Building the White House

Designing and building an environmentally-sustainable home.

Builder Meetings

Posted on | December 9, 2008 |

So this week, we’re finally going to start meeting with builders to find out the cost of actually building the house. I met with Monica last week to get working copies of the building plans. We’re very excited to see where this leads us. I think it may actually be a very good time to consider building a house. Construction and material costs seem to be falling as do interest rates. This should all be countered by the falling value of our home when we go to sell it, but we might still come out on top.

We’ve taken the drawings to a level that will hopefully allow us to get a quote within +/- 10% of the actual building cost. I’m meeting with Black Diamond Builders tomorrow, and plan to meet with at least two or three others as well. The goal here is to get the builders to quote the house as-drawn, so that we’re comparing apples with apples when looking at their pricing. We’ll also ask them to make suggestions but to indicate these ideas outside of the scope of the quote.

Now for a little peek at a siding option and window placement we’re considering. Monica created this little flyover so we could see how the house might look with a siding option and a bit more asymmetry in the window placement, something we felt was missing. What do you think?

Category: Design, Planning
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Comments

3 Responses to “Builder Meetings”

  1. Daniel
    December 9th, 2008 @ 1:52 pm

    I love the style of the house, but what do you do to prevent snow and ice buildup on the shallow or flat roof?

  2. Jeff White
    December 9th, 2008 @ 1:56 pm

    The pitch of the roof is designed to be deep enough to allow for run off. Also, this is planned as a very high efficiency roof with steel and very solid waterproofing materials (especially where the second tower at the back pokes up through the roof). the side area of the deck may be a concern, and we’ll discuss that with her.

  3. Oliver
    December 16th, 2008 @ 10:17 pm

    I love the way it is coming together as well; particularly the covered walkways and the break up of colours. The asymmetric window placement is working nicely as well. Although, the top left window seems like it could be a bit more impressive, similar to what’s happening on the top right :)

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