossed around some ideas and Christina suggested just moving it to the east (left on the sheet) outer wall. I'd lose my thought of having a nice "closet" access to the back of the equipment, but it really helps the rest of the puzzle fit into place. Here's what we are thinking right now:

This allows us to push the bathroom more down toward the other end of the floor, closer to the guest bedroom. Also down there should be room for Christina's office, Pat's "boys town", exercise room, and mechanical room.

6) Garage: Considering making the workshop portion 4 feet wider. Once you get a tractor/bobcat in there along with shelving, workbenches, saws and other garden equipment, it will get full fast.

Those are the big things. We discussed a ton of other smaller things not worth posting. Heather says she should be able to get revised plans back to review by Tuesday or so. Christina leaves Wednesday for a week-long trip to Orlando (board exam study course). So we will be crunched for time together to review the changes. But we are getting close! Once we finalize (or close to it) Mark should be able to get us a revised bid and we will be very close to signing a contract!

Jumping back into the design phase

During the week of Jan 11, things started to really get rolling again. At this point we were armed with the Sams' bid on our current plans, and also I had called a lot of references who had built with Kevin Vegar before. It was very difficult to get anyone to say anything negative about their house. All of them were overjoyed with the work that had been done. Many of them gushed about Kevin and his friendliness and work ethic. I understand that the reference list they provide is going to be be people whose experience went smooth, but everyone was so extremely positive that it was a big plus in our minds.

On Monday the 11th we met with Mark and Jamie again to go over some questions that we had, but more importantly to have them show us a couple other houses that Kevin Vegar had built. Much like the Sams' home, these homes looked wonderful. The attention to detail was really good. I'm no house building expert, so I figure when I look at a house the things I'm going to look at is if the detail work is done well. Trim, paint, tile, etc. These homes looked great.

One of the homes had a great room modified somewhat from what we were planning. Instead of vaulting all the way across the living/kitchen/dining it just vaulted in the living section. It looked great. Plus it had the added benefit of much smaller (and cheaper) beams.

Kevin met us at one of the homes and we all went over to the local Caribou to chat. Here I droned on endlessly with a typed-up series of questions ranging from "nearly trivial" to "irrelevant right now". But hey, that's how my brain works.

We agreed the next step would be to meet with a designer (Heather Hiner) that they work with a lot. Mark knew he would need better plans drawn up anyway (even if we didn't change anything) plus this would give us a chance to perhaps change some things in the design to lower the cost. In fact, if we end up building with them, they will eat the costs of the re-design work. That sounded like a good deal to us!

We met with Heather and the Sams on Fri January 15. It was sort of a frantic discussion as we tried to jam all of our ideas at Heather, while at the same time she had a lot to say too about the design. We discussed some great ideas. For example, she knew right away that if we turned the garage so that all of the foundation angles were at 90 degrees, that would be a big savings. Christina and I both said "OK!". So after what at times seemed like a "who can get a word in edgewise" match, Heather said she would get to work on her revision late the following week.

Soooooo....

Late on Sunday the 31st, Heather emailed us her plans (below). At first I was really discouraged as there were some key things missing/wrong -- mostly because we didn't really spend the amount of time needed to cover everything.

But...the more I looked at the plans the more I liked them. There definitely needed to be some changes. Here is what she sent us, with just a few comments. She did a GREAT job of reducing the size of the house (cut about 400 square feet) while leaving us with essentially the same room sizes and functions.

Full Main Level:
Note the change in the garage angle (big foundation and truss savings), the vault only in the living space, and the return of the closet foyer! There are some kitchen space/arrangement issues that we will need to fix however.

Main Level (living space only):

Lower Level:
clearly some things to change here (she doesn't realize at this point the crazy big AV/Media wall I need!)

At this point, we (and by "we" I mean "Pat") went into a frenzied pouring over of the plans,nitpicking every little thing we wanted changed, and re-drawing most of the lower level...but that is a story for another post...

The Blog is BACK!

Yes, that's right. To our thousands (give or take) of fans out there patiently waiting, I'm happy to announce the BLOG is BACK.

As alluded to in prior posts, its been a bit of a whirlwind since we ended the contract with Bayfront. As noted, we do own the land now so that piece is done. Over the last couple of months we considered several different options and had endless meetings and phone calls. Options included change in time line (wait longer), drastic change in house design, and exploring other builders. Kind of a long story but for the purposes of this blog its enough to say that we have landed on going with a different builder.

When we first visited Duluth we were introduced to Mark Sams who works for Kevin Vegar construction. Kevin is a smaller operation who has a small crew and he does most of the work himself. They only do 2-3 houses a year. Mark is his client-facing person...essentially the project manager. His wife Jamie helps as well. Way back in one of the early posts I linked to pictures of a house that was our inspirational "starting point" for our house design...well that house was the Sams' house.

Here's a couple of the pictures:

Front view:


Rear View:


Part of the Great Room, you can see a little bit of the beams that we liked:


Kitchen:


Family/Rec Room:


We had several conversations with Mark and Jamie. The one big difference between building with someone like Mark and Kevin is that Kevin doesn't have much overhead. No fancy office, not a lot of crew members, and does much of the work himself. They do contract out things like the foundation, plumbing, and electric. But a good share of the stuff they contract out is with other smaller operations that they have partnered with for years. In general they really seem to be able to keep their costs down. And they do great beautiful woodwork.

Mark bid out the plans that we ended up with Bayfront and came up significantly cheaper. This was of course a thrilling turn of events. But Mark would need to have the plans re-drawn so he could get full detailed blueprints. He recommended Heather Hiner of Hiner Home Designs. He suggested that we could probably find more cost savings by tweaking the designs as well. So at this point we were pretty optimistic and scheduled a time to meet Heather.