Showing posts with label process. Show all posts
Showing posts with label process. Show all posts

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Moving and Initial Impressions

Moving day! It was a long time coming, but we finally moved into our house in mid-October. We hired movers to handle everything in the townhouse we had been renting. They came on a Friday. We then rented a U-Haul truck and had help from friends and family to empty out our storage unit on Saturday.

Ready to move inEmpty areaOne bedroom is being used for temporary storageFurniture moved in. The chairs served as temporary coat racks.

Moving went smoothly. Settling in was a bit more difficult. While the majority of the work was done, there were a lot of details to finish after we moved. For example, they were still finishing the wood floors the day we moved in, so that evening we went out to dinner and a movie to give the floors a chance to dry.

The biggest missing piece was the stair rails. This made it easier to move furniture and boxes up and down the stairs, but wasn't quite appropriate for a finished house. The next week was spent finishing the stair rails. Since then, there has been at least some work each weekday to finish up the remaining details. The remaining tasks are recorded in a punchlist, which is being checked off at a steady rate.

The first few days living here were exciting. Partly because this is a nicer house than any of the previous places we've lived. Mostly because we are finally living in this house that we designed ourselves and have watched every step of the way. Despite everything we've done, living here was still new. We knew the layout, the materials, the details, etc. It looked familiar and was designed around us, but living in it is still a different experience. We could really experience the advantages of the design, and appreciate the materials and construction techniques.

Even the bedroom serves as temporary storageReality set in fairly quickly, though. While all our stuff was within the premises of our house, we were a long way from "moved in". Unpacking was complicated by the fact that work was still being done on our house. Most of our shelving wasn't installed until a few days after we moved in, so we couldn't immediately unpack clothes. Paint touch-ups were still in-progress, so we were a bit cautious about blocking walls.

Stair rails were being stored in the master dressing room & bathroomThere were some bugs and obstructions to deal with initially. The master shower had a bug where the water was either fully hot or fully cold, with no temperature adjustment in-between. Our bathroom and dressing room held a pile of stair rails. The kitchen counter was mostly covered with construction paraphernalia.

These particular issues have been resolved, but there are still some inconveniences. The largest one is that the garage is not ready to have a car in it. It is full of our boxes that need to be unpacked and construction equipment belonging to our builder. All of that needs to be cleared out and the floor painted before we can park our car in there. Having always had access to a garage, it has been difficult seeing our poor MINI sit outside in the cold and rain for weeks at a time. More practically, it has prevented us from putting proper winter tires on the car.

Some annoyances derive simply from adjusting to a new place. The mini-split heating system seems to be working well, but we're still learning the proper adjustments to keep the house comfortable. The kitchen is wonderful, but we are still learning how to use the stove, oven, dishwasher, etc. and figuring out the locations of all the kitchen implements.

Dressing room, full of clothesThere are plenty of details to enjoy, though. The master suite is excellent — the bedroom is quiet and cozy, the dressing room is functional (even without chairs and a side table yet), and the bathroom is just right for us. The kitchen is working well, and the induction stove is amazing to cook with. The media room is everything we hoped for. We've already been enjoying movies and video games, and hosted a few gatherings that took advantage of it.

Media room, with two rows of seating and rear speakersMedia room speakers, subwoofer, and screen all set up (right speaker is temporarily out of position to allow the left closet door to open)

As time passes, we're increasingly enjoying our house. Items are being crossed off the punchlist, bringing the construction closer to complete. Boxes are being unpacked, bringing the house closer to moved-in. And we are becoming more used to living here, bringing it closer to feeling like home.

Despite this big step in the process, we're not done blogging! There are still plenty of areas we have not yet written about; and even once those are covered, we'll be writing more posts about our experiences using the space.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Why Design Is Not Done

Now that construction has started, we've been asked: "Oh, now you just get to sit back and watch, right?" The answer is "No, not at all."

We work with the principle: "design only what we need". Some major design elements are needed from the beginning. The floor plan and building structure determine everything else. Details such as windows were required for permitting. The kitchen needs to be ordered early. Since the colors in the kitchen are closely related to the colors of the floor and counter, we've chosen those too. These major decisions are the ones that we have finished.

But there are many more decisions that are still to be made. We have delayed some decisions simply because they are not needed earlier. For example, we've just started talking to a craftsman about the front door.  This class of decisions follow the construction schedule. A few of the many other items in this category are hardscaping (driveway, outside walkways, etc.), landscaping, deck material and railings, stair railings, interior doors and hardware, kitchen backsplash, shelving, and light fixtures.

