Our builder gave us an average per sq ft price on a house our size on our area.
We imagine the average has been calculated from finished prices divided by the sq footage. Simple enough.
Where we are a bit lost is, the house we are designing has an extra tiny living room, it adds about 100 sq ft, but in reality should be a really cheap room to build compared to lets say the kitchen.
How can we figure out what the overall impact of certain rooms on the final price might be?
Replies
You're smart to see the flaw in price per sf estimates. How do things like garages, porches, decks, basements, etc. count in the equation? Sitework? Professional fees like architects and engineers. Some people count those items in the price per sf and some don't.
Depending on finishes, a room like a bathroom or kitchen could easily be double the cost of a living room depending on the finishes and infrastructure. The higher end you go with the design and finishes, the more the multiplier will go up over a simple non-descript room.
I don't see how a smaller living room can make your house larger.
The only way to get and accurate bid is to hand the builder specific plans and then get a bid specific to those plans. Anything else is just a guess.
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yep- more detail equals a more accurate bid, including a specific building site.
just curious- why a hundred square foot living room? seems too small to have any real impactNo Tag
Well the small living room is like a distribution area for the bedrooms, we were planing on putting there a couple of big chairs and a small table or ottoman.
could the space be put to better use in the bedrooms? or in a bed room?
as a staging area it is not a living room -no one will ever use those chairs.
maybe build in some book shelves and a nice chair for reading space...
or an area for family computer and the like
No Tag
Edited 7/30/2008 12:02 pm ET by hubcap
I am not sure if I agree with it never being used. My parents had several seating spaces like that on their old house and I remember using them frequently with my friends when they came over, I however rarely used the formal living room. On their new place they also have a seating space before the bedroom and it also gets used a bit, then again this is in south america where there is a formal living room, no tv in it, which no one uses other than on big parties.
I guess my thought is as a "living room" that space will not get used, or used infrequently at best so I would re-task it.
No Tag
Yeah I am still considering how to make that room the most useful. I just hate the idea of having a long hallway, that was just a way to make it into a useful space.
If you are quoted a square foot price everything is included in the price, any square foot they can find.
Well we were quoted a price, we were just told by several builders, in this city, at that size usually your house will be between 125 and 135 $/sq ft. It all depends on your finish, etc.
That price would include the square feet from the small living room.
That price was not firm, just ruff estimates. By the way, those are not terribly high prices.
Well yeah the price includes that living room but I am wondering how it compares to that price? The kitchen for example costs a lot more than $125 per sq ft, while I am guessing the garage costs a lot less. Where does a simple living room stand?
I am meeting with the builder soon to ask this, I just want to get everyone's opinions.
Does it make a difference to you? You are contracting for an entire house. The square ft price gets you in the ballpark I am sure he is going to sit with you and discuss your wants and desires.
Just remember it is not like buying a car, all builders are different. You need to find one you can work with, at a price you can afford. Whether he can build the kitchen 1000 less than the next builder is ot important as what he uses and builds.
It's hard to come to an actual square foot price for each room, as the only way to calculate it is to divide the entire project cost by the square footage. Obviously the kitchen and baths will be higher, but you'd have to estimate each room individually to achieve the result of cost per room.
The problem is that houses aren't built room by room, and if he did estimate every room, your bid would be much higher.
You can do the math yourself. If you get a detailed bid, which you should, then you can break down all of the numbers from foundation to finish and incorporate the relative items into each room.
I wouldn't worry about that though personally. I'd start with a plan that works for me and one that I can afford, and find a contractor that you trust will build it the way you see it.
$125 a square foot is not expensive. I've built garages that were more than that.
You are trying too hard to beat too much detail out of a rough guess.It is not 250/ft in the kitchen and 70/ft in the garage.
it is a rough average of 120/ft _ or whatever) for the whole house.Also, those kind of figures are usually based on past history looking back and on tract houses. You are doing a custom which instantly increases cost, and future pricing, not past history.
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I finally got to ask my builder and he gave us a bit more info.
He said a living room space with just basic stuff would probably be at the $95/sq ft, I didn't ask about the kitchen. Of course its still hard to justify 100 sq ft at $95 but a bit easier than at $125 or $135. With that space we are still nearly 290 sq ft over what we wanted so there are lots of places we need to cut stuff out, just don't know where since we like it all.
casolorz
I had a similar situation in my house.. hallways and stairs all led together and was a distribution point. When I finally settled I made a round tower out of the spot and you can go 4 directions from that spot to 8 differant locations plus all the individual rooms etc. each location has..
I'm tempted to put a compass rose inlay in the hardwood flooring in that spot because of all the options. <grin>
You sound like you've got a good plan going there..
That sounds pretty cool, got any pics?
That inlaid rose sounds like a great idea
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You need to put in a You are Here sign along with a map.Do it all in marquertry..
.
A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
Sounds like an intimate "sitting room"
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Well it only makes the house about 100 sq ft larger and in my mind the builder said xyz per sq ft then it ends up being a large number.
I see - this is an ADDITIONAL space as an anteroom for the sleeping quarters. my first read was that your living room was reduced in size to a hundred feet."said xyz per sq ft then it ends up being a large number."A sq ft est is only an approximation.
The real number is what the actual cost should be. I have built for less than a hundred a foot and I have done work that ran up over four hundred a foot.
There is a definite difference based on design, detailing, materials chosen, etc.
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"I don't see how a smaller living room can make your house larger."
Exellent point .
I see you read it like I did. By now, you probably see that he has an EXTRA living room that happens to be small.Look at the plans he has posted! This is getting to be entertaining.
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I just looked at it .
I agree with you plus add my normal thought of recovery .
While I dont mind the small den , I dont see the point between two bedrooms adjoining . Im having trouble finding an instance anyone would like it that way unless its mates living in separate rooms . That may be the case for all I know . Not a good guest or kid situation.
The plan is not in the normal market of buyers.
Considering the high cost of construction in the plan , two bedrooms , four car garage , small rooms , says its for an elderly couple or a couple not planning on any more than a two family that has money to be frilly.
