Whitewash Studio Architecture Podcast

Show Notes:

EUGENE OREGON

This week I am in the car and I fill you guys in on what I have been working on. I discuss fraternity housing and a little bit about Eugene Oregon.

Join me for this mobile podcast. *Warning the audio quality is not at its best.*

I hope that you are having great success with the planning and construction of your home. If you want to get in touch with me please reach out to me on twitter or google plus.

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Show Notes:

RESIDENTIAL SOLAR ENERGY

As you know I’m Marc. I’m your architect and my goal is to give you the knowledge so you can advance your dream of creating the ideal home for you and your family.

Since last week was all about water conservation and recycling I thought it would be fitting to discuss energy this week. Mostly solar.

Solar can be kind of confusing if your not sure how all the parts go together to create the system.

So to go through the basics and start from the beginning there are two types of solar systems. Off grid and grid tied.

At this moment in 2015 solar is still rather expensive. It takes a lot to make the panels and a lot of money to install and assemble a system that will run an entire home. Because of the costs of each watt is still rather high. Systems are usually priced per watt. In order to reduce the cost, it really pays to research how much energy you are using now and the first thing to do is to see how far you can cut back.

What can you do to reduce your consumption before you try to add solar and meet a very high demand. It is much easier to reduce your usage than to produce your needs.

I want to get right into the numbers here. Your power usage will vary each month typically rising and falling with the extremes in the temperature because a lot of our home energy use is put towards heating or cooling our house. So you could see how adding something like proper insulation or better windows could cut down your energy bill and reduce your power consumption.

Those are both things that you should do before you ever think about going to solar. Otherwise you are throwing more money at a loosing battle.

It is a lot cheaper to reduce your consumption by doing those things than it is to add solar to the roof. Let’s look at an example.

Lets say you use an average over the year of 2000 kilowatt hours each month. Some months it drops to a thousand and other months it is over 2. So we arrive at 2000 per month.

In addition to your energy usage, your bill has the environmental compliance cost the nuclear construction cost recovery the municipal franchise fee maybe and the sales tax. All the fees add up to little over 45 dollars each month. I am going to ignore the fees because the only way you can reduce those is by going off grid. Just going to focus on the usage. Our utility company is charging .087 cents per kilowatt hour. 2000 hours would be 174 dollars.

2000 kilowatt hours per month is costing us 174 dollars.

I am going to go to a system size calculator to make this easy for us. If you go to affordable-solar.com they have a calculator that you can use to customize this to your house. This site is a pretty good site with tons of information and products. You might want to check it out.

I am going to say that we want to cover 100% of our energy usage. You will also need to enter in the amount of peak sun hours for your part of the country. They have a map for you that gives you the peak hours. You are generally looking at 4 hours in most of the country and 6 in places like Nevada.

The website gives you a recommended system. For this example it says we would need a system that produces 20.83 DC kW to cover 100%.

They also tell us some stats below saying that we would add 41,760 dollars to the value of our home. Not sure about that. Not everyone will pay the premium for solar. They also say that the value would be paid off in 20 years based on electric bills.

The largest kit they have goes to 7 kWatts. And it actually has 28 (250) watt solar panels. 28 units. Each one measuring 3 feet by 5 feet. That is 420 square feet of solar panels. About 20 feet by 20 feet.

That is a pretty large area of the roof. To meet our needs of providing 100% of our usage we are looking at 3 of these systems. 1260 square feet of panels. Or 35 feet by 35 feet. So you can start to see how one limitation to providing 100% is simply roof space. Now if you live on a farm and end up putting all these on the ground then your not going to be faced with this problem but if you are planning on putting them on your roof you might have some complications. And this would assume your roof is flat or at least a shed because each change in roof pitch would have to break up the system and they are really only productive in one direction. So if you provide a solar panel on the north face of your roof you are going to get much less power out of it than if you put it facing south.

Of course this is for the northern hemisphere. Anywhere in the us the panels need to be facing south for the best results.

So for this 7000 w system they are making me call for pricing but I am going to see if the panel they list has a price on it. Affordable-Solar is making me call for pricing but I did find one on another site for $ 245 on sale from the usual $ 330. Our system had 28 units and we said we would need 3 of them so that is 84 solar panels at 245 gives us a cost just for the panels of 20,580 dollars.

You will also need the mounting system a series of micro-inverters which I can talk about cables, disconnects.

There is another site called solar home that has a 18 kw grid tie system that claims to produce 2295 kWh per month for 26,000 dollars. Don’t forget you will need someone to install the system if you are not doing it yourself and typically could range from 1/2 to full cost of the system to install. Maybe 15,000 so we are looking at 41,000 dollars.

That is very close to the 41,700 number that affordable solar gave us as added value to the home. That’s interesting.

Remember this is just the simple grid tied system. You would be spending 40,000 dollars and the power would still go out when the utilities go down.

There are a lot of people that don’t understand that when you have a grid tied system and the power from the utilities is down your power is also down.

In order to maintain power you would need to have a storage bank of power. That is achieved by providing a battery bank. Once the power goes out you switch your home to the battery system through a transfer switch that takes you off the grid and isolates your home so you can run everything off the batteries.

So why is that? The reason is that you are supplying a large amount of voltage to the grid. Your feeding the utility company rather than them feeding you, so when their system goes down they have to shut you down. They need to repair the lines and it would not be safe for the people repairing the line to have different systems feeding into the lines from various houses.

In order to meet code there is a switch that shuts the system off during a power outage. And you might be saying that if you went to all this expense to provide an energy solution to your home that you would at least want it to run during an outage. I mean can you imagine how disappointing that would be to have energy at your disposal on your roof and not be able to use it.

The solution is to install with your system a battery backup. A bank of batteries that can power your home when the utilities are down. There is a transfer switch that allows you to disconnect from the grid and run your home from the batteries and power inverter.

Since all batteries store electricity in DC or Direct Current and most of your appliances and light bulbs and computers run on AC Alternating Current you have to convert the electricity to AC from DC.

AC is able to be run over greater distances on smaller wires at a higher voltage than DC. It is cheaper to run than DC would have been so our electric grid was developed using AC which is a cheaper system. Once the high voltage AC reaches your house it is reduced at the transformer to lower voltages before entering your home. Generally 120 volts.

DC power is usually 12, 24 or 48 volts for residential use. The voltage can get much higher. The inverter creates different waveforms to create the alternating current from the direct current. The best wave form for electronics to run properly is a Sine Wave. They make sine wave inverters and this is what you would want to get for your home.

Anytime that you convert electricity there is a power loss in the conversion. That is why a lot of off grid homes that are running entirely off solar (which produces DC power) and storing in a battery bank. This is why they many times will be using a lot of DC appliances. You can get appliances that run off DC but they are made for motor homes, and boats so they are generally scaled down versions.

So if I’m producing my own electricity and I have a storage bank or energy to use, why would I tie to the grid at all? Why not just stay off grid?

If you can, do it. You would be more self reliant, more self sufficient, and not subject to increase in energy costs. But, there are drawbacks because of the amount of energy you can produce you might not be able to produce as much as you need. What if you go through a rainy time and your batteries get depleted. You might be without power. But not likely because you would usually have a way to connect in a generator, either a gas generator or propane. Some kind of generator that would allow you to recharge your batteries if you absolutely had to.

But they are loud. Generators are loud and if you are in the city with neighbors it could have them knocking on your door. But maybe if they do you could invite them in to watch some tv while their power is out because of some storm or other random power outage.

If you are off grid you are using all your own power that you’ve stored. But if you are grid tied you are actually selling all the energy you produce to the electric company. Then you buy back the electricity from them. The reason this is because they get more money from green energy. People pay more for green energy so the more credits they can get the better they like it.

I want to get into numbers here again. So right now on the Georgia Power website they are stating that they will pay a premium price of 17 cents/kilowatt hour.

But the first expense you will have to pay is to have a monitoring meter installed by Georgia Power. There is also a monthly metering fee of $4.50 for single-phase and $11.20 for poly-phase.

For your home you will most likely be using single-phase. $4.50 per month and 17 cents per kWh. Our 40,000 dollar system from earlier was producing 2295 kWh per month. 2295 x .17 is 390 minus the 4.50 so 385 dollars each month. That would be nice, and would pay off the system you purchased in 8 and a half years. But, Georgia Power has a limitation. They limit it to 1500 kW. So you are looking more like 250 dollars. which would take 13 and a half years to pay off your system. This is why it is almost more appealing to put in a smaller system. One that just max’s out the allowed by GA power and install it in a way that it can be expanded to accommodate more, since they do mention on their site that they will be increasing their limits.

Currently the website says there is a waiting list. So you cannot even join the program until you reach your turn, because the power they buy from you at the 17 cents they want to sell that to people at a premium since it is green energy and right now there are not many buyers that are willing to pay the higher premium for green energy.

So until the costs to produce solar panels and all the equipment involved drops the payback might not be there. This is an interesting figure that I heard the other day. Someone was talking about the government bailouts and all the quantitative easing numbers. So this chart I saw on Heritage.org is interesting.

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/08/quantitative-easing-the-feds-balance-sheet-and-central-bank-insolvency

It shows the total amount of money printed by the federal reserve since 2007 to be 4.4 trillion. 4,400,000,000,000.00 dollars. If you took that number and divided it by the 40,000 dollar our system would have cost. We could have put very large solar systems on 110,000,000 homes across the country. The total us population is 318 million. and the average household is 2.6 so we would almost, almost cover the entire united states with solar power. Imagine the independence this country would have then…

Instead where did the money go? I’m not sure either. Well, way to end the show on a depressing note… our gloomy future.

But there is a bright side. Solar is becoming more and more popular. It is becoming easier to get and the panels and equipment is getting much simpler and more reliable. New innovations are being developed, new products and people are at the point now where they are actually considering it as an option.

