Adding A Deck To The House

Adding a deck to our house was an easy decision to make. It's a quick way to add extra space, and it's really nice to be able to just walk out there to grill or eat dinner. Kids like being able to run out on the deck while mom or dad is in the kitchen or whatever. We don't need to go into detail why you might want a deck. I just want to make a quick post about our deck since I'm going to be out of town for a while and I'm not sure if I'll be able to write anything else for a while.

We looked at lots of options when getting ready to build our deck. Did we want wood, synthetic, or something in between? Did we want stairs down to our back yard? Where should we buy the material? These are just the big ones. Of course, when you decide on any of them, there are all sorts of sub-decisions to make.

Ultimately, we decided to go with Trex decking, because we really wanted it to be maintenance free. Even though we like to do things on our own, we're pretty lazy when it comes to upkeep or prevention.

We also decided not to put stairs on the deck. Much of this decision was actually because of our inability to make a decision about how we wanted our stairs to be. We considered a conventional stairway, a two-tier stairway, one that wrapped around the side of the house, etc. Well, we finally decided that we could put stairs on later if we really thought we needed them. It turns out, though, that I really think we made the right decision. Pets and kids can be let out by themselves on the deck without worrying that they might fall or run away. It's rather convenient, and it saved lots of time and money.

So, we had our design down. Yeah, it was real interesting, a rectangle. We had to decide where to buy the material. We wanted to go with a local lumber company, but it turned out that Home Depot was cheaper for a lot of it. Ultimately, we split the purchase and got some from the local guy and the rest from Home Depot.

My parents helped us build it. You can see my dad working in the above photograph. Our neighbor even pitched in for a while. It was actually a rather fun project. A deck really goes up quickly. It's not like finishing a basement (which we'll get to some other day). With the maintenance-free decking, you just put up the deck structure and then put the Trex decking on it. It's all cutting and nailing/screwing. There's no taping, carpeting, painting, filling, etc. to deal with. You just put it up and it's functional.

I don't know what else to say for now. Please let me know if you have any questions about adding a deck.

Land to Buy

Well, one of the first things that you have to do in the how to build house process is to find some land to buy and acquire it. It helps if you have a rich uncle to bequeath you some, but it doesn't work out that way for most of us. We did, however, get some help from my (Tonya's) family during our search process. I'll get to that in a bit.

We have pretty much always known that we were going to go back to my hometown and buy some land. I always wanted a plot of land similar to what my parents own, out in the hills, surrounded by trees, and where you can't see your neighbor. When we decided that the time was right, that is what we began to search for. I began to look on the internet first to see what you could get and how much it might cost. We had a budget in mind and a desired acreage. I wanted at least five acres, but wanted to live less that 20 minutes from the city. We have three young children, and I don't want to live too far from a decent grocery store or hockey practice. Of course schools are a consideration with kids, also.

In my hometown, there are about seven directions that you can go out of town to get to undeveloped acreages of land to buy. I'm not sure if Ed has mentioned yet that I am a bit picky, but there were only five directions that I was willing to look into, and only two that I really wanted and one didn't have any good building land for sale. So, we focused on this "sweet spot." We ended up looking at properties in three of the other directions, but they were all eliminated for various reasons: too dry, too exposed to harsh weather, not enough bang for the buck, or too far away from free babysitting (read parents).

Buying land, a car, a house, or anything major is all about being patient. I write this, but am definitely not great at staying patient through the process. That's my husband's job.

I searched internet listings through various realtor and MLS websites. I also found listings on eBay and Craigslist. Our biggest obstacle was that we didn't, and still don't, live in the town we were searching. It was hard, because we couldn't just drive to see a site if something caught my eye.

Finally, when we thought that we had found a property worth driving the better part of a day to see, we contacted a realtor. After I mentioned all that about patience, it's a bit funny, because I only looked for about two weeks when I found what I wanted.

My parents live in the town, so I gave them the job of scouting out the property and giving me their first impressions. My mom fell in love immediately. It is on a canyon and I think that she was ready to move there the next day. Of course, she was probably imagining her grandchildren living nearby, and I'm sure that influenced her opinion.