Its a low resell plan fitting limited buyers.
Not to say I would not enjoy living there with just my wife. I would but she would say its too small for both of us . <G>
Tim
Maybe this area of the country is different. Here a 2000 sq ft house usually has a master bedroom, and either 2 little bedrooms (11x10 or so) or 1 berdoom and 1 office. Usually in the basement you get one or two more bedrooms. While I understand everyones comments about the shape of the house raising the cost to build, the inside of the house is pretty standard for what we've seen in town.
Did I hit your type or not ?
You live in a retirement town or a prep town where preppy people have professional jobs as the average?
Sounds preppy to me more than retirement .
Tim
How about late 20s couple! don't know if my city fits your description, but yeah I guess we both have "professional" jobs, both of us are engineers.
Edited 8/1/2008 3:24 pm ET by casolorz
someones not comparing apples to apples or shall i say houses to houses?
Close enough, thanks for responding .
"she would say its too small for both of us . <G>"Depends who is cleaning all the square footage!;)
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Or who it is who has to live we me.
if that's what she said...
UT-OH!!!!
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WOW!!! What a Ride!Forget the primal scream, just ROAR!!!
I always tell my clients that looking to build a house with a cost/SF in mind is like buying a car by the pound. Big difference between a Chevy and a Lexus.
Runnerguy
:-) nice
So I guess how should we consider getting this process going? just ask the builder for a detailed bid? --Carlos
Yes. Detailed bid with allowances for stuff you maybe haven't decided upon yet like kitchen cabinets, flooring, etc. For some items it'd be great if he had some options. Example: HVAC system. Base price and then a number for an upgrade to a higher SEER.
Runnerguy
The only way your tiny room could be cheaper would be if it stuck off one side of the house like a wart. You can't just add a 100 square foot room into your house with affecting the rest of the house. If the room is 10' on a side then you'll have to add 10' to the width and 10' to the length of the entire house to accommodate the room. If your house started out 30' x 40' or 1200 square feet by adding a 10' square foot room your house has suddenly become 40' X 50' or 2000 square feet. It could easily be the most expensive room in the house if you look at it by itself because you had to add 800 square feet to get it.
There can be a hundred other variables as well.
But sticking it oput from the rest of the house can make it more expensive, given the percentage of siding and roofing and corners added relative tot eh room size.adding elsewhere can add to width and increase the size of floor framing required in the whole house or impact the height of the trusses and the amount of roofingI wonder who is designing this place.
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The room doesn't stick out, nor is it necessarily extending unnecessarily any part of the house. From what I can tell its not using any more sq footage than necessary for the room, its pretty well located, actually removing it as it stands right now would require that a few things be moved.
I'll bet Euros to dollars ( the old dollars to donuts doesn't mean anything now that a donut costs nearly a buck) that if you can post a sketch of what you are planning, you can get dozens of ideas here on how to trim costs.
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I am attaching the drawing. It was originally made in meters, it has the feet measurements right now with some quick labels.
That looks like a lot more than $125 a square foot to me, although I am a lowly remodel guy.
Hmm I'm a bit lost, thats just what we were told the average price for a house of the size we want is in our area.
There is no way to accurately guess. What kind of finishes are you planning on? Some tile is $2 a square foot, some is $20, and the same goes for all other finishes.It looks like the foundation and roof will be somewhat complex(not a tract house, it's at least semi-custom), due to bump-outs and angles, so it will cost more than a 'standard' house.Like I said, I am a remodel guy, so I don't build new houses. Most jobs that I do are in the neighborhood of $150+ a square foot, but I could be way off for your area and finish level.Get it priced, for real, and adjust from there, That's the only way you'll know what this house actually costs.
Yeah we are getting it priced but we are still not done with the floor plan, there are a few changes we've asked to be made already. The biggest one is to reduce it by almost 300 sq ft, no idea where from though.
We are probably going to go with cheaper materials on most things, like the $2 dollars tiles you mentioned and other cheaper stuff (incidentally we are putting granite on our kitchen counters right now which was $2/sqft at the home depot parking lot).
That must be the radioactive granite. Just kidding! But there actually has been some found recently that matches that description. Good luck with your project! It looks like a nice design.
hahahaha yeah I bet. I did hear about that. Ohh well hopefully this house will be sold in less than a year.
OK so you are in South America if I read correctly? Not sure how most of us in North America can help, except that to tell you that a) you couldn't build that house for $125/SF here (in our locale it would be $225-265/SF) and b) if you're going to all that trouble to build a 4-car garage I'd suggest making it a little deeper and wider.
Also, that square-edged step at the top of otherwise-segmental treads would be considered quite dangerous in my book - eliminate it if you can.
Jeff
Edited 8/1/2008 8:32 am ET by Jeff_Clarke
No we are in Kansas. The guy who drew this up for us is in South America. Of course we will have it redone with someone local and up to local code but when we go to that local person we want to just tell them to copy that drawing.
In our area you can still buy new houses for 120K, a model house of the size we want may go from 250k to 350k depending on the basement and landscaping and lot price.
when we go to that local person we want to just tell them to copy that drawing.
Wanting and getting are two very different animals. If you brought that to me, as is, I'd ballpark it as $9000 to convert that to buildable plans. Which would not include the cost to get it wet-stamped, or walked through the approval and permit process. There's a whole boatload more than "just copying" to get these things done.
Better off to take what you have and try going just from what's there.
In our area you can still buy new houses for 120K, a model house of the size we want may go from 250k to 350k depending on the basement and landscaping and lot price.
Those are probably tract houses built to minimal standards, and with little in the way of variety, and certainly few four-car garages.
I'd ballpark your plan into the $300-350K range, not including anything beyond basic sitework. Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
I was thinking about the same money. That is not an easy plan to build!!
That is not an easy plan to build!!
And it will want some tweaking to be a better plan to frame, and that with the things that will be needed for a permit.
That, and all of the things that are not-quite dimensioned having to be cut-n-tried to get them in the plans.
