Our Home In The Woods!

[rustyshakelford]

This is finally happening! After lots of headaches and emails we have actually made progress in building our home. We started back in Oct '12. We bought 12.86 acres in gods country. I had my wife on board with moving to the country and raise our son and wanting to get away from all the headaches of town.

I started by getting a survey crew out to help locate the pins. We were able to find all but one! That elusive one could have been found for a hefty price due to the amount of chopping needed. I figured, it'll be ok. I'll find it...more in that later.

I knew I wanted to leave a buffer for the privacy and also keep the dust down. It's still 5 years till the road gets paved so to make the best of it we left about 60' along the roads. I drug a Dozer out dec 22 2012 and officially started clearing. This was slow going for me by myself. I was able to underbrush and burn off a couple acres before having to do some figuring. Here's the beginning. It was pretty thick.

We have a creek that runs right down the middle and it's decent sized. I was able to track down a big culvert to aid in accessing the back of the property. Here's the culvert installed temporarily.

I'll add more pics to get us caught up to where we are now when I'm on a PC. We are scheduled to pour our slab on thurs or Friday!

Some specs on the house

3 bd/2.5 bath
2703 living sq ft
750 sq ft covered porches
4000 sq ft slab

Minimum 10' walls with 8' doors
2x6 studs
Stained concrete floors throughout
Very nice kitchen for my bride

I plan on keeping this updated so we can tell the story of building our first home. Once the house is dried in, we will move out there and stay in our camper.

Brett

Any tips or tricks please share.

 

[PaulMel]

How very exciting, and very similar story to ours. We paid Amish folks to clear up to where we will build down the road, and they put a culvert in so we can cross the creek.
Did you lay out the foundation yourself, and then pour the concrete yourself too?
Best of luck to you!
PaulMel

 

[dave1949]

Looks like a nice house location. You have a nice beginning on a yard area with trees by the looks of it.

Great adventure, builds character. Look forward to watching your home progress.

 

[oosik]

What a beautiful location. i know exactly what you mean by headaches. We had our house built in Alaska and when we moved here we built this one ourselves. No matter how its done - I think there will always be headaches and memories. Believe me, the memories will last a lifetime.

 

[rustyshakelford]

How very exciting, and very similar story to ours. We paid Amish folks to clear up to where we will build down the road, and they put a culvert in so we can cross the creek.
Did you lay out the foundation yourself, and then pour the concrete yourself too?
Best of luck to you!
PaulMel

The builder is handling that. I dug a pond and used the dirt for the pad. That's my extent on the construction side. I'm responsible to get power and water. He's supposed to do the rest! Got lucky and have a great guy building it.

Looks like a nice house location. You have a nice beginning on a yard area with trees by the looks of it.

Great adventure, builds character. Look forward to watching your home progress.

Thanks. I took out the majority of pines and left the hardwoods. I might still take out a few more but for now I want everything to rest. The remaining trees were stressed in the clearing and I don't want to kill any good ones! One thing I do know is I'll be needing a big mower now!

What a beautiful location. i know exactly what you mean by headaches. We had our house built in Alaska and when we moved here we built this one ourselves. No matter how its done - I think there will always be headaches and memories. Believe me, the memories will last a lifetime.

Thanks. My wife has been very supportive even when it seemed like this was never going to happen. The construction loan alone was an ulcer. Supposed to take 30 days but was drug out to nearly 3.5 months! We had to keep submitting the same things over and over again. Closing on that was a great feeling!

Brett

 

[rustyshakelford]

We finally have our slab! They will begin framing on Tuesday!

Brett

 

[EddieWalker]

Congratulations, it's a huge step when you get your slab poured!!!!

Pouring the porches at the same time as the slab might lead to some issues down the road. Concrete expands and contracts with the change in temperatures, and since the inside of the house is usually pretty constant, and the outside porches change so much, the porches are usually poured at a later date then the slab. Some places even do the garage separately. Do you have expansion boards between the porches and the house slab? If not, be sure to cut the concrete there so you don't end up with cracking into the house.

Eddie

 

[rustyshakelford]

Congratulations, it's a huge step when you get your slab poured!!!!

Pouring the porches at the same time as the slab might lead to some issues down the road. Concrete expands and contracts with the change in temperatures, and since the inside of the house is usually pretty constant, and the outside porches change so much, the porches are usually poured at a later date then the slab. Some places even do the garage separately. Do you have expansion boards between the porches and the house slab? If not, be sure to cut the concrete there so you don't end up with cracking into the house.

