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Update: New house done (enough) and moving in this weekend!


avguytx

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Appraisal on existing house is done and the HVAC was checked and serviced yesterday.  Hopefully we'll hit the number we need for that part.  16 days left in this house...that I won't really miss whatsoever.  I've been living in it for the time she and I were married, since 7/13, but she's been there since she and her ex bought it in 12/08.  For the few years he was  there, there were lots of bad memories that I know she and the kids will be glad to was their hands of and put behind them.

 

Coming up, packing more things for storage and deciding on what's going in rent house once we see it Saturday and get an idea of the space that's not there.  ha.  At least our storage unit is 1/2 a mile away.  We're meeting with the house designer this Friday to hash out some of the plans so they can get the pre-construction appraisal done and start the construction loan process.  I decided I wanted the 3'd car garage added on and will be put on the front side of the house.  It will also allow for a safe room/tornado shelter to be installed as my wife has a major fear of storms after their house was wiped out by one when she was 9 or 10 years old.  I've taken the left end of the original plans we chose and "meshed" them with the right half of other plans that have the 3rd garage space.  

 

As an extra bonus, this makes my upstairs "man cave" grow in size to roughly 16' x 30'.  I've no problem with that at all.  My plan is to do a basic surround system upstairs for the occasional movie watching and video game playing.  A rare occasion for me but...  I've got a PS3 for a BluRay player and I'll snag a new Onkyo surround receiver from the Nat'l Sales Manager and come up with 5 or 7 speakers from Klipsch or from another brand from a dealer I know.  I never pay retail for anything which is a nice bonus, too, after all those years in the industry.  The surround won't be anything major as I really don't care overall.  Not Atmos, etc...not going overboard...not that important.  But, for the occasional movie it will be ok.  I'll pre-wire for it all so it's there when the time comes.

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  • 1 month later...

Time to come back and update this thread for anyone that really cares.  :)  We've been living in the small rent house now since about April 16th, which has been interesting to say the least, but it's working.  We officially close on the construction loan on Tuesday June 5th and should start tearing some ground up on Thursday or Friday.  If this hot Arkansas weather keeps going like this, we should be "in the dry" on the house in a few months or so then we will take off on finishing out the inside.  It's going to be a lot of work but it will be worth the sweat equity we'll have from it.

 

I'm excited.  New house and new audio room not so far off in the distant future now!  

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It will be hot but a much better chance of not being to wet and not drying out compared to winter.

 

Good luck, it's going to be a job, but well worth it in the end. 

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The heat is a pain all the time but it's not like you would wait for cooler months to build, that would be crazy. Plus we have had wet winters where it never dried out, that would be a mess especially with the first part of construction.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Let me tell you one thing....figuring everything out for the kitchen as far as appliances and cabinetry has been the biggest pain so far.    But closer.  Tomorrow (Tuesday 6/11) they are supposed to start pushing down trees and leveling out to be able to dig the trenches for the footings.  I guess we're moving along...

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Uh huh.... getting my better half to make a decision about anything when we built was like pulling teeth. Good thing she doesn't follow this forum:) And we bought our land in 2003 and did not start building until 2009. They say if your marriage can survive a house build it can withstand anything.

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Ain't that the truth.  It's honestly been both of us that are trying to decide how to set it up and, thankfully, we have quite a few months until it's at that point.  I'm going to buy appliances on the July 4th sale because that's the top appliance sale for the year (2nd biggest is Memorial Day) and I can "park" them at Lowe's or Home Depot for 90 days before delivery which would be about the time we need them maybe.  We really haven't had any issues picking things out and most everything already is....wall paint, trim, tile, flooring, etc.  We are doing most all of the inside work ourselves so it will be on use to decide.  I try not to let her look at other styles of flooring so it doesn't "confuse her".  ha. 

 

It's mainly trying to figure out how we want the cabinets laid out in the kitchen and laundry room and it not be a "form before function" thing.  I'm obviously going more for the function first.  

 

Thankfully, she doesn't read this forum, either.

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2 weeks later, the land has been excavated, trees burned off, footings dug and filled with rebar and concrete and the block work started today.  They are hoping to get the slab done by late next week.  Sweet...  One step closer to having my dedicated room finally!  ha  I'll try to post some pictures of the progress soon if there's any interest.

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If you ever get Klipschorns (or Jubilees, I guess) you should have a high ceiling and a thick rug on the floor.  For the Khorns, Klipsch recommends at least a 8.5 foot ceiling.

 

Depending on how much hands on experience you have had in your job, the following may be too elementary for you, but, here goes, anyway.  As you know, room proportions are important.  Obviously, no two should be the same, and not exact multiples of each other.  There is not as much emphasis on what are sarcastically called "Magic Proportions" as there once was, in this day of bass traps, room treatments, electronic room correction, etc., but if you haven't built yet, you might want to look at this: https://www.salford.ac.uk/research/sirc/research-groups/acoustics/architecture-and-building-acoustics/room-sizing-for-studios

 

A book I found handy was Jeff Cooper's Building a Recording Studio.  He is really targeting building a dedicated room in a home, and his advice goes from minimum pains taken to maximum.  Try your local library.  Amazon wants an arm and a leg.

 

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  • 1 month later...

