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| My husband and I are at the very early stages of building a house. I'd love any advice! Thank you! | |
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Expert
Posts: 1561
 
| What state?
Is it city or county?
Acreage or residential lot?
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 Shelter Dog Lover
Posts: 10277
| Are you building it yourself or have you hired a builder? We are building right now. My husband is a contractor, he builds multifamily so he knows what he is doing, this is our 3rd house we have built. My best advice is to be there every day and check everything, don't assume things are going to get done right. Pm me with any questions or concerns.
Edited by rodeomom3 2015-02-16 6:07 PM
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 Go For It!
Location: Texas |
Next to finances... building a home is the #1 cause of divorce, lol. Start counseling now so that you are ahead of the game!
J/K... Congrats! We've done it five times and luckily survived them all, lol. Put more closet space then you think you need and don't scrimp on things that are hard to change out later. Like tile, tubs, porches, windows, etc. If it is a long distance from your water heater to the bathrooms, add an additional H2O heater somewhere closer.
Good luck and have fun with it!
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Duct Tape Bikini Girl
Posts: 2554
| Kaycee, where are you? | |
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  Damn Yankee
Posts: 12390
Location: Somewhere between raising hell and Amazing Grace | If you are on a slab....RADIANT heat :)
I've told hubby when we build there are things I want without a doubt, such as a mudroom, and a storage room. Depending on where we retire I am hoping for a concrete slab with radiant heat in an earth berm home. | |
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 Party Girl
Posts: 12293
Location: Buffalo, Wyoming | We are getting ready to buy a fixer upper and my one must have so far is a mud room off the back of the house with a laundry room attached.
The house we are currently living in has a mudroom for the one and only entrance, I love it but if you have dirty close you have to track them through the whole house to the laundry room.
BIG closests and extra storage.... just remembered those.
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Member
Posts: 28
Location: Arkansas | Include a hot water Fawcett on the outside, next to the cold. Comes in handy for lots of things! Also.... if you ever hang Christmas lights outside, place electric outlets up high on each end of the house....say porch ceiling level so you don't have to run extension cords down the wall. I wish I had done that one! Also.... insulate interior walls for sound proofing...for example the kids room, bathroom and utility room. Enjoy! | |
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Shelter Dog Lover
Posts: 10277
| Yes, can't over build on closet space. I have huge closets in this house, my master closet is almost as many square feet as the bedroom, a big mud room right across from a big laundry room. In the kitchen I am putting in two 24" refrigerator columns instead of a refrigerator/freezer combo. We will have an under counter ice machine in the kitchen and the freezer will be in the utility room. We don't use the freezer near as much as the frig and I wanted more frig space, hate it when it gets so packed it is hard to find things. Houzz.com is a fantastic website for getting ideas. It has a gazillion pictures that you can narrow down by room and style. | |
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 The Vaccinator
Posts: 3810
Location: Slipping down the slope of old age. Boo hoo. | - have really well-drawn out and thorough house plans. It's worth the money to have someone who specializes in house plans to draw yours. They will help you make sure you do not forget things... and your builder will be very appreciative to have great plans to build from.
- have a solid and detailed contract with your builder; know the draw amounts and payment dates -- and exactly the work that must be completed to attain a draw. Read your contract; have an attorney review it; make sure it has guarantees and a warranty - and spell out what the warranty covers.
- houzz.com is an awesome site. Set up an account (free) and enjoy.
- have a meeting with your electrician and a walk-through to determine all the electrical plug-ins you need and exactly where the light switches should be. Do not assume the electrician will put in enough or put them in the right places. THINK about this.
- remember your can do some neat customizing without spending a lot with you ceilings and trim... bead board ceilings; natural wood; contrasting paint colors; tray ceilings; modified tray, etc... talk with you builder.
- consider an on-demand hot water heater. We LOVE ours. We NEVER run out of hot water. The local gas company paid a $500 rebate for our gas on-demand hot water heater. Check into rebates for your appliances...from stores AND from your energy provides (gas and electric).