BTDT, was lucky to already have a t-shirt.Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
Wow that sounds high, most designers we've talked to here in town charge between 50 cents and a 1.25 per sq foot designed. Some seem to include the basement, others don't. Of course these are designers not architects, we talked to an architecture firm and they said 10% of the finished price of the house.While I don't doubt that most model homes are built with contractor grade materials, houses in the area where we live are pretty cheap, at least compared to anywhere else in the country we've ever looked at.
"charge between 50 cents and a 1.25 per sq foot designed. "Again, that is for a most basic econobox design that has few frills and no special items to detail and work out. Maybe even just a floorplan like you have and not even an elevation or section drawings. Your design is loaded with extra work to be done, because it is special not off the shelf stuff there.
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Obviously I'm not an expert nor are we done yet (we've had this floor plan for just a couple of weeks, although we've had a lot others for several months). The one designer that we've actually worked with here in town charges 75 cents / sq ft. Now his claim and our builders claim is that for that price he will give us everything we need to get the permits and for the builder to do his job. Yes elevations are included, I don't think he does a 3d walk through of the inside of the house though. I don't know what all the details this guy will go into but our builder told us the one house he worked on that this guy designed was very detailed and had almost no errors (when he said that he was still working on it).
In his case the 75 cents is for what he calls heated sq footage, so it includes the basement which drives the price up a bit.
We talked to several other designers, they all said very similar things, but since I have been told we are doing everything wrong here, how do we find a "fine home building forum members approved designer"?
"since I have been told we are doing everything wrong here, how do we find a "fine home building forum members approved designer"?"I think I might detect a little sarcasm there?Sorry if I have been too blunt and put you on the defensive about your home. In persson I would probably spend more words on the niceitys and smiles and voice inflections to let you know I am not attacking you but trying to be helpful.On cost, the fact is that you get what you pay for more often than not, and the designers who are willing to do double the work for the same price as the average home are going to miss something that will cost you money later in the building process or that will leave you uncomfortable living in this dream house.I have been saying these things just to educate you and to help. There is no intent whatsoever to attack YOU personally, but I understand how the person can get wrapped up in the dream so that it is hard to separate the ego from the shell. Please accept my apologies for having put you on the defensive.nopw to the Q of how to find a good designer -
Do not shop based on price alone. When your first Q is "How do you charge", you have already by-passed quality work or turned off the better designers to the idea of working with you.Instead. Look around at other homes and talk to friends to find designers who have done work of the kind and quality that you are wanting to see. Personal recommendations are worth more than gold plated advertising in this business.I can understand that perhaps you may be in one of those pockets of the country where costs are contained for whatever reason or that there is something about that area that does not attract too many of the better talents, but someone is there who is qualified to help you make this dream a reality.
But he/she will not be willing to do it on a "Here, copy this drawing and make it work for us locally" basis.What I am trying to point out is that your dream and your budget are far apart it seems. Part of this - you come across as having a mindset of getting a design like you get snack at a concession stand. Put a dollar in and get a coke out.That is fine if a coke is all you want with that stale chicken sandwich, but there are places where you can be served a steak done just the way you like it, with a properly mixed drink or just the right wine. To find those places, you need to ask around, and follow your nose.
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Yes there was a little bit of sarcasm :-)I guess here is my problem with it. Like I said most designers in town charge a certain price which here I've heard is too low therefor not a good design. We met with small and big designers, ones who did 50%+ of the model homes in town, and ones who looked like they do 2 homes a year.
Most of them straight up told us, bring us the plan of 2 or 3 homes you like in town and will put them all together for something you like. We didn't really like that as we wanted something designed from zero (maybe our mistake). Another guy we worked with who we actually paid a deposit for, we sat with him on several meetings and gave him lots of things we wanted and in the end his first drawing was missing most of the things we asked for. When we asked for changes we were blocked on most of the changes, instead of him saying I'll figure something out he would basically say, well that's a pretty big change I will probably have to redoit all, lets do this other thing instead.Finally my wife stopped by a house we love here in town and knocked on the door and asked the owner who designed her house and she gave her the name. They talked about their process for a while and how they mostly do commercial drawing but that for residential plans they charge 10% of the final price of the house. So now we've gone from guys who will charge as low as 2K for the whole house to a guy who will charge $30k. Maybe I am crazy here but $30K is a significant amount of money for a plan, it might be ok on million dollar homes but not on a $300k home, I don't see that ever paying off in resale if our competition paid $2K or $3k for their plan.
Its because of this that we decided to ask my uncle in south america to give us some ideas, nothing else, now he went out and drew up a floor plan and now wants to go all the way, which I don't think he needs to since its gonna have to be changed over here. Then somehow I came in here and asked about sq footage price of a room and eventually even posted the floor plan. The reality is we are probably not going to use that exact floor plan without some heavy modification. Our builder is getting a quote from his foundation people, we are already talking about the roofing price as well, and by the end of next week he might come back and tell us that we are way over budget, and even if he doesn't we already have a lot of changes we've asked about the floor plan.
I do thank you for trying to educate us, thats the main reason we posted here because even though every time we post here a few of the posts are really useful. Its the same way on every forum in the world, when I do programming I ask some question on a forum and most people say "why are you trying to do that" instead of "this is how you do that".
I'll be sure to post newer floor plans although I think I may be more careful of explaining the situation next time.
"they charge 10% of the final price of the house. So now we've gone from guys who will charge as low as 2K for the whole house to a guy who will charge $30k. Maybe I am crazy here but $30K is a significant amount of money for a plan, it might be ok on million dollar homes but not on a $300k home, I don't see that ever paying off in resale if our competition paid $2K or $3k for their plan."see now, you have already done what I suggested and you see the difference between the fine dining establishment and the cold sandwich concession! There is a diff in price as well as quality as a general rule. you are shopping based on price, rather than based on quality of outcome.Hint for a heads up - You are saying you will be getting prices on foundation and roofing soon
But you have not finalized the plans yet!
