Patience
According to my Gantt chart, Monday (24 hours from now) was supposed to be the first day of construction. Actually, we are still waiting on the “appraisal” portion of our construction loan. So far, every delay has really just been an opportunity for us to save up a little more money and learn a little bit more, so I have relaxed about it. I also see that the prime interest rate has been dropping all month. Since we are not in a panic about building, we can relax with family over next weekend’s Easter holiday (although I do still plan to talk to my uncle about what sort of MAG welder I should buy).
On the other hand… I don’t want to start too late. Winter is coming around again and I need to be closed in properly or the work will be interrupted and the scheduled and costs will increase.
When we dropped off the appraisal paperwork (over a week ago now), I left feeling like I was on the edge of a cliff. I would describe it as a cross between cold feet (pre-wedding jitters, which I did not actually experience with my own wedding) and that feeling people must get just before enlisting in the military. I was about to bet a lot of money on my self… On skills I am planning on developing… On an idea that I know is a little bit crazy. On something that will require a tremendous amount of effort. On a long term commitment. On a change in lifestyle. Pretty scary stuff.
Over the week, I have both calmed down and geared up. I am ready to go. We could hear news about the appraisal this week. I could get rolling the day after Easter. And that is why I am having trouble sleeping and I am typing this at 5:30 AM on Sunday morning.
Behind the Drywall Tour
Since we didn’t have anything major going on this weekend, I took a few hours with my wife and went on a “Behind the Drywall” tour. The company conducting the tours is known for making very high-quality energy-efficient homes, oftne using “Earth Tubes” and other interesting systems. The “Behind the Drywall” tours let you get a look at these systems before they get covered up. This particular home had a green roof with interior roof drains that lead to a complex system of “rain gardens” on the sloping site. It had geothermal heating with radiant floors, an ERV connected to carefully designed duct work, several different types of insulation and a belt-and-suspenders approach to water proofing. I was hoping for some extra inspiration, maybe a good idea or two, and at the very least, a nice walk with my wife before things got crazy (we left the kids with my mother-in-law, so they were happy too).
A previous tour featured specially designed plastic gel packs suspended between the wooden wall studs as a thermal mass (sounds expensive compared to concrete construction).
I was reminded how many little bits are needed to build a wood framed home (especially one with an interesting layout and some steel beams). So many little blocks were cut to make things fit and that made me feel better about my relatively simple build plan. Understanding everything I was seeing also made me feel more confident about my own build. Sherri also asked a couple great questions, so I know she is feeling pretty knowledgeable and confident also. Sherri pointed out that our home would be much more exciting and efficient and tour worthy…
Eye Candy
That’s enough for now, on to the eye candy.
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I wanted a pic of insulation for my insulation page… Michael wanted to jump in.
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Cool secret mirror door.
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Half door on the living room keeps kids out of the kitchen
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I liked the details of this arch. If your wall has some thickness, you may as well work with it.
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Spiral stairs down to somewhere interesting.
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Classic tree house… All builders used to be kids who wanted a cool tree house.
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Interesting earth sheltered home. I got it a while ago, so I forget all the details
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Very interesting building… We are moving away from cookie cutter?
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No plans to copy this, but it is eye candy
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This house was built by someone with a professional contractor. I have seen worse, I can do better.
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Poor woman has a hard job to do.
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Cool “Murphy Picnic table”
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I liked the lighting and the wood soffit. I plan to do likewise by my entry way…
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I thought this SteelArchHome was nice and modern looking… One step away from earth shelterd
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This was from a magazine article about how to dress difficult windows. I am sure the shutters were not cheap.
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Concrete and mosaic bench
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Concrete umbrella
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I liked this corner window a lot… I would like to do something similar.
My parents sent me this link a few weeks ago, knowing I would appreciate it. At first glance, it was interesting. A guy built a pretty cool dome home (in Thailand) from cement blocks. He only spent ~$6000 for the basic structure and got it done in about 6 weeks… The home looks nice and organic, but it is not earth sheltered and it didn’t have to deal with our cold weather. Not a lot of lessons that I could apply in North America…
But then I saw this… And I realized that someone on the team, maybe Steve or one of the guys he was working with, was quite brilliant.