- as someone else said, do not skip on your countertops and tile in bathroom, etc. They are expensive and difficult to replace and the good stuff adds value to your home. BUT don't get too wild with your colors/design. Try to keep it classic.
- we love having a nice, deep laundry sink in our laundry room; and, our laundry room has a door into our master bath. So easy to do laundry and put it away. (We also had the laundry walls soundproofed since the room is near the bedroom.)
- Every room needs texture, pattern and color.
- I prepared a 3-ring binder with tabs -- a tab for each room in the house. In this binder was the color for each room, walls, ceiling and trim, color for inside the closets, type of flooring....and I provided our contractor with an exact copy of my 3-ring binder with all the information - each page was dated so I could easily change out/update if something changed to assure the contractor had the most recent and correct information.
- walk through your home every day as it is being built. Meet at least weekly with your contractor to review progress - and discuss that 3-ring binder - if it needs updating.
- be nice to your contractor and his subs..... a cooler of soft drinks; perhaps feed them lunch every now and then.... you want them on your side! Bake them brownies or cookies.
- have an outside hydrant on every side of the house -- I don't think you can have too many outside hydrants -- and have plenty of electrical plug ins located outside around your house....
- remember paint colors are darker on the wall than the paint chip. Usually when you find a paint your love, you ought to back down to one shade lighter to paint on the wall to end up with what you want.
- if you have a large "great room" in your home, select that paint color first, then move on to the other rooms to assure all your color flow from that room and compliment one another.
- really think about how you live day in and day out -- build a house that supports your lifestyle. Remember that bigger is not always better -- if you love the outdoors, a small, easy to care for home would be best....more time to spend outside.... plan for easy to care for flooring...and make sure you have thought about an area (mud room?) for when you come in from the barn / farm to help keep your home clean.
- we have cats; we put a pet door in the wall of our laundry room -- the pet door goes into our enclosed garage; all the litter and the cat's food is in the enclosed garage. Works great - cats love it and actually spend quite a bit of time in the garage (they have beds in there, too).
- make sure you have construction insurance on your home....contact your agent at least a week before construction begins to get it covered.... and increase the amount as the home goes up to assure you are covered. (too many times homes under construction have burned to the ground....lightning....arson....be covered)
- check on package deals for kitchen appliances - sometimes there are very good savings through package deals
- overstock.com, Josh & Main, West Elm are your friends..... light fixtures, neat door knobs, handles, etc.... look for unique items at great deals that can customize your home without breaking the bank....
- remember, it is your home - stay involved. Inspect it regularly to assure quality work. Cultivate a great relationship with your builder... and your banker.
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 Texas Tenderheart
Posts: 6715
Location: Red Raiderland | luckyjo - 2015-02-16 5:26 PM Kaycee, where are you?
 LJ, I just saw this and it made me laugh before I even saw what you wrote because I was thinking, "I would NOT recommend Tilson!"  | |
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| Wow! This is all great information and exactly what I was hoping for. Y'all are wonderful. We are being gifted some family land here in Texas that we currently live on in a mobile home. A close family friend will be our contractor. | |
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Go For It!
Location: Texas |
I LOVE Tilson! I have worked for some really nice upscale custom home builders, contracted a couple of houses myself, and when we finally decided that we are staying put this time... I had Tilson build our house. It's a pretty nice house, lol. After working for and with lots of builders and subs, Tilson was an easy decision for me. ALL builders MUST build to code, the expense is in the details. I had Tilson do some stuff that they don't usually do, but our GC on the job was awesome and finally told the guys to "just do what she says", lol. They did a fantastic job and I would highly recommend them to anyone. There are actually 3 other people down our road that used Tilson after seeing our house.
