Build Notes (New Construction, Older Homes, Renovations, Interesting Finishing and Details)
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I’m probably going to give away who I’m talking about by saying this, but I really don’t care. I’ll say without hesitation that restaurant owners and restaurateurs have been some of the worst people I’ve ever worked for. They rarely pay on time, you’re constantly chasing your money, and in my experience they almost always find some reason not to pay the final amount.
Case in point, the last one who really stiffed me was a very prominent Southeastern chef and restaurateur who was also a James Beard Award winner. I had done the kitchen in his personal home, which turned out absolutely beautiful, and later did a refresh on one of his restaurants for what I believe was its five year anniversary. Before we touched the hardwood floors, I specifically asked him whether Murphy’s Oil Soap or any other cleaning product had ever been used on them. I don’t remember exactly what the wood was, possibly heart pine. He assured me absolutely not. He said they had a professional cleaning company with explicit instructions to use nothing more than a lightly damp mop and no products whatsoever.
My hardwood flooring company came in overnight, lightly sanded the floors, and applied polyurethane. He told me polyurethane was what was already on the floors. I had actually suggested going with an oil finish, but he didn’t want that. He wanted something with a little sheen to it and something he felt would be more durable. The next day, while we were finishing the rest of the refresh, the polyurethane started peeling off the floors. Clearly something had been used on them at some point that prevented the new finish from bonding properly. He didn’t want to take any responsibility for that, and rather than get into a prolonged fight over whose fault it was, we just bit the bullet, sanded the entire floor all the way back down to raw wood, and refinished it properly. Needless to say, that cost me money.
Something similar happened on his personal house. When it came time to collect the final 5% or whatever remained, suddenly there were a bunch of additional things he wanted done that were never part of my scope of work. It wasn’t even a tremendous amount of money, but I don’t believe he ever paid me the final balance.
The funny part is that I later built out a bakery he was heavily involved with because the bread was being produced for his restaurants. I believe the space was around 10,000 square feet. The shell was already there, but we retrofitted the entire space into the bakery. Thankfully, he wasn’t actually the owner writing the checks, even though he acted like one. I knew the real owner very well, so I got paid properly on that job. Had I been relying on the chef to pay me, I probably would have gotten stiffed again.
And just for a little perspective for everybody who says, “Screw that, I wouldn’t have done it. I would have sued him. I would have filed a lien. I would have walked away.” I was broke as a fucking joke at that point. When 2008 hit, I went from doing very well to having essentially zero dollars coming in almost overnight. Every single job mattered. A decent renovation might cover a few months of mortgage payments on the unfortunately more-than-one home I owned at the time, which had seemed like a great idea right up until 2008. A tiny bathroom job might cover the cell phone bill, gas, electricity, groceries, or whatever else was due. I literally started equating every job with which bills it was going to pay.
It was a very bleak time, and sometimes the practical decision was to finish the job, eat something you probably shouldn’t have had to eat, collect whatever money you could, and move on to the next one. You can be completely right on principle and still not have the luxury of spending months fighting somebody over a relatively small balance when you need cash flow right then. I wouldn’t change that experience for the world. Well, maybe I would change parts of it, but you know what I mean. Lol.
Edit: I should’ve been clearer in that last sentence. I wouldn’t change what I learned during that timeframe or how it changed my overall perspective on what I wanted out of life, at least monetarily and, in some ways, life in general. Other than spending a ridiculous amount of money on boots and clothing, of course.
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Inside most of the tile works done waiting on lots of the cabinets once the French Oak flooring goes down which you’ll see in the picture and the treads are being installed this week on the staircase flooring has to acclimate. We have the AC going, but it needs to sit in the house for about five days so we’ll install it sometime starting next week hopefully…
Hoping these come out right. I had to resize them.
This is my next house that I really need to get closed by the end of October.
