Anyone build a house recently??? (Fairfield, Freedom: credit, new home, crawl space)

[mollysmiles]

Originally Posted by forest beekeeper

...

I got our building from Freedom Steel.
http://www.freedomsteelbuildings.com/
2400 square foot cost us $16,000. Pre-engineered to withstand hurricanes.

Some friends of ours just bought a beautiful piece of waterfront and are currently looking into manufactured homes. I'll have to share this link with them! I'd never heard of steel homes either, but it's certainly economical and rugged, too. With the winds we sometimes get down here (like last week!), it sounds like a great solution.

[forest beekeeper]

I only had so much $$$ when I retired. We had saved our little nest-egg very carefully and wanted to do as much as we possibly could with it, before it ran out.

I wanted forest land with waterfrontage.

We wanted a nearby college for our children.

We wanted year around maintained roads, close availability to power and phone lines.

And my DW wanted to keep her new job and to be able to transfer to a store location near enough to the homestead that she could commute.

We had played with possible floor plan layouts for a few years, and I did like the steel buildings; as all structural support is in the outer walls. This leaves the interior completely open. You can arrange interior walls anywhere, or you can leave it open. Since nothing you put in the interior will be load-bearing.

So we decided on a floor-plan with high cathedral ceilings, a lot of openness and movable wood partitions, that can partition off and define each 'bedroom'.

When I found this location and the pricing for the land; we saw that much of what we had wanted was a possibility for us.

Thick forest tree-growth with Penobscot River frontage, maintained roads with power and phone lines, Orono college is near-by; all for under $1k/acre. My DW transferred to the Bangor store location and she now commutes into Bangor.

We were able to buy 42 acres, and build a house on our nest-egg. We just ran out of nest-egg this winter while hanging insulation and interior walls. But we finished the insulation and most of the interior walls. So now further building will be done at a slower pace, until it is finished. Or it may never become entirely finished.

We have gone out on the river with our kayaks the last two days, it has be great! Right now the river is running very high, so it is about twenty paces from our house.

[mollysmiles]

Gotta love it! I didn't think about the interior walls being non weight-bearing. That for me would be a big bonus. They are going to love this info! Thank you!

[irishmom]

Forest Bookkeeper - I showed my husband the site you posted about the house you bought....he is totally hooked! The home plans are fantastic! One question...do the inside walls look/feel funny? Of course we are used to sheet rock or plaster...so what is the look and feel of the walls in the house you bought (or aren't you there yet)?

He's ready to order one...which plan did you get? We love this one:

http://www.freedomsteelhome.com/homes_g.html (broken link)

and this one:

http://www.freedomsteelhome.com/homes_b.html (broken link)

We found a piece of land that we want to build on already...so this may be the way we go (except for the do-it-yourself part...been there done that with him already...LOL). Do you get a referral bonus? If so I'll let you know if we actually buy from here so we can direct it to you....since you are the one who pointed us in this direction.

[forest beekeeper]

Originally Posted by mollysmiles

Gotta love it! I didn't think about the interior walls being non weight-bearing. That for me would be a big bonus. They are going to love this info! Thank you!

When playing with interior design, we found that we really liked the openess. We have a central sunken living room. 12 foot by 12 foot, with four couches built in it, each an eight foot couch/bench. The floor of the living room is black slate, and it is plumbed with propane. We plan to build an open-hearth firepit in it.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ingroom001.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...okingSouth.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ookingWest.jpg

DW has not made the cushions for them yet, though she does have the fabric, a blue denim. And she wants a second set of cushions with a flower print, for company.

[irishmom]

Originally Posted by forest beekeeper

When playing with interior design, we found that we really liked the openess. We have a central sunken living room. 12 foot by 12 foot, with four couches built in it, each an eight foot couch/bench. The floor of the living room is black slate, and it is plumbed with propane. We plan to build an open-hearth firepit in it.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ingroom001.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...okingSouth.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ookingWest.jpg

DW has not made the cushions for them yet, though she does have the fabric, a blue denim. And she wants a second set of cushions with a flower print, for company.

Wow when you said sunken living room I assumed the room was sunk not the couches...how creative! Just wondering and all...how would you vent an open fire pit?