So any prices you get will not have any value. When the subs see the real plans they will adjust the price accordingly.So just like you went from a general sq ft price to being surprised at a total, you will again be overtaken by reality.This is why it is important to have a local person who know local prices and methods and materials. For example, if you came to me wanting me to design a house that could be built for 125K, I would not waste your time and money designing something like what you show. Maybe that was part of the problem with the guy who did not include the things you asked for. Maybe he knew you could not build them for the budget mentioned
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I agree there were a lot of things the guy told us would be too expensive, he flat out told us we had expensive taste. But there were some things which he just didn't want to move, for example we had asked for the possibility of a bonus room on top of the garage, and that it would be great to put the stairs on a place where it could lead to both the basement and garage room. He just would not do it because too many things would have to be moved around. He not once said price was an issue. He had two dining rooms on the design, we only needed one, he made a huge deal about how removing one of them would be difficult on that layout. So it seemed like he didn't want to start over or make any major changes, only little changes. Of course he was pretty cheap to so that makes sense I guess.And I certainly agree with having a local guy who knows local prices, I mean my uncle has never seen a basement before so when talking about a walkout basement it probably made no sense to him. Which is why we just wanted ideas from him. Every time we find a plan we sort of like or some feature we like we ask the builder his opinion, regarding every part of it from whether its something that will last to how much it will cost. We are doing the same with this floor plan, we are asking him where we can make it easier to build, therefor cheaper, and he is getting foundation and maybe roofing quotes not to get the exact number but for him to tell us you know what this floor plan will end up costing you at least xyz more than if you had built it without all the angles. Or if you do this with the roof it would be a lot better, etc.
This is a huge learning experience, there are things on a house we never imagined were very expensive, while others we find are not as expensive as we thought. And its taking us a while but I much rather take a long time on the design than be unhappy on the new home. At least by now we have a pretty good idea of what we want inside, minimum sizes of most rooms and where they should face, its just a matter of getting it all to fit together in a floor plan we like and can afford.
It sounds at least like you are developing a decent line of communications with the builder!
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Wow that sounds high, most designers we've talked to here in town charge between 50 cents and a 1.25 per sq foot designed. Some seem to include the basement, others don't. Of course these are designers not architects, we talked to an architecture firm and they said 10% of the finished price of the house.
I've never made a dime per square foot in custom work, and only ever sell per square foot on already-finished plans I'm shopping to plan houses or tract builders.
In custom work, I assume the plan, the finished plan, will likely get redrawn 4-6 times just to get to a set for permits.
By my eyeball, the arch fees on that house, as is, are going to run from about $15-16K to $22-24K; depending on construction prices and percentage fees. "Designers" can often be cheaper as you will need budget room to buy wet stamped drawings when required by your AHJ.
Now, you do know that every toilet on that plan needs a 90º turn, right? You can install a toilet in a 1 meter wide space, but it's not very comfortable. The master closet and the master bath need to be swapped so you don't have to walk through the bath to get to the closet (or go out in the hall and back through the laundry). That wil lbe less elegant for where the laundry is , but might help group some of the plumbing. I'm more than some worried that your plan wraps around a specific tub, too. If that tub is not locally available, or is 4x the cost of a similar one, you are looking at expensive framing changes.
I'd flip the fireplace out of the bathroom-bedroom wall, and use it as the Private LR-Bedroom interface. You ought to get your south american buddy to print you up a page of "paper doll" furniture images you can move around on the plan. I'm more than passing concerence that you do not have well-developed bed walls. I'm also concerned about where the tv wil lgo and the requisite couches and chairs, especially in how they will interact with the probable dining room table & it's location (you want about 9'-10" by 12-13' for a six-person table).
I'm certain you are going to want more shear wall in the garage, and an extra foot in depth will help well beyond the cost increase, too.
The major footprint change I'd likely make woulf be to take the "point" off of the Office, and add a flat to mirror the one in the closet plan. Now, whether to add that to the office or append that to the dining are is something that would hve to be looked at after drawing it out.
My largest concern for your plan right now is that it seems to show all the signs of being designed from the outside in, and not from the outside out. Frenchy touched on this a touch, previously. It's so much easier to arrange your furniture the way you want it (and the actual furniture you are bringing is even better), and then set the spaces around that.
My other concern is that this house is flat. The angles and spaces you are suggesting/desireing here nearly beg for some ceiling height variety and features. Simple tings like dropping the height of the bedroom hallway, and letting the privar LR "pop up" would really set the spaces off (might be nice to get mechanicals and framing into some of the trickier corners involved, too). A low, "cloud" ceiling over the dining room van be nice, too. This plan deserves some more planning for decks/patios to go with the elegenace of the entry steps (I'm counting 6, that's 45-48" above grade--is that what you have in mind?)
These sorts of questions are why people pay for this stuff (even if it is so simple that you can get the brother's nephew's sister's kid from across the street who mows, who took drafting in high school, to do it <eyeroll>). People deserve good Design; yet far too many get any <sigh>.
Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
CapnMac
I really like your last statement plus the general theme of your post.
I went back and forth to the city hall over 45 times getting approval in the end my "plans" were simple sketches on a sheet of yellow legal paper..
They interfered in so many ways and over so many issues that an architect would have been driven insane. No issues over construction techniques which you'd think would be important (especially since the technique I'm using is totally unique) but rather location of rooms and exterior design of the house.
For example I was "allowed" to build a bridge across my great room for access to the billard room. However it had to be less than 9 feet wide so it wouldn't be able to be converted to a bedroom because that portion of the house was required to be a single story.
They didn't car how high a single story so my roof peak is around 38 feet above the ground which puts the ceiling at 28 feet in that room..
Now while that sounds like a great room and it is great room sized, it's at the wrong end of the house.. the view is of the street and my neighbors garage instead of the lakeshore..
I could go on endlessly but bottom line the city required me to build the house their way or wouldn't grant the needed permits..
I wish I could have had someone with a good sense of proportion and design do my home but it would have been wasted with this city.. Plus the poor guy redrawing it for the 61st time would have been looney!
poor guy redrawing it for the 61st time would have been looney!
61?
Only 61?
I've been through a couple where we beat 61 in schematic development, and agaon in design development.
