If you’ve followed this blog at all, you know that we recently built our house. We’ve been in it for a little over a year now and it is still new to me. We are still adjusting to things and how the house behaves in terms of noises, maintenance and small little nuances. When we started this project in October 2008, neither my wife nor I had any previous experience with construction or building. That isn’t to say that we were totally clueless about the process. We did do a lot of homework before taking on the project, but we hadn’t really had any formal experience with construction before, so therefore, we didn’t totally know what to expect. With that said, I’m extremely satisfied with the outcome of our house and I hope to be able to live here until the day my kids have to wheel me into the old folks home or I die in the back yard.

Everyone that I know that has taken on the task of building their home has come out of the project ultimately very satisfied but with a few things they would want to change. This is no different for me. There are a few alterations I would like to make and wish I would have thought of them during the building phase, but sometimes it is just really hard to have that much foresight. The purpose of this entry is to identify a few things I wish I would have known before the build; thus making the experience in our house a little better for years to come. Some of these things are small and some a bigger. Some of them might be obvious but we just overlooked and some are so detailed that I would have never thought of them during the pre-build discussions with our builder. All of them, however, would have made the experience in our house better and thus I thought it would be a good idea to culminate them into a blog post for others who might be researching their own build project.

Construction Alterations

In this section, I’d like to specifically detail some changes I would have done to the physical construction of the house i.e. framing, concrete, bricking etc…