We’re finishing up a lot of the interior trim details right now. Much of the wall treatment is molding applied directly to the drywall to create the panel and box details. As anybody in the business knows, whether you’re doing paint-grade or stain-grade paneling, it gets expensive quickly. On a house like this, space and clearances are also at a premium. The main house is only about 24 feet wide by 60 feet deep, and as insignificant as a couple inches may sound, heavy built-out paneling can start making rooms and hallways feel a little clunky.
The crown detail is pretty cool and incorporates a small dentil molding.
The pool currently looks like a nasty pond, but directly behind it is the two-car garage with living space above. That space will be the owner’s office with a full bath and a small wet-bar area.
The other structure, which you can kind of see to the left of the two-story garage, just barely through the bushes at the edge of the building, is actually a separate one-story structure. That will be the workout room, another office, a full bath, sauna, cold plunge, and a large walk-in shower.
This is probably my least favorite stage of a project. Everything is unfinished, dirty, and none of the individual pieces really make sense yet. Even the garden area around the pool looks pretty rough right now. The bushes on the left are overgrown and actually belong to the neighboring property. Once the old chain-link fence comes down, the new fence and vines go in, all of the bluestone is installed, and the landscaping goes in with the new bushes, trees, and planting, that whole area should change dramatically.
There’s also a large granite water-feature monument that will sit against the wall at the end of the pool, backing up to the garage. That should be a pretty great focal point once everything is finished.
All in all, I think it’s going to come together really well. I just wanted to post a few pictures from this stage because you usually only see these houses once everything is clean, landscaped, furnished, and finished. This is the part where it still looks like a construction site.
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All of the flooring and stair treads in this house are French oak from a local company. I’m not going to pretend I know every technical detail of what makes it “French oak,” but it’s really nice material with a great look and feel. The matching stair treads are a nice touch too and help everything feel consistent throughout the house.
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One of the main ideas with this house, and really this little 10-unit neighborhood, was to make the architecture feel like it evolved over time rather than being built all at once. Almost like the original house had been there for decades, then a garage with living space was added later, followed by a small outbuilding, pool, and garden. The different masses and rooflines help it feel more organic and layered, like it grew over generations.
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@northsouthdenimguy
Damn these are amazing looking homes, great job man. Are you a sub developer? I def can relate on how hard it is to get projects going permits, inspections, finding the right contractors etc. I’m a property manager in San Franciso. Currently almost at the end of a 350k remodel on one building. Part of a mixed commercial/ residential/parking lot real estate portfolio. We Started back in January, hopefully be done in 6-8 weeks. The city does not make it easy to get any work done, -
Thanks!
I’m a General Contractor/New home builder
This particular project, the 10 homes, is something I do for a local developer as a fee builder, and we’re also partners on the back end ($). It’s kind of a unique situation. I basically control everything on the building side just like I would through my own company. I price the homes, manage the budgets, hire and manage the subcontractors, and make sure the projects are built where they need to be financially. The big difference is I don’t have to deal with all the accounting. I’ve known them for almost 31 years, and since 2013 I’ve built more than 200 custom homes this way.
I definitely prefer the way our companies come together on these projects versus doing everything as a one-off through my own company, but I still like keeping my name out there and doing some projects independently.
I still do one-off custom builds solely through my own company, like the standalone house on eight acres I posted the other day, and I’m currently in the planning stages of another custom on six acres that will hopefully start early next year.
I’m sure San Francisco is a bear. It’s hard enough here in Atlanta but I can’t imagine there or NYC Etc.
Good luck on getting wrapped up in the coming weeks
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fuck I really love that tub
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Our work is mainly focused on tiles, natural stone, terrazzo and glass mosaics, so our portfolio isn’t quite as broad as taking on the refurbishment or construction of entire houses.
for example, here installing a terrazzo hot tub in a private spa.
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I love stuff like that. It’s cool seeing different products and everything from something affordable to super high-end is interesting to me.
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The next house courtyard and pool area are starting to come together in this little 10 unit neighborhood. We’re doing French pattern natural stone around the pool, and it will also carry over to the small stoop outside the outbuilding, finished with a granite border. The outbuilding has a kind of open studio space on the main level with a bedroom and bath above.
