Broke things off with one builder and found another

9 years ago

We have been going at this for over a year and have dealt with our share of headaches. You may have read some of my recent posts.

Builder 1: DH's BFF. He approached us and offered to build it at cost, and ended up backing out.

Builder 2: The BFF's Uncle. They got their numbers back recently and their numbers are about 30K over what we wanted. They were reasonable for the size of the house though.

DH and I have come to the conclusion that we can't afford the square footage of this house which is 2,388. We could when BFF was going to build it, we can't now. And we don't need all that space. We were really hoping for around 2,100 sq ft but when the architect was done, 2,388 was what we got.

So we sat down with builder #3 and his designer. After 2 hours of visiting, we decided to use the designer to reconfigure our whole guest wing. We originally had 2 guest bedrooms with a jack and jill bathroom connecting them and then a little powder room right at the front of the wing. We are getting rid of the jack and jill and 1/2 bath and doing a regular hallway bath. By looking at the specs, I think we will save around 80 sq feet right there. We are also going to shrink the back side of the house by a square foot and if I recall that was about 60 sq ft. She said we wouldn't even notice it. We are hoping overall to cut back at least 150 sq feet. At $100 per sq foot, that is a savings of $15K. If we can do more without compromising our "must haves," we will. Gone are the days when I was dead set on having this exact floor plan

Then they proceeded to point out all sorts of little things that would save us money. Like not having super high ceilings. You should start with an 8 ft ceiling and then coffer the ceiling up to 9-10 feet high so that there is some height there. We had ceilings that were 10 foot and 12 foot. You can save on the framing, labor, bricks, drywall, etc. You also end up needing smaller windows which costs less money too. Since I have never built a house before, I did not know this, and NO BUILDER that we had spoken to prior to this new fella bothered to mention things like ceiling height.

We know this builder personally. His wife was our realtor and upon looking at one of his recently finished homes, we really liked what we saw. So we are going to pay 50 cents a square foot for the designer to do this reconfiguring and go from there. She apparently draws plans for many builders in our area so she is legit and charges a reasonable rate.

I am BEYOND ready to close the door on this part of my life. We have been in a rental townhouse for over a year now and I am looking forward to moving in my dream home!

Sort by:Oldest

Comments (7)

amberm145_gw
9 years ago
About half way through your post, I was going to say, it's not all about square footage. A 1000 sq' garage is going to be significantly cheaper to build than a 1000 sq' house with one bedroom, a 500sq' kitchen and 2 bathrooms with marble and gold plated fixtures. A 2000sq' house with the same size kitchen and the same bathrooms isn't going to be twice the price as the 1000sq' house.

A 2 story house is cheaper per sq' than a single story. The roof is half the size, as is the footprint. A square is the cheapest shape to build, so lots of corners and bits sticking out will also increase the cost. Having plumbing run from one end of the house to the other is another cost.

I wouldn't get too hung up on shaving a foot off the master bedroom and living room (for example). Cutting out a bathroom isn't just saving you 80sq' of space, it's saving you the cost of a toilet, vanity, sink, mirror, faucet, plus the cost of the plumber and pieces he needs to hook that bathroom to the rest of the plumbing in the house. That 80sq' is WAY more expensive than an 80sq' closet.

Good luck with the new builder. I've also been working on this for a year now, and have yet to break ground.
dekeoboe
9 years ago
I agree with amberm145. When I read We are hoping overall to cut back at least 150 sq feet. At $100 per sq foot, that is a savings of $15K. I thought, no that is not how it works.

OP - Perhaps you should look into reading some books on building that explain ways to cut cost without cutting style when building a house. I know the others on this forums have looks of good books to recommend.
Related Professionals
Ammon Home Builders · Forest Hill Home Builders · Santa Cruz Home Builders · Conneaut General Contractors · DeKalb General Contractors · Ken Caryl General Contractors · Mansfield General Contractors · Marinette General Contractors · Muskogee General Contractors · New Carrollton General Contractors · New River General Contractors · Noblesville General Contractors · Point Pleasant General Contractors · Port Huron General Contractors · Tamarac General Contractors
Aims
Original Author
9 years ago
Our old house was a 2 story. I got tired of the stairs and with my husband's diagnosis of MS, he will most likely be in a wheelchair in the next 20+ years . The builder had mentioned that cutting out the plumbing, fixtures, vanity, etc will definitely make a difference. I'm just excited about having less bathroom space to clean :)

I'm just happy to scale things back a bit.

This post was edited by aimless07 on Fri, Jun 27, 14 at 10:12
amberm145_gw
9 years ago
I wasn't suggesting you build a 2 story. It's just an example of how the cost per sq' is not linear.
Aims
Original Author
9 years ago
We got our reconfigured design back and she cut about 250 sq feet out and the house still looks very similar to how it was before. I am very relieved because I was worried that it would lose all the special/specific things that we liked about it. So we went from 2,388, to 2,152. Hubby and I are going to really study it and see if there is anything else we want to adjust.
pixie_lou
9 years ago
I know in your last thread there were a lot of comments about the plan not being ADA friendly. Was this designer able to make ADAmodifications for you?
Aims
Original Author
9 years ago
All the doorways are wide as we had previously planned and our hallway bathroom will be accessible. I would like a floating vanity so a wheelchair can get underneath and then we have storage drawn in right beside it. There is plenty of space on either side of the toilet so we could install a frame that has bars around it eventually. DH wasn't initially wanting to do full handicapped accessibility in the bathroom in terms of the fixtures and stuff because he probably won't need it for a few years. His type of multiple sclerosis doesn't progressively get bad so he'll be getting around for a long timeI just figured, let's do it now instead of paying more and doing it later. Plus when his brother comes to town who is wheelchair bound, he can get around our house and bathroom comfortably.