House: The Timber Frame

Yes, the house is a timber frame - basically really big pieces of exposed post and beams timbers with mortise and tenon joinery.  If you ever saw the movie 'Witness' with Harrison Ford or lived in Alsace of merry ole England, you know what I'm talking about. 

I probably heard of the concept of a timber framed house when I was in my teens, and I was watching 'This Old House'.  And I had followed the blog of a US builder of new timber frames for years - who was promoting them for their sustainability features (it's a flexible structure that can be repurposed over the centuries).  It seems Patrick had similar experiences, and he brought up the idea of building a timber frame house about 2 years ago - thinking I would poo-pooh it, he was surprised that I actually knew what it was and wanted to do it.

There are basically four variations of a theme if you want to do something with timber frames.

1.  BUY EXISTING AND RENOVATE ON SITE

You can buy a piece of land that already has an old (and probably falling down) timber frame barn on the property already, and then restore it.

   Sounds crazy, but these barns are more common than you think.  At one time they were across the midwest every 40 acres.  Most have been lost (once the roof goes, it's pretty much downhill), but if you drive around the countryside and look for them, you'll still see them.

   We actually thought about buying a piece of property that had a barn on it - for about 5 minutes - but it's pretty hard to find the right size land, right barn, and right price.

2.  MAKE NEW

You can have someone build you a barn to your own specifications out of new timbers (usually Douglas Fir), and they'll even put it up for you.

   We thought about that for about a month, until we realized how incredibly expensive it can be (~$100K for a 30'X40' structure ... I'm talking just the frame ... you still need to put up walls, HVAC, windows, etc.).  Keep in mind, we're talking about something that is strictly aesthetic ... like choosing marble tile over ceramic tile, or putting a painting on your wall ... so $100K is a big chunk of change.

3.  FAKE IT

You could get the timber frame look by buying some timbers from an old barn and then attach them to the walls somehow. 

   I've actually seen this done in production homes to make them feel homey.  I personally hate the look, it just looks fake (like the plastic window shutters that are too small for the windows).  And, of course, they aren't structural. 

4.  MOVE ONE

The last option I can think of is to find someone who already has a barn (and doesn't know what to do with it), dismantle it, and then move it to your location.

But be warned, it's not as easy as it sounds - since construction is all about the details and fantasy hitting reality like a hard brick wall.

We actually did option #4 ... despite the risks, we would rather save a barn than have something new - and saving some cash didn't hurt either.  Once we got into it, we realized that these barns are really about our history, and they are rapidly disappearing.  The issue is that their original purpose (raising animals on a small farm) is now essentially gone - so unless we give them a new purpose (in this case, a house), then they will eventually all be gone - those roofs don't last forever.

We originally were thinking of moving a barn of one of our friends, but unfortunately, it didn't work out.  Even if you get the frame itself for free, there are still some significant costs in just dismantling.  And although many have tried to just pull it down with a chain and a truck - they just roll over.

So advice on timber framing ... find one that's already been taken down ... and for that, just do a quick google search.  You'd be amazed at the number of people who have frames sitting in another barn somewhere.

Although an already dismantled barn has distinct advantages over other options - you are also introducing an awful lot of risk - which I look back now on and think what was I thinking.  The main risk is that you have to trust the current owner that the dimensions are correct and that it can be put back together in one piece.  Usually those barns are taken down for a reason - like a rotten timber - so make sure part of the deal is that the guy you're buying from has to put it back up.

We did end up making some alterations to the barn ... we had to increase the slope of the roof in order to make the second floor more liveable ... so that required extra timbers.  One timber in particular that I had to find was a 40' long ridgebeam - not very easy to find, let me tell you.

But all in all, it went very smoothly.  Just be well aware of the risks involved and some of the hidden costs (transportation, crane rental, etc).

So here's the barn in its original location, which was actually the NE corner of Ohio.

