Final Site Plan

It's been a while since the last post.  It's not that there has not been activity, it's that the activity has been very detailed and I'm pretty sure I'd lose the large blog following if every engineering drawing was posted.  Also, if I'm honest here, the real reason for the post today is that I found out that Rick, a good friend from NJ was actually reading the blog yesterday, so I felt pressure to post something recent.

Five main things have happened in the last month:

1. Completed the site plan, which is below with some descriptive information. 
2. Completed engineering specification necessary to bid out the foundation and site preparation work.  These are very detailed, so I'm not posting in the open blog.
   
3. Tests for the septic system were conducted. We found a very good location to the east side of the driveway in a relative flat area and much closer to the house than the preliminary subdivision location. There was NO ledge found and the perk rate is about 1 to 10 which are both terrific. Next steps are to finish a design and get approvals.
   
4. Wes completed the window list and sent out a quote request for the the 64 windows in the main house and gotten back firm pricing.  These will be Norco windows, which are made by a division of Jeld Wen.  I'm not going to post financial information here for obvious reasons, but suffice it to say, I needed to sit down after getting the window quote.  It's high, really for two reasons.  First, the large full wall windows in the Great Room and second, the seemingly high cost of adding automation to the windows that are too high to reach.  This first reason makes sense, but the cost of the automation was so high we took it out until we can regroup and understand more about the technology and what the cost should really be.
   
5. Based on  engineering specifications that are now complete from a foundation and basement perspective, Wes sent out detailed quote requests for the site work to two vendors.  We expect to hear back within two weeks.  The scope of this work will include Excavations, footing and leader drains, concrete retaining wall along the south side, septic system, concrete foundations and slabs with reinforcing bars, radiant hot water piping in future main basement slab (to be verified), foundation/slab insulation and waterproofing.  This bid will not include stone veneer or other masonry work, structural columns or girders.
   

 Now the site plan:

If you double click it to see the details, you'll see that a few things have changed:

• The most obvious thing, as those that follow the blog have already noticed, it that the house has moved five (5) feet to the right.  This helps a little with the steep grade on the left (which has always been a challenge) and also helps center the Court Yard in front the main entrance with five feet less possibility of having a visitor drive their car off the cliff on the left.
• There is now an indication of a  'limit of clearing line' on the Site Plan. This indicates that trees (except where flagged) and under growth that would be completely cleared in this area. These are areas of grade modification so the vegetation needs to be removed.
• The Septic Tank has been sited on the left hand side of the courtyard.
• The proposed Well has been sited to the right of the driveway.
• The meter for electric has been sited on the left of the driveway and we've even sited a place to put the unused rocks that come out of the foundation.  That can be found across the driveway from the meter.
• Also in the site plan are the retaining walls that are included in the site work bid.
  

General Contractors Meeting Two

After we reviwed the drawings, we called the GC meeting to order.  My questions were less random this time as I finally internalized Wes' view that we need to focus on things that will effect the design, and most importantly the foundation design as that's the first bid we'll put out.

Let's try some examples:

• We should focus on the floor plan as that effects the foundation.
• We should focus on the stone work on the outside walls, as that effect the ledge in the foundation.
• We should focus on the type of flooring, if it’s going to be unusually heavy as that may change the foundation design.
• We should not focus on the fireplace stone as that does not affect the foundation.
• We should not focus on siding as it does not affect the foundation.
• We should not focus on whether or not Solar Panels will be approved by the St. Johns Peak architecture review board as it does not affect the foundation
• And for the love of God, we should not focus, again, on the heating system as it does not affect the foundation.

So, now that we're focused, here are some of the decisions we made at this meeting:

• We'll look at the sample that Wes has on Saturday, but we'll probably use 'Thin Stone' or another 'Thin' alternative for the foundation cover, so we only need a small ledge in the foundation.
• I'm not going to mention heating systems until Wes asks me.
• Wes is going to engage the engineer for the Septic design, review the plans with the township officials regarding the Horizon Line and present the elevations to the St. John Peak Architecture Review Board to see what else is needed to get approval.
• Wes is also going to discuss the foundation design with one or two contractors.

