Good things, Utah (or, wherein I sing the praises of our contractor)

A long time ago when this house was just a twinkle in Tai's eye, we had a discussion about who would build it. Davido's name came up. Knowing next to nothing about the Biesinger clan (except that it is a mighty huge clan), I was reluctant to hire a family member — I was worried about what would happen if things went wrong, if we got mad, if he got mad, budget overruns, missed deadlines, etc. Basically, I was worried about what would happen if we hired a family member and then had a stereotypical GC experience.


But, my family connections include a geologist, a second-grade teacher, a pediatric endocrinologist, and a couple of college students, so I couldn't really produce another general contractor option. We hired Davido, and I'm so glad that we did. Here's a brief list of the good things that have happened because we did:

• started digging approximately 90 minutes after we received our building permit and finished excavation that same day
• got us a connection to an awesome concrete subcontractor who we otherwise couldn't have afforded — our first floor (which will remain exposed concrete) is beautiful
• got us another connection to a metal subcontractor who has matched an early, low bid and does great custom work
• put bonus reflective insulation around our bathtub — hey, who knows whether it will keep our water hot longer, but it's worth a shot!
• got us blown-in insulation for only $400 more than our initial blanket insulation bid, taking us from R-17 to R-23
• got us additional sound-proofing insulation in interior walls upstairs
• bonus: radiant heat in the front porch concrete!
• tolerated Tai working to his heart's content on the framing crew, giving him the bona fides to say, "I built this house"
• the specs on our framing plan called for a lot of unique hardware, but Davido tracked down less expensive options that still maintained high performance
• enjoyed a friendly relationship with all inspectors, who come out to the site more to admire Davido's handiwork than to find fault with it
• Davido found us an equally beautiful but less expensive window brand than was originally specified, saving us several thousand dollars
• got a level 5 finish on our drywall, making it look like it was painted before so much as a layer of primer went on and thoroughly hiding all drywall seams and patches
• found a pro painter who was willing to work on hourly with materials at cost, meaning that we get a fully painted house with lacquered doors and windows by the end of this week for minimally more money — saving us the roughly three weeks it was going to take us to do the same job (which saves us much more in construction interest payments than the painting will cost)
• Davido has done so well keeping things on budget that we have barely touched our contingency money, and we've gone so quickly that we won't use all the construction interest money in the budget. He has saved us enough money in construction that it looks as though we might be able to build a garage with the savings, something we thought we'd have to wait a year or two before doing.

But there are two big things that deserve their own paragraphs: timeline and peace of mind.

We are flying on this house. It's now looking quite likely that we'll be moved in before Thanksgiving, which was a laughable pipe dream back when we got our permit on July 29. Things have moved so quickly. We will get to celebrate the holidays in our new house.

Every time I hear anything about construction, it's because another piece of good news rolled in — either Davido has saved another $500 on some sub-bid or product, or he got us a free upgrade, or he's shaved another couple of days off the construction schedule. The more I share this with people, the more I'm coming to realize how exceptional it is to be under budget and moving faster than expected. Which gives us total peace of mind about our general contractor.

Footings

We are not messing around, folks. We had a building permit at roughly 11 a.m. on Wednesday, our contractor had an excavator on site by 1 p.m., hole digging started at 2 p.m., and the footings depths were all dug out by 4 p.m. Wednesday. Then, Davido set forms for footings yesterday to prepare for an inspection and concrete pour this morning.

This is the beginning of our first pour this morning:


And here's the finished pour for the footings, an hour (!) later:


I do not have words to communicate how thrilling this is for us.

(And yes, yes, we will post elevations/drawings as soon as we can get pdfs from the architects. Then those footings will make sense.)

Itching to start

Tai is at the lot right now clearing brush from some pretty nasty overgrowth on our sideyard. If the weather cooperates, we'll be cutting down some trees tomorrow. If the weather doesn't cooperate, then we'll doing tree removal two-by-two during the evening next week.

As often happens with me these days, my earlier Tweet about applying for a building permit today isn't going to happen. For many reasons (with many people at fault), the permitting and bid sets of drawings won't be finished today in time to visit the Salt Lake City permit desk. We're hoping that visit will happen on Monday morning, which puts us about two weeks behind when we originally thought we would start the bid process (again, many people at fault).

Our current circular pinch point is that we cannot start construction until we get a full set of construction drawings from the architects. We can't get a full set of construction drawings from the architects until they are, rightfully, paid for their services. We can't pay the architects until the bank releases money from our construction loan, and the bank won't release any money until they have a detailed cost breakdown. We can't give them a detailed cost breakdown until we have completed bids from the contractor and his subs...which takes us back to the permit/bid sets of drawings that will be done by Monday morning. Stay tuned.

Cathouse

Last night's meeting was great — we know what our floor plans will be, we have an idea of what the exterior will look like, we're all on the same page for materials, and on and on. (If you know us in real life, just ask to see the exterior elevation sketches next time we run into each other.)

