Our house isn't farmhouse though, but yes in the burbs the farmhouse style is extremely popular. We are in the city, will be similar to this when done:
Our construction manager and design specialists asked us to confirm our cabinets early for that reason. We were pushed on finalizing brick color, cabinets, window colors (and options that would affect window count) and appliances as quickly as possible so they wouldn't delay the process. What I've learned is a lot of these things don't come down to the builder, they come down to the individuals responsible for your particular build.
yea I mean we picked out cabinets in May of last year, there is no reason they should be causing a delay
We even upgraded ours to dovetail drawers, double roll trays in all base cabinets, and soft close at the last minute and got them on time. I'm assuming someone didn't hit the button on ordering yours. We're going through that with our video doorbell. We got a POE video doorbell that is flush mounted with the brick and they installed the wrong color. Our dopey sales guy with the data/home entertainment company didn't plug the color in right, and we let him know the day they installed it that it was wrong. He rarely answers my attempts to contact him and just told me the doorbell would be another week or two, 2 weeks after I pointed out the problem. This guy just ordered it, I guarantee you.
The best advice I used to give people when I built homes was (with permission) walk through other homes under construction at various phases to “borrow” ideas those customers have. Things like extra storage locations, wiring ideas, kitchen layout changes, all kinds of ideas can be found just looking at what others are doing.
Oh yeah, and on that note, go through the model (if there is one of your floorplan) and take a look at how they laid it out. We stole our entire living room design off of the last model, and we got a lot of good ideas from our new home model, including good places for mirrors to make it feel even bigger, as well as painting some ceilings a different color to add a lot of character to the room. It seems like a weird concept until you see it pulled off correctly and it looks good.
Hey guys. Had a small fire in the sub floor under my fireplace the day after Christmas. Fire department comes and knocks everything out and it’s pretty apparent it wasn’t up to code. Insurance has sent out adjuster, inspector, attorney, and I’ve had a contractor come look. Just got off the phone with adjuster and they’ve decided they can’t sue anyone and have approved contractor to proceed with repairs. I ask him if he knows from the plan if fireplace floor will be 4 inches this time (code) and his reply begins with “well speaking of code, your existing foundation can’t have fireplaces and chimneys on it anymore yada yada yada” Thirty fucking thousand dollars in repairs. Basically foundation work, brand new fire place, chimney, everything. I am not sure if my insurance company is going to raise my premium or murder me.
Some demo started on our fireplace trim today because we are refacing it. The contractor team decides not to plastic wall it off first and does not even cover the return vents in that room. I start breathing concrete dust from the demo a floor up and the other side of the house. Almost lost my shit on them on the first day of work. They went and got plastic (forgot it today) and then it was a lot better. But my wife and I have both had serious fatigue this evening and I wonder if it’s from breathing that shit in. We also have a 9 month old and a 3.5 year old. Not ideal, Bob.
Make sure you change your filter out. Especially if you have the fancy allergenic type that pick up extremely fine materials.
You know what, i now feel much better about just having the replace our fireplace and extend our chimney 6 more feet which we have scheduled to take place next weds. Going to be able to have a make a fire this time next week.
So my water bill is pretty high and I even have my water off for irrigation. I'm guessing I have a leak somewhere. Anyone have an idea what I need to do to find it? This seems like it's gonna suck.
Good news, I'm an idiot. While I do have a soemthing going in this bill actually included my irrigation after talking to the water company. It looks like a do have a toilet that sometimes keeps running, careless SiL who left the shower running at a drip during Christmas, bit no major issues should could see. Crisis adverted
is there a downside to having seller pay say 10k to closing costs as a buyer like I get that if a house sells for 500k, or if it sells for 500k and they pay 10k towards closing they net 490k which is better as the buyer, but is there any downside I'm missing? I understand the appraisal needs to hit the price, which I don't see as a problem in this scenario so not a risk
Im a novice but if you as the buyer can get the seller to pay the closing costs then that’s a win for you.