Just before we adjourned the meeting, we discussed how often we would need to be on-site and at what points during the building phase the on-site visits would become more frequent. While Wes was contemplating, I brought up that I'd been looking on eBay for pop-up campers and old VW Camping Vans, thinking that this forward thinking was a good thing. I was going to continue and start asking how we could get water and internet service hooked up to a tent, when I realized that I had wandered off on my own again. Wes, who only a few minutes ago must have been feeling great as he could tell we loved the plans, was now deflated and staring at his watch. That was bad, but worse was the look Kim was giving me, like she just realize for the first time her husband had a severe learning disorder.

After that, we showed Wes some of our furniture as we must have thought the pictures we sent were not good enough and he was on his way

Design Session Six

This morning, Wes came to Westport as he had business in Greenwich.  After Brie got her barking out of the way, we sat down at the dining room table and went through the latest drawings.

This first drawing of the main level now has the screened in porch back in.  We may not build it right away, but will certainly add it and it may be part of the initial build.  Wes has also taken out some of the complexity on the left side of the house, adding a little room and reducing some cost as the foundation will be simpler.

On On the second floor, not much has changed with the exception of the left hand side, where Dormers and Window Seats are now larger and since the ceiling will extend to the roof line, Wes has added another set of windows above the original two. We'll see that in the elevation drawings.

Although the basement has not changed, it's worth spending some time on it as we certainly did in the discussion today. The basement will generally follow the grade, with a Crawl Space on the right side, then a normal basement (from a height perspective) in the middle, followed by a high ceilinged basement on the left side. After going back and forth on the type of support we would put on this left side, we decided that it was OK for the columns to stay as we would want to divide up the space. Allowing this reduces the cost of the support structure.

The main area on the left will house a social area with a pool table and my office area when we decide to finish it, and will have space for another bedroom, but that's just for resale value. In the middle area, there will be lots of storage, a future bath and a future sauna. The Sauna discussion was interesting as it was the first Kim heard about it. I've now learned to use the term 'Future' as a way to introduce some things into the house design (or any part of our marriage, really).

During the conversation we discussed where the wine storage, aka 'future' wine cellar would be. I think we ended up with it in the middle section, but I may push for it entering the main area on the left along the front wall so it can be part of that room.

Next we got to look at all four elevations. This was exciting as we had only seen a front elevation in the past sessions.

The re-worked front elevation has changed somewhat, in that it is now in proportion to the floor plan drawings.  There was no reason for Wes to spend much time on the elevations until this week as we kept growing or shrinking the footprint every time we met.  The other element that this now shows is a more modest covered front porch; cleaner, but with some rustic feel.

The two side elevations are very interesting. The walk out basement is on top (or on the left depending on your browser), and we discussed sliding doors (which the drawing shows) versus French doors. We're still not sure which is best. You'll notice above the basement doors is a small overhang and some detail work designed to break up the height of the wall. We really love this idea as our Skillman house always look akward from the back due to the walkout and high elevation.  Also, here you can see the second set of windows on the top floor to let in more light.

The right side elevation (which is either on top or on the right depending on your browser) may look a little squashed on the lower level, but remember, it's built into a hill, so is actually into the grade. On the right side of this elevation you can see the Screened in Porch as well as the 'future' covered terrace.

Another interesting discussion on the side elevations was the introduction of four skylights. Wes added them as Kim would really like the light they bring, but they do come with some drawbacks; mainly cost and potential maintenance.  Wes also feels that they may bring in too much light in an already well lit room leading us to put some sort of blinds on them. Hmmm ... skylights with blinds .... thinking about that one.

The rear elevation shows the expanse of windows in the Great Room as well as the level Terrace area giving way to a gradual slope down toward the walk out.  We'll be using 'thin stone' as well as landscaping to try to take some of the focus on the height of the house on the right side.

The Stihl Arrives in Westport

Kim's friends Mary Anne and Nancy came over Saturday.  Kelley joined them for drinks and then Kim, Mary Anne and Nance went out for dinner and stayed overnight.  It was nice to see them of course, but the real treat was the Stihl 360 chain saw that Mary Anne delivered.