The nice thing is that Tilson has been around since 1948. The thing that attracted me to them was that if I have a problem, they'll be here in 10 or 20 years. My slab was engineered and has a lifetime guarantee. That means a lot to me when we deal with the heat and drought issues that we have here in TX.
Okay, now that I have cleared that up, lol.
Edited by grinandbareit 2015-02-16 10:47 PM
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 Poor Cracker Girl
Posts: 12150
Location: Feeding mosquitos, FL | Delta Cowgirl - 2015-02-16 8:00 PM - have really well-drawn out and thorough house plans. It's worth the money to have someone who specializes in house plans to draw yours. They will help you make sure you do not forget things... and your builder will be very appreciative to have great plans to build from. - have a solid and detailed contract with your builder; know the draw amounts and payment dates -- and exactly the work that must be completed to attain a draw. Read your contract; have an attorney review it; make sure it has guarantees and a warranty - and spell out what the warranty covers. - houzz.com is an awesome site. Set up an account (free) and enjoy. - have a meeting with your electrician and a walk-through to determine all the electrical plug-ins you need and exactly where the light switches should be. Do not assume the electrician will put in enough or put them in the right places. THINK about this. - remember your can do some neat customizing without spending a lot with you ceilings and trim... bead board ceilings; natural wood; contrasting paint colors; tray ceilings; modified tray, etc... talk with you builder. - consider an on-demand hot water heater. We LOVE ours. We NEVER run out of hot water. The local gas company paid a $500 rebate for our gas on-demand hot water heater. Check into rebates for your appliances...from stores AND from your energy provides (gas and electric). - as someone else said, do not skip on your countertops and tile in bathroom, etc. They are expensive and difficult to replace and the good stuff adds value to your home. BUT don't get too wild with your colors/design. Try to keep it classic. - we love having a nice, deep laundry sink in our laundry room; and, our laundry room has a door into our master bath. So easy to do laundry and put it away. (We also had the laundry walls soundproofed since the room is near the bedroom.) - Every room needs texture, pattern and color. - I prepared a 3-ring binder with tabs -- a tab for each room in the house. In this binder was the color for each room, walls, ceiling and trim, color for inside the closets, type of flooring....and I provided our contractor with an exact copy of my 3-ring binder with all the information - each page was dated so I could easily change out/update if something changed to assure the contractor had the most recent and correct information. - walk through your home every day as it is being built. Meet at least weekly with your contractor to review progress - and discuss that 3-ring binder - if it needs updating. - be nice to your contractor and his subs..... a cooler of soft drinks; perhaps feed them lunch every now and then.... you want them on your side! Bake them brownies or cookies. - have an outside hydrant on every side of the house -- I don't think you can have too many outside hydrants -- and have plenty of electrical plug ins located outside around your house.... - remember paint colors are darker on the wall than the paint chip. Usually when you find a paint your love, you ought to back down to one shade lighter to paint on the wall to end up with what you want. - if you have a large "great room" in your home, select that paint color first, then move on to the other rooms to assure all your color flow from that room and compliment one another. - really think about how you live day in and day out -- build a house that supports your lifestyle. Remember that bigger is not always better -- if you love the outdoors, a small, easy to care for home would be best....more time to spend outside.... plan for easy to care for flooring...and make sure you have thought about an area (mud room?) for when you come in from the barn / farm to help keep your home clean. - we have cats; we put a pet door in the wall of our laundry room -- the pet door goes into our enclosed garage; all the litter and the cat's food is in the enclosed garage. Works great - cats love it and actually spend quite a bit of time in the garage (they have beds in there, too). - make sure you have construction insurance on your home....contact your agent at least a week before construction begins to get it covered.... and increase the amount as the home goes up to assure you are covered. (too many times homes under construction have burned to the ground....lightning....arson....be covered) - check on package deals for kitchen appliances - sometimes there are very good savings through package deals - overstock.com, Josh & Main, West Elm are your friends..... light fixtures, neat door knobs, handles, etc.... look for unique items at great deals that can customize your home without breaking the bank.... - remember, it is your home - stay involved. Inspect it regularly to assure quality work. Cultivate a great relationship with your builder... and your banker.