Companies are developing new ways for you to afford solar by working out leasing options for grid tied systems. The technology is there ready to be widely adopted.

If you want me to dive into solar on a deeper scale let me know. I can get into each piece of equipment and all the different manufactures. How connections are done and all that. So if you are interested in hearing more let me know.

I hope that you are having great success with the planning and construction of your home. If you want to get in touch with me please reach out to me on twitter or google plus.

Tip the show with Bitcoin

Show Notes:

WATER HARVESTING

My water is out. How appropriate is this episode?

When was the last time you had a drink of water?

I am drinking some right now and luckily I filled my glass before our house lost pressure. We have been having lots of problems with the water in our neighborhood. I don’t know if its old utilities or what.

There have been 3 water main breaks within a block of our house. So this got me thinking about water. You know it has become so common so easy to get that it is just there. It goes unnoticed. Until you need it and it’s not running.

We have become very reliant on the utilities to provide us with water. We don’t really need to think too much about it, but most cities seem to really be struggling with getting our water to us. You hear more and more about water rights and who is getting what.

Rain water has been collected for thousands of years. And in many countries it’s actually required. If you don’t collect it your not going to have it when you need it.

Here in the US cheap potable water delivered to your door has really reduced number of people collecting water. If they do it is generally on a small scale.

In the US water rights laws have restricted rainwater harvesting because it was seen as stealing from those that have rights to take water from the watershed. Before just recently you were not able to collect the water that came off your own roof on your own land in the state of Colorado. I think the legislators finally realize how ridiculous that was and that the water was not even making it to the watershed from peoples roofs anyway.

So why would we want to collect it? Why should we? In the past my wife and I had a garden at our last house. We had a pretty nice garden with all types of vegetables. Tomatoes, Okra, Squash, Greens… all that stuff.

We had several rain barrels set up to collect the water that came off the roof and what we noticed was that the vegetables seem to actually like the rain water better than the tap water. Perhaps its the chlorine or minerals, I’m not sure but I felt that it made a difference.

So a lot of times this is what rain collection is used for to store up when it rains then water the garden. You would be amazed at the amount of water you can get from your roof. We had 3 50 gallon barrels on 1/2 the house and another 150 gallon collection tank in the back. So we had a total of 300 gallons capacity and with one normal Georgia rain they were all full and spilling over. It really is amazing. And that was on a 1200 sf worths of roof or surface area.

So each time we watered the garden we would save a lot of water that would have otherwise been added to our water bill and sewer bill. Because our water and sewer are combined water that we would have sprayed over our plants would also be charged to the sewer because we did not have any separate irrigation meter or anything.

So lets just say we used 300 gallons in one month. We probably used more but I just want to run some numbers here to see what that would have cost. I never actually paid attention. Pun intended.

So I got my water bill out and I pay 3.08 per thousand gallons. Just to make the math easier 300 gallons is about 1/3 of a thousand so we were saving 1 dollar per month on water usage. 12 Dollars a year. Then lets add on the sewer fee because if we would have been using the city water it would have impacted our sewer and that is 11.34 per thousand so 1/3 of that is 3.78 per month. 45 Dollars per year. So water and sewer for 300 gallons per month would cost a total of 57 dollars per year.

Not really breaking the bank. But like I said, I think the plants like it better. And the rain barrels we got were free so the expense to put them in was very minimal. So if you want to know a secret. How do you get rain barrels for free. You go to a carwash. They get soap delivered in these large 50 gallon barrels and they have so many they don’t know what to do with them. Go talk to them and ask when they typically replace them and see if you can pick them up when they are empty.

Now get the ones with the non-toxic soaps. Most of the car washes are using non-toxic soaps and you can just clean them out with water and you are good to go. If you want the more sophisticated ones you can buy those from the hardware store for about 100 dollars each. Pretty much the same thing. You just have to add the faucet to the barrel cap. You can buy those on amazon. I will put a link in the show notes.

King Brothers Inc. SFT-0750-T 3/4-Inch Threaded PVC Sink Faucet with Hose End, Bronze

So earlier I mentioned that we had about 1200 sf of roof that was collecting water so I want to look that up an see how the numbers looked with the average rainfall in Georgia.

So in Georgia – Atlanta the 30 year average is 49 inches per year.

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ffc/?n=rainfall_scorecard

So this is the math you need to do. Take your square feet. The length x the width. Like I said we had 1200 sf. Our house was 30×40. Take the average rainfall of 49” x 0.6 gallons and that is 29.4 gallons per square foot. 1200 sf x 29.4 gallons is 35,280 gallons.

That is a massive amount of water. If I take my current water usage and I am just going to be totally honest. We use about an average of 8,000 gallons per month in our current house. Over 12 months that is 96,000 gallons a year. If I take my numbers that it cost me from earlier the 3 for water and 11 for sewer that is 1,376 dollars per year.

If we were able to use the 35000 gallons to cut the total amount we use down that would cut our bill by 500 dollars each year. Over 30 years lets just say it is 15,000 dollars and that would be if rates stayed the same which we know they never do.

But all this is not really possible right. At least not where we currently are with all our building codes and laws. We can’t use rain water to shower. We can’t use rain water to wash our clothes or wash the dishes or drink it.

It’s dirty. It’s just too dirty. But if we could clean it would we be able to use it then. Could we use it if we could clean it. Would the state allow us to.

So I want to throw this out there. I just found out about a new system that is pretty cool. Something that I have not seen before. It actually takes it to the next level and I want to set this up for you yet to see how much of an impact this could make on our homes in the future.

Up until now we have been talking about collecting rain water. What we use it for is generally exterior, but I mentioned that if we were able to clean it we might be able to start using it for our indoor consumption and use.

All the math I’ve been doing all the water per year collected is equaling about 1/3 of my actual very liberal usage of water. I have to admit. So what about the rest how do we make up the rest of the water. How do we get the remaining 2/3 of our usage. What if we just used it over again. and again. and again.

There is a system that just came out. It is an at home residential system that actually treats and cleans the water that is used in your shower, your washing machine and possibly some sinks. You have to do some creative plumbing to get all this to work but the idea is that you turn on your washing machine. water is delivered to the unit and as it washes the water then gets drained from the machine.

Typically it would go to the sewer and away. Instead it goes directly to a holding tank that then is pumped into this filter and uv treating unit. the treated water is then pumped to another holding tank and is used again to flush toilets (then it is gone) It does not get recycled from the toilet. Currently that is all the government will allow you to use it for is to flush the toilets, but this is just the beginning.

Our cities are so strapped for water that they are going to have to start allowing innovations like this. If you were to use recycle your water lets just say pie in the sky. If with water collection and using the grey water or recycled water you were able to eliminate your water and sewer bill you could potentially save 1,376 per year over 30 years is 41,000 dollars.

Now to be realistic this is a long way off, but it is really interesting to think about. I would like to know if you would use a system like this. Let me know by leaving some comments on the website. Whitewashstudio.com episode 37.

I hope that you are having great success with the planning and construction of your home. If you want to get in touch with me please reach out to me on twitter or google plus.

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Show Notes:

DESIGNING FOR CHILDREN

Today we’re going to discuss designing for children. Not immature clients, but actual children.

First I just wanted to say congratulations to a friend of mine who recently had twins. So awesome.

This is what really sparked this idea in my head about designing for children. What are the needs of children versus adults? What are the aesthetics that appeal to children over adults?

kids adapt very quickly. They understand they’re small and they find ways to get around it. Quickly climbing anything they can to get elevated. They also grow so fast that designing everything to a smaller size really makes it difficult for them in the future. It might work perfectly for one particular stage of their life, but they will outgrow it as fast as their shoes.

And this mostly relates to bathrooms. When people with kids decide to build they often freeze the project in time at the age their kids currently are. They even go to the extreme of putting in small toilets and lower sink vanities.

This might be really nice for that young age but how does that adapt to your child later? How can they grow into that? If you plan on using low vanities and small toilets be ready to change them all out at some point. And that is ok if that’s what you want to do.

A lot of couples tend to really ramp up their ideas of renovating or building before they have a child. Most often they are expecting when they realize they’re going to need more space or some other arrangement to make things more efficient or more comfortable.

One thing that is often overlooked is the time that it takes to do certain projects. Be sure to allow enough time when you’re planning that you can make it through the construction before you deliver if possible. Moving and dealing with a construction project on top of having a new born can be stressful.

You might make some decisions that you are not entirely happy about, simply because of your lack of time to provide attention to the project. Obviously the baby is the more important of the two, so one has to give and it will be the attention to the project.

So lets just look at the room. Kids really need three things outside of the eating and sanitation. they need a space that can accommodate

Sleep,

These can be handled a variety of ways. Lets talk about study first. There are really two theories. The first is to provide a desk in the room. In the bedroom, so that the child can have privacy and quiet while studying. The second is to not have a desk in their room. Have them study in another room of the house like the dining room or kitchen some where with a table or surface to write.

And that second thought is ok if you take the time that they are studying very seriously and are able to get everyone in the house to appreciate that time as quiet time. Turn all the tv’s and audio off. The advantages to this is they will be able to discuss certain questions they have with you. They will be able to work through problems in a room with you as opposed to being alone in their room possibly getting frustrated with a particular challenging new idea.

But on the other hand there are times when you just need to have absolute quiet. This would be one of those times that you need to have a private space for them to set up and really get down to work. A space that is only used for work.

I have heard before that when you combine areas of a room you tend to fall into that behavior when you use that area of the room. For example if you lay in bed to study or read you will start to fall asleep because your bed is for sleeping. If you always play some video game on the couch you will be thinking about that video game when you are sitting on the couch.

I don’t play video games but it does seem logical that if there is an activity that you enjoy doing perhaps more than reading a math textbook you will be more associated with that activity when you are in or at a place where that activity happens.

