Build Notes (New Construction, Older Homes, Renovations, Interesting Finishing and Details)
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Edit: should’ve put this at the beginning originally, but where these homes really shine, at least for me, is two or three years down the road when the landscaping has filled in, the vines have grown, and everything starts to develop a little patina and age. Even when the house is technically finished, it never really feels completely done. That evolution is part of the process.
Here are some details from the house with a small pool. This is a mahogany gate to the pool equipment. The wall is a 4” cement block with 3-coat European hard coat stucco. Notice the little radius or semi radius on top of the wall, looks nice and helps to shed water. Same detail they were supposed to do on the water feature monument, so it would look less like a headstone. Still debating whether I’m going to get them to fix that or not. The guy’s shook their head like they understood what I was telling them to do and they proceed to not do it. I can’t totally blame them because so much of how I build is “off the cuff” sketched on pieces of paper, not architectural drawings. More often than not just something mentioned in the field.
This is another mahogany built detail. The louvered screen lets in a little light while also blocking the view of the neighbor’s HVAC condenser. Fortunately, their condenser is whisper quiet.
This is actually next to the front door at the terrace level. Since they chose not to build the stairs going up to the main level, it was important not only to screen this area but also to make it attractive. It would have been easy and more cost effective to simply extend the masonry wall or fill this in with siding, but this gives the area a much more intentional finished look.
Below is the opposite end of the terrace-level porch area. The metal screen was fabricated by a guy I’ve been using for over 20 years. When my landscaper does the house next door, they’ll plant a creeping vine here, and the gardener who maintains everything will weave the vine through the screen as it grows. Eventually, this will become a green living wall.
After acid washing the PebbleTec this morning, the pool is now being filled. With the darker color, surrounding landscaping, and the colors of the home, it should end up having more of a lagoon feel to it.
And after asking my pool contractor about half a dozen times, supposedly they’re putting the water feature spout on today, but I won’t hold my breath…
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@northsouthdenimguy that’s a great idea doing that in a smaller bath. I’m actually about to redo a bathroom at my house soon and I’m gonna consider this. We have a marble look stone hexagonal backsplash in our kitchen and it looks so good. One of my favorite things in my house
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The pool is filled and some shitty interior shots. Don’t have time to set up for this, will have some more professional ones done later today. Keep in mind this is the client selections, which I think are very tasteful, but may not be everybody’s cup of tea.
Fingers crossed it’s closing on Monday was supposed to close today. Daddy needs a closing. I haven’t had one since October of last year….
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A few little things that drive me crazy on these final punch days.
One, the painters were here yesterday afternoon and still completely missed the spots around a duplex light switch. In their defense, the electrician had to add a switch at the last minute for the client, but still, it needs to get done.
Two, I’m going through the house cleaning little specks of drywall mud off the hardwood floors from some last-minute repairs. The cleaners came through this morning and did a good job overall, but definitely didn’t get everything 100%. I don’t really have to be doing it myself, but I’m kind of bored and my project manager is here knocking out some other punch items, so I’m just going through things.
And then, of course, there’s this light hanging down directly in front of the elevator door. I opened the elevator and almost destroyed the damn thing. Nobody told me the client was apparently OK with it hanging this low and actually wanted it this way, which makes absolutely no sense to me. So we’re zip-tying it up out of the way until they move in before somebody destroys a very expensive light fixture.
Edit: and the spout is still not on the pool water feature as promised yesterday, imagine that…
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A few curves
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Gorgeous lines!
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@Giles thanks! Appreciate the comment. I know you have a keen eye.
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Great detailing. The person who does all of our exterior detailing and quite a bit of the interior actually hand sketches all of these types of details to scale. He’ll take something like this, not copy it exactly, but pull the general idea from it and work it into a newer plan. It’s funny because every time he does something I’ll think it looks familiar, then months later I’ll be traveling somewhere and realize, that mf’er, that’s where he got it from.
Other than some of the really extreme modern stuff, I don’t know how much in residential architecture is truly new. Most of it has some connection to things people were already doing 70, 100, 150 years ago, sometimes way before that. Even Arts and Crafts and mid century modern were still borrowing from older ideas. Really it’s just taking those things, changing them around a little and making them work for what you’re building now.
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@northsouthdenimguy
Impressive examples of real craftsmanship. Nowadays, it is becoming less common. -
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@northsouthdenimguy
Unfortunately, the client for the marble tub did not pay his last bill in full, therefore only
of
As a small, equalising justice, he is currently behind bars in Austria -
During the economic downturn from 2008 to 2011, I was doing a lot of renovations because new construction was virtually dead here in the States. The last year I was doing renovations, I got stuck a few times with people refusing to pay their final bill, usually the last 5% to 10% of the job, until they had squeezed every possible extra out of you for free.
Fortunately, shortly after the last time it happened, I was able to get back into building custom homes again.
Some people just aren’t good people. They’ll take advantage of you as long as you let them, and somehow convince themselves they’re justified in doing it.
@selveldgesteps
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@northsouthdenimguy im in commercial/industrial mechanical construction but have noticed that after 2008 virtually every job, no matter how big or small, has a "right to lien" clause
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@northsouthdenimguy said in Build Notes (New Construction, Older Homes, Renovations, Interesting Finishing and Details):
I got stuck a few times with people refusing to pay their final bill, usually the last 5% to 10% of the job, until they had squeezed every possible extra out of you for free.
I fucking hate people who do that.....Be kind to people, you never know when the roles will be reversed....
"OK face up to it - you're useless but generally pretty honest and straightforward . . . it's a rare combination of qualities that I have come to admire in you" - Geo 2011
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@Giles
My experience, it’s usually the arrogant, full-of-themselves blokes, flaunting their so-called wealth, who end up being nothing but trouble. -
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.
