Boo Boo and I sold our house!

[Donziweasel]

Well, I guess it is official. We sold our house today after a whole 3 days on the market, and a full price offer to boot! Without Alltrans, Inc. selling yet, we had to to finance the Lazy P ranch (I wanted to call it the Rockin P, but Boo Boo said I was more lazy then rockin:)). I guess we will be renting somewhere for the summer. Anyway, we met with the log home company (Yellowstone Log Homes) and are finallizing a design for the main house, guest cabin and shop. Need to pick a contractor, get permits, etc....

One thing I am finding out is that although Boo Boo and I never fight, we have been butting heads over this project. I would love to here stories of any other couples who built thier own homes. Did you fight at all? How did you handle it? Any tips on dealing with contracters, building companies, etc... would be great. Never done this before and it is already stressful. I know the end result will be worth it, but I have a feeling it is going to be a tough 10 months. It just seems that once you get some part of the process out of the way, 10 more things you need to do seem to pop up.

[MOP]

Shame a man of your obvious intelligence and cunning have not yet learned the most important words in life!


Yes Dear!

[BUIZILLA]

my advice....

you handle the Bronco, guest house, and shop, let her handle the main house, that way if you don't like the finished product you have a place to sleep, a garage, and a car you get to work on that you DID have control over...

[DonziFreak]

my advice....
you handle the Bronco, guest house, and shop, let her handle the main house, that way if you don't like the finished product you have a place to sleep, a garage, and a car you get to work on that you DID have control over...


Haha! Thats good advice!

[Donzigo]

Godd advice from Buizilla. I say let het handle whatever she feels like doing. Otherwise, you will fight over every grain of sand and end the end, it will be a house you will both hate because of all the bad memories. Most of the stuff you will fight about, you won't be able remember what they were or give a damn about a year after you finish the project.

I've been down this road a time or two.

[Donziweasel]

I like your logic Jim. I am quickly beginning to realize me place in this project. Agree with everything she likes and write checks......

[CHACHI]

Shame a man of your obvious intelligence and cunning have not yet learned the most important words in life!
Yes Dear!
Phil, you took the words right out of my mouth!

I am positive that Tim Morris can give some advice on how to handle this milestone in your lives, we just need him to chime in.

Have fun and if you are building a log cabin make sure you know exactly where you want yhe outlets and switches.

Ken

[CHACHI]

Shame a man of your obvious intelligence and cunning have not yet learned the most important words in life!
Yes Dear!
Phil, you took the words right out of my mouth!

I am positive that Tim Morris can give some advice on how to handle this milestone in your lives, we just need him to chime in.

Have fun and if you are building a log cabin make sure you know exactly where you want the outlets and switches.

Ken

[Formula Jr]

With out even seeing your design:

Add 100 square feet to the kitchen.
Add 200 square feet for more closet space.

Make the bathrooms at least 50 square feet larger than what you have designed. And make the master bath have two sinks.

Entries all need mud rooms. Make all the interior doors two inches larger than normal. Or what ever the ADA standard is these days for wheel chairs. It don't cost that much more.

Weather Proof Cover all your entries. Its more important than just an arrival zone.


A shower is a shower head, some controls and a drain. No matter what your wife says. Its a shower head, some controls, and a drain.

These might be my last words on earth. As I'm in bed as an old man dying, I will call over a nurse and whisper.... "A shower is a, shower head, some controls , and a drain." She will not have any idea what I'm talking about. But it will feel good to say it one last time...

Make everything in the house electric except the gas fired accent fireplace.

Set aside 18K for the PV solar net metering system.
You will need to design two garages, or more accurately, garage spaces.
One will fill up with junk. The other you park your cars in. Design the garage to fit a 22 donzi on its trailer with at least two feet to walk around.

Be your own general contractor. And sub anything you are not familiar with.
This is the hand/ fingers system. You can cut off any of the fingers you want if that sub is messing up. And at least one or two will. But you are still the hand. If you go with a general contractor and have a problem with him/her then you lose all your subs and your arm. I fired the first two generals before they had the chance to make me dependent on their subs.
That turned out to be a good decision as both these contractors later got into legal problems with their clients.

And then acted as my own general contractor.

up your home owner's liability to twice what ever it is now. Some of your subs may not be bonded, and mostly hiring people with out health insur. You can back that down to what ever the bank says you can later.

buy moen stuff. They don't mess around when it comes to warranties.

Buy one companie's set of locks. And have only one key open everything.

Your wife will have one thing that she really, really wants which will be insane and will not fit into any overall design theme. Give in early, or get a divorce.

[chappy]

A shower is a shower head, some controls and a drain. No matter what your wife says. Its a shower head, some controls, and a drain.

That is funny.

