Schedule, revised

Here's our new (optimistic) schedule - praying it stays dry:

Tomorrow, June 8: Pour footers; Res4 walk-through inspection of finished house in factory;

Wednesday, June 13: Pour walls;

Thursday, June 14: Pour slab;

Monday, June 18: Bring utilities up driveway;

Wednesday, June 20: House delivered;

Thursday, June 21: House set.

Today the concrete guys set the forms for the footers. The forms double as the drain pipes (the perforations let water in and funnel it to away from the foundation). Because we'll have a walk-out basement, the downhill footer is set lower than the other three walls (to get under the frostline). The foundation walls will rise three feet above the uphill grade, and then we'll backfill. The pad to the right (the downhill side) is where the crane will park; it'll be returned to its original grade, so the ground below the walk-out wall will also be about three feet higher at the end of the day than it appears right now.

No Stone Throwing Please

Everybody's got their own design aesthetic, and as they say, there's no accounting for other people's taste. But here's mine:



Don't know if I'm fastidious enough to do it right, but that's my ideal. Probably not til the kids are out of the house, though...

Ninjas fight ALL the time

The videos on Res4's site of the Dwell House have apparently gone viral. And the architecturally savvy ninjas at MyNinjaPlease are impressed.

Jetson Green wonders about the presentation. I think they're great, and I think the music is outrageously cool, but I know something he does not know: Claudia Tanney, the producer of the second and third videos, was about twelve years old when she put them together. I, at 32, just learned how to use blogger.

Contractors

Everybody knows somebody who's had some major house project done by a contractor that turned into a train wreck. We've got a neighbor right now who's going into month thirteen of a six month addition; her stories are just absurd. We knew from the get-go that this was one of the really attractive upsides of prefab for us; particularly because our home site is a couple of hours away, the idea of not having to supervise/nag a GC to get this done was a huge advantage of the Res4 version of prefab (a 95% completed box), even if it hadn't been any cheaper. And having a (little) bit of DIY experience, the idea of finishing as much as we can ourselves really means that we're in control of the timeline and the costs. But there are some things that you just have to have other people do (like build a quarter-mile long driveway and pour the foundation) and that are not in your control. And even when things are going fine there's just a little bit of insecurity about how the next thing's gonna go.

So our working relationship with our contractors (an excavator and a GC, though we're not using him as a GC) has been pretty good so far; I don't have any real complaints. But I am struggling with a creeping anxiety that I'm sure most clients must face at one time or another: that our project is slipping from the consciousnesses of our contractors and that, try as I might, I cannot will them to put our job first. Now in our particular case it's pretty understandable; ours is admittedly a small potatoes kind of job. Our excavator is currently building the road for a 1400 acre subdivision ten minutes or so from our place, and the GC is building million dollar homes in that same subdivision. The excavator worked hard to get our road in; the only thing we're waiting on from him is the utilities ditch and conduits (and electric isn't essential at this point anyway). We haven't yet even engaged the GC to do anything other than the foundation and the set, and he's been available to me for all sorts of questions and coordination issues. But we're two weeks out from the set and I don't have total confidence that we're going to be ready (and really all that entails is the foundation being poured properly). I'm sure all modular projects, by their nature, have a ratcheting of anxiety as the set date nears, and mine will increase accordingly.

This anxiety is not really grounded in anything in particular at the moment; it's just that feeling of not being in control of a process that I'm not real savvy about in the first place that gnaws at me (as much as you read and learn, how confident can you be that your foundation's concrete doesn't have too much air/water in it?). And I'm not even a control freak. But like everybody else I want to get precise answers to my questions and have calls returned promptly and have people show up when they say they're going to. And of course it's a reality of working with contractors and trades that those things don't always happen. One thing prefab means, for me, is that there's much less of this anxiety than there could otherwise be.

Rough Schedule

So this is what we look like right now:

Week of June 4: Dig footers, excavate utility trench, order cedar siding; factory finishes box;

Week of June 11: Pour foundation, walk-through inspection of box at factory, my brother Craig arrives for the summer to help the finishing of the basement;

Week of June 18: Box arrives and is set. Anybody want to come?

We'll see how close we can stick to this. I've got a lot to blog about the prep process that's going on right now for the rest of the work we have to do, and some of the difficult parts of this process and managing it ourselves. But more on that later.

