Basics
While talking to people at our open house I was reminded of a few basic things that I learned while designing our house. Here they are.
- In Crestview, houses cost about $150 - $200/sqft, and you can build for about $100 - $175/sqft.
- A construction loan is based on the value of the property after work is done, not the current value.
- Pools and decks return about 40% of what they cost in resale.
- A small bedroom is 10 ft by 10 ft. You really shouldn’t go smaller than that.
- 13×13 is nice but not a big bedroom. 14×14 is ok. 15×15 is great. 16×16 is crazy big.
- A shirt on a hanger is 2 feet wide. If you want to hang stuff up on both sides of a walk-in closet, that’s 2 feet on each side, and 3 in the middle. 7 feet.
- A hallway is 3 ft minimum, and that’s really small. 3.5 ft is ok. 4 ft is nice.
- Stairs take up about one full bedroom of space. Stairs in a straight line take up 60 sqft out of each floor, for a total of 120 sqft, but if you start to fall at the top, you’re going all the way downstairs. Add a landing (is that why they call it a landing?) in the middle and it’s 180 sqft.
- 8 ft ceiling is low, 9 is high, 10 is, well, just get out a ruler and see how high that really is before you spec it.
- Closets and bathrooms can have kludgy shapes, but bedrooms should be rectangles.
- Exterior lights look better if you can’t see the light source.
- Every room should have windows on 2 walls.
- Sometimes a window has to be in an odd spot inside, to be in a good spot outside.
- It’s not how many feet of pipe you have that drives cost, it’s how many times it pops out of the wall. Sink? 1000 bucks. Tub? 1000 bucks. Another sink? 1000 bucks. It’s enough to make you rethink those his-and-her toilets.
I cannot say enough thanks to you guys for the information you are sharing. This list is so informative. Thank you for letting us peek into your lives.
I have to admit, we learned a lot from LiveModern.com and from just plain burying our noses in books and getting obsessive. Not the route everyone wants to take, so we figured we’d publish the blog as the ultimate cheat sheet
Glad to see you’re enjoying it!!
Like Joanna said, thank you, thank you, and thank you for sharing your experience. Often the first thing I do everyday is to check your blog to see the progress of your dream home. It’s addictive! It’s a beautiful house and you have a beautiful family. My husband and I are in the process of building one for our two kids. We’re not as talented (okay, I am not, but Paul my husband is) as you guys so we hired Mark Meyer to design one for us. I find myself coming back to this page to get your opinion on the bedroom sizes. Very helpful. Thanks!
Again, you’re welcome! Sometimes I think, “Who the heck cares about all this stuff except us?” But, man, I love reading house blogs.
(Hint, hint… we’ll be expecting you to post a link to yours, LOL)
Katharina,
That’s really exciting. I hope to see your designs, and the finished product. I’m really curious to see the results of the road-we-did-not-take. There’s a metro house being built down the road from us about the same stage as ours. It’s looking really cool. Every time I see it I wonder, “What if…”
I have a couple more bullet points to add.
Spec out the measurements of every feature before signing a contract. I didn’t spec the width of the exterior trim or the depth of the eaves. A real architect wouldn’t have missed those.
The height of the ceiling is tied to the square footage the stairs take up. This got us twice, once downstairs when we went for 8 to 9 ft (two steps), then again when we went from 8 to 9 ft upstairs we had to move the attic access at the last minute.