1. Engineered I-Beam Floor Joists – For those of you who don’t know what these are, just go do a quick google search on them and you’ll find a plethora of information. I’m by no means a construction engineer, so I’ll do my best to explain what I know about these in laymen terms. A house floor is historically made up of 2×12 floor joists. These are the joists that run perpendicular to the basement or foundation walls to provide the structural support for the floor. If you’ve ever looked at a wood framed house, these are the large spanning boards that usually make up the floor. They are made up of 2×12 boards that are extremely long and strong as to provide for the best possible structural support for all those heaving things that reside on the main floor of your house. Just think how much weight the floor of your house holds. Not only does it hold all your furniture, appliances, cabinets, desks and so on, but it also holds yourself and however many people are at your house on a Friday night to play rock band! All in all, that adds up to be a lot of weight. The floor joists and sub flooring of your house is probably secured together with nails or screws. Screws being the better of the two, but in a lot of cases the time it takes to construct something like that with screws is too much so often framers do this with nails. As the weight in your house moves, whether you’re moving things around or just walking across the floor, it can cause the floor joists to move quite a bit and sometimes make noises as it shifts, bows and squeaks the nails. If you have a single story house, you might hear some small pops and cracks as you walk across the floor, but nothing really big. However, if you have a basement like I do, and you’re under those floor joists, you hear it all, thus coming to the point. I wish I we would have gone with engineered I-beam floor joists rather than traditional 2×12 joists. Why, you ask. Because not only are engineered I-beam joists stronger than traditional 2×12 joists, I’ve read they are much more quiet. This is simply because of the way they are engineered and assembled. If you googled the term like I said previously, you’ll know why this is and probably have read some of the advantages for yourself. I don’t know why, but I’ve come to appreciate an extremely quiet house. I don’t like the fact that if I’m in the basement, I can hear every little footstep that is walking a cross the floor. I can hear every little pop and crack in the floor above me as the weight of the floor shifts. I can’t imagine what it would sound like if we hadn’t insulated the basement ceiling. That adds a little bit of sound protections, but it isn’t enough.  I really wish we would have gone with the engineered I-beam floor joists just for the quiet factor.
2. Thicker Gauge HVAC Duct – This is probably the biggest thing I would change in my house and subsequently it is probably the 1 thing that I wouldn’t have ever thought about simply because I have no experience with HVAC systems. It makes sense that there are thinner and thicker gauges of metal for duct work. Some environments would require a thinner gauge and other would need a thicker gauge. Shortly after we moved in and got settled, I began to hear a kind of popping noise when I was in the living room. At first I thought it was a water drip because it was raining outside. After many days and investigation, I followed the noise to the main air duct run in the basement. There was a particular spot along that run that seemed to pop when the air/heat would come on. I did some researching on this and found out that the most likely cause was either the duct work was expanding and contracting and thus would flex a little or the duct work was rubbing up against the wood framing of the house when it was expanding and causing this noise. After a long time and a lot of frustration, my builder and I decided to bust into the basement ceiling to get a better look at the duct work and see what was going on. Many hours of troubleshooting and detective work later, we still hadn’t figured out how to stop this noise. We had called in several HVAC experts and they tried everything from putting foam dampeners on the duct work to clamping it together and many other things. Nothing seemed to resolve the issue which was the expansion and contraction of the metal causing it to pop a little bit. What sounded like a small little pop downstairs when you were under it echoed somehow into a large pop upstairs loud enough to be heard over the television when it was on. Needless to say this is a highly annoying thing to go on every time the air conditioner or furnace kicks on. Many experts say that a thicker gauge duct work would probably have eliminated this problem because the thicker the metal, the more resistant it is to flexing or expanding enough to make itself pop. You can hear this noise happening in the back bedrooms every so often and it wouldn’t be so bad if it was isolated to those rooms, but since this is in the main living area in the house, that makes it that much worse. If I would have known spending a little extra up front for a thicker gauge metal would have kept me from going insane with this annoyance, I would have gladly spent the money, but alas I had no idea.
3. A Higher Quality Sliding Door – As many of you know who read this blog, our house was broken into about a year ago. They were able to get into the sliding glass door by lifting it off its hinges and forcing it open. We have since taken measures to secure the door preventing this from happening in the future, but I wish we would have spent a little extra money to get a nicer door that would not only have looked really nice, but also might have come with feature to protect us a little better. We didn’t really look around too much for a sliding glass door as it was kind of a last minute purchase. We actually had purchased a door previously and replaced it with this slider. It is one of the cheaper models made of metal and vinyl. The handle and locking mechanism are pretty cheap and ultimately was the reason for the burglar being able to get in. I wish we would have spent more money to get a nice solid wood and metal slider. In my experience, by seeing the doors some of my friends have, the nicer wood ones not only look nicer but also glide better in the tracks and are heavier with better locks and safety features. I learned my lesson here; don’t cheap on external doors!
4. Vented Glass Front Gas Fireplace or Wood Pellet Stove Downstairs – I really wish we would have put a better fireplace in the basement. We have a really nice HVAC system with a high efficiency gas furnace so the house stays very comfortable with minimal utility expenses. However, one of the only things we didn’t really get a chance to pick out in the house was the gas fireplace in the basement. This gas fireplace is in the living area. It is not vented and doesn’t have a glass front so it is basically open. The builder had chosen the least expensive fireplace and had it installed before we even knew it. At the time, although we were kind of mad we didn’t get to choose, other fireplaces would have been about $1,000 more so we didn’t really care too much. In retrospect, I wish we would have made him take it out and got a better one that was either vented to the outside  and had a glass front or had gone with something like an electric powered pellet fireplace. This is the reasoning behind my desire. Right now, the basement stays at a fairly regular temperature. With minimal heating and cooling we can keep the basement at a steady 60 degrees in the winter and 70 or so in the summer. With that said, we hardly go down to the basement although it does have a fully furnished living area and that is where the fireplace is. On the occasions we have company or a party or something, I usually either heat or cool the basement by turning on the HVAC system before hand. This is mostly a waste because just the main living area needs to be heated because company isn’t going to spend time in the bedrooms downstairs, they will mainly be in the living area. It would have been nice to have a good fireplace down there where I could flip that on for 20 minutes or so to heat just that room. Instead, as it is right now, we don’t use that fireplace at all. Because it is so cheap, there are no fans on it so it doesn’t disperse the heat very well and since it isn’t vented, it leaves the downstairs filled with a little bit of a hot and gaseous smell that just isn’t pleasant. I really wish there was a more pleasant fireplace down there so we could utilize it. As it is right now, we don’t even light the pilot light on it in the winter because it will never get used.
5. Power Outlets in the Attic – This may seem like a really weird one, but I do have a good reason for it. I’m a tech junkie. When we built the house, I wired each room with 2 or more rg6 coax cable runs for television as well as 2 or more cat5e copper runs for phone and data. The main living areas got even more cable runs than that. Every room is fully wired and future proofed for whatever might come down the road in the future. With that said, I previously mentioned our house getting broken into last year. Since that, I have wired surveillance camera’s into the house. These cameras require a regular power outlet to work and in positioning them in the rooms the best place is to put them up high to get the best view of the room. Having outlets in the attic would have allowed me to run the power and ethernet cables up through the wall/ceiling into the attic and plug them in there. Also, I would have been able to run a network switch up in the attic to connect all the camera’s instead of having to run more ethernet cables to each camera. It would have looked a lot nicer and I would have been able to hide the cords a lot better. Not to mention, you never know what might need a power source and a lot of the time it is easier to run cabling in the attic so a power source up there would possibly come in really handy.

Aesthetic Alterations

There are a few changes I wish we would have done aesthetically to the house up front. These changes would have made my job as a homeowner a little easier and would have looked a little better from the start.