And those were commercial.
With a few dozen more iterations durning contract documents, too.
Notably, one of those, the client didn't even bother to follow much more than the slab dimensions (guess who the City leaned on about the metal building with four fire occupancies all built with wood framing?)Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
amen... brother , amenmy take is and wasbuilders are legiongood builders are numerousgood design is harder to come byif you start out with bad design, no amount of good builder can rescue itcalorzthat design sucks for liveability it probably sucks for esthetics, but since we have no elevations , who knows ?and your budget sucks for doabilitybut don't let me dissuade youjust consider it your first iterationlook ... how many houses have you and your wife built together ? i think it takes at least three before you have a chance of getting it right and by that time , your life style changes , so it ain't right anywaysMike Hussein Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
Thanks for that reply, probably the most useful one so far.We have considered a lot of the things you mentioned. I hope you all keep in mind that this is the floor plan we like the best but we've already sent lots of changes back to the architect, lots of which you mentioned. Our original post was regarding pricing differences per room, but somehow we made in all the way into the floor plan, which is ok, I was planing on posting it here later but I was going to wait until we were almost done, which now I am thinking that posting it here earlier might have been a better idea.
Of the things you mentioned we've already talked to the architect about the fireplace, dining room area, living room area, laundry room, etc.
We've also placed furniture in the rooms, I use sketchup cause its free but it gives me a general idea at the very least, and yeah the living room is very awkward to put stuff in, and the dining room is way too small for our table.I can see how the plan might have gotten designed from the inside out instead of the outside in, we had sent the architect several pages of what we wanted on the inside of the house, on the outside of the house we didn't say much.
By the way, I'm a bit lost, what do you mean by:
"Also, that square-edged step at the top of otherwise-segmental treads would be considered quite dangerous in my book - eliminate it if you can."
If that line between the top curved (segmental) step and the front door is a straight-line riser (step) you are going to have a dangerous condition.
By the way, where exactly are you located?Jeff
Wichita, ks
hahahaha yeah I bet. I did hear about that. Ohh well hopefully this house will be sold in less than a year.
so, are you building this on speculation to sell?
I wouldn't call it speculation, we plan on building a new house, moving there, then selling the one we live on right now. We can afford to pay both mortgages until it sells, of course we don't want that to go on forever.
I didnt notice if anyone else asked yet, but do you have a site yet? Picking a house plan and trying to force it to work on a site later never works out great. Have you read any of Susan Suskana's books (Not so big house)? She is a pretty well known architect that has published several books. Its not about making houses small, rather its about building to fit your lifestyle. I think she has a lot of very smart ideas and will get you thinking about things in a little different perspective. Far too many people build to impress, and dont ever sit down and consider how they live as a family. Asking for budget prices at this stage is not a great idea, but that has been well discussed. You have a ton of variables to define.
Another option you may want to consider is pre-selecting your contractor based upon qualifications, units prices and his experience. You would need to be careful. The benefit of having a knowledgable contractor involved during the design is he/she will be able to offer advice as to prices along the way and help keep your budget in line. I am an engineer and work in the commerical building field, but I no longer work out budgets. If you wanna know the price, ask the guy building it. He knows and appreciates the true work to make it happen.
Before hiring a designer or architect take a look at their work. This is a field where I think you largely get what you pay for. If you know exactly what you want then the cheaper ones are fine as you can lead them down the path as you need, but I get the picture you may need some advice or opinions along the way. For that you need an experienced person, and unfortunately the good ones know the value they offer to a project.
Brad
Yeah we already have a lot, 3 1/2 acres, pond on the back, a couple of blocks out of the city (not for very long).
A lot of the design had thoughts of things we want because of our lifestyle and things we've always wanted or liked about other houses.
For example, the laundry room (http://forums.taunton.com/tp-breaktime/messages/?msg=103527.0) was very carefully placed close to our closet. The living room, dining room, kitchen were all designed very open because when we do entertaining it usually involves my wife cooking but its hard for her to be part of the conversation hidden behind the kitchen, so the openness we've seen on other houses gives you the freedom for everyone to be able to participate.
The private living room is there because my parents always had those between sets of rooms and I always found them very useful when I was a kid, but I have no idea if they would be useful now.
The house is fairly long because the lot is big and we didn't think it was necessary to make the house as if it was on a tiny city lot. Of course that will end up costing us a lot when it comes to the front exterior finish.
The bathroom has a fireplace because we saw that on several model homes and thought, we've never used our fireplace but if it was next to the tub we might, so lets try it, if we don't use it, ohh well we learned a lesson.
The mud room is fairly big compared to what we've seen because we are pretty messy when we first get into the house and would like to see if that helps, instead of throwing everything on the dining table as we do now.
The master bedroom size was chosen based on our current master bedroom which is ok for us on one of the dimensions, and we asked the architect to design it with the other dimension a bit bigger. Like I said, we sent pages to the architect about where and why we want things, obviously we made a lot of mistakes but we mostly captured what we want out of a house. And yes we are concerned about resale value someday but honestly we also want to build a house we will love coming home to not one that we think any buyer would enjoy, after all we are gonna be paying the mortgage, might as well enjoy it a little bit.
Sorry for not reading all the posts, my bad. I will add a couple of things:
1. I agree with CapnMac walking thru the ensuite to the walk in closet will not always be handy, but maybe it will be fine for you.2. Is there a different driveway for guests or do they follow the same path to the house? If not, your main entrance will not get used. People are sheep, they follow paths and see where others go. I guess you have a nice view out the front; hence the design, but I see far too many designs with beautiful entrances that never get used due to their locations. You also mentioned a walk out basement. I assume this is in the front, so I dont quite get the main ent configuration.
3. I would add a door to keep the mud room separate from the living space. By the way, i dont think the mudroom is particularily large. I would have dedicated spaces for each person to put their commonly used seasonal items to avoid it getting piled up throughout the house. My preference would be to fit the separate mudroom space within the garage along a logical walking path from the vehicles.