When I was growing up, I didn’t have a desk in my room. I think I did have some kind of desk in another room at some point but it was moved or something happened to it. So a lot of my studying after school was kind of done in a weird way. I would come home from school and this is mainly the middle to high school years. I can’t really remember the elementary years. I think I just played outside after school. But during those middle and high school years after watching an episode of the Brady bunch, I would set out my books on the bed and do all my homework on my knees.

It was a good thing we had some soft carpet in my room but i would also usually put a pillow under them. So not sure why this was my setup but it was. It worked ok. Not the most comfortable of setups but it was ok. I was also able to take my books to the breakfast table if I wanted to. But with an older brother and younger sister it was hard to concentrate in the more public spaces.

So think about how you would envision your child using their bedroom or other spaces of the house for study.

The next activity that needs to be planned for is sleep. Maybe the most important of the three. Sleep is awesome and I need much more of it. So when I was young I was lucky enough to have my own room. I had a double bed that was pretty old. It was a large brass bed with a head board and foot board. I can’t remember which grandmother this was passed down from but it was pretty old.

Every part of it would move. Like it was barely put together and would just fall apart at any moment. but on the other hand it was extremely heavy and solid. I think all the parts were just loose but the structure was solid. So kind of a contrast there but this thing was tall. And I mean tall. for a small child it was a mountain of a bed.

I still have this bed, its in storage but even now the bed is super tall. The top of the mattress is at around 42 inches probably, maybe 48. I remember having to grab the sheets like a horses mane when pulling myself up and into it. I think I had a stool as well. It was a small wooden stool and the top was a design my mother had done in needlepoint. Hi mom. I know you listen. Hi.

I can remember under the stool near one of the edges there was a staple or something poking up and if you stepped on the stool just right it would poke your foot. I stepped on the right spot every time. ha.

Another thing i learned is that the higher you are the harder you fall. I fell out of that bed at least 2 times that i can remember and it was a long way down. I can actually remember the dream. I was somewhere high and tripped I started to fall. and fall. and fall. and bam. I woke up hitting the floor. if you have ever fallen out of bed or can remember that usually you just roll out and bam. this seemed to carry on forever. free falling.

What made me think of all that is when you see kids rooms the first thing the parents often do is build or buy bunk beds. And of course bunk beds have rails on them or at least you hope they do because that would be a fall even greater than my brass bed.

Let’s look at this. The stages that kids go through. You start with the crib. There are several models with this bed. You have the low solid model that does not have moving parts. you have the tall models with the drop down panel. then you have the ones that convert and the first and the convert model might be the same.

With our daughter we went with the tall crib that had the drop down side or front panel. It was a nice crib well made and pretty solid. I can’t remember the manufacturer of it but it was well made. With the sides fully up it was a little lower than chest level for me so I could easily put river in and take her our without dropping the sides. My wife had to drop the side in order to comfortable put her in.

The panel was kind of difficult to drop you had to lift it a little push your leg into it to get it to unlock at the base and slide off the track then lower it while pushing with your leg. And I remember that when you did all this the whole crib would move around some because it had wheels on the legs and was on hardwood floors. We did put some of those rubber cups under the wheels and that helped keep it in place.

Eventually River got bold and climbed out one day. So we went to a mattress on the floor for her. She slept on a low mattress as her bed for a long time. I’m not going to tell you what she sleeps on now.

Other people I know got the low cribs with the fixed sides and they said positive things about them. I always thought they were too low but they said it was fine and not an issue at all.

Like I said earlier, a friend of mine had twins recently and talk about a surprise. So How do you plan for surprises? How do you adjust the space for two. You don’t necessarily need each and every item for each baby. There is a lot of sharing and there will be for a long time to come.

The biggest thing you will need to get for each would be a bed. It would be difficult to share a bed. Maybe not for the first couple of months but eventually they will need their own bed.

As they get older they will most likely share a room as well. There are a lot of ways to share a room and typically the most common way is with bunk beds. They are fine I have never really been a huge fan of bunk beds. I would much prefer to have two twin beds cleverly arranged if possible.

One of the new things to do is to actually build the bunks in. build them into the wall. Make them more permanent fixtures rather than a piece of furniture. There are some really cool looking ways this has been done, so that is an option as well.

The key to making any kids space work effectively is to make sure there is some system of organization. Children whether you know it or not actually want a system of order. They want things to be tidy.

Give them a place to put their dirty clothes and they will put them there if it becomes habit. Give them a place to create, color whatever and they will create there. You will have to guide them of course, but if you instill the behavior early on they will keep their room clean and organized.

When I was growing up part of my routine was to make my bed each morning. That was something I was expected to do as well as put clothes in the laundry room. More or less I did it. My room stayed pretty clean 90% of the time. That translated to who I am today and I try to keep things orderly and clean as an adult as well.

So this is always a big debate. Do you decorate the room with a bunch of childish things or do you keep it rather simple. If you go on Pinterest and search for nursery or children’s rooms you will find a plethora of projects or crafts you can do to decorate the room for your child. Everything from stencils on the wall to hanging butterflies from the ceiling.

If that is fun for you and you will enjoy doing those projects then by all means do them. They make the room look really cool. some of the more permanent things you can do is to pick a carpet that is fun or exciting. A paint for the walls that is unique or different. The furniture. There are so many options out there for children’s furniture. You will not have a hard time finding furniture.

One thing that I would suggest not getting are the beds that are like cars and trucks. I don’t see those as growing with your children and are a more temporary purchase or a waste in my opinion. Of course that is my opinion.

More important than all the decorations is the lighting. Give your children light. Enough light so they can create, read, study, and play without having to strain their eyes. Most children have pretty good if not great eye sight as children. Over time our eyes get tired. Mine are tired right now. ha.

There will be plenty of opportunities for them to strain their eyes later in life so give them the proper light now so they don’t have to. Most everyone will recommend going with some form of task lighting.

This leads me to another topic. Do the kids have technology in their bedroom? Do they have TV’s, computers, any of that stuff?

Everyones lives are different and everyone has their own opinion on this topic. I want you guys to weigh in on this. So go to whitewashstudio.com and leave a comment under this show. episode 36. Let me know what you think. Should children have technology in their bedrooms?

Well that is going to do it for this show. If you enjoy what I am doing here, I would love for you to go to iTunes and leave me a review for the show. Go to whitewash studio and click podcast. At the top is a link to take you to iTunes so you can leave that honest review. It would really help the show.

Thanks for listening and I will talk to you next week.

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I hope that you are having great success with the planning and construction of your home. If you want to get in touch with me please reach out to me on twitter or google plus.

Tip the show with Bitcoin

Show Notes:

HOW DO THESE IMAGES I’M COLLECTING TRANSLATE INTO ARCHITECTURE

In case you missed last week. Here is the sign up for the Tiny House drawings.

When did you first decide to build or renovate your house? When did the idea hit you?

You most likely did not begin your thoughts of building a new house or renovating entirely on your own. It is more likely that you saw an image of something either in real life, a television show or in printed or digital media and thought hmm.

You saw something that sparked you wanting to venture down the similar path towards creating something for yourself. You might not have even seen exactly what you wanted but rather an image that sparked some creativity within you. Something that told you that you wanted something more or something different.

Images, either seen with our own eyes by exploring the built world around us or seen through print or digital means they both have an effect on us. All the images that we see and collect overtime shape us into what we are and how we see the world.

Our current age is flooded with images. We must see hundreds of thousands of images a day. They come and go. We see them then on to the next image. We might scroll through feeds on Instagram or visit websites searching for those images. Each and every image we see, no matter how quickly, you have to imagine that it gets cataloged somehow in your brain. Stored away waiting to be recalled when that moment sparks.

You have probably heard the saying, “There’s nothing new in the world.”

I believe this statement to be very true. And I don’t see it in a depressing or limiting way at all. Actually for me, it is rather relieving. It lets me know that I can build upon others ideas and make them either better or entirely worse.

Isaac Newton said, “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.” Meaning that all his ideas all his discovery and greatness was not created entirely alone. His work was possible because of the people who came before him. The work and discovery done before him.

“There is nothing new in the world.” It is an interesting concept because we might think of that one thing that seemed so revolutionary to be new. In actuality it was not new at all, but it was revolutionary. Revolutionary is often understood as being new.

The iPhone is revolutionary. The personal computer is revolutionary. The automobile is revolutionary. All these are revolutionary ideas, but none of them are entirely new. They were not just conjured up from thin air.

If you were to put bill gates, Steve jobs, and henry ford in separate rooms from birth until they reached old age, they would not have developed the revolutionary ideas that they did. Ideas are not born from sheer thought, they are built by expanding on the ideas of others. Pushing the boundaries of previous ideas.

So where do others lead you? How do you revolutionize your space? and maybe that’s not the goal for your space. Maybe you don’t want to create a revolutionary space. that is fine. you don’t have to. Nobody is forcing you to change the world.

but you are going to have to gather inspiration from some source. You need to be able to communicate to your architect what your inspiration has been thus far. Where have you come from and where do you want to go with your design. Understanding the past in your life is almost just as important as understanding where you want to go in the future.

You might be saying, “Marc, what do you mean by that?”

What I mean is that if you can convey where you came from. The home that you grew up in. The home that you might have transitioned to, the space that you evolved in. What shaped your current style. What shaped your current interests? What is your passion? How did you arrive at your passion and how does it translate into your current needs for your space?

The goal of renovating or creating architecture for you is not just the simple task of saying that you want to add a master bedroom, and we tack one on. If that is what you want you don’t need an Architect for that. Although you might find an architect to do that for you, but you are not going to be interested in the fee. And the reason is that you are not seeing the value for that fee. Ok I can’t get off on that today. Remind me to touch base on where I was going with that one. I might try and do an episode on it.