Utilities

We knew all along that we wanted to have our utilities buried if it was feasible as opposed to having power poles run up through the property to the house. We had no idea what it would cost. But the power company got back to us last week and we seem to be all set. Because the nearest existing pole is across the street behind the neighbors house, we had to get an easement from her to bring the line from her backyard to the street and the entrance of our driveway, which she generously granted us (thank you, Mrs. Gates!). Then our excavator will run a ditch up the middle of the driveway, burying two conduits - one for electric and one for telephone - at opposite sides of the ditch a couple of feet apart. The conduits have a nylon cable in them already, so when the electric company is all set they simply attach their electric cable to the nylon rope at the bottom and then go up to the top and pull it up. Because our driveway is so long, they actually can only pull it about halfway at one time, so they do it in stages. The total distance of the new utility line will be about 1600'; the power company gives us the first 600' free and then we pay $1.50/ft the rest of the way. That's another 1000' for us to get up to the transformer location, so the bill from the electric company (which came in the mail already!) is about $1500. That's in addition to the cost of the ditch and the conduit from the excavator, so all together we're at about $7500 for the underground utilities. Seems like a lot just to avoid having poles going up through the property. But the power company wouldn't go up the driveway; they'd only do a straight line to the house, so that would've meant another big clearing of the trees and we didn't want that. And it also means that should we ever subdivide or build more houses, we can run a shorter underground conduit to the next site for a pretty modest marginal cost.

Last Week

Not much in the way of bloggable stuff going on right now. Got our permits (septic, well, building) in the mail this week. But because we got our poured concrete sub so late, we're not on his schedule til June 11th. (We were on his schedule the last week of May and then the first week of June, but I guess we can't complain since he's squeezing us in as it is. Those kinds of interactions with contractors deserve their own post - if not their own blog - and I'll get to that soon.) So we hope to get our footers dug and poured this coming week, and be ready for the forms to go up for the foundation the beginning of the next week.

Hi Seiko!!!

Radiant Heat

We've decided that we have to have air-conditioning. Personally, I'm not a big fan of AC - I like a good floor fan and to be able to hear the outdoors. But if folks are going to give us money to stay in our cabin, last thing we want to do is ask them to suffer through the occasional 90 degree WV afternoon (and then there are the down-the-road resale considerations). It's a big added cost for us; we could have just done radiant heat in the floors and the woodburning stove, not have hired an HVAC guy, and not have had to have a soffit in the basement or to cut up the floors to add registers (air vents) after the house is delivered (Simplex doesn't recommend doing it in the factory, because HVAC guys are always moving the locations of the registers around to suit the duct installation).

So we will have a forced air AC system. Which means that radiant floor heating becomes a redundancy - forced air heat is a no-brainer if you're doing AC. But we really want it in the basement - exposed concrete will be chilly down there, and what's the point of having it if you're just gonna put rugs over it? So I'm thinking I'm going to try to put in radiant heating anyway, if only in the basement (but maybe underneath the first floor, too). Anybody have any experience with a redundant system like this? Used a furnace with a closed secondary system for the radiant? Or used a separate heater (maybe tankless)? Installed it yourself? Let me know - lostrivermodern AT gmail DOT com.

Appliances

We bought them today (Memorial Day sales and all). The only real observations I have about buying appliances are:

-There are too many options; and

-Cabinet-depth refrigerators apparently aren't cabinet-depth. If you put something call "doors" on them, and then something called "handles" on them, all of a sudden your cabinet-depth fridge is sticking out five inches past your cabinets. The alternative, I understand, is to pay three times as much for a "built-in" fridge that really is cabinet depth.

A Generation Gap

So we combined our visit to the factory last week with a visit with my grandfather. He wasn't aware of any of the details of our project, though he knew it was happening. I told him it was going to be a prefab house and started to explain how prefab construction works, and he stopped me and told me he knew all about it - he'd seen it on Bob Vila (my grandpa is a solid DIYer).

Then I showed him the blog and the design of our house. This is a rough recap of the conversation:

Me: It has an inverted roof.

Grandpa: Why?

Me: (Something about modernism)

Grandpa: But how do you shingle it?

Me: (Something about a rubber roof that's less than a 1/2" thick)

Grandpa: (Back to watching the baseball game)

Some comparisons of renderings to the box as it stands now:

Finishes

I've gotten some great feedback from people emailing and asking that I address issues they are interested in. A few people have wondered what the quality level is of the finishes. So I'll detail a few here:

Windows are Anderson 400 series, sliders are Anderson Frenchwood Patio doors;

Daltile white subway 3x6 tile in the shower (we looked at the much more expensive glass tile, which we both liked a lot, but decided against it), Daltile black and white mosaic 1x1 tile on the bath floor (instead of slate or other nice stone products);

Zodiaq synthetic black countertop in both the bath and kitchen (instead of some more expensive natural/synthetic stones);

Merillat maple cabinets (nice maple doors with less expensive plywood boxes);

5/8" strandwoven bamboo floors from Sustainable Flooring;

Lutron Maestro dimmer switches;

Lightolier recessed lighting;

Kohler sinks, toilet, bath fixtures (though nothing outrageous).

As I said, compared to a lot of the finishes you see in Dwell or even in some of the Res4 projects detailed on their site, ours are modest and genuinely cost effective (and of course largely unspectacular).