this is where I'm at, also never bought anything before, our mortgage guy also advocates for it just to dodge more upfront costs while keeping the sale price higher which helps resale down the road just seems like a no-brainer but you know, if its too good to be true it probably is scenario
We paid closing costs but we were also trying to make our offer look more appealing to the seller because we were competing with like 8 other offers. It’s just all negotiations
yeah we're currently in a buyers market where we're looking so have leverage, but it also seems to be turning back around offered 40k under list (place probably should have been listed ~9k lower than it was), they countered 23k under list which was pretty astonishing they came down that much off first offer
The main downside is if the appraisal won’t cover the increased sale price. If you are close say it appraises for less than the “total sale price” than the buyers won’t be able to finance the full amount and will have to put more cash down. Other than that, there really isn’t a downside as long as you are ok with financing the closing costs over the life of the mortgage. At the current rates, it’s usually not a big deal, but when rates were higher, it was more of a consideration. That’s my two cents.
No real downside. Have them cover as much as you can get them to. Get them to do a lump sum seller credit in addition to splitting the cost of attorney and title if at all possible. As someone else mentioned, the house has to appraise but if it's a hot market and other houses nearby have been selling for a similar value you should be fine.
Closing this Thursday, we went with this approach and got sellers to cover all closing costs. Only downside our realtor mentioned was having appraisal come back as others have mentioned. Thankfully appraisal came in right at the mark for us
Wanting to replace the mosaic tile and the floor tile surrounding our fireplace. Had our guy Francisco stop by to look at it for a quote. Francisco: “What do you think is a fair price?” Me: “Uhhhh I have no idea, let me get back to you and we can work something out.” What would be a good price to remove the current tiles and replace? We already bought the materials except for grout.
You must not be all to familiar with how the Joses and Fransiscos that we keep in our pocket operate. They will NEVER tell you a price, and leave it up to you. But they will always come do whatever job you need at whatever time with little to no notice. And for that, I pay them well.
We built with Pulte seven years ago. Couple things: - get the three car garage if your model doesn’t have it. If you have the three car where the one is double deep, make it four car. Their garages are super narrow and you’ll want more room. - get the sunroom add on. It definitely expands the main floor but you get the added bonus of a deep dig in the basement. The extra two feet to ceiling down there is what you want. Their standard dig makes tall people have to duck under the air vents all the time. - we added the upstairs playroom which added another like 450sq ft, moved the laundry upstairs to the loft area and made the old useless downstairs laundry room into a giant pantry. I would highly recommend that. - don’t have them finish the basement, have someone else do it, but do have them rough in the plumbing. It’s significantly cheaper that way. - do what someone else said and get the cheapest carpet and replace it. We upgraded and are getting ready to replace it all. - wood floors they default to skinny plank so if you like a wider plank make sure you do that. - they also hide a shit ton of options from you. Make sure you work with the design people to see them all. - also don’t do the half wall stairway things. Get bannisters and railings. The metal railings have a ton of options and they only showed us one type. We pushed and they brought out more for us to choose from Switched and shit all seem to be in good spots. oh we also had them redo the stairs. There was like a funky landing and then you had to step up to the hall to the left or step up to the playroom over the garage. They leveled that out for us to there was no additional steps but a level landing but that we did with the building foreman during construction.
Shit one more thing I’d add. Since WFH may be more of a thing have them put an outlet in the floor if you know where you desk is going to go. That way you aren’t running wires across floors if it isn’t up against a wall. I looked to have someone do it and it was ridiculous so now I have a flat extension cord running along the floor and it looks stupid as shit.
Sadly, I do not. I feel like someone should tell these guys their time is worth more! That seems so low to me, idk why. They need to demo the floor tile first, cut the wall tile to fit (are those tiles wet cut?)... everything just seems so expensive to me right now after finishing a kitchen project and now starting on 2 fireplace remodels + a few odds and ends
Have an actual remodel company doing a 3’x7’ floor to ceiling shower with bench and 3 shower niches and roughly 100 sq ft of floor tile for $3000 labor. $400 for some fireplace detail is not low. Less than that would be. There are no crazy cuts in the project he has set out, just straight lines.
Yeah that’s fair. I just wasn’t sure if the demo would be a pain, possibly cause a bit of damage that then needed repair, etc. I am not a good judge.
Of course all labor markets in cities can vary, but having lived in KC (FC lives there) and Dallas (I live here now) I have not noticed too huge a difference.