Eddie

No expansion boards placed. It's structural and has full beams and full thickness concrete. Hopefully we don't have any issues. Never even thought of that so thanks for the heads up. I'll ask builder tomorrow. Any other tricks or tips?

Brett

 

[rustyshakelford]

Started getting walls up today. Builder said it will be more than two but hopefully less than three weeks of framing!

Brett

 

[rustyshakelford]

They have been making progress!

Front of the house is taking shape.

Garage side. The garage is getting a beam so the sagging boards are only temporary.

One weeks down, hopefully they will be wrapped up in a week and a half or so. Been 4 guys going at it lately.

Brett

 

[rustyshakelford]

They are moving right along. These were from this weekend. We are going out there tomorrow to see the progress. We are getting excited! Also we are picking up our new range which my wife is estatic about. They are sure proud of them. We will try and keep that as a suprise for when it's done.

Still waiting on the dormers and pillars

Rear of the house

Brett

 

[Jack Yuan]

waaaaaaaaa, very cool. come on

 

[TnWV]

Really like the design so far! Looking foreword to seeing how it all comes together. Thanks for sharing!

 

[EddieWalker]

Looks like a nice, interesting roofline. They should have OSB on it in no time!!!

Eddie

 

[rustyshakelford]

Looks like a nice, interesting roofline. They should have OSB on it in no time!!!

Eddie

I hope so! It was originally designed to be a 10/12 roof. That seemed way to steep and did some figuring that put the peak around 30'. Though that was way to tall for a single story and would look weird. Had the framer drop it to an 8/12 and hoping it turns out. I'm sure they were more than happy to make that change.

We wanted to have a section of the front roof done in metal but I couldn't believe how expensive it was. It was the first time I was truly shocked by the price of something I figured to be relatively minor.

Haven't gotten to pick out our entry doors yet so I may have more surprises yet.

Brett

 

[EddieWalker]

Wonder why it was so expensive? Was it some kind of special metal? Who told you the price? most of the roofers that I know do it all and don't care if you want metal or shingles, it's all pretty simple.

Sometimes when a contractor doesn't want to do something, they jack up the price to either make it too expensive for the client to do it, or worth the time to learn how to do it.

If it's something you want, I would be 100 percent sure of the price and know why it's so much. Nothing worse then not having what you want and regretting not doing it.

How much was it?

Eddie

 

[rustyshakelford]

Wonder why it was so expensive? Was it some kind of special metal? Who told you the price? most of the roofers that I know do it all and don't care if you want metal or shingles, it's all pretty simple.

Sometimes when a contractor doesn't want to do something, they jack up the price to either make it too expensive for the client to do it, or worth the time to learn how to do it.

If it's something you want, I would be 100 percent sure of the price and know why it's so much. Nothing worse then not having what you want and regretting not doing it.

How much was it?

Eddie

It was an extra 6k. It's the area above the door that says shingles. I think they didn't want to mess with it. I was just wanting a concealed fastener metal. Not standing seam

Brett

 

[JRobyn]

I bet if you asked for a redo on that quote, but use just "standard" corrugated sheet and washer-head screws (exposed), you'd find the new quote to be MUCH lower. I found in our construction that going outside of what the local contractors do as "standard" got really expensive. On our metal, we asked for a standing-seam quote; it was ridiculously high. Maybe that's what you actually got quoted to meet your hidden fastener requirement. For our install, they used a very thick poly mat underlayment that I believe will prevent any leakage issues even if any of the washer-head screws don't seal perfectly.

It all is looking terrific!

- Jay

 

[Jack Yuan]

how much is this house cost totally? Is it possible for me to build one in your there? BTW, I'm Chinese.

 

[rustyshakelford]

I bet if you asked for a redo on that quote, but use just "standard" corrugated sheet and washer-head screws (exposed), you'd find the new quote to be MUCH lower. I found in our construction that going outside of what the local contractors do as "standard" got really expensive. On our metal, we asked for a standing-seam quote; it was ridiculously high. Maybe that's what you actually got quoted to meet your hidden fastener requirement. For our install, they used a very thick poly mat underlayment that I believe will prevent any leakage issues even if any of the washer-head screws don't seal perfectly.

It all is looking terrific!

- Jay

That makes sense. Were just going to do shingles for the entire roof. With our weather I'd be concerned about the lift span of the gaskets on the fasteners. The cost of materials is approx 1.5 the cost of shingles but I guess the labor was considerably higher.

Brett