4. If I were trying to reduce the area, i would lose the private living area near your bedroom. I dont see the need for this space. Great idea for some maybe, but the reality for most is we hang out where others are in the house and if not, we go to our bedrooms. The most common gathering space is near the kitchen or TV areas. Hubby/wife lingering in a nearby space other than the master bedroom may be a nice idea, but I doubt in reality it will happen that much. Maybe if it is a private space for the wife and her friends to get together it might work, but it is a bit far from the kitchen. For that, I think the space would need to be closer to the kitchen so it is handy. The girls will need their wine I am sure. As for the kids, ship em to the basement.
5. Wash/dryer near bedroom: Good, just make sure the units don't end up sitting midspan in long span floor joists and vibrate the floor. I will assume you plan to get quiet units as I could see the typ being to fire em up at bedtime.
Brad
Brad, I wasn't implying you didn't read, sorry if you got that, I was just reminding everyone of what the post was about and how we got to this point since a lot of people were replying almost in an angry manner, not you, yours was actually a useful post and so is this new one.1. We've seen both, closet after the bathroom, closet before the bathroom, we haven't fully decided yet, one of the changes we sent was for the closet to be a little smaller, not much, and separated into two at the entrance of the bathroom. We'll see how that comes out.2. The idea is that the house has a semi circle driveway with the main entrance as the place people come in at. There would be a small driveway which will go towards the garages for us. The garage as it is now will not work because of the walkout basement (on the back), it is either going to have to be switching to a front loading garage or make the angle come towards the front of the house instead of the back.3. The "mudrooms" we've seen are smaller as they are usually just a wall to hang coats on as you walk from the garage to the other living spaces. Sometimes they have a place to sit but not much more than that. The only big ones we've seen have been mixed with either the pantry (we don't like them) or the laundry room (totally different side of the house for us). We'll take your garage idea into consideration, I do think the mudroom will help us a lot at keeping the mess out of the living spaces so its a pretty important space.4. I am leaning that way as well, back home where those private living rooms are common one never uses the main living room because there is no tv there, its just reserved for more formal events. On this house we do plan on having a tv on the main living room so that private living room would probably get almost no use. 5. We are planing on doing sound proofing of that room, also building it assuming it will one day have a water leak, there were lots of ideas given when we made a posting about it. We are still unsure about the closet to laundry connection but the laundry room will definitely be near the bedrooms, after all almost all the laundry comes from there.Thanks for your reply.--Carlos
Take Brad up on his suggestion on reading some of Susanka's books. "The Not so Big House", "Creating the Not So Big House" etc. The books really aren't about small houses so much as they're about houses that are comfortable. Many of the houses she discusses have been published in FHB.As an aside, I recommend to anyone thinking of building a house to budget a few hundred dollars in getting a good library together. The internet's great for specifics but nothing like a book to cover an entire subject in detail. You should cover design, working with a builder, the building process, construction standards, etc.)And there's nothing wrong with designing a house from the inside out. Creative designers do it all the time, Wright being one. The affordable Usonian Houses ($5000 construction costs in 1950 $) to Fallingwater (expensive) were all designed from the inside out (Note to readers: I just cite Wright as an example because he's familiar, not to start a debate here on his design philosophy. That is for another thread). Many of the houses Susanka features were designed from the inside out as she explains in "Creating the Not so Big House". I think your house was designed from the outside in. A nice long symetrical (almost) front with nifty 45's was thought of and all the spaces were poured in to fit (well, almost).In any event Carlos, the best of luck .Runnerguy
Edited 8/2/2008 7:23 am ET by runnerguy
Cool, I'll see if we can pick that up this weekend. Yeah I have no idea how it was designed, I know we sent a lot of info about the inside and on the outside we tried to tell him to keep it in a line so the foundation and roof would be cheaper but I am not sure he got that.
having a tv on the main living room so that private living room would probably get almost no use.
Well, if you narrow the hallway a bit, so that the private LR "opens up," add in some built-in bookcases andcuriou shelving, then it drops neatly into Susanka's definition of an "Away Room" which is almost always a design boon. Even with as few occupants as two (perhaps especially with two), having a dedicated space away from other activities can more than pay for itself. So, the use count can be low, can also be very needful, too.
The one space the is "missing" to me (and may have been previously deleted as a budgetary item already) is a hobby/craft space (which can be a different sort of away room).Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
Interesting a hobby room, well my hobbies will be limited to the office and garage although we can probably also make another room like that on the basement. Keep in mind the basement has almost the same amount of space plus it doesn't have a kitchen, however it will probably have some sort of game room with a bar.
basement has almost the same amount of space
Which gets us back to teh slipperly slope of square footage prices versus percentage of project costs.
You just doubled the square footage, which has an effect on the project cost--even in "stripped bare owner finish out" condition.
Bumps my assesment of project cost up from a 1/3 million to closer to 1/4 million. Means design fees closer to $25-45K too. Oh, and those "designers"? They charge for basements, too, just the same as above ground spaces--they are not free.
Oh, and reasale of tract houses? You get what you pay for. Buy that cheap tract house plan set, and the second owner is just that much closer to a land fill. The advice of developing a library of books is ever more spot on. Note that the notable houses tend to be the custom houses, even when designed for one speicif owner--yet those features tend to "stay." Good design gets "selected for" over the course of history.
This business, of thinking spatially, is the hardest thing to do--second only to communicating fully-integrated spacial design.
Walk-out basements do not "just happen." I've seen more than my fair share of backwards ones too (where the windows are all on the buried side, and the "open" side is blank, and under a few thousand sf of deck).
You have clearly committed to not having an "off the shelf' solution. Please consider carrying that decision all the rest of the way through to its end. Yeah, you could lash some boston whalers together, or you could get a custom hull built--size afloat is the same, end effect is different (and the price paid is also different).Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
Dont worry I was not offended. Good to see you are thinking it through in detail. One thing I will say is I detect that you review things in great detail, and unfortunately that generally leads to the most expensive items. If you want to stay on track with your budget work out some reasonable allowances for each item of the house and stick to them. The key word is reasonable. If you want like the fancy things put them in the budget. You and your wife need to be on the same page. The old adage, ahh, its only a few extra will add up in a hurry and by the time you get to the kitchen you will be out of money.