My dad is a bit more practical. He saw potential, but also noticed drawbacks. The land was less acreage than we had wanted. It was only 3.81 acres, and we were looking for 5-10 acres. Probably two thirds of those acres were part of the canyon, which means that they weren't usable for building on. Also, it happened to be one of the smallest lots in the neighborhood, so we wouldn't be very far from our neighbors.

Another small drawback was that the land was a mess. A few blizzards combined with many years of neglect left a lot of downed trees to be removed. Of course, when you're buying something, a minus like this is actually a plus. Since my family is pretty good with chainsaws and stacking wood, we were able to get a bit of a gem that happened to be hidden under a pile of junk. I'll post about all that some other time.

My parents took lots of pictures and extensively discussed the land with us over the phone. Because we couldn't leave town immediately, we actually made an offer on the land without seeing it. The offer was about 20% less that the asking price, was contingent upon us liking it when we saw, and had a contingency for it passing a land survey. It all seems pretty crazy to me now as I retell it.

At the same time we bid, someone else also made an offer on it, so our first offer was rejected. We didn't really want to get into a bidding war for a piece of land that we had never seen, so we increased our offer by only 5% to keep it in play. To our surprise, it was accepted with the contingencies still in place! We drove out the following weekend to look at the land as well as properties in a few other areas nearby. It was by far the best property we saw, and we thought it could be really stunning when cleaned up.

So, now we own what we think is a great piece of land. You always wonder if you got a good deal when you are making a purchase like this. There weren't any similar properties to compare it to, so it's really tough to tell if it was priced right.

Since buying our land, there have been a couple of things that have made us feel good about our decision. The first one is that on the day that we closed on our land, we were offered 125% of our purchase price. We declined the offer, and they then offered 155% of our purchase price just days later. We also turned that down. We didn't think that we could find a better replacement, even with the extra income from the sale. Whether or not we made the right decision business wise is debatable, but we felt like we got a good deal on the purchase.

The other big thing that we feel good about the timing of our purchase. I think that, had we invested money in the stock market instead of buying land, we wouldn't have the funds to make a purchase now! It seems to have worked out thus far.

Well, I think that's it for now. I hope you enjoyed this story of our site selection for project how to build house and how we found land to buy.

Installing Edging

We've been using this Edge Hound tool a lot this past couple weeks. Tonya decided that our front yard needs to have mulch around our trees and house, instead of granite rocks. Not only that, but the rest of the yard needs edging surrounding the entire house.

Years ago, we installed edging in front of the house. There was a perennial garden with some "Peegee" hydrangeas lining the face of the house. Our large "Autumn Blaze" maple tree had edging with rock and hastas around it. Another tree had rock but no edging (which turned into rocky grass), and our electric box had "Pink Diamond" hydrangeas, pink phlox and rock to pretty it up.

All those rocks are being transplanted to the back and side of the house where they will fill around new shrubs, hastas and such. Then, we will replace the transplanted rock with mulch, so that we'll end up with mulch in the front and a combination of rock and mulch lining the house on the sides and back. The pictures that you see represent the current unfinished state of the project.

This all means that we've spent a lot of time pushing that Edge Hound into the grass and peeling up sod. Once the sod was removed, we installed new edging that connects to the previous edging. Then, Tonya planted perennials all around, thanks to a generous donation from her aunt and uncle. Much of the rock still needs to be moved, after which we'll add the mulch.

It's been a bit tiring lately, but I think it looks much nicer. It will also make for better mowing because we can get the mower up around the edging easier than we could just against the house.

At some point, we will install edging and mulch around our young fruit trees in the back. For now, I think we're ready for a vacation. For now, I've done enough work installing edging.

How To Build House, The Backstory

I want to give you the how to build house backstory. I'll give you an overview of our past situations and projects here. Then, in some future articles, I can go into detail about any of them. If you're interested in anything in particular, please let us know.

When Tonya and I got married, I was living in an apartment, so she moved in with me. It was a small one-bedroom space that was too cramped for us. The walls were thin, and our bedroom shared a wall with the creepy neighbor that liked to watch adult movies too loud. I had lived there for long enough, and we didn't last there very long once we married. One of my friends was looking for a place, so our apartment ended up going to him when we left.