The goal of creating your space is to create a space that works for you not only functionally, but also provides value to your life. Something that understands your past and pushes you towards the future. Wow this episode is getting pretty etherial and deep, but I believe that good architecture can drive you. It can guide you or direct you towards or if bad away from achieving your goals in life.

So I mentioned that the purpose of collecting images is not to create a literal translation of the image. Let me repeat that. The goal with collecting images is not to literally copy what has previously been done, but rather to get or gain inspiration for your space and what direction you want to take it.

Find multiple sources for inspiration. Perhaps the modern magazines are not exactly what you are looking for. Are they trying to meet a style that is not entirely you. Do you not really connect with any of it.

Perhaps you look back further to images from the past. what is it that you like from historical images compared to the images spanning the pages of today’s magazines?

Maybe you look outside of the current media. Look around you to your current built environment. Maybe it’s not even to actual architecture.

There was a husband and wife that were wanting to build a new house. They search and search for the ideal architect. After thorough research they find a highly decorated Architect that has multiple honors and awards, many prestigious projects. They say to each other, “this is the person, this is the architect that will be able to design our house and meet all of our goals.”

So they grab their bags and meet with the architect. As they are walking to his office they see award after award on the wall. He briefly mentions some of them along the way pointing out some of his past work. They sit down and the architect starts to ask them questions about what their goals for the house are.

The wife pauses and looks at her husband. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a kitchen faucet. She places it on the architects desk and says, “Design us a house around this.”

Do you guys remember this Kohler faucet commercial? If you don’t that was a commercial that was running for some time and in the commercial the architect kind of gives a look of “what” or “shock”. How could they would ask such a thing. And I does appear that way at first.

But in reality it was actually pretty brilliant commercial because it is entirely possible. Of course the architect is going to need more goal information from the husband and wife, but as far as the design or the aesthetics of the home. The durability the construction the details, it could be entirely design around that Kohler faucet.

If that’s the owners goal it is entirely possible to study the years of evolution and inspiration that went into designing that faucet. It could be very much translated to the architecture for that couple. The function. The style. All those could provide guidance and inspiration. And the reason the couple took the faucet to this award winning architect was not to embarrass or make him feel like his ideas are not important but rather because they knew he would know how to translate the faucet into architecture.

I didn’t come to this realization the first time I watched it but probably the third time. I thought yes, you could design a house around that faucet. You definitely could.

I will put a link to this faucet in this commercial so you can see it in the show notes. It is a good looking faucet and could definitely be designed around.

KOHLER K-19774-4-CP Symbol Tall Single Control Lavatory Faucet, Polished Chrome

So you have your faucet or your inspiration, how do you keep it all organized? How are you planning on communicating to your architect what your likes and dislikes are?

We are in the digital age. Of course you know that. You are listening to a podcast. Almost all our images these days never make it to the printed world. We keep our images on the screen. You can do this how ever you like. Digitally or analog. I suggest digital but of course I am bias.

My suggestion would be to start 2 folders. Call one your Love folder. The other will be your Loath folder.

When you start to come across images begin creating copies of those images in one of your two folders. During this process it is very important for you to really think about what it is you like about the spaces, furniture, details, etc…

This will be the time when you will really need to narrow down those ideas. Edit and edit again. Don’t collect the images you kinda like. Hold on to those love images. That is why the two folders are called love and loathe. They are the images that drive your emotions. Images that motivate and encourage you to push through the challenges that a construction project might bring.

Once you have collected your inspirational images, sit down and take some notes about the images. what is it that you love about them. What are the colors the textures, materials that you relate to. How do you see them being used in your space?

By this point you have put in a lot of time and thought into what you like and what you don’t. You should be more prepared to have discussions with your architect and relate your ideas to them. Remember, don’t get locked into creating a reproduction of the images you have collected. These are inspirational. Images that can guide you down the path to creating your own unique home.

“What story are you trying to tell? Start by piecing it together with images.”

If you missed last week, I talked about the Tiny house. There was a give away where if you sign up to the newsletter from the episode 34 page you would be sent an email with construction drawings of that tiny house. That is still going on and will be there forever hopefully. But go to whitewashstudio.com and search for tiny house. or episode 34 and you will find the page so you can download the pdf.

Thanks for listening and I will talk to you next week.

I hope that you are having great success with the planning and construction of your home. If you want to get in touch with me please reach out to me on twitter or google plus.

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Show Notes:

THE TINY HOUSE

We are going tiny with this one…

I’m your host Marc. I’m your architect with the goal of giving you the knowledge so you can advance your dream of creating the ideal home for you and your family.

What if I told you your house was too big? You would say I’m crazy right. Today I wanted to talk about somewhat of a passion project for me, it’s the Tiny house. I briefly mentioned these in a past episode probably episode one.

These are houses that I have been curious about for some time. Simple, unique, highly efficient housing on a small footprint. The average tiny house, to be considered a tiny house is under 400 sf.

400 sf that is 10’x 30’ with a 100 sf loft above. Can you imagine living in such a small space? Well it’s taking off and becoming very popular. Not just in other countries but here in the states.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that living in a larger house is bad or wrong. I’m not saying that you personally have too much square feet. So don’t take offense to this episode on the Tiny house. I want to take you through the thought of someone that is living this simple lifestyle.

Maybe this is not your main home. Maybe this is your vacation spot. A vacation home that allows you to get away from the hustle and bustle of wherever you are right now. There might be some way that this fits into your lifestyle, so keep that in mind.

Why would someone do it?

Our world has become one of increasing stuff. We have products pushed in our direction at every turn and all our extra money or even lots of times our debt is collected on purchasing all this extra stuff.

Some people just don’t want it. They want to be able to live a life that is mortgage or debt free. This is where the tiny house comes into play. A tiny house can be built relatively quickly and can be built by the average person. Meaning that you don’t have to be an experienced carpenter of 20 years to piece together something small.

With home prices rising now at a very rapid rate. You know we saw the prices drop for a while during the recession, but if you were looking around during that time, the prices were still relatively high. Especially compared to a tiny home.

The tiny house doesn’t have a mortgage. Actually imagine a bank giving you a loan to build a 400 sf home. Never going to happen right. This is something you are going to have to save for. It will have to be purchased outright with cash. No payments.

Imagine the life you would live if you didn’t have a mortgage payment or rent. Would you be able to explore your interest more?

Now don’t get me wrong. These houses are not cheap by any means. Per square foot they far exceed the typical house, but because of their size you can splurge a little on the details.

The tiny house really boils down life to the basics. Sleep, eating, working, relaxing, and sanitation.

These are the activities that we need to accommodate with any house no matter how large or small. The key to designing small is to design efficiently. A lot of these area’s get combined in a tiny house. Things become more versatile and universal. A table might flip up off the wall to create a small dining area. A chair might be used to lounge in the living area then serve as the dining chair later.

The well designed tiny houses I have seen all have very interesting materials being used. The styles range from the quaint artsy cottage look to the sleek modern walls of glass and steel. The range is all over the board.

The consistent theme is to have a double or one and a half height living room combined with a kitchen/dining area. Then you pass under the loft bedroom to the bathroom. The emphasis on the bathroom is always the most disappointing to me. People create these tiny bathrooms that you can barely move in.

In order for a bathroom to be useful it needs to give you some amount of room to shower etc… Imagine living with someone else in this tiny space. Very difficult. Why can’t we bump up the bathroom to more full size and go from there?

Above the bathroom and kitchen is typically the loft area. A steep ladder would take you up and down each day to the shallow sleeping quarters. I think I have a problem with this loft idea as well. Why do we need to always build a loft. Imagine getting changed up there, or coming down that ladder in the middle of the night. I think there might be a better way.

Another thing I find difficult with the tiny house is the storage. I feel like I would need a lot of storage. Where do people keep all their food. I don’t want to replace going to the store once a week, or once every other week to going every day. That is not how I want to spend my time.

What makes this different than a mobile home?

You might be thinking. Hmm. Tiny house. 400 sf. Contains all the necessary spaces in life. Sounds like a mobile home. Why not just buy a mobile home?

These are not quite the same thing actually they are nothing like a trailer, although a lot of them do get built on trailers. If I was building one of these tiny homes, I can tell you it would not be built on a trailer.

The reason a lot of them are build on trailers is typically for building code reasons, or perhaps the person does not have their ideal piece of land yet and plans on acquiring land once they save up, then move their home to that land. Many properties across the US are zoned to have a particular size house on the property. We have been legislated into building larger houses.

And I understand why. We want our neighborhoods to have some consistency. They say its to protect the surrounding home owners and keep all the values consistent. The only reason the values need to stay consistent or increase is because of mortgages. If you did not have a mortgage on the property you would not need it to increase in value, or inflate in value, but that would be a side rant.

One way the tiny house owners have found to avoid this is to have a house that doesn’t have the typical foundation. Remove the foundation and the house is no longer a house. It is a temporary trailer. Now there are rules for this as well, but far less and someone is more likely able to skirt some of the legislation.

You will need to carefully pick your location.

Location is one of the key reasons people are building tiny homes to begin with. They are able to invest in the land that is right for them and bring a house that is less expensive to that property. A large percentage of tiny house people have very beautiful settings.

The porches and window usually spill out to beautiful landscapes. Part of it might be that living in a tiny house has you screaming to get out of it. You need the outside to break up the smaller interior spaces. Imagine those rainy days. Cooped up inside the small den with nothing to do but immerse yourself into a good book.

Now obviously this lifestyle is not for everyone. I mean I have hobbies. What would I do with all my hobbies? That is the question. And the answer might be do I really need all these hobbies? What am I doing them for, what is the reason for my hobbies? Could we have more financial freedom If we saved more and lived in a less expensive house, explored life, pursued less hobbies.

I do really enjoy listening to podcasts and reading a good book. I also enjoy making things and exploring my passion to create. I don’t know. It’s a trade off. Something to consider. Something that I would like to explore some day.