Delta Cowgirl hit it on the head
We built our house from March to September so the subs and crews were working right through the middle of a Florida summer. I'd stop by and check it out every day but about once a week I'd bring beer and baked goods. I was their favorite customer and they worked hard right through the summer.
It comes down to being really really thoughtful about how you live and what you are willing to deal with. Look at lots and lots and LOTS of house plans and steal ideas that work for you. Our house is relatively small and all the finishes are tough because we have animals and track in mud and can be lazy about deep cleaning so we don't need a lot of house that needs to be tended to.
For example, we have polished concrete floors in our house. They are **** near indestructible. My dog apparently wasn't feeling well one day while I was at work and I came home to doggie puke explosion everywhere. The floors wiped right up and you'd never know. No stains, no sticky residue, nothing. Love those floors. | |
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Shelter Dog Lover
Posts: 10277
| Lots of great advice. Think of how you want use your space and plan for your needs. I am out on land and wanted as many windows as I could get. I decided to have windows in my kitchen instead of upper cabinets. When I met with my cabinet maker, I had written down for each lower cabinet what I planned on storing in there- glasses, dishes, baking goods, pots and pans, etc. It made it easy for him to suggest drawers vs roll out shelves and size of cabinets/drawers needed. I have a big 10 x 6 pantry and added outlets in there- I put outlets every where ( also did as someone else posted, put outlets on the roof eaves per suggestion of our electrician for hanging Christmas lights). We have a exercise room that shares a wall with the master bath, you can acess from the hall but I added another door from the master bath because my husband works out at 4:30 in the morning and he can get to the shower and closets without having to go back through the master bedroom. Ditto on treating your subs good. I always have a cooler of drinks available, we buy lunch and you would be amazed what favor a batch of brownies and cookies will get you. Our building experiences have always been good, but then my husband is in the business and my builder so we have an advantage and we have the same taste in finishes. It can get overwhelming picking lights, plumbing fixtures and all the finishes. I learned form the first house to not beat it to death. I thought I needed to look at every possible choice and realized I was always choosing just a little different version of the same thing and driving myself nuts. With the houzz.com website, I would look at lots of pictures and when I found one that I fell in love with, that was it. When picking finishes I would take that picture and say this is what I want- made it so much easier and instead of trying to pull different elements together and hope it all works I had a visual of what the fisnished product/room would look like. Here is a picture that I used for our master bath. It is a little different, my vanity is 7' and has a sit down make up area but the overall look is the same. I could have never come up with this on my own. I also hired a friend who is a decorator to help with paint choices because I am terrible at it.
Edited by rodeomom3 2015-02-17 8:37 AM
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Expert
Posts: 1314
Location: North Central Iowa Land of white frozen grass | Make sure you put in wider doors in. They are not much more money than the narrow doors. Also on room sizes go look at other peoples houses and compare room sizes because you will see what it looks like with furniture in it. Our master bedroom closit is 9' by 10'. Also what sells a house is the kitchen and the master bedroom and bathroom. We designed them first and then fit the rest of the house around them. | |
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 Accident Prone
Posts: 22277
Location: 100 miles from Nowhere, AR | Things I would change about our house:
1) bigger laundry/mud room. It was so much bigger than what we had, I thought it would be plenty big, but I was wrong.
2) bigger garage. We did a last minute scramble to cut costs to get the build cost where we wanted, and cut the garage down to bare bones. Bad idea. 24x24 is not big enough, even tho both our vehicles do fit. Barely. I have a shed for my dually, but it would be nice if it would fit in the garage when needed,
3) bigger window in the kitchen instead of extra cabinets. We have lived here 4.5 years and I still have empty drawers and cabinets. It's ridiculous and the larger window would look better from the outside too.
