Wyatt Homes

Designing a deck

Making a customer happy isn’t always an easy and/or quick thing to do but it’s always worth it.

For a recent customer we had to go through 6 different designs before we settled on a deck design that met both budgetary and aesthetic concerns.

At the first meeting we looked at various magazines and photos the homeowners had collected that showed decks that they liked. After we took measurements and photos of the existing conditions, we went and whipped up a design that had many of the features they desired. We came up with this:

While the customer liked the design it was a little too “simple” looking for them. They wanted some pizzazz. We went back and tweaked the design a bit for them and ended up with this:

They liked the complexity added by the ninety degree stair, but it still wasn’t pizazz-ish enough for them. Back to the drawing board!

We went all out this time, incorporating just about every idea the homeowners had said that they liked:

After incorporating all of the ideas they wanted, they decided (and I agreed) that it just wouldn’t work in the area this deck had to go. They also wanted larger areas of flat space, and they saw a pergola that they liked. On to design #4:

They liked many elements of this design, but decided that they’d like to see something similar but with a roof instead of purlins on the pergola structure. This led us to:

Getting close, but they’ve now decided they’d rather not spend the money on the additional structure. This led us to our fifth and final design.

This is the deck we finally settled on. The next hurdle was the type of decking. Ideally, they wanted to use ipe decking. This is a good choice. However, while you don’t have to oil ipe, if you want it to keep its original color you need to oil it every 6-12 months. Since the homeowner’s preferred the look of oiled ipe, and they’re getting older and don’t want the maintenance, we decided to go with TimberTech’s Tropical Teak composite decking product with their hidden fastener system.

Tags: construction, decks, Design. | No Comments »

What kind of decking material?

Nowadays, you have a lot of options when it comes to the sort of material to use on your deck.

1. Pressure Treated

This is your most basic option for decking materials. While pressure treated wood has a decent lifespan if you get good quality materials, most people find it to be the least pleasing to the eye.

2. Cedar

Cedar is a great, natural, and long-lasting wood that many people choose for their decks. Cedar can be stained a multitude of colors to go with any sort of decor. The biggest downside to cedar decking is that it requires maintenance. Depending upon how much fading is acceptable to you, you may find yourself restaining your deck yearly.

3. Composite

Composite decking has made great strides over the years. Many manufacturers make composite boards, they vary in their quality. Composite decking is a wood-plastic composite. Some downfalls include a tendency to mold in the right environment and a “plasticky” look. A lot of this can be alleviated by choosing high quality products from the right manufacturer.

4. Exotic

There are many more exotic woods available to the deck builder today than their were in the past. Leading the charge of exotic woods is ipe. Ipe is an extraordinarily durable wood. You have two options when it comes to maintenance. Oil it yearly to keep it’s rich brown tone, or do nothing to it and it weathers to a uniform gray color. Either way, Ipe will last for decades.

The biggest downside to Ipe is it’s cost. Not only is the material itself up to 5x more expensive than pressure treated lumber, labor to install it is also much greater. Because of it’s extreme density, fasteners will not drive through it easily, causing labor to skyrocket.

There’s many more choices in the Exotic category. From tiger wood, to garupa, there’s a wide range of exotic woods available to the contractor and homeowner today.

5. Tile

Something a little different is a tiled deck. With the right preparation a deck can have a finished surface of tile, allowing you to go to the vast array of choices in porcelain and stone tile available.

Tags: decks, Design. | 1 Comment »

How we install our windows

With slight modifications for the vinyl windows typically used in our homes, this is how we install our windows - the right way. I have yet to see another builder in our area install windows correctly.

Tags: building-science, business, construction, drainage, windows. | No Comments »

What’s this house really have?

Here’s a feature list just for you!

• Over a thousand square feet of hardwood floors
• Structured media wiring system.
• Arched interior openings.
• Double-hung windows with low-e coatings and argon gas between the panes for energy efficiency
• Separate heating/cooling units for upstairs and downstairs
• Craftsman fiberglass wood-look front door for minimal maintenance
• Home office/loft area
• Two walk-in closets in master suite
• Over 1/2 acre lot with large back yard
• And of course nearly 2400 square feet with 4 bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths

Tags: 412trevor, Design, real_estate. | No Comments »

What are all these wires?

There’s a problem with the way telephone and video cabling are traditionally run in your home.  There is no expandability or configurability built into the system.  Additionally, your typical new home is not pre-wired for networking  the 1.5 computers in the average US household.