I should have clarified what I meant when I said the mudroom is not large. I meant in comparison to some of the ones I have seen in the "not so big houses," or in the FHB article a few months back. It is an important room. If you want it to be used in needs to be located so the home users naturally walk through the area and each person needs enough space to toss their seasonal items. This will help to reduce house clutter. If the room is not big enough or not in a logical location, it might as well be deleted because it pretty much ends up a junk room.
Your driveway idea sounds much better now.
Good luck with the project.
Brad
casolorz
It sounds to me like you have things a bit backwards..
You're trying to build to a price without the usual accomidations. Here's what happens.
In the building process invaribly changes are made no matter how careful and complete the plans are.
I designed my home over a more than 10 year period while I acquired the money to do it and the permits. If anybody should have had every single detail nailed down it would have been me. I mean I focused on this as my prime entertainment for well over 10 years..
During the permit process the planning commision constantly interfered with my design.. making up rules as they went along and forcing me to make spur of the moment changes constantly.
When everything was finally approved and construction was well under way I discovered things I'd never even considered.. My tower was in the wrong spot, I'd missed a fantastic view that I only recognized once the frame was up and I was standing there, I eliminated the elevator, and added a bridge, added a new entryway, and completely changed the interior layout.
Plus countless other minor and major redesigns.
I'm much happier with the revised layouts and still love the view from the extra dormer.
Since I built it myself there wasn't a change order cost but it would be silly to have something less than what you wanted because of a couple of hundred dollars.. So the costs creep up..
Normal process is to add 10% to the house for those changes, but that really depends. I've seen disciplined people build exactly to plans and budget and simply ignore chances to improve the house. I've seen people come in under budget by skipping finishing spare bedrooms, or using basic builders grade materials and planning on replacing them at another point.. or even in one case the whole second floor (open the door and the whole second floor is bare and unfinished)
Now I should get back to my main point.. It's normal to draw plans and adjust as budget interfers.. what's not normal is to do a clean sheet redesign.. For math purposes if you can't afford 400 sq.ft. simply eliminate that room or eliminate that feature etc..
If you eliminate that room or feature what will the cost to you be? A less than optimum home?
Go back to the ballons, You know draw ballons for each room, reconnect them, eliminating what isn't affordable and then reconnect them.. Does it still make sense now?
Are there design features that you can eliminate rather than rooms? For example each change of roof plane adds dramatically to the cost of building a roof. (plus greatly increases the maintinace and likelyhood the roof will leak) simple roofs are the easiest/cheapest to build and least likely to leak or have high maintinace.
Second calculate what it will cost you to build using poor grade materials only to tear them up later and replace them with the quality you wanted in the first place.. Those numbers get really scary sometimes!
The compromise my wife and I came up with is we finished the extrerior of our home as we wanted it but we're doing the interior at a much slower pace and with the quality we seek rather than a compromise to remain within budget..
Thanks Frenchy. We've been trying to avoid making mistakes just from seeing what our friends have done, having to change all the exterior stone on one house after it was already on, or redesigning the whole roof after it was on the house, or changing a basement wall after the top floor was almost complete...... we are just terrified of those. We've been working on floor plan ideas for 8 months or so already, this is the one we like the best but even this one already has 2 pages of changes we've sent back to the architect.
We are planing on going pretty cheap inside the house, won't finish the basement, or bonus room. I can tile anything that wasn't tiled in the future. On our current house we replaced all the carpet with laminate flooring, finished the basement, built a deck, and are in the middle of changing the countertops, so I am not too scared of building with some cheaper materials at the beginning, we just know the structure of the house we won't be wanting to change so we need to get that right.
casolorz
Part of the real problem that I see is the conversion from metric to inches.. rooms now will be sizes that won't make efficent use of materials. Standard building materials of inches and feet means that you'll most likely have a lot of little cut offs or pieces added on.. either way that will be expensive to build.(and provide no increase in real value) A little thing like wall studs not of a standard size means someone will have to cut longer studs to fit rather than simply grab one from the pile.
Doors or window sizes once converted to American sizes will be either in conflict or custom made.. Building techniques common elsewhere might be completely new and part of a learning curve here. That adds dramatically to cost without providing any real value..
A design that works well done in metric might have doors that hit each other or an awkward transistion from something.. Moldings might not fit or seem awkward and clumsy. Cabinets will need to be custom made instead of off the shelf items. (again adding to costs without providing value.
Your building department might want engineering approval for details that appear differant from what they are comfortable with and etc..
Edited 8/1/2008 10:47 am ET by frenchy
Yeah we had sort of imagined that. Our plan was to get some basic shape we like there and then have someone local draw it up in feet keep in mind what the standards here are, how big doors are, studs are, etc.
The original idea was to just get ideas of the layout from there, however this floor plan is the one we liked the most so far (keeping in mind we still have lots of changes to it) so thats what we've been working with for a few weeks now.
"rooms now will be sizes that won't make efficent use of materials."Forget size - the SHAPE of this house will waste far more time and material than the sizing will.
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Piffin
You're correct but it's the design that they want.I'm sure they've selected that over many other designs for reasons you and I won't begin to understand.
While the design seems in confict with building at a low cost they apparently have made up their mind and anything else would be a compromise they don't want to make..
They will find out when the building goes out to bid just how far off they are from that imaginary sq.ft. price.
Kind of tough way to learn because the temptation will be to just chuck it all having invested 8 months in a plan that can't be built on a budget they can afford..
I really understand their position. Your heart wants one thing your budget will allow something else.
Do you remember the line from Mr. Blanding builds his dream house? The one near the end where the lawyer says that somethings shouldn't be built to a cost but built with your heart? (or something like that)
That movie should be manditory for anyone who ever plans on building a custom home.