She had picked this baby up from Uncle Britt last week up near Saratoga, NY and I was like a kid on Christmas.  Hopefully, Kim and I will get a chance to try it out up in Kent next Saturday and can bring a few pieces of firewood back to Westport.  Now I have to find a shop to pick up an extra chain.  I'm also going to look for a sharpener on eBay.

General Contractor Meeting One

After we finished our design session, we gathered around Wes' desk and starting talking General Contractor or as we say in the business, GC stuff. Since our design session had gone so smoothly, I wanted to make sure Wes was reminded just how all over the map we can really be. So it began, the endless barrage of unique questions ranging from who buys the wood, how do we know we're getting the 'Contractor' price, to other KEY house building decisions - such as shopping for a Porta-john via the web. 

When I stopped to take a breath, I noticed that Wes had his head down in his hands and a good portion of his hair was sticking up. I figured this was a sure sign it was time to leave, so we agreed that Wes would contact an engineer to start the septic design. He also felt we were close to being able to talk to a few other contractors, but more design work needed to be completed first.

Design Session Five

We didn't quite know what to expect when we arrived at Kent Friday afternoon and went up to Wes' office. After he assured us that we could build a wonderful house for our budget, he showed us the first floor revised floor plan below. Earlier in the design process he had showed us a very similar layout, but now that we were intent on shrinking the footprint, we spent a lot of time reviewing this plan and really started to warm up to it.

What had been 3,150 sq ft just Tuesday was now 2,750 and it still looked pretty good. There were a few changes and not all of them minor.

The Den was now a Sitting Room, which I think has to do with how big it is and whether or not it seems to be part of the master bedroom suite or more of a separate room. The Master Bath and Dressing Area were configured differently. These changes allowed Wes to reduce the square footage on the left hand side of the house, and since that also reduces the upstairs there was a pretty good savings.

The Great Room was also reduced, but then Wes added an extension to it in the back that would be used to put the dining room table and make the room more interesting.

The right side of the house was not reduced at all. The only change Wes made was to replace the Screened in Porch with a Covered Terrace.

After talking though all these changes and adding back in a fireplace in the Sitting Room, we really warmed up to them and it doesn't feel like we're giving up anything. Maybe the only exception is the Screened in Porch, but Wes says that will be easy to add in later if we want to.

One if the interesting parts of the conversation involved the Sitting Room. When I was describing how we would use it, and drew myself lying on the couch watching TV and then showed Kim delivering Dinner to me, Wes thought I was joking. No matter how many times Kim said.... 'No, it's embarrassing to admit, but I do deliver Dinner to him while he lies on the coach almost every night' ... Wes just wouldn't believe it.

Below is the how the upstairs would look with the new downstairs configuration. The Bedrooms are a bit smaller, but fine and we still have the same sized unfinished room over the Kitchen wing for expansion.

All in all, we're really happy with these changes and Wes will now start back into drawing the elevations for our next session.

Between Design Session Four and Five a major decision

After the last design session, we had contacted Wes and asked how we could scale back the cost of the project, and still build the house we wanted. Through an email exchange, we agreed on two areas to focus on. Wes had brought up a third at the end of the last design session. It seemed somewhat out of left field and as you will soon realize, will make this blog much more interesting to read going forward.

The first obvious area is to make the house a little smaller. This was a brain twister to us as we had gone back and forth on room and sizes and ended up talking Wes into making the house larger just a week ago. However, things had now changed and we were much more willing to scale back and he assured us there were ways to do that, without changing the character of the house.

The second area was on finish. We (really me) wanted to build a Lodge, and that meant the use of rough timber, a grand entrance, and other style elements that drive up the cost. Wes again assured us that if we used these design features sparingly and where they would have the most appeal and impact, we could save some expense.

The third area to focus on was not an area at all. I like to think of it as a lifestyle choice. Wes suggested that we consider acting as the General Contractor..... I'll let that sink in for a while.... yes, no need to re-read the previous sentence ... we are going to be the General Contractors for the build of our Kent House ... let the fun begin.