We intentionally delay other decisions until we have more information and context. For example, many of the colors will be finalized once we can test them on the building. We have a general color scheme chosen, but once the siding is up we can apply some paint swatches and choose the exact colors. We haven't even begun to think about carpet and interior wall colors. Another example is wiring. Once the frame is up, we can walk through the structure and decide on exact positions for light switches, electrical outlets, and any additional wiring such as Ethernet cabling and speaker wiring.

We delay other decisions because we do not know they are needed. Some decisions have unintended consequences that we have to take into account later. We discovered one example recently. Our island is 11' long, but CaesarStone comes in slabs up to 10' in length. We can live with it and have a seam in the counter where two pieces of stone join together. We can attempt to shorten the island to 10'. We can tweak the counter design to avoid or integrate the seam. We could even change the counter to another material. Luckily, we learned about this issue early enough that we have time to address it (though shortening the counter would affect the imminent cabinet order). Not everything will be so accommodating.

The early stages of construction are interesting to watch but don't require a lot of input from us. We don't really have anything useful to say about the size of the foundation hole or the concrete being poured. As construction progresses more elements will need our input, and we will be more involved in the construction process. Some of these decisions will be minor, but some will be required to allow construction to move forward. We will be kept busy designing throughout the entire construction period. In fact, this may be our slow period!

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Custom Construction Loan

Last week we closed on a custom construction loan with Washington Federal.

When it comes to construction financing, there are two major options (unless you can self-finance): get a bank loan or get a private bridge loan.

Private bridge loans allow you to move faster, can be easier to get, and provide more freedom. For example, a bank may not approve a loan for a home using non-standard construction methods. However, they are more expensive; interest was 15-20% on the loans we considered. Refinancing a private loan once construction is complete can be more difficult because the bank considers the project more risky than one it has already vetted.

Bank loans require a long process of approving the borrowers, builder, and project, but they are cheaper. Depending on the bank, a construction loan may have a standard mortgage rate plus a fee equal to some percentage of the loan or the loan may have a rate 2-3% higher during the construction period. Banks tend to be more rigorous about inspections, which can be both a benefit and a hindrance.

We chose Washington Federal on Yuval's recommendation. As a builder, he finds them easy to work with, and they have a good reputation (e.g., Erika's grandparents thinks they are the best choice). Another advantage is that their construction loan automatically converts to a standard mortgage; no refinancing needed.

The standard credit application for us was approved easily, and Yuval was already verified as a builder with them. The project approval required a fully-approved permit set, along with a budget breakdown, and some other details. This part of the process took longer than normal, first because we had to wait for the permits, and second because the bank had problems finding an available appraiser who was willing to evaluate a modern, green, construction project in Bellevue.

Once everything was approved, the bank worked on finalizing the paperwork and getting it sent to escrow. I worked on getting a course of construction insurance policy in place, along with some other minor details. Once the escrow agent had the documents, we wired the funds for the fees and down-payment, signed all the documents, and the bank managed to close the loan the same day. And now construction can start! Excavation is scheduled to start October 1st.

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Construction Contract

Another milestone has been reached! We signed the construction contract with YS Development.

The contract specifies the responsibilities of both sides, the fixed price of construction, the start date and timeline, and the penalties that apply if either side fails to meet their obligations. YS Development has a base contract for their projects. Our final contract integrated terms from the standard AIA contract and others terms suggested by What Your Contractor Can't Tell You into that base.

We waited this long to finalize the contract because we needed a cost. Yuval worked hard to get quotes from vendors that were as close to accurate as possible; a fixed price contract needs to be based on reliable data. The final number was close to the target we had aimed for. We included a bit extra for small changes and contingencies for some small items that need to be finalized. With the quotes in, the price of construction could be locked, and the contract signed.

This was one of the easier pieces of business we've dealt with, and now that it is settled construction can start in earnest (well, once we finalize financing).

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Permits Issued

We finally have city-approved permits for building our house! The last sign-off happened a couple weeks ago, but it took an additional week to finish processing everything and get the permit set ready to issue. If you are curious, you can view the online history/status of the process by the city.

Brent, the project manager, scanned the corrected plans into a PDF and made copies to work from. The official permits must remain on site, but they would get too tattered if they were the working set. The official set is usually kept safe in a box and work is done off the copies.