Turns out the barn was built sometime between 1840 to 1850, so it was the first in the area.  The timbers are hand hewn and they are significantly larger than barns built just a few decades later when the saw mills were cutting standard sizes - so some beams are 14" square instead of a more typical 8". 

We kept the original footprint of the main part of the house ... so that's roughly 30' X 40' ... we had ended up changing the roofline in order to make the second floor more useable.  And we bagged the side section (we need to replace some of the rotten timbers).

So here's the barn up in our property in Indiana.  The 2X4's are just for safety, and temporary stability.  But it also gives you an idea of how big the actual timbers are.

What about the walls?  That's the next post on structural insulated panels ...

House: The Foundation

So how's this for progress ...

We started looking for land in October of 2009, bought land in December of 2010, spent almost a year in designing and bidding the project, and now we're in November of 2011 with the start of a foundation.

Seems that building a foundation is a bit of a slog, and it probably doesn't help that my sub had 3 other jobs going, and a whole lot of rain to deal with.  But as you can see, we have the start.

We originally were going back and forth on having a basement, but when Patrick's Mom looked to the open field to the West and asked, "Sooo ... what are you going to do in the event of a tornado?" We decided that we were having a basement.

Yes, they're a pain with the sump pump ... yes, they add expense ... but the tornadoes.

We looked into a lot of foundation options that were atypical ... just looking for something that was air tight and a good insulator (concrete by itself just doesn't cut it) ... I know, people say the basement stays a nice 55 degrees all year round, but I have yet to meet anyone who heats their house to only 55 in winter, nor cool it to that in summer.

   We looked at a product called Thermomass, basically a poured wall with insulation on the inside ... super crazy insane expensive - and marginal performance despite what the lab reports would tell you.

   We looked at a product that was essentially pre-formed concrete that was lifted into place and sat on a gravel bed ... more air leakage than my 1920's house and probably less stable.

    We looked into doing simple foundation on our own - have a sub pour a typical foundation, and then we could attach rigid foam on the outside or inside for better insulation.
  
We actually went with ICFs (Insulated concrete forms) for the basement - which is basically two inches of styrofoam with 6-8" of concrete in between.  We had originally dismissed the idea, because they had a couple of disadvantages and the insulation wasn't amazing (just R20) ... like, we would have to finish the basement walls since the styrofoam is not fire rated.  But they ended up not costing a whole lot more than a traditional foundation (actually, I don't think they cost anything extra, now that I think about it), and they were tighter in the air leakage department.  But the main reason is that we wanted to use our neighbor to the north on the project, and this is the only way he built foundations.

We also put insulation down in the floor ... code says you only need 1/2" (and I don't think they even really check to see if you do that), we did 6" (recycled, which is a story in and of itself).  Since we were doing radiant floor heating in the basement, we really didn't want to pay for heating up Mother Earth any more than we already are.

All in all, it's a solid foundation ... which is what you want, right?  Just be prepared for it to take awhile, and then be surprised if it's quick.

House: The General Contractor

Um ... that would be us ... just Patty and I

No, we don't have any prior building experience.

No, I'm not even that great a pounding a nail.

No, I had little idea what I was getting myself into.

Basically we got turned on to a concept called UBuildIT, where you basically hire a building consultant for significantly less than a general contractor would cost.  You basically do all the work on scheduling the subs etc, but they consult and guide you through.  We were going to go with UBuildIt, but had another contact who was just a building consultant ... so we went with him.

He essentially took our detailed plans and then bid out the project to a list of subs that he's worked with in the past.  We can choose to either use his subs, or bid them out to someone else.  See post on bidding process.

Once that's done he helps you with the building process, but you still end up doing all the work (e.g. scheduling subs, yelling at subs, begging subs, permitting, etc).  It's definitely not for everyone, because you have to have a certain eye for detail and know what you want. 

Even with a building consultant, there are things that are just missed or done incorrectly.  The bad news is that you usually catch them late.  The good news is that most of them can be fixed.