Now, this is not a totally insane idea, mind you. Although I may be slightly more ‘contractor like’ in that I can identify a few more tools than Kim and I've certainly been to The Home Depot more than she has, but neither of us are what people like to call 'Handy'. We both are however, really good project managers, and what is building a house, but a huge project? So, we do have some of the skills, but what is more important is that we have Wes. He was going to be involved until the house was complete anyway, and feels pretty strongly that with his help, we can bid out and work with sub-contractors to build the house successfully.

Like I said ... this blog just got more interesting ...

Design Session Three and Four

Over five days, we had two design sessions with Wes up in Kent. By last Thursday, what had started as a 'Cabin in the Woods' had turned into a full blown house, and we were evaluating three different plans that were 2,800, 2,950 and 3,150 sq ft respectively. We really like the larger plan, which we see below, so we asked Wes to focus on it and start to draw elevations that would give it a 'Lodge' feel for our next meeting, the following Tuesday. Mind you, Wes had listened to us, looked at all the books and pictures we had cut out of magazines and designed a house we were in love with.

When we came back on Tuesday, Wes had laid out some of the furniture so we could see how it would fit in the house and also took, thankfully, the opportunity to start talking round numbers to make sure we were comfortable with the overall spend. I promptly had a mild seizure, and after Kim had escorted me to the car and I starting to regain feeling in my extremities, we decided to contact Wes the next day and say we would be more comfortable if we scaled back the project somewhat. On the way home, Kim was pretty sure she heard me mumble over and over .... 'must move back to Skillman ...must move back to Skillman .....'

Just to complete the picture and for comparison after the next design session, below is the upstairs version of the larger floor plan. Two nice bedrooms and a bath on one side, a loft area in the middle and a storage area on the other side, that is there for future expansion.

He also showed us a more detailed version of what the front elevation could look like. Kim and I really liked the way different gables are used, and now we're more comfortable with the way the house will fit the land, which slopes to the left. Wes see's a nice stone wall on the left, and steps leading down to the walk out basement.

 

Driveway Progress

After one of our recent design sessions, we decided to take a drive up to the land and look around.   We're getting used to the driveway, and love how it bends up towards the building site.

Also, we are now the proud owner of a at least one Culvert, which we see below.  This will send water under driveway in certain areas to stop erosion.  I think we have two of these, so we'll check for the second next time we're up at the land.  Jason we see, was nice enough to face the plastic pipe with stone.  A nice touch.

Westport Dump

Kim surprised me with a trip to the dump this Thursday, on our way to a design session with Wes. As you can see, being Westport, one needs to dress like they are going to the Opera and Kim looks great. I'm not sure if I'll be invited next time, as I was so busy taking pictures that Kim had to unload and 'dump' everything.

Design Session Two

Saturday morning, my favorite time of the week because I get to go to the Westport Dump and then we go off to Kent to spend time with Wes doing house design. We had everything all arranged; leave by 10:00, stop at the dump, stop at Kelley's house to drop off the dogs and some rugs to store (the rugs, not the dogs) and then off to Kent so we could meet Wes at 1:00.

Unfortunately, the plans had changed between 10:00 PM and 8:00 AM, as I was told there would be no Dump today. Evidently there is some sort of minimum amount of garbage that makes the trip worth it, and we were under by an undetermined amount. If I had known this, I would have gone out late Friday night and taken garbage from the neighbors. Kind of the opposite from what we did in Skillman, NJ where we would go out at night and put our excess garbage in the neighbors trash cans as we only contracted for one small pick-up a week.

As a side, I'll be posting pictures of the Westport and Kent Dumps as we progress as I know this sidebar may be more interesting to some than the house.

The rest of the trip went like our version of 'clock-work'; kind of slow and sometimes not in the right time zone. We managed to get out the door within a half hour of the new start time (as we didn't need to allow Dump time) and made it to Kelley's with a ten minute window to drop off the dogs and the rugs. We seemed to be on the same page as Kim volunteered that she knew we needed to leave Kelly's at 11:30, no problem. I think I'm still learning to decipher some of this communication stuff, as we finally exited Kelley's at 11:50 and that was only after two false starts where I was already in the car as she was 'right behind' me and had to go back into the house to extract her.