We should be starting construction shortly. Yuval has started prepping the site (getting a survey, staking the boundaries, and removing trees that will be in the way). Excavation is scheduled to start within a few weeks, maybe even by the end of the month. The last thing we're working on is getting financing fully approved and closed. Soon we should have regular status updates with pictures of construction!

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Permitting and a Trail

We haven't forgotten about this blog; it's just that things have been moving pretty slowly since we submitted the permitting documents a month and a half ago. We've worked on non-design topics; construction contract, budget, and financing have been the biggest items. We'll talk about some of those a bit more in a future post, once things are mostly settled there.

The biggest blocking piece was the permit from the city. The initial review finished in about a month, and resulted in a request for some revisions. The building reviewer wanted more notes and details on the plans, along with some extra structural engineering for the foundation. At the same time, Yuval decided to revise the foundation to reduce expense. The original design had a slab-on-grade garage, and it required a large retaining wall on the west edge of the garage (i.e., lots of pricey concrete and steel). The revised design modifies the foundation to follow the slope of the land, and uses concrete supports under the garage. The garage will be framed with thick wood with concrete poured on top.

But the major hurdle was trail requirements. When the land was initially divided into the smaller lots for building, Bellevue required some improvements to the land. They wanted the unofficial dirt trail down the hill developed into a real trail with pedestrian and bike lanes and some landscaping. Yuval worked with them, and they changed the requirement to a trail easement, with the development to be done by the city at a later point. Our lot has the easement on it (a 15' foot strip along the south edge). It made our land a bit narrow, but we were able to work within the confines. We weren't too worried about having a trail there, because the neighborhood seems fairly quiet. It would be a huge benefit to us, since it leads down to a lot of shops and buses.

While reviewing our documents, the city told us we needed to do the trail development as part of construction. The trail will be nice to have, but we weren't counting on the extra cost. The hill we're on is steep enough that it will have to be stairs. We're guessing that over 150' of stairs and railing would be significantly more expensive than a bit of sidewalk.

This requirement surprised Yuval too. He represented us (since we now own the land), and did all the work of talking to the city about the issue. Eventually, a legal review found that Yuval had a special agreement with the city for this issue, so we do not have to develop the trail. Instead, we'll work with the city to design it and construction will happen later.

Current status: The revised permits are under review. Since the trail issue has been settled, the main work from the city should be the building review. They know we are on an expedited schedule, so we're hoping the permits will come through fairly soon. And after that, construction!

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Permitting Documents Submitted!

We have finally submitted the required documents for getting permits from the city to start construction; the submission process was called 'Permit Intake' — yes, there is a process to start the process. We submitted them on the last day of May. The intake process involves initial reviews to make sure our documents are in order and look reasonable. Now they go through the full review process. To encourage green construction, Bellevue has a program which completes permitting within six weeks (the normal process, to our amazement, takes twice as long). As soon as the permits are approved, we can break ground. We should be able to start construction around mid-July.

There's still plenty to do in the meantime (mostly on Yuval's plate). We need to get the construction contract signed, agree upon a more detailed budget, draw up a construction schedule, and finalize construction financing. We are close to finalizing the kitchen and bathroom designs from Pedini and will be placing that order near the start of construction. We also want to get a siding scheme finalized soon. Yuval will start sharing the plans with others in charge of specific areas. On area is framing; once that is done, we can order the lumber. Another is mechanical, to get detailed designs for HVAC and hot water supplies.

Submitting the permits was an important milestone and puts us that much closer to starting construction.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

It looks like a house!

Design is progressing nicely. Markus modeled our house in CAD which brings us one step closer to permitting and construction. Moving from simple layouts to a computer model gives us our first views of the building's massing — how the house sits on the land, height, roof form, etc. This makes the building much more real. Clockwise from the top left we have the west, south, northwest, and southeast perspectives.


As the images show, our lot has a strong slope from east to west. The garage is actually elevated a few feet above the main level to decrease the slope of the driveway (bottom left image). The slope also gives us additional height: a limit of 30' from average grade gives us a total of about 35' on the west side. To take advantage of this, Markus added the 35' stair tower as a distinctive architectural feature (bottom right image).

We still need to decide on window placement and roof form. The images above show a flat roof. We like how the flat roof emphasizes the strong horizontal elements of the soffits and decks. However, all of the other homes in the community will likely go with butterfly roofs. We are going to look at several roof forms in the context of the neighborhood. As you can see below, in isolation the flat roof definitely looks best.