[gcarter]

With out even seeing your design:
Add 100 square feet to the kitchen.
Add 200 square feet for more closet space.
Make the bathrooms at least 50 square feet larger than what you have designed. And make the master bath have two sinks.
Entries all need mud rooms. Make all the interior doors two inches larger than normal. Or what ever the ADA standard is these days for wheel chairs. It don't cost that much more.
Weather Proof Cover all your entries. Its more important than just an arrival zone.
A shower is a shower head, some controls and a drain. No matter what your wife says. Its a shower head, some controls, and a drain.
These might be my last words on earth. As I'm in bed as an old man dying, I will call over a nurse and whisper.... "A shower is a, shower head, some controls , and a drain." She will not have any idea what I'm talking about. But it will feel good to say it one last time...
Make everything in the house electric except the gas fired accent fireplace.
Set aside 18K for the PV solar net metering system.
You will need to design two garages, or more accurately, garage spaces.
One will fill up with junk. The other you park your cars in. Design the garage to fit a 22 donzi on its trailer with at least two feet to walk around.
Be your own general contractor. And sub anything you are not familiar with.
This is the hand/ fingers system. You can cut off any of the fingers you want if that sub is messing up. And at least one or two will. But you are still the hand. If you go with a general contractor and have a problem with him/her then you lose all your subs and your arm. I fired the first two generals before they had the chance to make me dependent on their subs.
That turned out to be a good decision as both these contractors later got into legal problems with their clients.
And then acted as my own general contractor.
up your home owner's liability to twice what ever it is now. Some of your subs may not be bonded, and mostly hiring people with out health insur. You can back that down to what ever the bank says you can later.
buy moen stuff. They don't mess around when it comes to warranties.
Buy one companie's set of locks. And have only one key open everything.
Your wife will have one thing that she really, really wants which will be insane and will not fit into any overall design theme. Give in early, or get a divorce.
I don't understand all this "mud room, and weatherproffing"......what in the world is it all for?????:confused::confused::nilly:
It was 84* here today for crying out loud!!!!!:yes::yes::yes:
It's supposed to rain tonight, but I'm not gonna need no freakin' mudroom!:wink:
And weatherproofing an entranceway??????
What's that for???? keeping in the air conditioning?????
A house is a six car garage w/oversized doors, 12' cielings, a paint booth, wood working working area, and machine shop w/living quarters attached!!!!!

Nothing more!

That's all that's needed!

Tell her to lump it!:):yes:

Of course all this could fit inside a large log house.

Tell her she can have the second floor.:angel:

[BUIZILLA]

DW, ya know my brother lives just a couple minutes from you, he built his own log house, hangar, and guest house.... I know he has built for others as well, see if you can find him, he's at the SE end of Ponderosa Circle across from the south end of the runway, just watch out for the wicked witch of the west... :wink:

[yeller]

Your wife will have one thing that she really, really wants which will be insane and will not fit into any overall design theme. Give in early, or get a divorce.LOL! That's exactly what I did when we were building.....but....I made it a condition that after that, we stuck to the budget no matter what. Worked great. We were less than $3k over budget when done...which is unheard of. Well, ok, maybe not unheard of, but it is uncommon.

[boxy]

DW, Owen's post makes good sense. I was the GC on the house we are in now, and it was a great experience, if you have the time to commit to it. I was here at 5:30 AM every morning to clean up before the subs arrived, stayed till about 8:30 AM to make sure everyone who was supposed to be here showed up, headed to work, tried to get back to the house by 4:30 PM to clean up the mess that each sub left.
My wife picked out most of the interior stuff, but I had already set a budget with the suppliers she was going to see.
It was a fairly stressful time, (we were also living with her parents at the time) but I wouldn't trade it for anything.
Owen's right about the mudrooms, I must have looked at my plans hundreds of times, and somehow way undersized the entry from the Garage. Oh well it's an easy fix, all we have to do is build a 3rd bay on the Garage, and use half of the first bay for a mudroom......

Have fun, life is supposed to be an adventure, and living in something you helped build is a pretty cool feeling.

Oh yeah....... and sometimes a shower is more than a just a shower ....... :D :D

[BigGrizzly]

John, we built our dream house here on Lanier a couple of years ago. The whole thing was about a kitchen and GARAGE/SHOP! The interior is simple and made for us not for resale. I had a great contractor, saved me a bunch of dollars, with good ideas. He talked me into finishing the Garage/Shop, ie boat garage opposed to car garage. He new I would procrastinate on finishing it, same with the bottom level, basement. Yes dear didn't work for me she kept wanting an opinion. I would throw thing out and she would win the discussion. I kept enlarging the kitchen, her idea was too small anyway. It worked so well that when I said I didn't think I could afford the car lift, she argued me into it. Life is good. There is always things you would change next time. Just keep them to minor items. She talks about closet space. Heck our bedroom closet is 8X12. Bigger than our other house. Now the our close need to breathe, what ever that is. It always seems that everything is spread out more now. We now have a 800 sq,ft bead room with a 20 drawer built in dresser. Each drawer is 24X24, this I built, now her undies can breathe! My draw space is the same as the other house her's has doubled. Such is life i.

[Donziweasel]

Thanks for all the advice eveyone. I can honestly say in Wyoming you do need a mud room, especially during our mud season of April and May. The most miserable time of year out here.

Boo Boo and I went over plans all weekend and no real squabbles. She kinda apologized for being "overbearing" about the project. I will update more tommorrow as I meet with Teton County about the ranch.