With everything comes some challenges and you would think that the largest challege of a tiny house would be the actual size. Unfortunately it is something that is even harder to overcome.

Moisture.

People are made up of 50 to 60 percent water. As we breath in and out we are exhaling a little moisture with each breath. As we cook, Shower etc. All of these add moisture to our homes. Typically in a more traditional modern home we have air conditioning units that are conditioning the air and removing the humidity in the air.

In order for the house to maintain a certain temperature level the system will run for a period of time. And over that course of time the unit is able to draw out the moisture.

In a tiny house you either do not have a unit to remove that moisture or you have a unit that simply because of the tiny house size it does not run for long enough to remove the moisture. So you end up with the interior of your home sweating on the walls and ceilings.

They will sweat when air of one temperature colides with air of another temperature. Lets say you are inside your home. It’s all warm and cozy. Outside it’s cold. So you are in a reverse glass. So the outside is the drink with the ice floating around. You are the dry, warm outside air surrounding the glass. As your warm air which holds more moisture than cold air. once your warm air with 80–90% humidity hits that cold wall the temperature starts to drop, the moisture is released from the air and it starts to form on your walls.

The worst part is it is actually forming in your walls. Literally raining in your walls, simply by changing temperature. So how do you keep this from happening. The best way to stop this from happening is to limit the drop in temperature as well as stopping the vapor before it transfers into the wall. If you keep the warm air from reaching the cool air it will maintain its humidity level and you can remove the humidity through other means such as a dehumidifyer or maybe hvac unit with a variable speed fan. Something that could run at a lower more consistant rate to increase the amount of moisture removed from the air.

To stop the flow of air into and through the walls we use a vapor barrier. This barrier is used on the exterior in cooling dominated environments and on interior in heating dominated environments. It is just inside the gypsum board. If you put it on both sides you will create the problem of trapping moisture in the wall cavity. You don’t want that either.

As you tack this barrier up and attach your gypsum board or interior finish, each time you nail through your wall you are creating a hole for that moisture to enter. There is another way and that is with closed cell foam insulation. This might be the best way to add the needed insulation while at the same time stopping any vapor from transfering through the wall.

This method when used on your roof. The underside of the roof deck. It allows you to construct a roof that can be unvented. Now keep in mind that you are still breathing, cooking and showering. You will need to get the moisture out. If you don’t the most likely place you will see it show is on the glass of all your windows. This will quickly turn to mold all around your windows, so keep an eye out for that. A dehumidifyer would be your best bet in combination with the closed cell foam insulation.

I just wanted to throw this out there. Do not ever drink the water that comes out of a dehumidifyer. You could get very sick because of the bacteria that forms in the machine itself. They have been known to form what is called lysteria on the coils that the air passes over. You can use it to water plants and stuff but don’t cook with it or drink it. You might be tempted in your tiny house because everything is so efficient.

You might say, “Wow, I’m even recycling my own water. This is awesome.” But please don’t drink it.

Imagine the limited amount of cleaning you would have to do. Ha. One bathroom. One living room/bedroom/kitchen combo. You could probably just have a swiffer sweeper. Not even a real vacuum.

That might be nice. You would be forced to limit the items you purchase. If you don’t have room for something how can you get it? Where would you keep it? You would have to get rid of something else to allow this new thing into your life.

The Simple life. And I don’t mean that if you live in a tiny house your life is simple or easy. I just mean that you are living on limited or with limited means, or below your means rather. Not living above your means. Might be nice to explore.

So I wanted to do something a little different with this episode. If this tiny house idea interest you and you would like to see more, head over to whitewashstudio.com. I have put together a design of a tiny home for you.

Sign up for the newsletter to get notified of all the new episodes and any other information from me and you will be sent the drawings of this tiny house design in pdf format. It is a complete set of drawings, so you can go out and build your own house on your land if you so desire.

If you do build the home, I would love it if you would send me a photo. That would be awesome to see!

I plan to eventually build one of these structures as a vacation home for our family.

“Moisture is the number one challenge to a tiny house. Solve the moisture challenge and the rest will be simple.”

I hope that you are having great success with the planning and construction of your home. If you want to get in touch with me please reach out to me on twitter or google plus.

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Show Notes:

THE TO DO LIST

Our brains should be used to solve problems, not trying to remember each item we need to take care of or address in some way.

When you’re trying not to forget something it can consume you. It can take a lot of energy and brain power away from the important things. You have to reserve a certain level of thought to preserving that idea. If you wrote it down your brain could be free of having to remember that task and can focus on other things.

This is why a list is extremely important during your construction process.

So what are the different methods and ways of keeping a list? The first way would be to just write it down. By hand. Maybe you have a small booklet that you carry with you so you can mark down information or ideas.

There are little notebooks made by moleskin that are very useful for sketching and taking down ideas. They make various different versions of the inside so you can get one with lines or no lines, even graph paper if you wanted to go that route. But really you just need something simple. Something small that can be taken with you and used at the spur of the moment to capture that idea.

Be sure whatever you use you keep it by the bed at night as well. Make sure you have access to get your ideas out at night. If you don’t you might spend many a night tossing and turning trying to ensure you don’t forget that one thing.

If you want to go a more digital route you could use something such as the google calendar or your phone calendar. I have found that a to do list is great, but if you don’t schedule when you are going to do the things on that list they often times just get pushed aside.

You need to not only list the items out but you need to schedule them as well. It is very important to do that.

So how do you stay motivated to get everything that you need to get done? I haven’t seen too many people have an issue with this during construction. Everyone is generally excited and eager to get things done. Although there will come a time that your list might become over whelming.

Items and tasks that you just don’t feel like doing. This is where it becomes hard. You have a busy schedule already, even without a major construction project. Add to it the stress of a renovation or building and its even more. The key is to first have your list. The second is to take each item one at a time. Have them preplanned out so when you do have time to tackle the list you can get right into the doing and not the planning to do. You don’t want to give yourself the opportunity to talk yourself out of doing that one particular item you know needs to be done.

Productivity is a strange thing. There are tasks that make us think that we are being productive but they don’t really get us anywhere. They are just circle tasks. These tasks run us around and around.

For an example:

If you spend more time organizing your list than actually doing the items on the list that will get you no where. You do want to have an organized list but be careful not to spend all your time shuffling tasks around and not getting any of them done.

The goal is to scratch them off. Don’t wait until the last minute to take care of something. If your contractor has told you that he needs a particular decision by x date, don’t wait until the night before to dedicate some attention to it. You will be able to understand and explore the different options if you have time to work through it and are not rushed to make a decision. Dedicate some time sooner than later.

Another important thing you will need to do during construction is to dedicate a particular time to working on that project. Dedicate a specific time each day or each week where you can just focus on the project. Do it regularly.

Lists are in a constant state of change. They grow and hopefully shrink, how do we stay organized? Like I mentioned earlier, I really like to work off of my calendar. I schedule in the tasks so that I am less likely to push them off until later.

Let’s say you have a list and your overwhelmed. You’re trying to figure out what to do first. That can be daunting task in itself, but at least you have them written down. You know what needs to be done so if you schedule them out you can just step in and start doing them right away. There is no deciding what to do. It’s already on the calendar planned out for you.

There might be several categories to your list. Things that you need to do and things that you need others to do. You need to keep track of both and once you have directed others to do that thing. You need to set a date or some indication next to it that you directed that person to do that thing on this date. Don’t give people open ended dates. If you direct something or ask for something, attach a date to that so you can follow up, but most importantly, you are giving that person a deadline. Everybody needs a deadline to assign priority to a task.

Once you have assigned it to someone, don’t scratch it off just yet. It’s not done yet. You can only remove that item from the list when it is completed. Just because you gave the task to someone else does not always mean that it will get done.

Unfortunately, that person might not have a list and they are trying to remember everything. It might just slip through the cracks. If you have your list you will be reminded of that item and you can bring it up again if you see that it is not getting taken care of close to that deadline date you gave.

This is where I believe the digital stuff has an advantage over the hand written. It is much easier to edit, revise, reorder, change, and track. So something changes or you need to follow up or add more detail to the list. All of that is very simple when you are using an organizational system that is digital.

I’m big on the digital stuff, so I would recommend that you find a system that works for you within the digital world. Some of you might prefer to write it down in a little book. That is fine as well, but be sure that you update the list. Keep it up to date. That is your journal for the project. It has to be current.

I like to use the program called Asana. It is a project management program that allows you to have multiple people working together on one schedule. You can assign tasks to people, they can comment and revise or update the task. It really keeps everything in one place. Really the goal is to remove it from the email. Get out of the email. Things get lost in the email.

People are getting more and more swamped in their inbox. We tend to scan through them and delete. Once we have read it you could flag it or something but typically it gets unhighlighted and just moves on down the chain. Eventually off the screen and buried.

With a group management program like Asana you don’t have that issue. It is a web based program so you can log into the website from anywhere. They also have an app for the iPhone that allows you to see your tasks list on your phone.

I also use it to schedule all the little things I have to do with this show. I put in notes about the newsletter that goes out each week. The social media sharing. The Show notes. The video’s that I am now doing each week on youtube. What topics I might cover next week. I have up coming shows scheduled out several weeks and this helps me manage all of that.

What is going to be on my list during a construction project?

You might be asking, I have a project coming up. What should I expect to be on my list? If you have a project where you’re hiring a professional to work with you and design a space for you, then you will have two sections to your list. These are the things that you’re responsible for.

The first section are Goals and the second is Content.

What are your goals for the project? What do you hope to accomplish?

These are big picture items. Goals are not I would like to have the refrigerator on this wall. Goals are more like I would like to have a kitchen that functions much better than the one I have now. I would like to enjoy being in the kitchen and having a system down, so I am not distracted by trying to find my pots or pans, I can just cook.

The second section is Content.