We decided to get a townhouse, because they were cheaper and didn't really have any upkeep. That lasted us almost two and a half years. Being a townhouse, there wasn't much to do on our own (which is one of the reasons we wanted it), so there isn't much interesting to discuss there. I think the only "improvement" we did there was to build a shelf in the garage. I think we had to fix the garage door spring one time, too. Other than that, all we did is fill up the space until our 1200 feet seemed too small.

The search for a "real" house began, and we looked at a bunch nearby. We hadn't considered building a house (here meaning having a house built for us) until one day we stopped by a new development a couple of suburbs out. We found that we could get a new home for about the same cost as an older home near our townhouse. That combined with the fact that our townhouse was selling for considerably more than we paid for it brought us to the decision to buy a new house a bit further out of the city (which we weren't exactly close to anyway).

The transition wasn't exactly the most smooth, but the "building" process was exciting and interesting. I mention the transition, because there was about a five month gap between selling our townhome and moving into the new construction. We lived at my (Ed's) parents house. Looking back, it was a bit funny, because they moved into their basement and gave us their bedroom. Of course, by "a bit funny" I mean very nice of them. They were also building their own home and doing some traveling at the time, so it worked out. The main issue was the 1-hour commute (each way) from their place to work, and that is when traffic was good.

During this time, we got to go to the Centex design center to make choices about our new house. If you haven't done this before, you can probably imagine how it goes. You drive into a new development, and you see something like "Houses From The Low $200s." That price is for the cheapest cookie-cutter house with no upgrades. Once you decide which lot you want (which may have a premium associated with it, like ours did) and which cookie cutter floorplan you want (again, potential premium), then you can go hang out at the design center. You could say that this is where our how to build house journey really began.

The design center is like a tiny Home Depot or something like that. There's a place that you can look at different carpet, linoleum, and wood floor choices. There are some mock kitchens and such where you can see countertops, appliances, sinks, etc. Then you can discuss which options cost extra and which are included. Here's a good rule of thumb to use when you're looking around the design center. If you like it, it costs extra. If it's kinda ugly and junky, it's included.

This is also where you meet with Centex people to discuss your house design. They will offer help with all kinds of different things. Again, anything extra and out of the norm costs extra, but I have to say that I didn't find them pushy. If you wanted some cheap included item, that seemed fine with them. I'm not sure if most people know this, but they will also let you choose to remove items and you get a credit for doing so. For example, we didn't want a garage door opener, so we got a credit for not having one installed. Then I just bought one and installed it myself. I think I saved about $100 on that deal. We did the same with some of our appliances.

One upgrade that we wish they would have helped us with a bit more was the heating and AC. They mentioned that we could install a dual-zone system, but they never really explained why we would want such a thing. When you're being bombarded with costly upgrades, you start to assume that everything is a bit of a scam. Well, I don't know how much that particular upgrade cost, but, after living here for a while, we understand why it would be nice to have different zones for the bedrooms and living spaces.

We moved in to the new house right in the middle of 2002, and it's still our home. You can see a picture of the kitchen taken on 6/11/02. We've done numerous projects here. We repainted the entire living space. We hung all our own window dressings (some of which we actually made ourselves). We put storage shelving in the garage. We finished the basement. We planted trees and landscaped in the yard. I will go into more detail about many of these things in my upcoming posts.

Part of my motivation to do this "how to build house" thing is because I feel that we have not properly documented our projects in the past. I have pictures here and there, but I don't feel like I have any good record of the things we've done. I am going to try to dig some of the pictures that I have, but I know there isn't much. For example, the basement finishing was a large project, and I probably have less than 10 good photos of it. I'd like our new home building project to be be better documented.

I'm working on getting Tonya to start posting. I told her that her first assignment is to discuss the land purchasing effort of how to build house. She was heavily involved with that, so I think she'll do a good job of filling you in.

Stay tuned for more how to build house.

