Thin buildings–in Japan, where real estate is prohibitively expensive, there are lots of them.

We’ve recently started a new home and here’s the first batch of pictures from it.

This house is for sale and among it’s unique features is that in addition to the two car garage, it also has a massive detached garage with 16′ ceilings, a loft area, extra-height garage door, and carport. This garage would make a great workshop and/or storage for your RV, boat, or extra vehicles.

With slight modifications for the vinyl windows typically used in our homes, this is how we install our windows – the right way.  I rarely see this detail handled correctly.

• 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

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!

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!

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

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