What can we do about it?

There is a concept growing in popularity among home builders of “structured media”.  Using this method for communication wiring addresses the shortcomings inherent in old-style wiring. 

By running television, telephone, and data cables to a central location, we allow the homeowner to easily configure the system as they see fit.

As you can see from the picture the house we have built at 412 Trevor Court is configured with a structured media system.

In other news, we’ve added more photos!

Tags: 412trevor, construction, photos. | 1 Comment »

Photo-licious!

Some more photos have been uploaded.

Tags: 412trevor, construction, photos. | No Comments »

Home construction scheduling for the layman

The schedule for building a home is a complex beast involving hundreds of steps, complex dependencies, and many variable factors. A good builder manages all of this for the client. However, there are times where the schedule and the client intersect, and sometimes in less than ideal ways.

A big part of any home building project is picking out materials, colors, appliances, etc. If it’s a spec home, the builder does most of this (if a buyer comes along before the project is complete I’ll often allow the buyer to make whatever selections are left to be made). On a custom home, the homeowner makes these selections.

This can often become a scheduling problem, because for some reason it’s hard to impress on the homeowner how necessary their prompt selections are to running their job smoothly. I think this partially arises when they see that some things don’t matter as much as others when it comes to making their selections. i.e. In some cases, while they are told it’s important to make a selection by such-and-such date, that date comes and goes and there’s no consequences as far as they can see.

This arises because of the fact that there is a Critical Path in the scheduling of a home. Some selections don’t lie on this path.

Critical Paths and you

All steps in the builidng of a home have to be completed to finish the home. However, all steps are not critical to advancing the schedule to the next level.

For example, picking out the wall paint colors are critical because the walls have to be painted before trim, cabinets, flooring, etc can be installed. Picking out the color of your shutters is not as critical because the installation of the shutters doesn’t hold up anything except the completion of the home. As Wikipedia says in the above link, “Any delay of an activity on the critical path directly impacts the planned project completion date”.

Other scheduling snafu’s

On a recent project the homeowner’s became concerned because the framing wasn’t going as fast as they thought it should. They didn’t see how we could meet our planned completion date.

The framing was, in fact, going slower than it could have. This wasn’t a concern to me because of the fact that the subcontractors who were dependent upon completion of the framing were scheduled to come at certain dates (based upon their own schedules) giving us much longer to complete the framing than we normally have.

The framing got finished, and all of a sudden there were a dozen new people on the job doing HVAC, plumbing, electrical, insulation. The homeowner’s were happy to see the progress!

At this point the project was right on schedule and I was happy with the progress. The next subcontractor to come in was the drywall taping and painting contractor. This sub lay right on the critical path. I try to avoid this situation as much as possible because it leaves the schedule of your project right on an outside party which can lead to problems, and on this project it did. The contractor stretched the job out so far it took him 6 weeks to do a 2 week job! Needless to say, neither I, nor the homeowners, were happy with this situation.

To add to the problems, the homeowners didn’t quite understand what I’m explaining with this post. Because the taper/painter was taking so long, I didn’t hurry on some other smaller jobs that needed done. These jobs didnt lay on the critical path, and didn’t ever have an affect on the finish date.

This house took 5 weeks longer than it was supposed to. The delay was directly attributable to the taper/painter. I now try even hard to keep subs off of the critical path.

Hopefully, this discussion will hep you understand a little more the things that go into scheduling the completion of your next home!

Tags: business, schedule. | No Comments »

New photos of 412 Trevor

I added some new photos of the house under construction.  At this point we nearly have the framing complete.  Just a few days to go.

The weather this winter has added months to our construction schedule.

Tags: 412trevor, construction, framing, photos. | No Comments »

Photo album integration

I’ve changed the method we host, view, and organize photos.  This will allow better organization and more photos!

You can access all our photos here or by clicking the link at the top of every page.

Tags: meta, photos. | No Comments »

Zillow Talk

Zillow is an online real estate estimator that uses various data sources to determine the value of a home. Today they added the ability to list your home directly on the site. This is an area of the real estate business that is going to show tremendous growth in the future as online sales start to push out traditional methods of buying and selling real estate. I see a big change in this space with regards to Realtors. It’s entirely possible with the ease of online listing that more and more people will save the traditional commissions and save money by going the online route.

Unfortunately, as with many technologies, these changes will take longer to propagate to more rural counties likes ours. Zillow has almost no entries for a local town.

Tags: business, real_estate. | No Comments »