Computer models aside, we're not planning on having a home made out of gray, featureless pixels. Although we have awhile before we finalize the external colors and materials, we have found an inspiration for our exterior. It is another home from Whitney Architecture, the firm our architect works for:

We like the elegance and simplicity of the limited palette of materials and colors and the contrasts between horizontal and vertical, dark and light, warm wood and cool silvers/grays.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Short Update

Design is moving along, albeit a bit slowly. Between the holidays and some other deadlines, the architect has been kind of busy. But Yuval is aware that we're behind schedule, so he's going to make sure that the focus stays on the two houses in the Bellevue project for a while. Our house is currently being put into a CAD program, and that work is almost done. We should be able to review that soon (hopefully within a couple weeks). After that, we will hopefully be kept busy while the design is pushed through and prepared for permitting.

We're looking at an April-May target to starting construction. This is 1-2 months behind our original schedule, but it will still be a good time to start. All the foundation and framing and most of the exterior can be finished before it gets too cold and wet in the fall and winter. (One of the other houses under construction had its foundation poured during the winter, but they had to pay a lot of attention to temperatures.) So with optimal time of year, and lessons and processes learned from the other houses, we're hoping our construction will progress at a nice pace.

We also had a chance to see the first house in the project. It is nearing completion. We hadn't seen it since before the drywall went up, and it now has all the flooring in, walls painted, and is been sealed up and heated. The exterior is almost all complete, too. It is looking more like a real house, and you can start to get a sense for how it will look when complete; and how nice all the material finishes are (during construction, we found it hard to appreciate the quality — particle board, concrete and framing boards looks pretty much the same all over). It will also allow us to start seeing how various materials and finishes look in a real home, and hopefully help us as we start making decisions on all these pieces, too.

Hopefully we will have more exciting updates soon!

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Size, Cost and Decisions

The previous post looked at just the layout of the floor plans, and some comparisons between them. Here we talk about some other issues that were raised by these plans, and what we've decided to do.

Size

After seeing these two sketches, we spent a while discussing size. The first sketch, with the fully built downstairs was around 2600 sqft. The second, with only stairs on the lower floor, was 2300 sqft. We decided that we could not fit everything we wanted into just 2000 sqft without feeling cramped. We do a lot of entertaining, and hosting people comfortably requires space — space for a dining room big enough to seat 10-12 people, space for a dedicated media room big enough to sit 10-12 people, space for a kitchen big enough to support both of us cooking regularly, etc.

Looking at projected costs, our budget, and our desires, we decided that 2500 sqft was a reasonable target. That would give us enough space to comfortably fit everything we really wanted without going outside what we can afford. This pushes total estimated cost to roughly $825k, which is a far cry from our original estimate of $700,000. However, as we get closer to starting construction, we have a better idea of how much money we actually have saved versus how much we need to borrow. Based on those numbers, things look fine.

Are we worried that costs will keep increasing like they have been? Yes and no. We are not in a situation where things are costing more than we expected in an initial budget. Instead, we are choosing to increase our budget to get more space than we originally planned.

Plus, now that we are close to locking down a layout, the size will be fairly fixed. The remaining unknown cost is construction, and that tracks size fairly closely, so our costs should be stabilizing. There is some contingency built into the construction budget, and other large budget additions can be planned as alternate additions (which we can choose to include or not later in the process). So hopefully, at this point, we should be able to manage the costs at a finer level.

Decisions

We had a good meeting with Markus (the architect) and Yuval (the builder) to discuss the plans, and work through some options. We considered (and eventually abandoned) an interesting design that attempted to combine the media and living room on the north edge of the main room; we could shut off a smaller media room or open it up to the main living spaces to get seating for larger groups.

We eventually decided to go with a modified version of plan two, with the stair on the west. Because we could not get a media room that met our criteria on the main floor, we decided to build out the media room downstairs. This allows us to shrink the north-west corner of the main floor (the media room in plan 2) and use it as an office. This should allow us to hit our target of 2500 sqft, and get a nice layout all-around.

With the general layout/relation of rooms locked down, we'll move to a deeper exploration in CAD to allow us to get sizes nailed down, and start getting a better idea of what the house will look like on our site in all three dimensions!

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Status & Inspiration

The beginning of October was a bit slow for house design.  We were both sick and had several events during the weekends, so we didn't get a whole lot done.  What we have been spending time on is collecting a lot of inspiration photos and notes.  We compiled a document with links and photos to things we like, and made some notes about what especially we like in each photo.  If you're interested, you can view the document.