More about the Factory Visit

As usual, we were well received by the folks at Simplex (last time I was there they put my name on the marquis on the highway). We had asked Jason beforehand if it would be ok if our kids tagged along and they were happy to oblige (though they kept us out of the factory). It was really great to actually step inside of the box and feel what the space was like. When we were first looking around at the different prefab options, we had no real perspective on what 14' wide or 16' wide would be like for the whole length of a house - those are both obviously fine dimensions for a single room, but how does it feel to have a whole house fit into that width? When we first met with Res4, we were lucky to learn that they had a project on Long Island that had recently been set that was right around the corner from my mom's house. There were contractors on the job, and we met with the foreman one afternoon last summer and walked through. It was an enormous house - I think it was four modules. But we were really able to see how a single bar would work just fine for what we wanted. So yesterday it was reassuring to actually stand in ours and feel how open and comfortable the space is. The soffit feels like it extends a bit further into the middle of the house than I was expecting, but it certainly has the anticipated effect of forcing one's attention to the sliding glass wall and it certainly exaggerates the height of the butterfly. Of course, as you can probably tell from the pics, the boxes in the yard are all stacked pretty close together, so the view was of some lumber and other materials. It'll be nice when it's a view of trees, sky and valley.

The finishes, for the most part, looked terrific. One of the real upsides of designing this as a second home/rental is that we aren't nearly as obsessive about the finishes as I'm sure we would be over a place we'd be living in full time. That's another of the paradoxical advantages of prefab (or at least the process as we've experienced it): constrained choice. Res4 has done this so many times now that they've identified a limited number of finishes that they think work. We picked cabinet and floor material/color, tile selection, sinks, faucets and appliances from a small set of options they recommended. They did the rest. So walking through the box I'm seeing things for the first time (like the brushed aluminum recessed lights, which we never discussed, but which look awesome). I'm sure we would have wanted more say over those types of finishes if this were a fulltime house, and I know I would have hated that process. (In a previous life I was a lawyer and I was involved not too long ago in a litigation over a $1.5MM custom home between the original builder and the owners. Reviewing the email and correspondence was really enlightening; having to pick every finish detail in a 5000sf home is an overwhelming task.) As a result, there are of course some things that wouldn't be my first choice - the windows on the uphill side of the house have white hardware, while the sliders have a much more attractive silver, for example. (I asked about that today, and John at Res4 said that Armstrong charges a hefty premium for the silver and Res4 doesn't think it's worth it.) So those are the kind of tradeoffs you're talking about when you cede control over the finer details. I'm happy with the tradeoff on the whole.

One big surprise (and it shouldn't have been, because both Res4 and Simplex talked to me about it months ago) is that we are going to have to paint. One of the realities of prefab travel and setting is that drywall inevitably cracks. I had reviewed this with everybody a couple of times; we discussed that Simplex will not be responsible for fixing any of it. But it turns out that, because of this inevitability, they don't do finish painting - just a white prime coat. And the sliding doors come unfinished as well. So that's one more thing to do on the back end. Not a big deal, but one more thing (and not a fun one, either).

There's also the fact that not everything's perfect at this stage. Wrong size cabinet here or there, mismatched door hinges, little things. The last apartment that we owned (in a wonderful old cast-iron building in Williamsburg, Brooklyn - man did it kill me to have to sell that place) was also new construction, so we were used to the idea that there are always things that get missed/need to be fixed. That's something I think anybody who's doing this process for the first time should be prepared for. The key is to have good communication and a good process for how that stuff gets resolved (and between Res4's very high expectations and Simplex's excellent responsiveness, we've been very happy with that part of this process).

Sarah says my posts are always too long, so I'll stop here. But more about the visit soon.

Today's Factory Visit

Well the house is coming along great. The EPDM is on, bamboo floors are in, bathroom is being tiled, trim is being fitted. It was great to see everything in person rather than pictures...

Simplex seems to be keeping up with Res4's attention to detail, and it's great to know that both of them are as excited as we are about getting everything done right. I hear some of the guys at the factory have even been checking in on this blog - if so, thanks for all the hard work.

On to pics. I'll just put them up and say a bit more about the visit tomorrow...

Gotta wear your hardhat:


Looking up at the peak of the butterfly over the master bedroom:


Open windows of the downhill side of the bedroom:


From the inside of that bedroom:


Clerestory window above the stairs:


Double windows and tile in the bath:


Close-up of bath window and tile (the sills are sloped toward the shower, which is a nice touch - thank you Simplex):


Bamboo floor (darker than you usually see):


Close-up of the bamboo:


Sliding mechanism for bedroom pocket door:


Brushed aluminum recessed lights (look very sharp):


Trim in the living room (just tacked right now):


Kitchen cabinets (I was worried about how the sloped ceiling would look above them - I wanted a soffit to come flush to the front of the cabinets; I was convinced otherwise and I'm glad. The slope of the ceiling is pretty dramatic with the shadowing here):


Front door hardware:


Sliding door hardware (same finish as the front door, but the light is different here):