My husband and I have a unique design for a house. In the current Annual Issue of Fine Homebuilding there are several unique homes. Our problem has been finding a builder who wants to work with non traditional materials. i.e. copper siding. How does one find builders who want do these unique homes? any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
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I would suggest asking around with local building suppliers (not the home depot type), bank loan officers, architects and people who have unusual homes for recomendations. Then meet with the individual builder and review the plans. Pay close attention to his/her questions, comments, and those little nuianses. After interviewing several you will have a better feel for what you will get from a builder.
Often time, it is the smaller builder who may be the better choice. Large builders often are into production and any deviation from their norm, even for the additional money is too much for them to undertake.
Speaking from the viewpoint of a builder who does take on unusual and "unconventional" building projects, my clients find me through word of mouth from exactly the people I refered to above.
Good luck If your project is in western Montana, give me a call
Cruise your neighborhoods or nearby towns and see if there are other houses that have similar details. Or go talk with an older real estate agent or home inspector and see if they remember any.
Tell us where you are...maybe there's someone here close to you. If it's really unusual, maybe Frenchie will build it for you.
Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell'em "Certainly, I can!" Then get busy and find out how to do it. T. Roosevelt
How does one find builders who want do these unique homes?
Talk to your building inspectors. They won't recommend anyone, but they know who's using unusual materials. Nothing unique about copper siding that I know of. Goes on everything I build. And the building inspectors are very well aware of it. Gotten more than a few inquiries that way, although the copper is the least of it.
PAHS Designer/Builder- Bury it!
Tom
Did some cabinet work in a house recently that is having galvanized tin put on as siding, even using it as baseboard inside the house. Kinda cool!
Down here in the Austin TX area everything that isn't a track home is so unique that every time I go to another house I see something that I never saw before.
If your in a higher populated area I would guess that unique isn't all that uncommon.
Doug
What's a track home? Near the railroad tracks? The race track?
tract...........like I lost tract of something ;)
eric
I'm assuming that your kidding when you ask what a track home is.
Just in case your not, oh forget it, you must be kidding.
If your in a higher populated area I would guess that unique isn't all that uncommon.
Actually, this is a small college town in central Va. Metro population something like 120k, considerably smaller than Austin. There is a wide variety of style here, but you have to get out of the subdivisions to find it. Otherwise, our subdivisions probably look just like yours.
Just noticed that my photo and information in my Member Profile is missing.
Was that "galvanized tin" corrugated roofing? I have a future client who is enamored with early Gehry, ala Santa Monica. We'll be doing a PAHS concrete house that looks similar. He's a GC who finds my work very interesting but doesn't want my appearance. I think he's nuts to prefer galvanized roofing over copper, but there's no accounting for taste, right? And concrete's a fluid, can look like pretty much anything.
Now that I've given a serious answer, may I address the part of your post that cracked me up? unique isn't all that uncommon <VBG> Yeah, I know what you were getting at.
PAHS Designer/Builder- Bury it!
Tom
Was that "galvanized tin" corrugated roofing?
No, it is sheets with a lip bent over, hooked to the row below it. Man I'm not going to describe this very well at all, I don't know any tin terminology! If metal work is your style you would probably love this, it is cool.
The look is flat, all you see is the line where the tin meets, not like wood siding but more like how I see flat seemed leaded tin put on flat roofs? God if that doesn't make any sense(and I'm sure it doesn't)I will get pictures of it. there are clips nailed on to the top of the sheet that they install and then the next one hooks into it on so on and so on.
The galvanized tin has a grey cast to it, not like the shinny galvanized tin that you usually see.
unique isn't all that uncommon , I moved here from Iowa a year and a half ago, Iowa is still fairly conservative, you just don't see anything all that extreme. Its there just not all that much of it. Down here in Austin it seems like all the high end custom homes are another architectures wet dream. Very contemporary.
Doug
Sounds like someone is using a factory-finished standing seam metal panel as siding, run horizontally, or maybe from the description, a flat metal panel with concealed fastening, sort of like standing seam inside out.
Nothing like what is seen in the housing tracts.
But maybe something like you would see out on the grandstand roof out at the race track.
The look is flat, all you see is the line where the tin meets, not like wood siding but more like how I see flat seemed leaded tin put on flat roofs?
Thanks. Sounds like the flat copper roofs that greencu has posted pics of. Knocked my socks off. I haven't seen, or noticed anyway, any around here. But people here think that traditional standing seams are somewhat exotic. (Except for the 100 yr old ones on farmhouses.) That's the only kind of roofing I consider. Re-roofing isn't anything I want to do.
If metal work is your style you would probably love this, it is cool.
I really know very little about metal, other than it works better than most materials for roofs and siding. Copper's my choice. Using it as siding was a happy mistake.
I'd planned on stucco but my stucco guy left the area before he got to me. A GC friend, the guy who wants Gehry-style, suggested that as I was already playing with copper (standing seam), I might as well use it for siding. $1.40/sq ft at the time. Those 3'x10' sheets went up fast. I was tickled. Now it's a dull brown. And the bugs leave it alone.
Then I discovered that the skins I used for my large doors weren't an exterior product, unlike what the supplier told me. Rebuilt the door bottoms and skinned them with copper. Just this week I had a visitor inquire about getting me to do some doors for his place. Loved the look of the irregular black stains on the shiny copper that come from it sitting outside in the rain prior to installation. I sprayed an automotive clear coat over it to keep the appearance. We enjoy the contrast with the dull brown copper siding.
Most people in this area have no idea anyone's doing the things I do either. Don't want publicity as I always have more work offered than I want to do. This week's visitor who was particularly interested in the doors was brought by a good friend who uses our place, and my motley machinery collection, as part of his local tour. They'd just come from a client house, similar to ours.
This summer I'm consulting on an envelope log house. The couple was disappointed I was unavailable for construction and had to build this year. Envelope wasn't anything I suggested. There's another one, same architect, the other side of town that doesn't work very well. Once you get into the odd-ball construction loop, word gets around. I doubt Austin's much different. PAHS Designer/Builder- Bury it!
where in Virginia. We are in Virginia. Maybe central isn't too far from where we are planning to build?
where in Virginia. We are in Virginia. Maybe central isn't too far from where we are planning to build?
I see my Member Profile got its picture back but still has no information. Gotta fill in some. We're near Charlottesville in Albemarle County, Mr. Jefferson's country. On top of Israel Mountain, if you know the area. The envelope log house in my previous post is slated for Nelson County, near Lovingston.
Where are you? Oh, and my apologies for our hijacking of your thread. But this happens all the time here.
PAHS Designer/Builder- Bury it!