We also have written up a lot of notes about what we liked and didn't about the initial proposed design, both by ourselves and meeting with Yuval.  Right now we're working to get the overall layout, sizes, orientations, etc. set; and then go into more and more details of each piece.  Hopefully in the next couple weeks we will have a firmer idea of what the rooms will look like.

Friday, October 8, 2010

Land: Acquired

As of last Wednesday, September 29th, we officially own the land in Bellevue for our house.  This is the first full commitment to the project, but also means that the whole process and timeline is now a go.  We will be starting design very shortly (as soon as we recover from various bouts of busy and sickness over this past weekend), and spend the next few months on that.

The land acquisition ended up being a bit quicker than we thought.  The lot was owned by the bank, so we would be negotiating with them on the price, and doing the actual purchase from them.  We informed Yuval of our decision on the Bellevue 41st project, and he told us he would work on our land purchase in about a week and a half, after he had finished closing a transaction on another lot in that same project.  However, less than a week later, I got a call Monday after lunch from Yuval that someone else had put in a bid for that parcel!  This would have a couple of potential problems: obviously it would put our project back into limbo; but as this was someone not involved with YS Development, a one-off house along with the other four houses from the Bellevue 41st project could throw off the continuity of the community there.  So we had to get an offer submitted ASAP that could beat this other offer.

We met with Yuval that evening, and he had an offer prepared to submit to the bank next morning.  It was for an even $200,000, which was $25k-50k above what we hoped to be able to negotiate down to; but we felt this should be enough for the bank to accept a competing offer; and while it was at the same price as the other offer, we had the advantage that our offer was all cash (therefore a quicker process not dependent on getting financing), and did not have any brokers or agents involved (avoiding the extra commission the bank would have to pay out of the proceeds).  Unfortunately, this did bump up the overall price to around $730,000.  While not great, this project still offered the best timeline; and a 4% increase is not terrible.  Since we've been waiting around 9-10 months, we decided that with the extra savings we've accumulated in that time, we could cover the increase, so we decided to go ahead with the offer.

Late the next morning we heard that the bank had accepted our offer; so in under 24 hours we had gone from biding our time, to having a pending purchase in place!  The offer was set up to give us about 10 days to cancel if we decided the lot really wasn't feasible for us; and a few more days beyond that as a buffer so that we could maintain a closing date before the end of the month.  Since YS Development had already planned on using this parcel, a lot of the work for assessing building, permitting, etc. feasibility had already been done; so it was mostly a matter of verifying that it would work for us in particular.

The first piece of this was an initial meeting with the architect to get an idea of what our house might look like.  I'll cover this in more detail soon, but the short of it is that we got a good feeling for how the land would constrain our design, but also showed us the possibilities that it offered.

The next piece was to make sure everything else was in order.  For the legal part, we used a benefit from Google which is (essentially) a subscription legal service, where we pay a fixed amount every month, but can use the service at any time to have a lawyer take care of standard things, such as reviewing real estate documents.  A few good points were identified, and prompted us to get a title report in enough time to have it reviewed, too. There ended up being quite a few things on the title report; which isn't entirely unexpected, given that this is a recently-subdivided part of a lot in Bellevue proper which has been privately owned but not yet built on since sometime in the 1960s or so.  Along with all the expected utility easements, there were also claims for a road (which has since been built and is the main access to the parcel) and similar.  But nothing was objectionable, and the review pointed out a few items that weren't relevant anymore and could be cleared.

On Monday the 27th, two days before the scheduled closing, we gave the go-ahead for the purchase.  We were going through Chicago Title for the title insurance and escrow/closing, since Yuval had worked with them and knew they were good.  We got a closing statement and wire instructions that day, and the next morning we sent a wire transfer from our bank to the escrow account.  Then Tuesday afternoon we went in-person to sign the documents for our part of the closing.  On Wednesday the 29th, the bank completed their part of the transaction, and the land was officially transferred to us.

This was our first ever real estate transaction, and overall went relatively smoothly.  It was fairly quick; luckily most of the hard work was done by others, especially YS Development. I probably learned the most from the lawyer's comments — while in some ways they felt like extra complications, they did help to point out issues we weren't really clear on, and helped to clarify some vague points.  We also learned that in a cash transaction, the amount of documents to sign is actually pretty small (apparently that changes completely if you have financing involved); the purchase offer to the bank was a half-dozen pages (one of which we signed and the rest we initialed), the title policy was maybe 10-20 pages total (but none that we had to sign), the closing statement and documents were about 15 pages, of which we signed seven.  The only large part was the supporting documentation for the title report, which was over 100 pages; but that was all copies of county and city documents and I certainly didn't read through it all.