There are some significant disadvantages ...

1.  YOU'RE A FRESHMAN, EVERYONE ELSE IS A JUNIOR OR SENIOR

  Essentially you have to figure that this is the first time that you've ever seen a foundation constructed before, whereas your sub has done it a million times.  So you have to pick the right sub that you can trust.

  Granted most of these subs are turnkey solutions ... they come in and do the whole foundation (ordering material, setting up inspections, calling the concrete company) - you want that.  But that also means that they can hide things pretty easily if they want to.  Again, pick the right subs.

  If you have a knack for being able to figure out if someone is BS'ing you, then you are halfway there; but remember, you are dealing with people who have been BS'ing for a long time.

2.  IT TAKES TIME ... AND IT COULD BE A LOT

  You basically have to know as much, if not more, on each aspect of the job than the sub does.  I enjoyed it, because I found it fascinating, and fortunately the Internet is an amazing resource.  Just talking to subs and asking dumb questions reveals a lot of information - but all that takes time.

  Here's an example that shows the time commitment or my general perfectionism ... I stumbled upon a basic question ... what varnish and finish should I put on my exterior wood door.  It all started innocently enough as one of my friends was telling about how when he built his house, his general contractor used some crappy cheap varnish on his exterior wood door, and then 2 years later he was calling in a professional and paying $600 to do it right.  He still has to reapply the finish every year or so (all products do), but at least the door continues to look good.

  Well, fast forward to my project ... 3 hours of internet research into wood varnishes reveals that a finish containing Tung Oil is the best, that certain Marine Varnishes are great, but need to be reapplied, that 'Formby's Tung Oil Finish' contains no tung oil whatsoever, and if you want it done right, you need about $75 in product and several hours of work to protect and finish one exterior wooden door.

   Hey, avoid the problem by painting it - but the door is fantastic.


I think there are some significant advantages to being your own general contractor - and for me they far outweigh the negatives ...

1.  MONEY.

   Even with a percentage fee of the total budget of the house (full disclosure we paid, I think, 4.5% of the total budget we went to the bank with).  Some days I was wondering if we were getting our money's worth, but it was a good insurance policy.  We were originally quoted 8%-10% for the consulting service, and that's basically robbery.

   I probably would have done about 70% of amount of work than if I hired a general contractor, but at least this way I paid less.

   The real cost savings however comes from the fact that you are not stuck with one sub.  A lot of the housing to be pretty conservative and safe, so general contractors just go to the same subs project after project.  What you find is that sub prices vary dramatically ... not only between individual subs, but also based on the subs own schedule.  If he's slow, then he'll bid low that month - if he's busy or the project is not really interesting to him (e.g. driving distance, size, etc.), then the price could be significantly more.

   Yes, some subs are very consistent - but you have no idea how much something should really cost until you ask a few other subs - more on that later.

2.  QUALITY CONTROL

  Cold and heartless, but everyone involved in your project has their own motives - and a surprisingly large majority want to finish as quickly as possible in order to start the weekend or move on to the next job.  Subs can talk about quality over quantity, but at the end of the day, you reach a point where it has to be about quantity for them.



  Don't get me wrong, the subs we had were by and large fantastic ... but they aren't 100% self-policing.  If a mistake means that they need to spend another 2 hours re-doing it and you won't know because it'll be covered up by Tyvek wrap ... then the majority aren't going to fix it.

  Don't even count on a county inspector.  Nice guys (or maybe not), but they are going to catch MAYBE 10% of what's wrong with the house.  They aren't going to find out if the panels were sealed tightly (but an infrared camera will), no one is going to get down on the floor and make sure the doors sills are all caulked and air tight - not even your insulation guys do that.
 

  I really don't care how honest you think your general contractor is ... at the end of the day he's not going to be living in your house, paying your electric bills, or probably even building you another house.  So what's his/her fundamental motivation in quality.  It's not non-existent, but it's not 100% either.