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How To Build House

Welcome to How To Build House. I know what you're thinking, we forgot an 'A' in our title. Yeah, even Tonya, my wife, is bothered by the title. She thinks it should be how to build a house, but that was already registered. How about we say that the home that we are building is currently named "house" somewhat like when people are pregnant they call their unborn child "baby." I'm pretty sure that we know how to make baby, but we're still learning when it comes to how to build house. From now on if we seem to use improper grammar, just assume that there's some technical reason and it's not because we're idiots, because I'm going to use phrases like "how to build house" and "how to build a house" interchangeably. What I'm saying is that we might be idiots, but please don't assume that we are. With that out of the way, let's get to why we're here.

We are going to build our own house, and we would like to have you join us on this adventure. You may be asking yourself, "Why would I want to learn how to build house from someone that isn't a professional home builder?" Well, we think that's precisely why you will be interested in learning how to build a house with us. I assume you want to build your own home (or at least learn to do some part of the overall process), and so do we. Also, probably like you, we have yet to build a house for ourselves. We will end up going through many of the same steps and learning many of the same things that you will need to know to build your own home. If we can do it, you can do it.

By the way, who are we, and why do we think that we can figure out how to build house on our own? Well, let's get one thing straight first. We don't plan to do this on our own. We have already received help, and we plan to employ plenty of help along the way. This may be in the form of relatives helping with certain tasks, or it may be in the form of hiring contractors to do certain jobs. For example, if we decide to have a contractor come in and do the mudding and taping, then we plan to explain the decision making process that went into such a decision. To me, this is no different than weighing the pros and cons of installing a drywall ceiling or a drop ceiling. My hope is that you will appreciate learning about the choices that get factored in to such decisions and use our experiences to help you make decisions about how to build your house.

So, let's get back to who we are and what sort of help and expertise we have at our disposal. I'm Ed, and my wife is Tonya (pronounced Tone-Yuh). We will both be posting articles to this site. Each of our parents have built their own house at some point in their lives. I think this is part of what makes us feel like we can learn how to build house.

My parents own land that was bought by my grandmother, which, on its own, is an interesting tale that I may post about some other time. My grandmother figured out how to build house (which for my grandparents was actually a cabin). When my parents became empty nesters, they decided to build their own home on what used to be my grandparent's cabin property. I can't say that I helped a lot during their own homebuilding process. I was around at times, though. I helped erect a large garage, and I did learn some valuable lessons about how to build a house. Maybe in future articles, I can get one of my parents to discuss some of their experiences.

I feel like Tonya's dad must have always known how to build house. My dad and I are probably the sort of guys that you might be surprised to learn could do handyman and owner builder types of things. Tonya's dad is one of those guys that you just expect to have built his own home, done all his own plumbing, excavated his own building site, etc. When Tonya was rather young, he built her childhood home. Around the time when I was getting up the nerve to ask him if I could marry his daughter, he was selling the house he built and moving his family into his father's house. Now, he can usually be found doing some sort of remodeling on their current property. I'll try to get Tonya to discuss some of these home building and remodeling experiences in greater detail.

Tonya and I have done work on our current house. With the help of friends and family, we finished the basement of our current home. This was somewhat of a drawn-out process, but we were in no hurry. We now have a guest bedroom, an extra bathroom, an office, and a large living area in the basement. We did almost the entire basement on our own, but I'll save those stories for another time.

The most important thing, to me, is that I have our family as a resource, not unlike how you now have me as a resource. In fact, I would love to get them to post here, but they're not internet geeks like I am, so that might be difficult. Maybe I can come up with a way to trick them into telling us about their experiences like asking them some questions via email and posting a Q 'n' A session here.

So, that's it. I feel like what we're qualified to do is to share our experiences and document the process of learning how to build house. We're not a experts in the field of how to build your own home, and we probably never will be. What we hope is that we can be peers that share a common experience, and hopefully we can help empower you to build your own home, finish a basement, or be your own general contractor. As peers, we also hope that you would share your experiences with us. As the website builds, we will come up with better ways to connect. For now, I suggest leaving comments on our blog posts.

Right now, it's early in our how to build house process. In future posts, we will bring you up to date on where we are and what we've already done. We will also discuss previous projects and the decisions that went into them. We hope you will enjoy taking part in our journey.

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