[forest beekeeper]

Originally Posted by irishmom

Forest Bookkeeper - I showed my husband the site you posted about the house you bought....he is totally hooked! The home plans are fantastic! One question...do the inside walls look/feel funny? Of course we are used to sheet rock or plaster...so what is the look and feel of the walls in the house you bought (or aren't you there yet)?

He's ready to order one...which plan did you get? We love this one:

http://www.freedomsteelhome.com/homes_g.html

and this one:

http://www.freedomsteelhome.com/homes_b.html

Yes the 'California' and the 'Windsor' are both very nice.

Our home is more like the 'Oakwood'. We were using their online design program. Saving the designs of a possible building that we were interested in. We had a five or six designs saved with their quotes, and we were still thinking about it. [FreedomSteel does custom buildings at no additional charge] When they called me, saying that someone had made a down payment on a building, and then canceled the order. A number of the parts were already made and I could get it minus their 25% down-payment.

Their engineers reviewed the building codes for our projected county, the snow load and the wind-sheer of this building exceeds the codes by 150%. [each county has slightly different building codes].

Then we were able to specify the colour of the exterior and trim [we picked 'forest green' and 'egg-shell' trim].

Our home is 40 x 60, 2400 square foot, with 12 foot eaves. The ceiling is 14 foot high in the center.

The look and feel of the walls?

Framed out the windows eight inches thick, so it allows for eight inches of insulation. With one inch of sprayed-in-place foam and fiberglass batting; we have about R-40. And then the light wood grain paneling, with a dark walnut trim.

We have enough lighting for us, but I did wire the walls for a lot more lighting. We however ran out of funding before we got to the lighting fixtures. I have tried a few times to take some digital photos indoors, but I need more ambient light. I will post photos as soon as I take them.

I guess that we have different priorities then other folks. Walls, roof, electrical circuits, plumbing, radiant floor heat, jacuzzi, insulation, all before light fixtures. But our jacuzzi is ten foot from my computer desk and we do use it daily.

... We found a piece of land that we want to build on already...so this may be the way we go (except for the do-it-yourself part...been there done that with him already...LOL). Do you get a referral bonus? If so I'll let you know if we actually buy from here so we can direct it to you....since you are the one who pointed us in this direction.

I do not think there is any referral bonus, thank you though.

We did talk with a local contractor who does specialize on steel buildings. He gave us a nice quote to put it all together for us. After he looked over the plans, he said that he could use a half-crew to set it up in five days [four to six men with a crane]. That would have been much faster, and we would have moved into it one year sooner, but we did not go that route due to our finances. I did it myself instead, and we saved a bit of money.

I will gladly refer anyone to the contractor that we found, he does a lot of steel buildings and seems very professional.

[forest beekeeper]

Originally Posted by irishmom

Wow when you said sunken living room I assumed the room was sunk not the couches...how creative! Just wondering and all...how would you vent an open fire pit?

Our plan is to suspend an exhaust hood over it, and include a water heater tank in the exhaust hood like we used when we lived in Scotland. Just one more source of heat to heat the radiant floors. BTW we ran PEX tubing underneath the seating and behind the seat backs of those couches, PEX is also ran through the slate floor, so both the floor and seats and their backs are heated by radiant tubing.

[irishmom]

Originally Posted by forest beekeeper

Our plan is to suspend an exhaust hood over it, and include a water heater tank in the exhaust hood like we used when we lived in Scotland. Just one more source of heat to heat the radiant floors. BTW we ran PEX tubing underneath the seating and behind the seat backs of those couches, PEX is also ran through the slate floor, so both the floor and seats and their backs are heated by radiant tubing.

Oh my you will be warm and toasty in more ways than one with such a set up! They had radiant tile flooring samples in the tile store where we bought all of our porcelain tile for the house here...it's so weird to feel warm tile...it feels great, but I always expect to feel cold tile...so it's weird too.

The house sounds great, I will definitely be looking forward to pictures when you are done! You and your wife sound very creative, congrats to you both.

Now just because I'm a worrier, you will be installing carbon monoxide detectors along with your fire detectors right? I'm sure you are smart enough to know that...but now I feel better that I know you know that. I told you I'm a stressed out worrier. , can't help myself.

[forest beekeeper]

Originally Posted by irishmom

... Now just because I'm a worrier, you will be installing carbon monoxide detectors along with your fire detectors right? I'm sure you are smart enough to know that...but now I feel better that I know you know that. I told you I'm a stressed out worrier. , can't help myself.

Sure, already have one.