The content is the stuff we are designing around. Let’s say you have a particular need or desire to have a vegetable sink in your kitchen. You have your main sink the sink that gets used to wash dishes etc.. but you also want to have a vegetable sink. Something dedicated to washing and preparing of your food. That would be content. Content that needs to be designed into the kitchen. It is a fixed known item that you would like to have.

Now it is the job of your Architect to find out why you want that extra sink. Will it be useful or function the way your planning on using your kitchen. Lets say you cook for a lot of people would you need that sink to be little larger than your typical vegetable sink. Will you use it for any other purposes. Do you want to have a disposal in it or will it just be for washing? Could it also serve to be a sink closer to the cook top so you could use it to fill heavy pots or do you want to have a pot filler for that? These are all questions and design ideas that go into helping you to design around your content.

A lot of times people might not know what their content is. What should it be? You might not go into a project knowing what all the content is going to be or even what some of it will be. And that is ok. You might also change some of that content in the early stages of programming. This is the stage of design when you are working very closely with your architect to figure all of this out.

Diving into those questions that will help to develop your content. Maybe you were not sure if you wanted a veggie sink or not, but after getting into the programming of your space you realize that you really do need one or you could live without.

These are all the things that will be discovered during the early programming and schematic design phases of your project.

Your list might be really large during these early stages and ideally as the project moves forward it will diminish, but then it will increase again during the Construction phase.

So let’s look at the construction phase.

There are several ways to handle the actual acquiring of appliances, lighting, fixtures etc… You can have the contractor purchase all the items then they would mark up based on your cost plus contract, because they are spending the time to coordinate, order and temporarily finance the purchase of those items. This is the least likely way to handle it because of the markups.

The other way is for you, the owner, to purchase the items. In this instance you will purchase and save on the markup, but now the coordination, scheduling and everything related to that item is in your hands. You will need to provide the contractor with what is called a cut sheet. It is a sheet that has installation instructions, anything that might be unique to that product that the contractor would need to consider during construction.

You will need to ensure that it arrives on the job site at the appropriate moment. Sometimes items have long lead times and if they are not ordered at the right moment you could miss an opportunity.

Interior designers are really good with this. Ordering, warehousing and then installing. There are entire companies that just warehouse products for construction projects. You have everything shipped to this one warehouse and it gets collected. Then that warehouse would have a delivery and typically install service that would install each item and assemble anything that needs to be assembled.

So that is one thing you will need to consider for your project. Will you be coordinating the ordering of fixtures or will the contractor.

There is also the shopping. Before you know what you can order you have to know want you want to order. Let’s say you are remodeling your kitchen. It is not uncommon for an architect to simply design the location of the sink. They do not actually pick out a sink and put it in the drawings.

The reason for this is it would take a tremendous amount of time to select, present and get approval for each item that goes into a kitchen. Instead what is typically done is the home owner is given a shopping list. Items that they are responsible for, stores locally that can supply them, and when they need to be on the site.

I actually am not a super huge fan of having you go through all of this on your own. It can be overwhelming and a daunting task. I actually prefer to present you with an option that I believe would be the best option for your situation and you can either use that or find something different. An Alternate.

The reason I like to initially select the fixtures is because of the fact that some fixtures work better together than others. Plus there are a number of things that go into each item. There is a particular look we might be trying to achieve and it would be very time consuming to tell you what you need to look for and how it needs to be sized, attached etc… Instead if I select something, then you find an alternate, you are selecting an alternate based off the selection I made previously. You can look at the faucet I selected and determine that the connection to the counter would look better as a 1 hole or a 3 hole. Should the faucet be a 4” spread or an 8” spread. Should it be counter mounted or wall mounted.

All these little details are needed by the contractor. They will need to know how to run the supply lines to that fixture if it is wall mounted or counter mounted. It can get really complicated if that changes during construction so I find it best to select all the fixtures and appliances once, before construction starts.

I hope this episode was helpful and gave you some good ideas for keeping your ideas safe and free from the threat of forgetting. If you’re already are a list keeper or a person that heavily plans out their calendar, I hope you found some interesting information in here as well.

This is probably the most important thing from this episode.

“Just because you delegated the task to someone else, does not necessarily mean that it will get done. Keep that item on your list so you can see it through to completion.”

I hope that you are having great success with the planning and construction of your home. If you want to get in touch with me please reach out to me on twitter or google plus.

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Show Notes:

WHERE DO ARCHITECTS GET THEIR EGO?

This episode is going to be so awesome. I guarantee this will be the best podcast you listen to all week. Today we’re going to talk about where Architects get their ego? Not that I have an ego, but you better stay tuned or you are going to miss something amazing!

I wanted to go into this subject. The Ego. Where does all this ego in Architecture come from? What can you do about it?

Have you ever heard the saying, “Architects ego’s are as large as their buildings?”

Where does this come from? The architect’s been given this stereotype or earned the stereotype as being the pre-madonna. Prancing around the construction site, throwing their ego and attitude around at everyone.

Stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason. They’re generally or usually true. I wish it wasn’t the case, but they usually are. There will be exceptions that counter balance the idea, I like to think of myself as an exception to this ego stereotype. I don’t like to think that I have an ego, but to tell you the truth I probably do at times.

Not the crazy over the top ego, but I might just have a little hidden ego deep inside.

I don’t want any of this to come across as if I am defending the architects ego. Actually it’s just the opposite. I would prefer none of us have ego’s. Or at least none of us outwardly project our egos on others.

Our goal to you the client should be to provide value. We should be focused on adding value to your project and creating solutions to help you meet your goals. When we focus on goals and creating a successful project, that should in turn give us as architects a feeling of success.

But when it comes to success, I think a lot of an architects mindset is that their notoriety or reputation determines their success, not their ability to solve problems for their clients. In my opinion a person can be successful without being well known. Would you agree with that?

In a lot of instances Architecture is a thankless job. Unless you are a Starchitect, a lot of architects go unnoticed. Starchitects are those famous architects working on the high profile projects like Frank Gehry. After going to school for many years, interning for many more then finally getting a license to practice, we want the recognition. A lot of us want to be noticed or sought out. We want to be in high demand.

That’s not always the case. Many architects work in the shadows. Behind the scenes. I think it’s wrong but in order to get noticed, I think the ego might start to come out. Kind of that fake it till you make it attitude. Make your own way right?

In reality only the select few get noticed. A lot of architects especially those working in larger offices, are behind the scenes. They spend long hours at their desk drawing and no one notices.

Architecture is, if you can believe it, very personal. Even when your getting into the details. You’re designing. Creating art in some way or another and it becomes very personal. You’re pouring your ideas out onto the paper or into the computer more likely. Creating. Creating that solution to meet your (the owners) goals. A lot of architects forget that we are solving your goals. Developing solutions to your problems.

When our ideas begin to get critiqued or questioned it’s difficult for some to deal with it. Their first reaction is to defend it. Client after client, critique after critique, It becomes a constant battle to defend our work.

Detail after detail. Decision after decision. Each one comes into question by contractors, clients, spectators and the architect themselves.

I think this is where the Architects ego is really born. It’s born out of the idea that its better to stand strong and forceful in the beginning to fend off any potential criticism of the work you create.

When it comes to recognition. Everyone wants some attention for what they do. They work hard to create great amazing spaces. People want to be recognized.

But with recognition comes a level of criticism. An Architect has to be somewhat vulnerable to put their work out there to begin with. To create something and actually something that’s going to be on public display for many years if not decades.

Just look at this podcast for instance. I am coming on each and every week. Trying to provide great content that you can hopefully find educational as well as entertaining. Or vise versa.

I’m throwing it out there. Putting it up on the internet. Asking for people to leave me reviews. Reaching for feedback.

But what happens when their work never gets noticed. What happens when there is no recognition. This is where the jealously sets in. Everyday people are surrounded by Architecture. Everywhere we go. The built world is all around us.

Architects constantly think about architecture. Each building I see or enter, I look at the details. The construction. I think about how the architect arrived at the decision, at the design. Walking or driving around and seeing all the great architecture gets the architect feeling bad if their not getting recognized for the work their doing.

Especially when it comes to awards right. Architects get very jealous about awards. Its the highest honor right? wrong.

You might be thinking. “Gosh all this ego talk. I mean seriously get over yourself. I could just run down to Home Depot and pick up a design book. I could get going on planning and designing my home.”

The perception that what an architect does on a residential scale is anyone can do it. If anyone can do it what is the value.

Why on earth would I hire an architect when I can just do it myself. I’m totally capable with Home Depot’s help. That maybe true. Most people feel that they have the design in their head. They have it all figured out and they just need someone to draw it. “I just need you to draw it for me. Real quick. It’s simple.”

The truth is, it’s always simple. Everything is always simple. I love the saying simple is triple. Simple is triple. I got that from Sean McCabe. It’s funny because all the “simple” projects I’ve done have ended up being the most complicated and the most time consuming of all.

So you as the owner have an idea of what you want. A visual image of what design solution you want for you home. Your idea might be completely different than what your neighbors idea for your space would be. You might think, well if my neighbors idea is one thing and my idea is another that just means that Design is subjective. It’s in the eye of the beholder, right. It’s all just opinion.

Ok so here comes the ego…

Good design solves a problem. It arrives at a solution that answers the questions that you have been asking. It’s neither random nor based on opinion.

Good design is backed by deep thought and insight. Each project is approached as a new solution to an issue. What is it that is bothering you about your space or your life? What is it that is keeping you up at night?

These are the issues I’m trying to address. Can they all be solved with design, probably not. But many of them can be addressed and by addressing them we can add value to your life.

So when you get down to it. There is a right answer. There is one design that is right for you. And that is the key. Right for you. You see, the design that your neighbor would do, might be right for them. The design that I develop for you, that is the design that is right for you. It’s custom. Tailored to fit you and your family.