Now that we own the land, we do have a bit of recurring expenses for it: taxes and utilities. Since it is bare property, the taxes are not too bad; about $1600 for the whole year (this will obviously go up a lot once we have a house on it).  For utilities, the city bills for storm drainage for all land, though the bills should be small since the land is undeveloped (0% impervious coverage).

I will admit that the financial and business transaction parts of this process are not my favorite.  I'm glad that this portion has been successfully resolved; and now we can focus on the more enjoyable design process for the next few months.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Bellevue 41st

We're moving to Bellevue! We decided to buy the last lot in YS Development's Bellevue 41st project.

Location

We can give a list of place descriptors, but unlike Seattle or Kirkland where geographic labels mean something to us, we do not really know what these labels entail. The good thing is that even you folks outside of Seattle will have only slightly less understanding of our description than we do.

The site is on Somerset Hill (this one makes sense; it's a geographic feature), near the Factoria Mall (but what is the Factoria area?), but also in the Newport area (the high school and library near-by are named after this), in the south part of Bellevue (the actual city). One thing we know is that people react much more positively when we say "we'll be living on Somerset Hill" than when we say "we'll be living in Factoria."


View Larger Map

Basically, the site is just south of I-90 (major east-west freeway that heads west into Seattle, and east out to the Cascade Mountains and Eastern Washington) and just east of I-405 (major north-south freeway that parallels I-5 on the east side of Lake Washington — this is the main corridor for the Eastside).

This area seems out-of-the-way to someone who lives up in Kirkland.  From there, we rarely have any reason to go south of I-90 unless we're going all the way to the airport, which is another 10 miles beyond Factoria.  Shopping, stores, and most other activities we frequent are either in Seattle or in the Kirkland-Redmond-Bellevue (downtown) area.  We don't go down to Factoria regularly (we've probably been down there less than a half-dozen times). We only pass by it as part of a longer trip south. That makes it seem far away.

But in driving distance, it isn't far.  If traffic on 405 is good, we can make it down there in about 15 minutes; taking the back roads is maybe 20-25 minutes.  Coming from Microsoft, downtown Bellevue, or even downtown Kirkland is less than that. The only awkward part to the location is commuting by bus between there and Kirkland; which is, unfortunately, what Erika does (however, we've already discussed alternative options for her, so we can hopefully find something reasonable).

Project and Site

The project consists of five custom homes; the others are in the range of 2300-2900 sq ft. and $800k-$900k in price.  We're going to be coming in a bit below that at closer to 2000 sq ft. and a bit over $700k (which was the high end of the Taltree project).  The houses are arranged with a short driveway down the middle and two houses on the upslope, three on the downslope.

The houses will probably all be oriented toward the west to take advantage of the views — a few trees close in on the lot, then across Lake Washington to some hills in the south part of Seattle.  The upper floors should be able to see some of the lake, too.  This development won't have the same major community features as Taltree, but there is already discussion of putting in some shared amenities near the end of the driveway.  This development is well along; as of several weeks ago, the first house was fully framed; the second had most of the foundation laid; the third was in design; and the fourth is close to being sold.  I'm guessing we'll start design on a similar schedule with the fourth house.

We are taking the fifth lot, which is closest to the (very quiet residential) road, but is at the western edge of the group (on a western slope, so there will be one house behind/upslope from us, but we shouldn't have anything besides trees blocking our view).  There is a trail that we are hoping the city will develop into real stairs that lead down to the Factoria Mall.  The trail goes right by what will be our backyard, and leaves a nice gap in the trees for the western view. We do have a view of the freeway, and there is some noise; but I found that as soon as you stopped paying attention it disappeared; inside it should be completely quiet.  There should also be enough flat space between the house and tree line to the west for a backyard, which will be below street level.

Design

What does this mean from a design perspective?  We're not as familiar with the lot yet (we'll be meeting with the architect soon for some preliminary layout); but a three-story house has been suggested to take advantage of the slope, with the lower floor being just one room; potentially a media room or guest room.  We're assuming that the entry and garage will be on the east side at the main floor, with the major social areas there; and private living spaces upstairs.