Yeah I understand about the dream and this design is what they want, but I took the thread here to indicate that they obviously can't afford what they want and are looking for ways to trim costs. From my POV, the shape is the most obvious thing driving the cost out of the ballpark. I am thinking the desiner is used to south american adobe or masonry material that is a little flexible as to specific dimensioning.
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Piffin
Interesting take.. I wonder about the cost of having a designer in South America ideas translated into something they want is all. Seems to me that instead of plans they should be getting sketches or design concepts. Rather than have the designer do full on plans. I'm sure costs are significantly lower in South America and it seems they want that influance. However sketches or design concepts would seem to make more sense..
You are right there, we were only wanting sketches done in south america, more like ideas. Then again we are getting it for free there so any extra details are ok.
Could you post the roof? that can be very expensive on a house with so many angles.
We haven't gotten to that stage yet but I'll post it once we have it. We imagined it would be two long sets, one on top of the main house, on top of the garage, with gables on the things that stick out.
"with gables on the things that stick out."That would look ugly as sin. You will have multifaceted hip type roof projections or a couple of towers.If like you said, this will sell in a year or so, you are planning this for sale not for yourself to live in, so you want it to look good for curb appeal rather than be ugly on the outside
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I believe that they intend to sell their existing home in 1.5 years. So that is the time frame for getting this one done..
.
A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
aha!
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Ohh no you got me wrong. This is for us. Our current house we will sell once we move, hopefully in a year or so.
I see now. Was confused when you talked about how nice that 100 feet of intimate space would be "for YOU" and then saw the comment about selling soon. I do believe this general shape can be refined to eliminate a lot of waste and foo-foo. Should not be too hard to reduce by 300 sq ft
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Holy cow planzman!Forget about applying any kind of "average price" to those plans. The average house does not have all those angles, ( and the implied complex roof design) curves, bumpouts, etc. etc, etc.Some generic est programs ask as a primary indicator how many levels and how many corners? With your angled cutbacks, count each corner twice. That gets you a count of thirty something modifier as opposed to say six for the 125/ft econobox. You have curved entry steps. I tell clients that as a general rule of thumb they can count on a curved stair setup like that costing roughly ten times as much in labor as a straight set, and 30-300% more for materials.Detailing and materials choices have been mentioned several times now as a price factor. In a car, you don't get heated leather seats with six way electronic controls for the same price as a stiff vinyl bench seat. So in say windows - you don't get a quality unit like a Marvin for the same price as a junky economy vinyl unit.I did an addition for some folks that I have done several projects for, all at cost plus. accurate estimates were never an issue for them.So they wanted this adition about same as another addition I had done for them a couple years before which had been 65K
So I said costs are up, so this be closer to 77Kbut this time they had richer tastes. Instead of the wood floor that I can install and finish for less than ten bucks a foot, they chose the most expensive tile I have ever seen. Just the tile alone ran more than ten a foot, plus shipping, Ditra, thinset, grout, shipping, labour.....so just on the floor they doubled down and added ten bucks a foot. Then there was the requested built ins, the fancy paint job, the upgrades in insulation....if cost is a factor for you, then your designer should know what the budget is before starting to draw anything. I don't know where you are, but that floorplan looks like a good 250-300/ft range to me.For my money, I would want larger bedrooms and severly reduce that anteroom for the bnedrooms. reduce overall size by downsizing a lot of the fluff space in bathrooms and laundry, knock off a few angled corners, condense the entry hall but add a coat closet there, maybe try to pull the pantry inside the envelope....
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Looks like a nice plan. is there an upstairs? Looks like the stairs go up and down. Two story houses are usually cheaper on a SF basis then ramblers. Also, all those 45's will add to the price compared to 90's. Materials aside, the plan doesn't look cheap. It's a long linear one which means more exterior materials compared to a plan that's more compact.
Don't know if anyone has thought about elevations yet but the front wall that goes by the laundry and master closet might be tough to break up without a whole lot of opportunity for windows. The kitchen on the other side will leave you with a lot of wall there too. The front might look a little bleak.
Runnerguy
Edited 8/1/2008 5:50 am ET by runnerguy
Interesting, we haven't looked at those things yet. Thanks.
Its going to be a full walkout basement. The stairs can go to a bonus room on top of the garage.
I forgot to mention, the house is long because we are sitting on a 3 1/2 acre lot, so we sort of wanted it to look nice from the street.
I haven't read all the replies but sometimes you do need to give a per sq ft cost even if it is not 100% accurate. For example the other day I went and looked at a room addition project and the folks have no plans, no sketches and no real ideas, yet they want to add on.
So I can toss out a large figure but it means nothing to them. But if I can give them an idea of per sq ft cost, than they can decide how big or small they can afford.
Sure, it would be easier with a set of plans and all but many folks don't want to spend the money (about $1k in our area) for plans if they decide not to do the work.
Just my .02 cents
Mike
I agree here. I provided the car buying analogy earlier in this thread but there's nothing wrong with answereing the question "What will a nicely equiped car cost?" and replying "If you budgeted 20K or so you'll be in the ballpark. Could spend more or you could spend less".
I think it's easier to forget about kitchens and bathrooms and figure all conditioned space at one SF cost and figure garages, porches and decks etc. at half that SF cost. And of course, that's wouldn't be accounting for driveways, walks, landscaping, etc.
Runnerguy
Agreed. A drawing would be great.
Runnerguy
i guess what perplexes me is why this matters to you. you already acknowledge the price is an overall average; do you want to price each room and then build ala carte? the rough estimate gets you into the neighborhood; the detailed plans get you closer to actual; and specifying materials, exterior trim (brick, stucco,vinyl) details, windows makes and glazing, hardwood or hollow doors, italian marble or linoleum, 15 year roof or 50 year roof, paint grade or stain grade or hardwood trim, etc, etc, etc gets you closer to probable actual cost.
the above details will likely impact the cost more than whether this particular 100 sq ft room is or is not in the equation.
. . . and for comparison, relatively decent new construction here on the central coast of california is running $350 sq ft . . . . . . . .
Edited 7/31/2008 8:53 pm by stpatrick
Well thats why I was asking because I am not a builder nor have I ever built a home before.