4) take 3' off the master bedroom and add it to the living room. We sleep in there and that's it. Didn't need that space.
5) would have hired a different builder. I hated him. I still can't speak to him without wanting to hurt him. Not only did we not jive AT ALL, but he ended up taking on too many projects while building our house and left underlings to deal with interior details that they kept screwing up because they were idiots. We interviewed 3 guys, and I liked another one better, but my husband was more comfortable with this one. In real life, he was busy working and I was the one that had to deal with the guy, so we should have gone with who I liked.
things I love:
1) our bathrooms. I went all out in our master, and did some cool details in our downstairs half bath. Love love love.
2) my kitchen. Lots of counter space, eating bar, cook top, double wall ovens and big enough for 2 cooks.
3) walls of windows in the main living space
4) layout. I drew our plans and nailed the layout for what works for us, I just missed some of the dimensions.
5) many many outlets. Our builder was disgusted with the number of outlets I asked for. He said he had NEVER put that many wires in a house this size and I was being ridiculous. Kiss my butt, dude, I have used every single one of those freakers.  | |
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 Extreme Veteran
Posts: 452
Location: Alberta | Pretty much everyone has brought up electrical outlets but it's so true! We've never built but my mom and dad built their place and that is the number one thing my mom still harasses my dad about; lack of outlets - he is an electrician and wired their house and that was 25ys ago!! Lol
If you are putting in an island put outlets in it, same for if your putting in a pantry. If you like to decorate for Christmas think about where you might put lights and such so your not having to string power cords everywhere (near the mantle on your fireplace, if your cabinets don't go right to your ceilings maybe put an outlet above your cabinets so you can string lights up there or other light up decorations through the year), I know it's only for a month or two of the year but this drives me batty at Christmas time!!
We get our water through a water co-op fed from the river and it's untreated so the only water on our place that we can consume is in the house once it goes through our filtration system. The people who lived here before were very smart and put a faucet on the outside of the house that comes from our treatment system so I can use that for filling the kiddie pool and other summer toys that kids are playing with and might drink out of as well as filling our water tanks in the trailer.
My husbands cousin just finished building an absolutely gorgeous house and the smartest choice she made was to put in a large pantry that is more long and narrower, it is floor to ceiling shelves on one side and a counter top the whole length on the opposite side with about a dozen outlets so all her little appliances can stay on the counter plugged in and she doesn't have to worry about storing them somewhere or have her kitchen counters cluttered with a coffee pot, bread maker, mixer, toaster etc., she can just close the door and no one sees it and her kitchen counters are clutter free!!
There are some great ideas on this thread, definitely going to write some of them down for if we ever build! | |
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Poor Cracker Girl
Posts: 12150
Location: Feeding mosquitos, FL | Let's see - things I love about my house - All the light switches. Most of my lights in the main living room and kitchen are run off of at least two switches so I don't have to walk through a dark room to find the dang switch. Drove my electrician mildly nuts but so worth it.
- The layout - our kitchen and living room are one big great room and it is awesome. I hate being trapped in the kitchen by myself.
- The kitchen cabinets and counters - I splurged a little on the kitchen and bathroom counters and I loooooove them. They are so beautiful. Automatically makes our little house look fancy schmancy. And the kitchen counter is wide enough to seat four on the other side at the breakfast bar. Love it. I told my kitchen cabinet lady to go nuts with the cabinet layout - I don't cook much and I don't have strong opinions. She knocked it out of the park. Love love love my deep pan drawers and the built in garbage cans.
- The floor - maintenance free!
- The insulation!! We went with spray foam and a closed envelope house. Here in the lovely FL panhandle, summer is boiling hot and winter is cold (for me. I'm a sissy.) Really super good insulation helps keep the a/c and the heat in. Worth every penny. My electric bill (heat pump) was $100 last month. And I get to turn the heat up without freaking out about the bill.
Things I don't love - No garage - we couldn't afford the extra square footage at the time and boy do I wish we had one. Plans in the works for a detached one day.