Time  to finally come back and add some resized photos to this thread since the house is now almost in "the dry".  The framers are supposed to be done either late today or tomorrow and the shingles will go on Monday then the metal part of the roof (above the front porch) right after that.  Also the siding will go on next week and the electrician will start wiring (and me with Cat5) hopefully.  I'll be adding pictures from my phone in just a minute as I resized them on it but am typing this part on the desktop PC.  I tried to take pictures in the same general spot as to have a sort of timeline of everything.  It's looking more like a house!

 

There's a lot more of in between photos but I know I have a limit on here so I'm being conservative.  The house is basically a "modern farmhouse" design which seems to be fairly popular and was what my wife has always wanted.  I'm good with that as long as I have my upstairs room, of course.  I need to find a shot from the side showing the garage but I'm not sure if I have any of those to give the sense of depth.  But...

 

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Found a side photo from earlier in the week but it doesn't show the upstairs window section being done. Also a picture of the (messy) upstairs section which is 8 feet at the top section with those 5 foot side walls.  I believe it ends up being about 16 feet across by 35+ feet long.  Hard to really tell from this picture for sure.

 

 

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Yep.  We've taken them water, Powerade, donuts, ice, etc., over the last week even though the builder told us that "he wouldn't".  Mainly because they pretty much left their crap and trash everywhere and it did look so bad that my wife and I picked up two huge bags of trash.  One day, we went with a single trash bag and filled it up before we even got to picking up the outside area.  Plus noticed a few beer cans late on one day like someone had a couple before they drove off.  That really ticked off the builder and he called the framing company's owner who, in turn, really nailed those guys for all of that.  Needless to say, it's been picked up pretty much every day now including the scrap pieces that go into two different burn piles (on each end of the house) and next to no trash.  But, it's a construction site. and it happens, I know, but our builder doesn't go for that at all.  He told  them they won't get their completion check until it's all done and all  trash is picked up, remaining wood sorted and stacked, and house swept out.  Hard a$$.  lol

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On 8/10/2018 at 4:35 PM, avguytx said:

Yep.  We've taken them water, Powerade, donuts, ice, etc., over the last week even though the builder told us that "he wouldn't".  Mainly because they pretty much left their crap and trash everywhere and it did look so bad that my wife and I picked up two huge bags of trash.  One day, we went with a single trash bag and filled it up before we even got to picking up the outside area.  Plus noticed a few beer cans late on one day like someone had a couple before they drove off.  That really ticked off the builder and he called the framing company's owner who, in turn, really nailed those guys for all of that.  Needless to say, it's been picked up pretty much every day now including the scrap pieces that go into two different burn piles (on each end of the house) and next to no trash.  But, it's a construction site. and it happens, I know, but our builder doesn't go for that at all.  He told  them they won't get their completion check until it's all done and all  trash is picked up, remaining wood sorted and stacked, and house swept out.  Hard a$$.  lol

Well that's a shame. Usually the effort and small expense of bringing out water for the workers more than pays off by them completely cleaning up their mess. 

I know how the builder feels.....you can build the best home around, but when it looks messy, it just doesn't look as good. People will see the mess before they see the home.

 

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On 6/11/2018 at 3:28 PM, babadono said:

Uh huh.... getting my better half to make a decision about anything when we built was like pulling teet

 

I don't know if I applaud you guys....or feel for you.

 

My wife designed our house...so, ostensibly, it is what she wants.  (cough)

 

Back story:  I had 5/8th's drywall put in on all ceilings.

 

"doorway" to kitchen, was an archway opening....kinda cool in my mind (especially since we did it outselves)

 

When I was working in Florida, she decided she wanted to remodel the kitchen and make it more of what she "really" wanted in the beginning.

 

Knocks out a wall to enlarge it, takes the arched doorway, creates a 1/2 wall (about 3' wide) and angled the doorway.

 

I move back from my stint in Florida...she decides she doesn't like the ceiling.

 

We commenced to rip down the 5/8 sheetrock (which I could literally HANG on it was up so well)

 

We put T&G planks on the ceiling.  Am I (she) done yet?  pfffft

 

Decides AFTER the ceiling is done, she wants to square off the room and get rid of the 1/2 wall angled opening.

 

Had to rip 1/3'rd of the just finished ceiling down, rip a third of the floor up so we could square it off.

 

Is she done?

 

Now, she wants to get rid of our pantry....create a built in unit....

 

Is she done?

 

Oh, and there is an open wall on one side of kitchen....  let's put more cabinets and a sink there.

 

"honey, we don't have water nor drain but for bathroom (on other side of wall)

 

Fine she says, you can cut into that wall to splice into each of them

 

Rip most of drywall down to run some wires, plumbing... she orders the cabinets.

 

Is she done?

 

Since the wall is open to the bathroom...  why not redo THAT wall.....  she decides she wants to rip out the rest of the drywall and put T&G planks on that one wall in the bathroom.

 

Is she done?

 

Now that this wall is different, the entire rest of the bathroom will need refinished (except for our hand painted cherubs "Cisteen Chappel" on the ceiling)

 

Is she done?

 

With the bathroom being redone, we really need to look at her outdated bombay chest (that I converted into a vanity bass) and put a new top on it.

 

Is she done?

 

I don't know....she's gone to work today and I didn't get a chance to talk to her.

 

 

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