And how do we know that the design presented is the right one for you? We work with you to explore and discover it through talking to you and diving deep into the issues you are having with your space. How you use your space. How you want to be able to use it.

It is very difficult to work on a project when design is seen as simple opinion or solutions are subject to an owners random whim. Especially when that whim is changing week to week. Our lives are fairly constant. We live each day pretty much the same as the last. We have a routine. Very seldom do we have life changing moments that alter that routine. Maybe we win the lottery. Ok life changing. We have a baby. Again life changing. If one of these two events happen during a design project you can guarantee some changes to the project. But otherwise your goals should not be changing on a daily basis.

When was the last time you were creative? We all do creative things. Everyday. Even people that don’t think they are creative are deep down creative in some way. Creative people love to create, they take their works very seriously. They pour their heart and soul into the work. Everything you got. Right. Then you put it out there. Show it to someone.

They start to pick it apart. They point out little details that they think should have been done differently. It’s hard for some of us. It really does get difficult. Some can accept criticism better than others. To tell you the truth it’s sometimes difficult for me to accept the critique. I guess it depends on how its worded. What angle the comments come from.

Although I do feel I can push past the first initial reaction I have and understand where the person is coming from. A lot of architects have a hard time overcoming the comments they get on their work. They feel that they must push their design. Convince you that what they have designed is what you need. And to a certain level I agree that we are the experts. We have the experience and the knowledge to take the design to where it needs to be. On another level you do need to have your input. If you are being convinced of a design that does not meet your goals then your architect did not fully understand your goals to begin with.

A good architect will explore your needs before hand, so when they show up with that design they are on the exact path you believed they were on. If they are not on the path then you might see the ego start to come out. Not from me of course…

Not only do we have to convince you that what we have designed is the best way, we also have to confirm it with the contractor. Possibly a contractor that has his own opinions on the matter. For 10 years he/she has been building something one way.

Maybe there is a better method that your architect knows about that would yield a better product. There will be a million and one reasons why your architect went down the path they did but inevitably the contractor wants to go down another path.

If they do, they will always through out money as the reason.

“It will cost a lot more if we do it that way, but I can save you money if I do it my way.” says the contractor. Because money is involve it always wins. Or at least has the advantage. We can defend our method day in and day out. Your architect begins to tell themselves to fight for their opinion. Show the client that you were right. Stand up for yourself. And bam! Out comes the ego or what appears to be ego.

You might be saying, “Gosh, why will he not just go with the flow? Why is he pushing this so much?” The reason most likely is a contractor last week told him the exact opposite on another project. Again we put all our effort in this work. We want it to be precise, correct and the best it can possibly be. We want it to be a smooth process and dare I say fun. I actually do want to have fun with my projects.

So what do you as the owner do about it? How do you approach your architect when you feel like the ego might be getting out of hand?

My best answer to that is give them the opportunity to describe to you how and why they came to that conclusion. What decisions they made to reach that design.

If they don’t have a strong foundation behind the reason for making such a decision or choice then they will realize it during this discussion. If they do have a good explanation and reason, then everyone might come on board.

The final thing that I believe adds to the ego is that what architects design eventually gets built. It affects your life on a daily basis. For better or worse. Hopefully for the better.

“Each and everyday someone is interacting with something I created. How awesome is that. Watch-out here comes the ego…”

I hope that you are having great success with the planning and construction of your home. If you want to get in touch with me please reach out to me on twitter or google plus.

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Show Notes:

SHOULD I BID MY PROJECT?

Today we’re going to talk about bidding and negotiation. Should you bid your project or should you negotiate?

I will compare the two so you can make a decision as to which is best for you situation.

I’m your host Marc. I’m your architect with the goal of giving you the knowledge so you can advance your dream of creating the ideal home for your family.

Today is all about project delivery and the method of that delivery. There are three types of project delivery.

Traditional

Traditional

The traditional approach looks like this. You hire an Architect. The Architect works with you to complete a design. The design is then sent out to multiple contractors that compete on price. The architect collects the bids and compares them with the owner. The owner selects the contractor that they would like to work with either based on price or price plus other factors. Sounds pretty straight forward.

The goal with this method is to design your ideal home. The perfect home for your family, and then select the lowest price possible to make that happen. Can you tell I’m being a little sarcastic?

Design-Build

The Design-Build approach is a little different but is becoming more common. In this case the Architect is typically hired by the contractor. The contractor and Architect work on the same team to deliver the project to the client. There are more decisions made in the field. This is because the Architect is working with the contractor so they can begin construction much faster because every detail doesn’t need to be complete to get the complete bid.

Because the architect is working for the contractor and the contractor is building for the owner. Who is looking out for the owner. Well, the Architect and contractor are supposed to both be but it’s hard to imagine most scenerios don’t fall in the favor of the contractor.

Negotiated

The Negotiated is my favorite. This is where the owner has selected an Architect as well as a contractor from the start. The Architect and contractor work together, but under separate contracts. While designing the contractor works on pricing the project to ensure it is within budget. Once the drawings are complete the contractor is awarded the job. Up until this point they have been working on a limited contract providing what is called pre-construction services.

The Contractor will typically send the drawings out to multiple subs. So even with the negotiated approach there is some competition for pricing.

Contract types

The project delivery is a little different than the contract you have with your contractor or builder. The contracts determine how the project is priced and how fixed or determined that price is.

In my opinion there are 2 commonly types of contracts. The contract types are some what tied to the project delivery method but can overlap in some instances. There is the lump sum contract and the cost plus. The Lump sum is also known as the competitive bid contract.

Lump sum

The lump sum or the competitive bid is a very traditional type of bid. To break it down even further there is a lump sum with a fixed fee and one with a GMP or Guaranteed Max Price.

The Guaranteed Max Price also typically comes with a Scheduled Contract. This breaks down all the pricing and is relatively apparent to the owner. This method is not entirely open book like the cost plus contract.

Either way the goal from the owners perspective with this contract is to ensure the project is built as shown in the drawings at the price that is agreed upon. This does not necessarily mean that it will finish up at that price in the end and we will get into that more later.

Another thing to note is that with a GMP you are requesting that they contractor meet a certain amount and not to go over. There is some incentive to give a relatively higher price so they can guarantee that they don’t go over. This also does not mean that they can’t go over. Lets say that we are renovating your house and once we remove a wall we find that there is major termite damage. Well, we need to remove the area that the termites have destroyed. This would be added as a change order that would increase the final price.

Competitive Bid Process

Like I mentioned earlier the traditional competitive bid approach works by delivering the drawings and having the lowest bidder give you a price to complete for the project. Of course we do not always select the lowest bidder, but often times it is difficult to focus on anything other than that lowest price.

We are used to shopping around. Finding similar products from store to store and eventually coming to one on sale.

“Yea! I’ll take that one.”

But in this case we are really comparing services as well as the products. There are many more factors to consider. If you focus your attention on price instead of value, you will get just that.

It is highly suggested that you do not select the lowest unless you feel that they have all the bases covered and have not missed an item in their calculations. It is best to bring all this to light during the bid comparison stage. If a number looks really low or off then we ask for more clarification on that number.

The worst thing we could do is let something go unanswered in the beginning so it becomes a problem in the field later. With that said does this not feel kind of off. You have spent you life saving and working hard to be able to eventually afford your dream home. You are investing time in getting it right and will be living in your home for many years.

“Should we give your project to the lowest bidder?”

Race to the bottom

Obviously you can see that this method is a race to the bottom. The person that reaches the bottom of the barrel first wins, right? How do you think this translates to the work in your home?

“I want the best craftsmanship at the absolute lowest price.”

I can tell you that if you select the lowest bidder you will not be getting the highest quality. When I recommend contractors to clients, I typically have a range that I like to recommend. The high, medium, and low.

These contractors pretty much fall in line with price (from high to low) and quality follows.

Results on quality

“How do you maintain quality and consistency with the competitive bid approach?”

It’s a constant struggle. The problem is that in order to stand out and be selected we have asked them to provide us with the lowest price. The contractor with the lowest price is rewarded. So if they miss a detail in the drawings or they leave something off they are held accountable right?

Wrong. They will make it up from some other area of your project. The contractor or sub will find a way to make up the error and your project will suffer because of it.

“If you hold someones feet to the fire, expect to get your hands burned”

The bottom line is you don’t get the best quality at the lowest price. You can’t.

Change orders

Are you someone that likes to change your mind? Are you planning on making some slight changes during construction? Maybe move a light switch over or change this door swing. Whatever it might be, You want to move a light thats $150. You want to switch a door around thats another $150. It goes on and on.

This constant markup on small revisions and adjustments is often a surprise to the homeowner in the end. If the paperwork was not properly kept then the owner might be stuck with a bunch of change orders in the end that they did not know were coming.

One piece of advice. If you have bid your project even if you are in a negotiated contract and you believe you are all buddy buddy with the contractor. You will be on site and you’ll say can we move this over here. They will say sure. Of course we can. I will have Tommy do that for you. It will be done tomorrow. In your mind your thinking.

“Awesome. That will be so much better over there. Glad I took care of that.”

Always. Always ask how much the change is going to cost before you direct to make the change. I assure you there is always a cost to every change in the field. Every single one.

A lot of people feel that they are there and whatever it takes to get the job done they are going to do. And that is true to a certain extent. But they are also there to make money. So don’t forget that.

Think about it. You have asked them for the absolute lowest price. You have made them compete with who knows who and in order to get the job they have very slim margins. Actually some take on the project knowing they might lose money and will make it up with change orders. I’m not saying all, but some.

Every time a change is made someone is being paid to make that change. So the contractor has to call Tommy. Tommy says that will be 100 dollars to move that over there. The contractor marks it up to 150 dollars to cover all his time on it and he says to Tommy.

“That’s fine the owner really wants us to move it.”