- Storage, storage, storage - with as much stuff as we have, you'd think we were a Duggar-size family. And it's just us two. Luckily, most of the "stuff" will move to my husband's shop once it gets finished.
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Texas Tenderheart
Posts: 6715
Location: Red Raiderland | grinandbareit - 2015-02-16 10:46 PM I LOVE Tilson! I have worked for some really nice upscale custom home builders, contracted a couple of houses myself, and when we finally decided that we are staying put this time... I had Tilson build our house. It's a pretty nice house, lol. After working for and with lots of builders and subs, Tilson was an easy decision for me. ALL builders MUST build to code, the expense is in the details. I had Tilson do some stuff that they don't usually do, but our GC on the job was awesome and finally told the guys to "just do what she says", lol. They did a fantastic job and I would highly recommend them to anyone. There are actually 3 other people down our road that used Tilson after seeing our house. The nice thing is that Tilson has been around since 1948. The thing that attracted me to them was that if I have a problem, they'll be here in 10 or 20 years. My slab was engineered and has a lifetime guarantee. That means a lot to me when we deal with the heat and drought issues that we have here in TX. Okay, now that I have cleared that up, lol.
G&B, we had just the opposite experience with Tilson building our house. I don't know if you saw the thread I had on here a year ago but we ended up with a crack from our back porch all the way through the house to the front porch. They tried to convince us that the crack was fine....and we finally had to tell them to STOP building and we needed to look further into the situation. Tilson ended up having to put 90 steel piers under the house and we too had the upgraded engineered slab before the crack was found.  I really love the overall house but in our case Tilson's attention to the details was really lacking. We went with them, too, as they were started in the 1930's. We went through 3 GC's. I know you are in Central Texas and we are in the North Central area so the way they do things down there maybe entirely different. I'm glad y'all got a great home. Ours was just a total nightmare to build. It was like pulling a mouthful of teeth! I think with any house if you get the right GC you will be very happy but if they try to cut corners or simply don't know what they're doing, a lot can go wrong. | |
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Go For It!
Location: Texas | Kaycee - 2015-02-17 12:18 PM
grinandbareit - 2015-02-16 10:46 PM I LOVE Tilson! I have worked for some really nice upscale custom home builders, contracted a couple of houses myself, and when we finally decided that we are staying put this time... I had Tilson build our house. It's a pretty nice house, lol. After working for and with lots of builders and subs, Tilson was an easy decision for me. ALL builders MUST build to code, the expense is in the details. I had Tilson do some stuff that they don't usually do, but our GC on the job was awesome and finally told the guys to "just do what she says", lol. They did a fantastic job and I would highly recommend them to anyone. There are actually 3 other people down our road that used Tilson after seeing our house. The nice thing is that Tilson has been around since 1948. The thing that attracted me to them was that if I have a problem, they'll be here in 10 or 20 years. My slab was engineered and has a lifetime guarantee. That means a lot to me when we deal with the heat and drought issues that we have here in TX. Okay, now that I have cleared that up, lol.
I sure hate to hear that... The nice part is that they added those 90 steel piers without having to go to court to get them, lol. I agree that the "detail work" is lacking, but they definitely are not a "custom" builder.
There are so many things that I would have LOVED to do and didn't. Eventually you need to decide on what you are willing to spend and stay there. It is super easy to get WAY over budget, lol. All it takes is money and you can have whatever you want! I traded "paid for" for lots of things I would have loved to have, lol.
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Duct Tape Bikini Girl
Posts: 2554
| Your rooms that you spend the majority of your time in should not be on the west side of the house. Avoiding windows on the west side will cut down on cooling problems in the summer. Having the garage door on the east side has been nice. In the summer, we tend to have our garage open in the afternoon and it is never hot out there. Neighbors that have garage on the west side roast if trying to work outside in the afternoon. position patios so they will be in the shade during afternoon. | |
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