We eventually made it to Kent only a few minutes late, but that was really due to some strange detour we were forced to take off of Route 7. I can now see why Kim does not take the schedule and driving estimates I come up with seriously, as even with all these delays, we were only a few minutes late. If this keeps going I'll probably be sitting in the car the night before, waiting for Kim to wake up so we can leave in the morning for the hour and a half drive.

Once we sat down with Wes, we agreed that he should show us his latest drawings and after that, we could go over all the pictures we had found during the previous week. I'm pretty sure he was hoping we would forget about our side of the 'show-and-tell', but he has not learned yet how relentless we are at pulling any conversation completely off track. He was in luck last week as I was a little off, and Kim had to bear the full responsibility for derailing the conversation. But on Saturday, he got the full team effect of our finally tuned chaotic speech and thought patterns.

(Note: you can click on the pictures to get to to be big enough to see)

We started with a drawing that Wes has made, giving us a front view of the house. We love the balance, the different gables, and windows and can now envision how the left side of the house will look as a walk out some ten feet below the rest of the house. Even though we were at first against it, we also really like the door on the right side being in the front of the house, instead of the side.

Next we went over a revised sketch of the main floor. Lots of progress on this and all our ideas from last week were incorporated. There are a couple of neat features, like a double fireplace in the Den and Great Room that shares the same stonework, the stairs as a focal point in the Great Room, a large Mud Room and the idea of a separate stairway that leads up to an unfinished room over the kitchen. This can be used for expansion later and is shown in the next picture. Wes also put in some nice flow through areas in the front and back of the Kitchen wing that make it easier to cruise around the house and added a Screened in Porch to the back right of the house.

This last picture shows the top floor, where you can see the extra room for expansion. We now have two bedrooms and a bath upstairs, and a pretty big extra closet plus a nice sized loft area. Kim decided after this meeting that she could use the loft as her work area, which will help reduce some space downstairs. I really like this last idea as since I plan on making the walk out basement my office area, having Kim on the very top floor working will really make communication easy, especially with our rapidly deteriorating hearing. I guess we'll be relying on cell phones and Skype to arrange cocktails and dinner.

Another good session and we decided to meet next Thursday to look at plans that will have more detail. Kim and I left less dazed than last week, but this was probably more due to me getting some sleep the night before and not dipping in and out of consciousness during the meeting.

Yup, we have this under control now, this house building stuff is really easy .... so, since we weren't completely overwhelmed on our ride home this time, I decided to have an anxiety attack on the potential cost for building exactly what we want, just to make the drive more interesting of course. By the time we got to Kelley's, I was OK, but Kim needed several minutes of 'quiet time' in the car as my tirade totally stressed her out. Fortunately, our next stop was drinks and dinner at Joanne and Ricks restored Colonial Home in Weston. We got a lot of great ideas from them and ended the evening feeling things were in control once again.

Design Session One

Kim and I met Wes at the land Saturday afternoon. On the way, we stopped by the Westport Dump for the weekly ritual of recycling and trash drop off. We like this a lot more than having a weekly house pick-up and hope that Kent has a cool dump to go hang out in on Saturday mornings.

We got to the land a little late as we didn't count on the Saturday traffic on Route 7 and will leave more time next week.

The site visit started out with a first. We drove all the way up to the building site on our new almost finished driveway. The only thing left to do on the driveway is to add the two conduits underneath for drainage and eventually put the finished stone on top, which we decided to hold off on until after construction is almost complete.

As Wes starting discussing his ideas, he took out his old Boy Scout compass to show us where the Southern and Northern exposure would be. This is where we hit our first 'glitch' of the day as Kim, thinking he was holding a GPS, asked him for directions to a friends house in Westchester.