Because the money is so tight on the project they have to charge it back to you. It’s just the way it works. If you decide to go through the competitive bid process and expect to not have change orders you are in for a surprise.

For the Architect it is a constant fight with the contractor to make sure no cost are being passed to the owner that should be covered by the bid. All this leads to pointing fingers as well. The contractor will start bad mouthing the architects drawings. The architect will start getting frustrated with the contractor over the details. And the owner is stuck in the middle.

Cost Plus

So lets look at another pricing method. This is the cost plus and is more common with experienced clients. Clients that have gone through the competitive bid process and found it challenging and frustrating often times turn to the cost plus approach the second time.

The cost plus is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Your contractor hires subcontractors to perform a job and then they add a set percentage fee on top. That is the plus. That fee could be a fixed fee or it could be a percentage of what it cost.

We will use an example here. We are going to pave your driveway. It is the end of the project and getting ready to finish some of the exterior work. Things have been going very smoothly. The contractor reaches out to 2–3 concrete paving companies and selects the best for this particular job. They give him a price of $5,000. He will then mark it up usually 20%. So your driveway will end up costing you $6,000.

Team

The real advantage of working with a cost plus contract is that the contractor will be involved from a much earlier stage in the design process. They will help to assist the architect and work through some of the challenging design issues. This would help to resolve issues during design as opposed to during construction.

Like I mentioned earlier with the concrete driveway, the costs are all open book with the cost plus contract. The contractor is required to submit a bill for every part of the project. It makes tracking the expenses very extensive. You will see everything that gets purchased. If you don’t see the receipt then you don’t get invoiced.

With the cost plus you will likely make out a lot better with changes to the construction. You are paying for someone to be there and do the work plus materials. If they make a slight modification then they just make it. If they move something it might cost them a couple of minutes, but because they are there and working it is usually not a big deal that comes back with a huge change order.

For example you want to move a fixture, they just move it. It will probably not even raise the cost of the project. If it was a bid project, each change comes with a cost.

The reason that the cost plus contract works so well is because it involves everyone. Everyone is on the same team. We are all working together to get the job done. No one is trying to undermine the other. The contractor is not in the constant battle or stress that he is going to be shafted or put in a corner with the project.

Because of this he or she is more likely to fix honest mistakes rather than try to conceal them. If someone makes an honest mistake and they try to correct it, they should not be penalized for making it right. You might say, “That is tough, they made the mistake? It’s not my problem.” I know that you might not like that they made a mistake, but things happen and it is no way to work with people if you treat them that way.

Now if they are constantly making mistakes, that is a different story. Another interesting and I believe useful element to a cost plus contract. You are given all the receipt and all the documents. You have a record of everything that went into your project. You also have a record of every person that worked on the project. So couple of years from now you need to get your garage door repaired. Who do you call. Reference your book. Call the person that installed it. That alone is very valuable.

The last thing I wanted to say is:

“You will need to decide which process that you want to use for your home. Just remember if you want quality then you can’t expect to get it by asking someone to reach for the bottom of the barrel. Approaching your construction with a team mindset will make a world of difference from a quality perspective.”

I hope that you are having great success with the planning and construction of your home. If you want to get in touch with me please reach out to me on twitter or google plus.

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Show Notes:

WHERE’S ALL THE MONEY?

Where’s all the money going to come from? How can I pay for this?

Today we’re going to talk about all the various ways you can fund or finance your project. Find the perfect financing option for your home and discuss the 5 methods currently used to fund your dreams.

Here we go. We’re going to talk about money. The forbidden subject right. Nobody ever wants to talk about money. Even though its public knowledge people don’t like talking about how much they paid for their house or their remodel.

It’s too emotional, too personal. For some reason it just feels kinda dirty. Well today we are going to get into it. First I have to say that I’m not giving financial advice or legal advice with anything I say today. Before you make any financial or legal decision you should visit a financial advisor, cpa or lawyer. I am neither.

You see what I just had to do. Maybe that’s another reason people don’t discuss money. It’s just too scary… Well, lets get into it.

There are 5 methods used to finance and fund a new construction or renovation project. Before we get into the methods lets take a quick look a what you can afford.

First off you will need roughly 20% of the full mortgage amount to put down. Lets really get into it and also look at your living expenses, because it really is a large piece of your household budget.

Lets say that you make $150,000 a year of household gross income. After taxes you will be taking home roughly $100,000. Lets assume that you do not have debt. If you do have debt, either student loans or credit cards or some personal loan like a car or something I suggest paying off your loans first before you look to remodel or construct your house. I know that most people will not like to hear that, but that is my honest opinion. I believe you should have the least amount of debt possible.

Get rid of that high interest debt. You’re throwing your money away. If you follow the Dave Ramsey method you would get rid of the smallest debt first then apply the money to the next largest debt. You will knock it out quicker if you have a plan of action. Ok enough of the debt talk.

So lets assume that you are bringing in $100,000 each year, that give you $8,333 per month. Take 20% of that and pay yourself. This is paying yourself first for retirement and savings. So you put $1666 into savings or Ira or whatever kind of savings you want. Each month you are left with $6,666. The next thing I would suggest you do is build up your emergency fund. Your savings account is not your emergency fund. Your emergency fund is the money you put away for the immediate expenses. Lets say your refrigerator breaks or your transmission fails in your car. This will come from your emergency fund.

Most everyone I listen to recommends 3 months worth of savings in the emergency fund. I would prefer to keep around 6 months of living expenses, I am not there yet but that would be a great goal. If you are living off of $6,666 per month, then you need to have 20 to 40,000$ in this account depending on your level of comfort. Imagine having this amount saved. Would you be able to live more stress free? So thats just the buffer you have if something goes wrong. To get up to that 6 months savings put that 10% away, that 666 in each month. So your left with 6000.

Don’t forget you are putting 20% away on top of that each month. Each year you will be putting $20,000 into your longterm savings. Five years and you have saved over 100,000 plus whatever returns you are achieving with your investment.

Now that we’ve gone into savings and finances. After paying yourself first, you’re left with $6000 per month. Can you afford that house? Most banks will look at mortgage to income ratio of 28%. They are basing that on total income. So based on 150,000x.28 you get 42000 divided by 12 = a mortgage payment of 3500. But look at that realistically compared to what you are actually living off of once you have paid yourself.

That is over half, well over half and you will be including taxes and insurance on top of all that. It is not going to be feasible and pay yourself. If you want to pay your house first before yourself go ahead, but sit down with your budget and look at your future and determine if it is the right move for you right now. Something a little more reasonable would be approximately 1/3 of your monthly amount, so a mortgage of $2000 per month. That is a $350 to $400,000 home.

So what does paying yourself do for you? How does it relate to building or renovating your home? It allows you to get more for your hard work. This might not be the most popular opinion out there because it doesn’t fulfill that instant gratification we all want. Who wants to wait? We all want it now. I so much want it now, its ridiculous. It’s difficult at times to take a step back in my life and say is this the direction I want to go?

Homes have become so expensive that a lot of us are forced to take a mortgage. Not just a mortgage but a high mortgage that really cuts into that future savings. So lets look at what our options are. Each of these go from costing you the least amount to costing the most amount. And you will see what I mean when I get into it.

There are 5 methods to financing or funding your project.

The first is Cash and Liquid assets – money you have saved from years of paying yourself first. This is zero interest money.

The second is Sweat Equity – how can you bring your time and hard work to the table. This is trading time for dollars. Still interest free but not always feasible or possible.

The third is a Home Equity Loan – now we are gradually getting into interest payments. Borrowing money. Don’t get me wrong we all borrow money. I have a mortgage on my house right now and I’ve had home equity lines in the past. You have to be careful. When people are given flexible accounts like equity lines and they don’t get used wisely like investing back into the house. It can become very scary.

The fourth is a Construction Loan. Typically an interest only loan with higher interest rate that can be converted to mortgage after the construction is complete.

The fifth is the worst way possible and that is with Credit Cards. People do it.

If you are not at the point where you can pay cash for your project or the work is beyond what you can do yourself or a major remodel, the most commonly used loan for small renovations is a home equity loan. They are generally limited to under $40,000 but typically based on your home value and how much you currently owe on your existing mortgage. A Banker would be able to give you better numbers than I could based on your unique situation.

If the project is much greater, then you are most likely going to be applying for a construction loan. I have discussed construction loans in the past, but I wanted to quickly talk about one loan in particular. It’s called the 203K program.

And this is not to try and sell you a loan. I have no idea on who you would contact to start this loan and I am not recommending any banks. I just want to give you the knowledge so you can research it for yourself.

The 203K is a mortgage program that allows you to either purchase or refinance your existing mortgage and at the same time add renovation cost to the home you are purchasing. This doesn’t apply to new construction only renovations. The borrower has to show the money was spent on the house. Its not like a credit line in that way.

The construction has to be completed in 6 months and you apparently are only allowed to have 5 draws. So during a 6 month renovation that is pretty much monthly.

The down payment is usually small for this type of mortgage and is in the 3.5% down range. The total loan amount is typically below 300,000 but it varies based on the location of the home since some areas are more expensive than others. If you are doing a much larger renovation or new home this is not the loan for you.

If the renovation is around the 35,000 range and has no structural modifications then you can go through a streamlined process.

The bank is going to require you to have the plans of your renovation drawn by an architect before you close on the house. They want to know what you plan on doing and how. They also will not let you do the work yourself. You’re going to have to have a contractor doing the work.

I hope that this gives you a little insight into the various methods you can use to finance your project.

The last thing I wanted to say is

“If the time is not right for you financially don’t put yourself through the stress of trying to make it work. Take the time to explore your finances and understand how much you can afford, After you pay yourself first.”

I hope that you are having great success with the planning and construction of your home. If you want to get in touch with me please reach out to me on twitter or google plus.

Tip the show with Bitcoin