The beginning

We have decided to build a custom house for many different reasons. I would be here all day describing all of them, so I will hit just a few of the main reasons. For anyone familiar with Houston, you may know that most suburban neighborhoods are all the same. Most are developed and only have a few house builders (or just one) building houses in that neighborhood. The problem we have with this is variety. You only have a few different models of homes to choose from and they only allow so much “customizing” with them. This leaves you with a neighborhood of houses that all look alike…we tend to like things that are different or out of the ordinary.

The next reason is lot size. Developers want to make as much money as they can so they typically try to fit the maximum number of houses per acre as they can. This leaves most new neighborhoods with a 6,000 to 8,000 sq ft lot per house. In some neighborhoods you can literally reach out your window and touch then neighbor’s house. While this may be fine when you live in the city or in a retirement community where yard size is not as important to some, what I am referring to is about 30 miles outside of Houston in a normal community. We wanted enough room around us where we did not have to look out our window and see the neighbor’s house…not just on the side, but also in the front and the back.

The next reason: Quality. There, I said it. I saved the most important, in my opinion, for last. By going custom, it can be built with my choice of materials and to my specifications. Houses today are not built to last 50+ years. Some might say, “Who cares! I am not going to live there for that long!” The problem with this way of thinking is simple. With the population continually growing, we are using up more and more of our natural resources leaving us with less and less trees, oil, rock, ect… All the things we need to build a house. Yes the trees will grow back…but not as fast as we are cutting them down to build houses. Same with the rest of the materials. My point being, the houses built today are not built with the same quality of materials, the same craftsmanship, or in the same amount of time as the ones built by our ancestors. It is true that the technology of building materials has increased dramatically in the past century, same with tools to make the job go faster. One problem with the new materials is the training of some installers/builders or lack thereof. The newer products of today are only going to function properly if they are installed correctly. Money is the other problem. If you have ever had a contractor come into your home to do any type of remodeling or repair, you typically pay them a fixed price for the entire job, not by the hour. This can be good and bad. By paying them a fixed price for the entire job, they are motivated to finish on time so they can move on to the next job – Good. You can get what you pay for faster. On the other hand, by paying them a fixed price for the job, some contractors are only concerned about making more money so they finish as fast as they can by doing sub-par work or cutting corners in order to move on faster to the next job. There is not a problem with paying a contractor by the job by any means (this is normally how it is done anyways), but you must be able to supervise and inspect every stage of their work in order to make sure they are doing it to your specifications and also code. Please do not take this the wrong way. Not all contractors work like this. It is actually probably very few considering how may are out there. But if you have my luck, you will get the crappy, dishonest one. This leads into a BIG problem. We live just outside the city limits of Houston in Harris County. While building/remodeling in the city requires permits and periodic inspections by the building inspector to insure everything is being done correctly, safely, and to code, building outside the city limits only requires a building permit – no inspections! To my knowledge, it is this way not only for residential, but also for commercial as well. While this may be much easier and less of a hassle for the builder, it is not good for the new homeowner. Unless you hire your own inspector while building a tract home, you really have no idea if everything inside your walls is done properly or not. New homes often come with a home warranty, but I would hate to be the one to fight the battle with the builder to try and get them to come out and fix a warranty related issue.

After saying all this, I can now begin telling you a bit more about our house. We spent about 6 months discussing pros and cons of the different house framing materials. We looked at traditional stick framing, SIPs, ICFs, and steel. Ultimately we have decided on steel for our house. Our first choice would probably be ICFs, but we have to consider our budget. While insulated concrete walls would be nice, strong, and very well insulated, we would have wound up spending about 50% more on just the exterior walls than using steel. We are using a combination of structural steel (wide flange beams) and light gauge cold rolled studs as filler. This combination will give us a very strong, termite proof, straight wall, long lasting, green house. Some benefits of steel are: 75% less waste that traditional framing methods, minimum 25% recycled content, 100% recyclable, easier to erect, cost effective, larger open spans, minimal shrinkage, and no nail pops. It also will work out well for us because we have a welder in the family…My Dad! I do not know if it would be as cost effective to do this if it were not for him. I can weld, but I do not know if I trust my welding ability enough to build a house. The welding is only done on the structural steel columns and beams…mainly the column bases. The rest of the SS is bolted together. As for the cold rolled, it is all screwed together. All the light rolled steel is delivered to me cut to the exact length I need. This is done by the manufacture as he rolls the steel. He simply follows my cut list and delivers exactly what I specify. This step saves a lot of time on the jobsite since only minimal cutting is required.

Next...the house design process.