restoring the roost

Even though we are building a custom home, which tends to be more costly, we have deliberately made many decisions that aid in cutting expenses to stay within our budget. In other words, yes, you CAN build a custom, high quality home on a reasonable budget! (especially if you have a great builder who will work with you and give advice to keep costs down).

One of the most important ways we stayed within budget was allowing most of the things we wanted within reason but also compromising on quite a few things too. I learned to be very flexible and to be content knowing that not everything on our wish list was going to be feasible for us to do. The items we splurged on were windows, the front door, countertops, tile for our master and guest bath, and the height of the ceilings.

It seems like many aspects of the new house that are standard for our builders are pretty high-end, but it turns out that’s just how our builders roll. For example, custom wood closet shelving systems at no extra cost?  Built-in cabinetry in laundry room? Yes, please!! Interestingly, our cabinets for the kitchen and bath vanities are custom-made by our builders who are master carpenters and do all their own cabinetry work, and they were no more expensive than any other basic cabinets (even ikea!) that we could have bought elsewhere.

Below is a partial list of what we did to help with cost savings:

-simple house plan, no fussy exterior (the more corners there are the more expensive!)
-two stories instead of one is more cost-effective
-addition of a full-length shed dormer on the rear of house
-removed gabled dormer windows on the facade of the original house plan
-hardieplank siding exterior rather than brick or stone, with a brick foundation
-wood-burning fireplace insert (with gas pipe) with a brick veneer rather than a full masonry fireplace
-metal roof (one of the more budget-friendly materials for roofing)
-budget-friendly (but still high quality) flooring choices: basic oak for hardwood downstairs, carpet in  bedrooms, tile in some bathrooms, vinyl plank in girls’ bath, vinyl plank in laundry room.
-no fancy wall treatments and simple interior moldings
-composite but still solid core interior doors
-fiberglass French doors to screened porch and steel door in laundry
-regular decking on screened-in rear porch instead of tongue and groove
-screen tight system on screened porch instead of custom fabricated panels
-no bathtub (yet) in master bath (just shower for now)
-high quality but reasonably-priced (“mid-grade”) lighting fixtures and plumbing fixtures
-recessed lighting in closets, kitchen, utilitarian spaces instead of higher-priced fixtures
-re-using our current washer and dryer
-re-using our current refrigerator
-re-using a few of our light fixtures
-taking advantage of holiday sales for fixtures and appliances
-no doors (just framed openings) on master closet, bonus room, and a few others
-minimal upper cabinetry in kitchen
-designing and completing landscaping ourselves

Of course there are a lot of building material costs that are difficult to cut down and the only way to really save is by cutting square footage. Still, we were able to make quite a dent in the cost of our house by choosing our house plan wisely and being conservative on high-end finishes or treatments. Additionally, since we were going for a simple farmhouse look, this lends itself to simple, cost-effective finishes anyway (think beadboard, subway tile, simple cabinets and trim, etc.).

The funny thing is, many things I thought I wanted in the beginning or “compromised” on, I don’t even miss! I’m just so thankful to be able to design and build a homestead of our own 🙂

Since nothing too exciting has been happening on the interior of our farmhouse build lately, today I’d thought I would share some updates on the exterior. It’s hard to believe we are at the point of picking out paint colors but yes–it’s true!

Since my last post our builders have finished the siding, all exterior trim, the front and back/screened porch flooring, and they installed the roofing!

I love our new roof–it’s a “5 V-crimp” metal in the standard silvery galvalume finish. In addition to being very durable and economical, I really think it fits well with the farmhouse look as most older farmhouses in our area have metal roofs.

The hardieplank (cement fiber board) siding comes standard in a grey color but we plan to paint it and the trim white. I never tire of classic white for a farmhouse–and it really makes the windows and brick foundation pop. With the dark exterior window sashes, the white will definitely give the house that “modern farmhouse” look. Currently most of the house has been primed already–and all exterior painting may be finished by next week!

The porches will have painted or stained floors but their trim will also be white. If we don’t like the paint–as my husband says–we can always paint over it later. So glad that he has this attitude 🙂  I’m really looking forward to painting the ceilings of our porches a robin’s egg blue color–an old tradition that was said to mimic the color of the sky.

Other than the front porch steps, the carpentry work for the porch posts, lighting, and the screening for the back porch, all of the exterior work is complete for the most part. The interior has had all plumbing, electrical, HVAC, gas lines, and a fireplace installed. The next big project for the interior will be installing drywall and making the cabinetry for the kitchen and bathrooms–it has been a little overwhelming trying to plan the layout and design for all the cabinets but by keeping things simple it hasn’t been too bad. We are so fortunate that our builders make their own high quality custom cabinetry–it is their specialty–and for extremely reasonable prices.

 Every week it is so fun to see what has been done –it’s really starting to come together!

A lot has happened in the last few months on our farmhouse build for our 11 acre homestead–we now have all framing completed, sheathing, wrapping, plumbing and HVAC, some siding, trim, a fireplace, and WINDOWS!!!

Let me just say if you all only knew how much we debated over our choice of windows for the house–I mean this was a HUGE point of contention between my husband and I. The windows were the ONLY thing I was set on and not really willing to compromise. Yes, my husband was frustrated 🙂 But there were plenty of other choices and desires that I have conceded in order to stay in budget. The windows? Nope–I was stubborn and did not budge!

I think that’s because I’m naturally a lover of old houses which have amazing often times old wood, double-hung, true-divided light gorgeous windows with original casings and surrounds. Windows in historic houses are classified as “character-defining features,” meaning they have a major impact on the look and feel of the building. I wanted this for our new house too but it does present a problem–to get something like the wonderful windows of old is very difficult, expensive, and the window by itself wouldn’t be as energy efficient. You simply cannot make new windows like the old anymore anyway unless you are using reclaimed old growth wood and producing reproduction-quality sashes.

So, I settled on something that I know I will like that still provides some of the same features as a traditional wood window: an all-wood window, double-hung, with aluminum-clad exterior and as close to true divided lights as we could get with a dark brown spacer in between the two panes of energy efficient glass. Most of our windows will be two-over-two sash and we will have three six-light casement windows in the kitchen.

We vacillated between going with Sierra Pacific and JELD-WEN, but ultimately chose the JELD-WEN “Sightline” because it was the company that our builder’s supply warehouse is most familiar with. It certainly is a top-of-the-line window and made up a good portion of the overall house budget but I know it’s something that will last a very long time and adds so much character to the house. I’m pretty sure I’m going to ditch doing any window treatments–I’m leaving these beauties bare and enjoying them!

My husband not only scoffs at my insistence of this particular window type but he also can’t believe that we have 31 of them in the house! That’s a lot of windows!! The exterior aluminum cladding color we chose is a dark bronze and we plan to paint the interior of the sashes white to match the surrounding casings and interior trim.

Our front door has four lights to match the sash pattern of the windows and the pair of French doors leading to the screened porch will have six-lights-over-one-panel. I love tons of natural light which was another reason why I chose for our doors to have plenty of glass.

The only thing that surprised me a little about the windows we chose was the “reflectiveness” of the new glass (low-e) they are using in windows these days. We were just unaware (in certain kinds of light) how tinted and mirror-like the glass actually looks. The upside is that it actually provides a little bit more privacy since one is less able to see inside. Other than that, we are extremely happy with how the windows turned out and look forward to enjoying them.