3.  DESIGN FREEDOM


  We did a lot of whacked out stuff on this house ... water cachement, SIP panels, timber frame structure, fiberglass windows, radiant floor heating, Control4 lighting, the list goes on and on.  It was challenging enough to try those things, but it would have been impossible if I had a general contractor that had never done them before and didn't want to try them.

  Even if I did find a general contractor who was willing to try those things, he would have had to raise his prices so much to cover the risk, that the project just would not have been possible.


  Friends have told me stories of where they would debate for an hour with a general contractor on how big to make the driveway, because the GC didn't want to pay for a couple extra yards of concrete.  Could you imagine if I told my GC that I wanted to put up a 150 year old barn with measurements written on a piece of scrap paper?  It just would have been a struggle.


  Probably one of the biggest compliments I would have to give my building consultant was that he never said, "Holy crap that's a bad idea."  Maybe he should have at one point, but everything has worked out so far, keep your fingers crossed.

House: Conceptual Design

So the second weird thing we did (first was deciding to build a house at all) was hire an architect.



I had some friends in college who were architects and was always impressed by their view of the World. We lived in one house that you knew an architect had designed, and every day it made you happy that the laundry chute was in the right place or you could turn on and off the lights the way you lived. They always say architects are more expensive, and even though you should expect higher quality should cost more, I'm still not convinced they don't save you money in the end with lower square footage and removing unnecessary costs. I'll keep track and let you know at the end of the project.



But the next step in building a house is coming up with a conceptual design (think: Where are the rooms and how are you going to move between them, and less about where the light switches are going to be). Basically, Chris, our architect, had to take all of our ideas that were more like random thoughts of fancy that we had picked up over the years, and put them into something concrete on how we want to live.



This project was not really constrained by land (20 acres gives you a lot of options), but it was constrained by cost (always) and a somewhat fixed footprint (more on that later). I'm glad we had constraints because it makes us more creative and economical - without them you end up with a 5000 square foot monstrosity with a gift wrapping room and a mortgage that leaves no money left to buy gifts to wrap.



For me, if we didn't care about resale value and we could convince the bank to fund us - I would be happy with just doing the first floor, which would be a killer one bedroom apartment in any city. Although we don't think it makes sense to have a bigger mortgage for the occasional visitor (we could put them up in the Conrad cheaper than the extra square footage will cost us in the mortgage) - we did want a place where we could have long-term family and friends stay comfortably (and privately), so if after a month they started smelling like week old fish, they would have their own space to stink up.

Here's the general plan (and the reasoning) ...

Visitors walk in at point A, while we come in from the garage at point B - but we are essentially sharing one main entrance. (We didn't want to pay for a formal entryway that no one really uses but the pizza delivery man). With land we are going to have a lot of dirty and wet clothes, so the mudroom is right there (I had a mudroom on Alabama, and it was beyond useful). One of the last things we do before we leave is put the dogs away - so the dog room is right there with their own exit to their fenced yard. They also need an out of the way place to chill when there are a bunch of guests around. With only 1400 square feet on the first floor, we wanted to make sure we were getting as much out of each room as possible - so the entrance is big enough for handle visitors coming and going, coats, and shoes; while making a little reading space off to the side at other times.



The main section of the house has a pantry and half bath off to one side - the pantry had to be close to the main entrance and the kitchen, while the half bath needed to be out of the way. Nothing special about the dining room and living room other than half of it is open to the upstairs loft.



The kitchen took a lot of thought because we like the idea of an open kitchen, I just don't like people in the kitchen. And I don't like sitting in the living room or dining room and seeing a kitchen mess (which I am sometimes known to do). So the kitchen is really kind of two parts - one section is open and has seating for six at an island, while a wall hides the cleaning up area. Even though the kitchen is really long with the island and galley footprint - the infamous kitchen triangle is incredibly small, since it's kept to one end.