A new and welcome wrinkle for us is the addition of Stephanie Kooyman from Architectural Nexus to help with our interiors. She comes to architecture by way of an interior design background and now works with Kenner and Matt at the firm. We talked last night about generally what we like for interior fixtures and finishes.

Stephanie's caveat is that no, we won't be able to afford everything we like (sad, but old, news to us!), but she can help us find similar things that will still look great in the space. She already has some interesting materials such as cork-infused bamboo and connections with suppliers that will help us understand what makes sense for our budget.

As part of that conversation, we touched on paint preference — light? dark? strong? any that we actually hate?

After a few seconds to think about it, my reponse was, "I'm not really afraid of bright colors. I would even do a bright purple, pink...whatever." Kenner: "Pink?! What is this? A cathouse??"

Kenner gets bonus points for being under 80 and using the word "cathouse." I get negative points for briefly considering a hot pink wall.

Meet the contractor

Meet our general contractor, Davido Biesinger, of Biesinger Construction and general Biesinger family fame.

Davido comes from a strong residential building background, with a lot of work on custom details and large, fancy houses. We're thrilled that he's slumming it with our little project, and we're counting on Davido to keep us on the budgetary straight and narrow, take our heads out of the clouds, and let Tai swing a hammer every now and again.


Davido (pronounced "David-o") was an early adopter of ICF building, and has agreed to bring his building experience to our ideas about what works for a small, modern home.

Every day should be Thursday

We meet with Kenner and Matt each Thursday to work on the house designs, and we spend all week looking forward to it. The meetings are long but exciting for us as we talk about the rooms in the house, how we'll use the different spaces, and how the flow of the building should work. (Again, big thanks to their families for loaning them out after hours.)

Last week was a philosophical discussion about how we used our home that ended with a rough sketch of floor plans. This week they walked us through the 3-d conception of the house.

(Showing the outlines of the rooms — second floor superimposed on the first)

A lot of the discussion was about how the inside of the house affects the outside, how the outside affects the inside, and how to tweak the layouts of the rooms so that everyone is happy (including our budget). We hit on the possible placement of the front door, the layout of the kitchen, the direction of our staircase (and a very cool window idea), the layout of the second floor bedrooms and bathrooms, location of a fireplace vs. location of a TV, use of the south side yard for outdoor living, and a hundred other things.

We think we have the layout firmed up. Here's the first floor...

...and the second floor:

Next week we'll hear about how this layout will fit with city utilities (sewer, water, gas, phone, cable, power) — certain rooms may shift slightly based on the distances to connect to those utilities or the best stacking for things such as plumbing — and we'll start talking about materials for the exterior of the house.

Meet the banker

This fine gentleman is Drew Hicken from Celtic Bank:

(Hi Drew — I promised you'd be on the blog!)

Drew has been a great advocate for us in our successful efforts to get financing. He's been responsive, helpful, and friendly — just the sort of person you want working for the bank that's funding your home. He helped finance the Lucy Avenue house (of Grassroots Modern blogging fame) and has built a nice residential niche in working with modern home owners and builders. (Plus, his hair is longer than Tai's, which bolsters Tai's argument that you CAN be a businessman with long hair.)

Thanks for all the hard work to this point, Drew, and here's a promise for that cost breakdown ASAP.

Meet the architects

Introducing our architects: Kenner Kingston (left) and Matt Nelson of Architectural Nexus.

We're thrilled to be working with Kenner and Matt, who caught our eye for Architectural Nexus' work on the Lucy Avenue house (those owners were guest bloggers on Grassroots Modern during their building process, here, here, and here). Arch Nexus is large firm with offices here, Logan and Tempe, Ariz., and they've done a lot of institutional, medical and commercial work. Kenner, a LEED-accredited partner, worked on the eye-catching University of Utah Orthopaedic Hospital in Research Park.

This is a much smaller project than this firm would normally take on, so we're grateful that they are committed enough to the idea of a small, modern house in Salt Lake to spend their Thursday nights with us. (Also, big thanks to their understanding families for loaning them out on the night of the week's best TV.)

We spent Thursday evening going over the basics of how to layout our home (I can say that! We're really building it now!!). It was a really fun evening, spent answering questions such as, "How do you feel about doors?", "Does the kitchen need to be part of entertaining?", and "What do you expect out of your outdoor space?" It was great to be part of a guided discussion about the priorities for our home. At the end of the night, Kenner and Matt had sketched out a basic layout for the two floors.

Next Thursday we'll take a look at a few basic designs, or massings (arch-speak for 3d renderings).

Architects, etc.

We are in the process of contacting and meeting with architects about the feasibility of our hopes for the lot. If you have suggestions for us, please leave us a link to check out.

We're also going to be talking to some contractors to get a sense of the building market at the moment, which we suspect will be a bit looser and easier to build than it was a year or so ago. Sometimes, there really is a silver lining to the Great Recession.