It will probably be mostly west and south oriented; since north is closest to the next house over, and east will be towards the driveway and another house.  West and south are more private, have good light, and have better views.  But we don't yet have a good idea of what the overall shape or layout of the building will be.  The backyard will be at the lowest level, which may be below the main social space, so we may have a larger deck off the main floor (one of the houses currently under construction has this setup).  Overall, though, we want the same functionality and general relationship between areas as we discussed for the Taltree project.  On the upside, now we will have a personal garage right next to our house, instead of a shared one in a different area of the site.

Personal Thoughts

In the end, how do we feel about this?  Well, it is a shame that the Taltree project wasn't coming together in our time frame.  While there is no hard limit in our current location (in fact, we've been quite happy here and could probably stay a lot longer), after more than nine months of waiting, we are very ready to finally have our project underway.  This has the best timeline and least uncertainty of all the options; and also gives us the best value — being part of a project that already has agreements with various manufacturers, we will get those same deals.

We are not familiar with the neighborhood down there, so that is a source of uncertainty.  We did a little bit of exploring, and there are ups and downs.  While it is considered very walkable (an 82/100 on WalkScore), that is pretty much all to the Factoria Mall.  This is not exactly the most pedestrian-friendly areas, but there is a good variety of businesses. Certainly more than Taltree which only had walking access to a (much smaller) strip mall. Being up on the hill is nice. It provides psychological separation from the mall even though it is only a short (though steep) walk away.

Jeff's commute will improve; he may not even need to drive to the near-by park and ride to catch a bus into downtown Seattle. If he ever ends up working on the Eastside, he'll be a short drive away.  Erika is not as happy, since the best bus is a route that takes about 50 minutes from Factoria Boulevard up to Google Kirkland.  On the other hand, she knows there are co-workers who live in that area which might make car-pooling an option; or if she is willing to drive, it will be fairly reasonable, even avoiding the freeway.  Certainly not as good as Taltree would be, though.

While the community will not be as extensive as it probably would be at Taltree, the existing members have formed a good community already, and it sounds like a nice group.  It is difficult to predict what will happen; but even at the other development, nothing is assured.

One disadvantage is that we'll have to change this blog name... (any suggestions?)

Overall, we're happy.  We've both decided it is the best decision; we are happy to be moving forward; and still happy to be working with YS Development.

Monday, September 6, 2010

Update: Site Changes

Apologies for the infrequency of recent posts; we haven't abandoned this blog, but not much has been happening until just recently.  First, a little catch-up for some proposed Taltree changes; and then some information about a choice we have to make now.

A few months ago, we got word that the garage plan for the Taltree site was changing.  The underground garage was deemed too expensive, and changing it to above-ground parking would allow for a change in unit mix.  There was little demand for the largest units, and more demand for the smallest units. A more cost-effective parking setup would the largest units could be eliminated in exchange for more small- and mid-sized units.  The exact details of the proposal kept changing; options included: parking directly attached to most units, parking mostly at the front of the lot with some attached parking along the south, and parking spread out (with a garage for us at the south-east corner, nearish our unit).  This change had some advantages, so we were fairly happy with it; but wanted to wait until the change was finalized before posting details.

However, a few weeks ago we started talking about some alternate options.  The Taltree project still has an indefinite timeline due to difficulties finding enough committed buyers for the project.  Talking with Yuval, we came up with a few options to consider: take the last lot at the Bellevue 41st project, reduce the community aspect of the Taltree site in such a way as to allow that project to happen in stages, or find a stand-alone lot elsewhere to buy and build on.

Bellevue 41st

The Bellevue 41st project is five lots, each with a single-family home with personal garage (no shared parking) down in south Bellevue (it is in Somerset Hill, right next to the Factoria Mall, but several hundred feet up).  The homes and lots (and therefore prices) are bigger than Taltree, and the location is further south than we would prefer; so we originally weren't considering it as a possibility.  However, this project was started earlier than Taltree, so is much further along; in fact, the first house is already framed, the second has a foundation laid; and the third is in design already.  If we decided on this, we could start design right away, and be ready to move in roughly 12-13 months later.  The trick is meeting our budget: we're aiming for $100k-200k less than the other homes in this development; however, we also want a smaller home.  If we can get the lot at a reasonable price, we could be a home there within our budget.