Chris hid the stairs behind the back of the kitchen (sweet) and there's an exit to the outside garden right off the kitchen.



The last third of the first floor is the master. Bedroom basically handles one king sized bed and some dogs - that's it (never understood a couch in a bedroom). We refused to do a walk-in closet - too much waste in the corners - and it always seems to smell like shoes. We kept the toilet and the bathroom separate - toilet and shower just seems mutually exclusive to me.



There's a lot of things that I like about this plan - there's very little wasted space, whatever hallways exist really need to be there for a reason and can be used by other rooms. The north half of the plan is pretty fixed with the kitchen and plumbing, but the rest is pretty flexible and open.

There you have it - a conceptual design.

House: The Land

It's done ... we have land!

I know that sounds a little dramatic, but we've been looking for land for 18 months. Here's the cliff notes version (skip it if you don't want to know the pain of finding a piece of land) ...

Looked around for several months and decided 10 acres was too small and 40 acres was too big. First offer on a property was in September of 2009 - 20 acres in Danville - low balled (it was close to the city dump), but nothing came of it. Second offer was an old horse farm in Mooresville a month later - unfortunately the owner had just declared bankruptcy and the bank was still thinking short sale - went 6 months without a response to our offer. There were other places - 15 acres in Whiteland (one big floodplain), 17 acres in Plainfield (competing bidder won out), 30 acres in Greenfield (land was actually 37 acres), 20 acres in Greenfield (really overpriced) - there were probably a few others that I've blocked out. Even did the auction thing a couple of times - but low interest rates and high corn prices made $8K/acre dirt cheap.

So what were the lessons learned?

1.  You can learn as much (if not more) about the land market (or any market) - if you put your mind to it. The online tools are such that you can see all the real estate transactions and know what you're buying and who's bought what when.

2.  You have to be patient. Never thought spending more than $100K in this economy would be so hard.

3.  Everyone (Realtors, Sellers, Lenders) - they all have their own incentives - you need to make sure they overlap - they rarely do.

4.  Very few people truly understand how much the economy was screwed in early 2009 - when people stop making economic transactions (in this case, buying and selling of land), then the whole machinery comes to a grinding halt, and it takes the work of God to get it going again.

5.  The idea that the market has perfect information and the best price will be made in capitalism is a load of horse shit. Call me a Communist, but people play in the capitalistic World because they think they know something that other people don't.

6.  Low quality outsourcing costs a company in ways you never imagined ... that old horse farm in Mooresville that we made an offer on in October 2009 ... turns up we ended up buying it 14 months later for a lot less. If you had a real person on the phone that cared about your company, you would have known to take our first offer, instead the bank kept this dead asset on their books for more than a year and ended up losing $50K more on it - how's that for a return on investment.

So what's the details on the property? It's in Mooresville (can't be more specific else Rebecca will drop off a truck load of dogs and cats while we're at work). It's 20 acres (a little over 8 hectares) - which is about the perfect size for us - albeit huge. There are three buildings on the property - a crappy house that will make a nice tax deduction to the fire department, a 35' X 35' garage that needs some paint and a concrete floor, and a 75' X 100' horse barn that's just a monstrosity of fun. We weren't in the market for a horse barn, but hey, when it's essentially free, we'll take it.

The land is something rare in Indiana these days - it's naturally fertile - thanks to a host of prairie plants. When we were out there in the dead of summer and after 2 months of drought - the fields were unique in that they were so lush and green. Turns out years of horse poop, and then 3 years of no one being on it - tends to make Mother Nature come back with a vengeance.

We closed at the end of December 2010, and we hope to break ground on the house in the Spring - lots to do before then, but we might get lucky.

House: The Beginning

Well ... I haven't done any posts in awhile - blame it on Twitter or having no time or not being in a very exciting place like Ireland or France anymore - regardless, Patrick and I are about to build a house, so what better place to record our thoughts than on the blog.