One of the cooler details is the little fabricated steel panel roof with spear accents.
We also have foundations, plumbing, and everything else going into the next three houses. Two of those are an attached wall to wall townhome unit, and the third is a detached single family house. Even then, there are retaining walls between all of these units, so some are true standalones while others mix in townhomes or outbuildings that attach in different ways to the main house or even the house next door.
There are just a lot of different little things going on that make this a really tricky neighborhood to build. Lots of elevation changes, courtyards that sit lower than the outbuildings but are at the same level as the main house, and all kinds of odd little conditions to work through. Very cool and interesting stuff, but painstakingly slow at times.
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One other detail across the front of these first three homes is that the front yards are really more of a shared park. This is not something each homeowner maintains individually. It is covered by the small HOA, and once everything fills in, it should be incredibly lush within a year or two.
Ideally, we would have liked to use some type of crushed stone in place of the concrete sidewalk, but there are a few city requirements that make the concrete necessary, and cobble or brick just was not in the budget. Long term, though, once the landscaping matures and really fills in, I think it is going to look fantastic even with standard concrete sidewalks.
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Yes, when it comes to residential construction in the U.S., wood framing is the norm for the most part. Florida is probably the biggest exception, where block or CMU exterior walls are very common. You also see more masonry construction in parts of the Southwest, especially with stucco and adobe-influenced architecture, where block can make sense for the exterior walls.
A lot of it can also be very builder specific. You may find a builder in almost any state or market who says, “Nope, this is how I build,” and all of their houses are block, poured concrete, steel framed, or some combination of the three. There are always a few guys out there doing the Bob Vila on steroids version of residential construction.
Architecture plays a big role too. Once you get into more modern designs with long spans, cantilevers, huge openings, walls of glass, and very open floor plans, steel and concrete become much more common and can sometimes be structurally necessary. At that point, it is less about a builder’s preference and more about what the architecture and engineering require.
California is another good example. They do a lot of different things there, especially at the higher end. Between earthquakes, wildfire concerns, steep sites, and ambitious architecture, you tend to see more reinforced concrete, steel framing, masonry, and other engineered systems. In a lot of those cases, it is not just about building “better,” but about responding to the site, structural demands, fire exposure, and the architecture itself.
Once you get into ultra high-end residential, or somebody simply wants something different, you will occasionally see structural block, poured concrete, ICF, steel framing, and other systems. I have seen all of those used, but outside of certain regions and specific architectural or structural requirements, they are still pretty rare compared with conventional wood framing.
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How do you typically construct and waterproof your outdoor pools?
Do you use a watertight reinforced-concrete shell, or do you rely on a separate waterproofing system?
And what do you normally use as the final finish — specialized pool coating, tiles, glass mosaic or natural stone?
I’ve heard that there are some highly specialized pool-coating companies in the Washington, D.C. area.🥴 -
These pools in particular are getting a pebble tec finish https://pebbletec.com/
Reinforced Concrete no separate waterproofing system
Typically, doing some sort of ceramic waterline tile
These are not particularly fancy or super high-end. There’s a lot of options out there.
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When I was asked about block Construction, I totally forgot about this from a while back…
Small 34 unit neighborhood pool house and pool project completed a little over two years ago. I built 17 of the homes in this development, including several of the ones you can see around the pool area in the photos.
This project(edit: pool project)is actually all block and stucco construction, except for the ceiling and roof structure. The exterior is a European hardcoat stucco with a sand finish. The bathroom interiors have a smooth, plaster-like stucco finish with subtle modeling in the color. It turned out super cool. I could probably take some interior photos, but I’m not sure they would really do it justice.
The one-story pool house has four separate bathrooms, two exterior vanity areas set into small offsets at the front and back, and an outdoor shower.
The pool pavers are actually cast concrete, but they have the look of limestone while being a little more practical and lower maintenance long term.
The one-story structure also kind of blends into the four-story home behind it, at least from a distance. Architecturally, it has a bit of a 1930s early-modern feel, with the breeze block adding a definite mid-century influence.
