Week 14

The reproducible design arrived - 14 sheets. The original architect is Jim Zirkel, Principal with Home Design Services, Inc in Florida. They have many high-end designs, and their stock plans service is fairly extensive. I looked up our design, HDS-2731, and found a photo of the home built from the design. It helps to see a finished design; it looks great and gives us some ideas on what we'll do.

After reviewing the reproducible design we've decided that it is very close to what we really want - more so than some of the changes we had instituted. So, the two revisions we had the architect do now have to be redone slightly. Basically, we like the Master Bath of the original, so we're putting it back. The original kitchen is much better than what we came up with, so we're essentially going back to it with the exception of a few of the changes we had come up with. You can see the list of changes that we have asked our architect to do here. Once we have the new, revised, floor plans available electronically (AutoCAD) I will post them. Hopefully, the architect will get this next revision (R3) out within next couple of weeks so that we can move on to the exterior elevations. I wish we would have of bought the reproducible design from the outset - it would have saved much time and I think we'd be further along. Although, I will admit that going through the two revisions we did was beneficial because it made us really think about the design elements that were important to us - maybe we would not have done some of the changes we're keeping, like moving the front and back walls out 3 feet, had we not worked through the design exercise.

I don't think we'll have the house design fully finished by end of year now - in fact I'm sure of it. I suspect this moves out our ground-breaking date of March 1st; should know more in the weeks ahead.

I meet with the UBuildIt project manager on Tuesday this coming week. I will give him a set of the reproducibles so that we can get started on the project cost estimate - which is called Opinion of Probable Cost (OPC). I'd say the reproducible design represents about 60% of the house design, but some major elements need to be generated, such as the Foundation Plan, and the Roofing Plan before real costs can be locked down.

I found an important omission on the septic design - I had failed to tell the septic designer that the barn is to be plumbed - it's at least one of the five bedrooms in the design - so he drew a septic line coming from the barn and tying into the septic system where the house system exits the structure. It was simple change, but had it not been caught at this stage would have resulted in a major revision (and slow down) once the septic approval process starts - which will be sent to county around Nov 26th. Glad I took the time (a couple weeks) to carefully review the design!

I got another, hopefully final, quote from HH Windows and Doors for the Fold & Slide Pool Room doors. I decided that rough openings of 180" W x 95.5" H left and right of the center post would be used. This reduced the design from 6 panels to 5 panels; reducing price by about $3K, so the cost for both doors now is about $20K. This is closer to budget.

No word from the pool concrete guy (Swanson Brothers Concrete) this past week. I left vmail, but no call back yet. I hope they turn out to be reliable because their work quality appears good.