This pivot arm is key to the whole thing…
Instead of working with complicated geodesic shapes, he is just using regular concrete blocks. Before starting the construction, he placed 3 of these posts, each with a pivot arm. Then he could just swing the arms to mark the footings.
Then he placed each row of blocks using the end of the pivot arm to set them exactly to form a sphere.
You can see more pics on his site, but eventually, he had several intersecting concrete domes.
Then he just coated them, inside and out, with stucco for a nice smooth finish.
Brilliantly simple. I probably still can’t apply it directly to my build, but I sure do find it interesting. Maybe I will experiment with building something else this way… When I have time ;^)
And here is a video tour of the completed project… (and some practice embedding youtube video)
Bank Paperwork
Over a month ago, we took on the challenge of getting our finances rolling. First we filed our taxes early so we could beef up our bank balance a little. Then we filled out the pre-approval paperwork. My net worth was up by over 40% of my annual salary since last summer when we had last applied for pre-approval, and my credit score is almost perfect (in the 820 range), so we were surprised when it came back (a week later) and the bank had not approved us for enough to get the job done. I resisted the urge to panic (because we had qualified for more last time) and contacted my loan officer instead. It took a bit to get a hold of him that week, but we eventually found out that the loan amount had been determined by the max he could sign for without extra “underwriting” paperwork (I guess even loan officers try to avoid doing paperwork). I told him we needed the full amount we had asked for and he said he would get on it. It was another week later before we were sufficiently pre-approved…
With the pre-approval in hand, we set to finishing the arduous “dwelling description” and “sworn statement” paperwork. These would be used to determine the value of the home. The home would need to appraise for at least 125% of what we were being loaned or the bank would need to reduce their contribution. The dwelling description asked strangely detailed questions like the finish on the closet doors, the brand, position and color of the microwave and 8 pages of other detailed questions. It took a couple evenings for Sherri to make her final selections in these areas and then several more hours for us to sit and fill it all out.
The sworn statement took much more effort. I had already figured out most of my budget as it was attached to my gantt chart (chart of the building process). But I still had to finish off a few more cost calculations, tweak some of the build process to save a bit extra and then add it all up. The number was still too high so we looked at ways we could save money. An easy one was to factor in the amount of a Federal Tax Rebate that would come in during the build year. We also decided we could save money on rigid insulation and vinyl waterproofing by buying second hand (I updated my insulation page and my umbrella page with some info on that.) The electrical quotes we had received were high enough to justify me doing the electrical myself. We replaced some of the earth moving costs with the assumption that we would buy a used compact tractor with a bucket on the front. We can sell it at the end (if we want) for almost what we paid and save some money in between, plus it will be useful for unloading trucks, dragging steel around, etc. We decided to drop the surveyor and site the home ourselves (I could put together a whole post on how I plan to do that), etc. Finally, we decided that we needed to do our own ledge stone work to save the last chunk we needed to get things safely under budget. I felt like my time was tapped out and Sherri agreed to do that last masonry task.
After we had the total down to the right level, I still needed to adjust the format from the gantt budget to the groupings that the “Sworn Statement” required. For instance, in the gantt budget, I had steel framing costs spread over a dozen separate steps, but I needed to aggregate these for the sworn statement. The sworn statement also included details about which contractor had provided each quote, etc.
Of course all this happened during a week when I needed to get a paper done for my MBA class.
Once all that paperwork was filled out, we realized we couldn’t print it (technical difficulties)… We ended up printing part of it at my in-laws, but they ran out of paper. Mean while, the USB I had carried it on was corrupted and messed up the formatting on the dwelling document. I had to waste a bunch of time fixing the formatting and then try to print again. We also realized that it needed to be notarized before we could send it in. Since Sherri and I both needed to sign it in-front of the notary, that required some more scheduling, but we got it done. Then we drove to Ann Arbor to drop it off at the bank.
Now we wait. It could be up to 2 more weeks before the appraisal is done, then another week before closing.
In the mean time, we are trying to do what we can without spending any money. I am shopping for a compact tractor, Sherri is getting all the permit paperwork ready to go, etc.
