Build Your House Yourself University

Many of us are building our houses with the intention of staying there for the rest of our lives.  We’re building our forever homes.   And there are some fairly simple design choices we can make that will allow us to stay in our homes comfortably even as seniors. The aging-in-place features we’ll discuss in this episode will give us a greater level of safety, independence, and happiness in our homes— no matter what our age.

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Open-plan homes with great rooms that combine the kitchen, dining room, and living room make smart use of space, increase natural light and make it easy for family and friends to be together. However, with few walls or defined borders and with clear sightlines from one space to another, open-plan rooms can be tricky to decorate.  It’s a challenge to strike a good balance between cohesiveness and separation. This week we’ll discuss some common mistakes people make when decorating open floor plans and we’ll go over how we can steer clear of those mistakes.

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Will open concept homes become a thing of the past?  In the midst of the pandemic, lots of people have been talking about wanting more private space in their homes.  And many are wondering if open floor plans are on their way out. I give you my prediction in this episode.

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As you probably know, a major part of doing our due diligence and vetting or investigating a contractor before hiring him or her is to contact some references.   Ask the contractors you’re considering for your project for ideally at least 3-4 references.  And make sure you actually contact those references.  Most people are very willing to help out by chatting about their homes and construction experiences. 

Some people think contacting references is not very helpful because they think the contractor will only give a list of their best customers who may potentially be unwilling to share anything other than the most positive remarks.  But you’d be surprised by how honest people will be, especially if the contractor is not in earshot of their comments.  Plus, my list of questions will hopefully elicit candid, valuable information.  

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In the last episode, we had a brief overview of the rough-in phase of construction, including what goes on during the electrical rough-in.

This week I’ll give you some very basic information about your breaker box and where you should locate it.   Plus we’ll briefly cover when you’ll need a typical 120 volt electrical outlet versus a more powerful 240 volt outlet.  And we’ll end the mini-lesson with some talk about what size electrical service or the number of amps your house should have.  I know this sounds pretty technical, but these are things we need to understand on a basic level so when our electrician asks if we want a 120 volt or 240 volt outlet or if we want a 200 or 240 amp electrical service, we’ll have some idea of what he’s talking about.  As always, I’ll break things down into simple terms.

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Significant progress has been made on my house, but if you’ve been following me for a while, you know the process has been painfully slow. Soil instabilities found during excavation of my property and the subsequent foundation redesign and retaining wall construction added more than 6 months to my timeline. Record rains, including overflow of the river, a brutal winter storm, and a global pandemic added even more delays to my schedule before we had even started framing. Unfortunately, unrelenting pandemic-related shortages in materials and labor continue to wreak havoc on my construction schedule.  But we are making progress, it’s just slow progress.  The next step is rough-in.  We’ll go over what that means and I’ll tell you about some of the highlights of the last few months. 

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This week we’ll go over some design tips that I read in a recent article on houzz.com called 7 Major Decorating Mistakes and How to Avoid Them.  Even if you like interior design as I do, it can be intimidating to decorate an entire house.  But information like this will give us some guidance and a little more confidence when making decisions about our decor. 

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This is the second part of our interview with fireplace professional Jake Cromwell of Top Chimney and Roofing. He’ll continue his discussion about high-efficiency direct vent gas fireplaces, which he recommends for those of us who want the heat and beauty of a fireplace, but don’t want a lot of maintenance. He’ll also tell us what we need to look for if we want to mount our TV above our fireplace and where we can find certified fireplaces professionals.

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This week and next we’ll have a fireplace professional and educator on the show who will help us understand the different types of fireplaces and educate us about some fireplace misconceptions. We’ll also talk about his favorite type of fireplaces and the greatest piece of advice he has for consumers. In part one of our talk, he’ll focus on breaking down the major categories of fireplaces for us.  It’s a great interview so let’s get right into it.

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The current homebuilding environment is a tough one. Builders and homeowners like us are dealing with historically high prices and historically low availability in building materials and labor.  In this week’s episode, I’ll tell you about a May 2021 survey done for the National Association of HomeBuilders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI).  The survey outlines the percentage of builders in the US who have ordered building materials and experienced significant shortages in those materials. 

I’ll also give you a few ideas for what to do during construction delays that might result from materials shortages.

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