Kim and I had sent over a 'Big Decision' document earlier in the week for Wes to look at. This started out as a few bullet points about major decisions (like 'no garage, but a barn' or 'we need a screened in porch to keep from being attacked by bugs' or 'internal bathroom instead of out house') , but ended up as a three or four page detailed epic. We were envisioning Wes with his face in his hands hunched over the email sighing after reading the first page, but instead, he complemented us on the detail and said it it was 'MOST helpful '. Kim and I took his enthusiasm and use of capital letters as a green light to send more of our 'concise challenged' documents in the future.

The challenge of siting the house (above) is that we we want to take advantage of the view (below), but also have to take into account the land on the top of the property sloping down to the left. To do this, Wes has drawn in some retaining walls to integrate the grade change and also make use of the stone we'll most likely get from excavating.

After we left the land, we met Wes down at his office in Kent and went over a lot of material that we have extracted from various books and magazines and a simple sketch that Wes had developed as a way to talk about the rooms, but not meant to be a design document. In showing Wes our material, we basically did a core dump, as we had pictures ranging from Great Rooms and Stonework, which makes sense for this part of the design process, to pictures reflecting way too much detail (like bamboo sinks in the powder room, kitchen cabinets and specific gas ranges with red knobs) which we could have done without at this session. Wes was patient, but needed to get us back on track more than once.

At the end of the session, we agreed that we could meet next Saturday to look at some revised sketches.

As we drove off into the sunset, Kim and I reflected on the day. We're impressed with the way Wes incorporates our ideas into the planning. We did however, agree that we need to be more specific on how we will live in the house (function) and also on the internal and external look and feel of the house (form).

Blazing

Smaller trees and branches are taken care of on site by a large bonfire ... and we forgot the marshmallows. I woke up in a sweat that night wondering how it would go over with the neighbors if we started a fire and burned down the development. Probably not a good way to get invites to pot luck dinners.

Filling in over the ledge

Here Jason dumps some fill over the ledge at the top of the hill. This really looks like fun, but I think I'll master a wheel barrow before I suggest to Kim that a large dump truck would be a good investment as we could use it to haul firewood, rocks and possibly as a snow plow.

Talking shop

Jason thinks Kim is joking when she starts talking about buying a chain saw and cutting firewood. Seriously, we're going off to buy a chain saw and talked to Kim's cousin Dane, aka 'Woodsman', for some advice. After settling on a Stihl MS-280, it turns out that Dane's Dad, Uncle Britt, has a Stihl MS-390 that we can have. What a deal and thanks Uncle Britt. We'll be doing some cutting this fall, but a lot more a year from now. Hopefully, my nickname won't be 'Stubs' after a few firewood cutting sessions.

Just a litte firewood

We asked Wes and Jason to leave us with some firewood.  This was only about one fifth what was taken doing the driveway.  Jason then reminded us that we'd be taking more when we cleared the house site.  What were we thinking? I think we need to give Wes a call and tell him we only want two cords from the driveway.

Driveway view from the street ... a work in progress

The driveway work has begun. It's going to be about 600' long, and will wind up a hill to the site of the house. Wes, our architect, made some alterations after Jason (who is building our driveway) discovered ledge that either needed to be blasted or filled over. We decided to fill and save the blasting for the house site. We also decided to curve the driveway a little more near the top of the hill. We're hoping the driveway will be done in a week and then we start the design work on the house with Wes.

When we bought the land, we didn't think much about the the driveway or pulling the lines (underground) up to the site. In fact, we didn't think about much other than how much we liked the lot. We're learning now.

Tractor arrives to start the driveway

Right before work was to start on the driveway, I went up for one last look at the lot in it's almost natural state, and there was a tractor sitting fifty or so feet into the woods, ready to start. We can't help feeling some guilt as we start this project as the site seems so natural.

Trees, hills, ledges and a stone wall

We choose to look for land around Kent, as it's a small community that is not too far away from New York and Boston, but far enough to stand on it's own and have it's own sense of community. There are beautiful lakes and the Appalachian Trail runs right by it.

We choose our development, St. Johns Peak, as much of the land is set aside for conservation easements and we'll be able to enjoy living in natural surrounding with we hope, like minded people.

We choose our lot as its beauty is very much in its challenge.