The main site is nice, up on a hill with some really great western views and trees around it.  The neighborhood is pretty nice, and has some of the best schools in the area.  The general location, however, is not ideal.  It is further from Kirkland, where Erika works, and further from where most of our friends live now.  However, it is quicker to get into Seattle, where I work, and driving the backroads between Kirkland/Redmond and Factoria does not take as long as it seems like it should; it's even faster if you take I-405 (as long as there isn't traffic).  There are more restaurants and stores within walking distance (even if they're all in strip malls or the main mall).  The community wouldn't be the same as at Taltree, as there is no group parking, and there is a (short) driveway between the houses.  However, the current members have already started to form a good community and are talking about adding some small shared amenities at the end of the driveway.

Taltree (phased)


Another option is to change the plan at the Taltree site. One proposal was to subdivide the land into several lots. One half-acre lot would have a smaller community of four houses; the other half-acre would be divided into two or three lots with a single home each.  The individual lots could start development before the community section, and they would be developed independently. Since the number of total units would be reduced, this change would would depend on getting a good deal for the land from the bank. However, it would allow parts of the project get started sooner and allow the builder to stage development. It would also make it easier to hit the threshold of the community section to start development on that.  For this option, we'd get our choice of lot and total time would be maybe 14-16 months.  On the downside, this setup would probably not have the same kind of community as the original Taltree proposal. Plus, since we would be in the first phase of building with others at indeterminate times, we might be living right next to other construction for a while.

Compared to Bellevue, this location continues to have the same advantages it did before: it is close to friends, it is a good commute for Erika, and, although it is not quite as walkable as the Bellevue location, it is still a pretty walkable location.

Separate Lot


The final option is to find a separate lot in a different neighborhood, and build a single house there.  This would require more work to find the lot, and get it ready to build. The timeline would be more like 18 months.  Since this would have no community at all, the main advantages would be finding the best location (preferably within walking distance of Houghton, where Erika works; and/or downtown Kirkland; both locations would put me within walking distance of the main bus that would take me to downtown Seattle for my work), and maybe a slightly larger lot for more gardening/play space (since we won't have shared spaces for these things).  Unfortunately, it looks like all the lots that even meet the location criteria are going to be more expensive than we like, and would probably push our overall cost up by around $100k.  Between the cost, longer timeline, and difficulty of finding/developing a new lot, this option is the least-feasible right now.

So...

We have not made a final decision yet, but we will soon.  In the next few weeks, we will find out if we can successfully get a good-enough deal on the land at either Taltree or Bellevue 41st to make those options possible.  At that point, we will need to make a decision (or have already decided), since there are other potential buyers interested, too.  Once we've decided, then actual development can start relative to the time frames listed above.  By the end of the month, we should know where we'll be living!

Monday, April 12, 2010

Introduction

We are involved in a custom-designed, green-built community called TalTree ecoVillage by YS Development. It will be nine houses on a one-acre lot, with shared community house and underground parking for residents. Each house will be custom-designed and built to the specifications of the owner; and the whole community will be focused on green-built techniques and technologies. There will be efforts to preserve a good number of the existing trees, especially significant trees or important groups. Each house will be a single-family unit, ranging in size from roughly 1600 to 2400 square feet. It is located in Redmond, on the border with Kirkland. More details can be seen at the official site, linked above. We have unit number 4, which is at the bottom of the U, as seen here (PDF).

Currently we have put down a bit of earnest money and have an initial unit reserved. The general process is that once we have quorum on reserved units (at least half), we can start the official design for both individual units and shared features (general landscaping in the center, community house, and parking garage). That process will probably take several months; once it is completed, we will have a contract with a fixed price and complete design and feature list. Once we sign that, we'll be committed and work on financing the full price. Then the designs will go in for permitting and city approval, which will take several months, or more. Once those are approved, construction on our new home will start. Right now the goal is summer of 2011 to move in.

This blog will be about our process of design and building. We've already spent time talking through initial ideas and seen the site; we'll try to summarize some of those things in more detail soon. Now that we're getting close to starting the official design process, we'll be posting more detailed information on how our design is coming along, but also inspiration from other things we've seen or read, and ideas we might like to see, such as thoughts on particular parts of our house or garage, and what we're aiming for. So expect to see posts with links to pictures, more analytical thoughts on what we want for ourselves, and general status updates on how things are going. Once design is finished, this will be mostly status updates -- pictures and descriptions of how the infrastructure and community features are going, and then pictures of our house (and possibly the other units). We'll try to find as much time in our busy schedule as we can to provide a record for others, and for ourselves of this project.