About the house

My wife and I have dreamt about building a house for about 6 years. Basically, ever since we have purchased our first house. If you would have asked us then what style house we were going to build, the answer would have been unanimously Mediterranean. That was until we stared seriously looking into the detail that goes into those types of houses. And that type of detail comes at a nice price as well. The tile roof alone can run 10K and up. Then you have all the elaborate molding inside and out, art niches, columns, and expensive travertine flooring. While the houses themselves are quite a dramatic statement of style and architecture, for us, the price did not justify it.

We then ran across a different style of house. This style was much different than most things we have seen in the Houston area. It is more commonly seen in places like California or Florida or even Arizona now. It is a style that can be partially contributed (residential anyways) to the well know architect Frank Lloyd Wright and the infamous Fallingwater, which can be seen here. Defined by its clean lines and its rejection of traditional historical style, modern architecture pushes the boundaries of design through the use of innovative material and a simplistic approach to everyday living. The idea is to design something around its functionality first; not its looks.

This is the thing we had to keep in mind when designing our house. It is often difficult to ignore the overall looks of something you are designing and put the functionality first. This is probably why it took us so long to get to this point. Once I was able to get this into my head, the design went fairly easy. Especially with the windows. The only true reasons a house has windows is:

-Light

-Ventilation

-Egress

-View

Not in any particular order. All of which are important for the people inside not outside. So why not design the windows around the people inside the house? Most windows themselves are not very energy efficient; as compared to the walls around them. So instead of putting an equal number of windows in each room or the same size windows everywhere whether it needs it or not, we decided to strategically place each window so it maximizes the view, provides plenty of light and ventilation (if needed), and meet the requirements of code.

Design:

Our house is going to be a modern 2 story, 3 bedroom, 3 ½ bath, 3 car garage around 2700 sq ft. There are a few cantilevered second floor and roof areas extending from 2’ up to 6’ out. The interior of the house is fairly simple. On the first floor is the utility room, kitchen, dining, living, and half bath. All of which will have a polished concrete floor. The kitchen will have stainless cabinets and a cobalt blue quartz countertop. Leading to the second floor are 4’ wide cantilevered stairs made from 1/8” raw steel plate. On the second floor are 3 bedrooms including the master, 3 baths, and a small office area. There are also 2 exterior balconies, one off the MB and the other off the set of stairs. Flooring for the second floor is still unknown at this time. The bathrooms will have concrete countertops and glass tile surrounding the shower/baths (master for sure, depending on costs and budget, possibly the other 2 as well). I tend to be drawn to more of the industrial look such as raw honed concrete floors, exposed bar joist and I beams, lots of steel, much less drywall, and raw plywood and OSB (even for the flooring). My wife, on the other hand, tends to be drawn to a cleaner modern such as polished concrete floors, less steel and more drywall, bamboo floors, ect…At least we agree on one thing…we want our house to be different than all others. It has been a challenge to find the middle ground on our style differences, but I think the end result will be a nice balance between our two tastes.

Construction Materials:

As you already know, the frame is going to be SS with light gauge filler walls. While steel studs are stronger, straighter, termite proof, and greener than stick framing, they are inherently energy inefficient so extra steps have to be taken to ensure heat/cold does not get transferred into the house. So to prevent the thermal bridging that occurs with steel studs, each stud will be fitted with a foam cap. From there, the entire outside will be wrapped in 7/16” OSB and Tyvek house wrap. Double glazed, Low-E, argon filled vinyl windows will then be installed. We are not 100% sure as to the siding material as of yet. It is looking to be a rainscreen design with Hardipanel and corrugated galvalume. The exterior entry doors and garage doors are going to be custom design and built. The entire house will be insulated with cellulose, both damp spray and blown dry. I learned a great deal about building technology and energy efficiency for the different climates by spending a lot of time on this website: http://www.buildingscience.com/. The roof decking with utilize a radiant barrier product such as TechShield to help reflect the heat. The roof will be standard composite shingles with the majority being a 2-12 slope. This is the minimum allowed by shingle manufactures. They do recommend using 2 layers of 30lb felt under this slope for extra protection. For the plumbing system we decided to do something a little different that the standard copper or pvc/cpvc. We are going to try a newer technology called PEX or cross-linked high-density polyethylene tubing. It is probably more commonly used for radiant heating than anything. One thing that absolutely set my mind on PEX was seeing crew on This Old House using this product when plumbing a house they were working on. It installs in a fraction of the time than traditional methods because it is flexible. There is no need to cut and glue/sweat a fitting when changing direction. We are eliminating baseboards and door casing by using products manufactured by these people http://www.trimtexinc.com/ .

We expect the house to take about 12 months to be livable and possibly an extra 6 to 12 months to put the finishing touches on everything. To save on costs while building, we are probably not going to finish the 3^rd bedroom and bath, and probably just leave that as unfinished attic space. Once we need the extra space and are in the house, it will be an easy project to finish those areas out.

Next: Windows, clearly not an easy decision.