Crazy, isn't it? The economy has crashed - primarily due to the house bubble bust. It seems the majority of house farms are in foreclosure. And the good portion of the unemployment rate is due to the construction trade essentially shutting down. So why not build a house.

So being able to have our pick of houses, why are we actually building one from scratch? A couple reasons ...

1. We want space
We have lived in a 40' X 100' lot for the last 11 years. I know that sounds big to all our European friends, but once you take into consideration the big magnolia tree in the front yard, we have no space to grow anything. The farmer's markets are getting really good in Indy - but they aren't cheap, and they still don't have some of the varieties of fruits and vegetables and ducks that we found in France.
Don't get me wrong, we've tried (well, not the ducks) - and we have a nice crop of lemons this year to prove it - but there are just too many things we've wanted to grow and raise that we can't in the middle of the city. Besides Patrick is a country boy through and through.

2. Quality over quantity
There are no shortage of houses here in the US ... provided you have 2.2 kids and want to go with the mainstream elements of an American house - stick frame construction, wasted spaces, and parts that need to be replaced in a few years.
I never understood why European homes are so much sturdier than US homes - we're the ones who have to deal with tornadoes. And as of this writing, I think Indiana has less than 10 buildings that follow the German passiv haus standard (think LEEDS on steroids). Whereas Austria has something ridiculous like 30% of their houses built to this standard.
And nothing taught us the value of having a well designed space than living in the apartment in Strasbourg - at 600 square feet, they couldn't afford to waste any space. Everything was so well thought out that you sometimes forgot how small the place was.

3. We ain't gonna live forever
We can't grow old in our current house - too many steps and too narrow hallways. And if it's one thing that pisses off aging relatives more - is loss of independence and privacy. Seeing my relatives enter their twilight years, you realize how unprepared our houses are to take care of us later in life. That one little step can be a pretty big barrier when you aren't steady on your feet. And that one small apartment off the house has a lot of uses.

Also we don't want to build a house that's so specialized for us that we could never sell it. I know people say that they'll die in their custom house, so they don't care about resale value - but that's just not reality - change is. The housing market is not the healthiest and will stay that way for years - no sense handicapping ourselves more. That being said, putting in a $2K garden tub or 5 bedrooms that you will never use just for the resale value is just stupid.

Upstairs Painting

Home remodeling is not me - considering it has taken a week after work and an entire weekend to paint the upstairs hallway and one bedroom. I can't complain - I still ended up saving some cash by doing it myself.

The picture doesn't do justice to the wall color - it's a very nice yellow (Resotration Hardware via Lowe's color matching). And yes, this is the original 'Winnie the Pooh' room - sniff, sniff. I even got rid of the purple window treatments and did some Target magic.

Hopefully the carpet will arrive soon and the whole upstairs (except for the bathroom) will be all done.

American Idol Night

Week 4 of the American Idol finals at Jason and Amber's. Hey! Don't judge me ... It's the only TV we watch each week (hence the need to actually go over to Jason and Amber's)

So can't decide who should be voted off ... But I'm bumming that tattoo chick was voted off.

Mona

Most of you have heard about her, but few have actually seen her. This is Mona, my Nespresso coffee maker at work.

Yes this is a little weird of a setup, but you can't expect me to pay $2 for a crappy espresso at Java City. Plus she's very social.

The only issue I really have now is getting my other machine to work at home. Unfortunately it has a European plug, and all attempts to convert the current have failed. When the last converter started to smoke after a few seconds, I decided to give it a rest

World's Largest Hamburger Bun

OK, it might have helped if I put in something to give you a sense of scale - the 'bun' is about 18 inches across.

I bought a new book on bread baking from some freak, so I'm still searching for the perfect french bread recipe. These recipes are using a pate fermentee to make the first fermentation go easier, but I still haven't gotten the crust right and the dough itself is a unstructured blob of dough to shape.

We'll see.