1. Landscaping – This suggestion is more like a “hindsight is 20/20″ thing and for some people this might not apply, but I really wish I would have coughed up a few more bucks and hired someone to do some more landscaping in the front and back of the house. As it is right now, we have a few bushes in front of the house and a single tree, but that is all. It looks sparse compared to the other houses in the neighborhood and although it isn’t a competition, I do like to keep the curb appeal of my house up. I don’t specifically like landscaping and although I’m not opposed to doing a little, it would be well worth the money to have a professional do it and make it look nice rather than me trying to do it and possibly messing it up. I know little to nothing about plants and what plants go where and which ones perform best in sun or shade or require a lot of water or little water. A landscaping professional would be able to provide me with all this information and with my decisions, they would be able to quickly give me a low maintenance and good looking landscape that will last for years. To me, I’m going to have to spend the money on the materials anyway, so I might as well pay someone for a few hours of work (which would probably take me days) and their knowledge as well. It is worth it to me to hire a professional for this and I wish I would have up front.
2. Lighter Colored Hardwood Floors – I think our hardwood floors look amazing and I really like them, however, we were told up front that the darker the flooring the more maintenance and upkeep it requires. Let me just say that is 100% accurate and more true than I ever imagined. We ended up going with a really dark mahogany hardwood floor and like I said, it looks really nice but every single little mark shows. I’m not only talking about dust, debris, foot marks and more, I’m also talking about dents, scratches and the like. Every single thing that happens to the floor is highly visible just because of the nature of the contrast between the dark floor and the materials on it. This requires us to sweep and mop the floors at least twice a week. If we let it go for more than a week without doing that, it looks trashy. You can see dust and small little bits of things that you wouldn’t be able to tell on a lighter colored floor. Again, I really like our floors but I wish we would have gone a few shades lighter. I’m cautioning people that if you really want a dark hardwood, I’m referring to something like black walnut dark, then you must be prepared to clean them several times a week.
3. Shutters and Flower Boxes – This goes along with the landscaping one above, but I wish we would have had the framers or carpenter whip us up some nice cedar shutters while they were at it. I’m considering building them myself, and although I don’t think it will be hard to do this, it will certainly consume some time because I’ve never done anything like that before. Also, as I said before, I will have to buy the materials so I would have much rather payed the carpenter that was already there a couple hundred dollars and had him build me some in an hour or so and install them than me taking a Saturday or more of my time to do this.
4. Outdoor Living Area – All through the building process my father would continue to tell me that if we wanted something in the house, it wouldn’t be any cheaper to build it in then now. What he meant was that the price of materials generally goes up throughout the years and it just gets more expensive as time goes on. While I understood what he was saying, we also had to be diligent to stay within the budget and keep things under control. One of the things that I wish I would have made room in the budget for was at least preparing for some kind of outdoor living area. Sure we have a nice back deck, and a nice porch under that, but I really with we would have designed into the house some kind of covered porch with a fire pit and BBQ area downstairs. It wouldn’t have cost a lot extra to run a gas line and hookup outside seeing as how the gas line for the downstairs fireplace is right on the inside of the wall. It would have been easy to do, and then to make a little brick or stone area for a gas grill would have been awesome. Also, it would have been pretty cheap to design a small fire pit area down there as well. All of these things aren’t completely necessary, but they are something that I will eventually do and for a small amount of money up front, I could have saved myself a lot of money down the road. 5-10 years down the road when I eventually get around to doing something like this, it will cost me a lot more.
5. Outdoor Lighting – This is one of the things we neglected and I wish we hadn’t. We only put the standard 3 lights by the garage, 1 light on the front porch and 1 light on the back deck. This is adequate  for lighting the outside at night, but hardly makes any kind of impression. This is yet another thing that might have cost us a couple hundred extra dollars to wire 3 or 4 more lighting areas into the exterior of the house, but it would have really made a statement. Several other houses in our neighborhood have recessed lighting in the roof line and landscaping and it really makes their house stand out at night. Not only that, but it also make the house more visible and less susceptible to any sneaky shenanigans!
6. Indoor Lighting and Automation – Our house was designed with indoor lighting in mind, however what we did right in recessed lighting, we did wrong in light switches. So many times have I wanted to dim a room’s lighting and we don’t have dimmers. Also, so many times have I wanted to be able to remotely control the lighting in my house. I know it is a fairly easy thing to install dimmer switches or x10 switches for automation, but I wish we would have done it at build time so I didn’t have to worry about getting around to doing it now. I could have ordered the parts and the electrician could have installed them for no extra cost. There is nothing special about installing them and he installed regular switches as part of the job anyway, so I with I would have just done that up front.

So, some of these things might seem obvious for you and some might seem silly, but these are all things that I wish I could change about my house or the way we did things now. I know this is kind of a complaining post, and that isn’t the intention really. What I wanted to accomplish is something that would possibly alert readers if they are going through a build project to look out for. Some things you might care less about, such as exterior lighting, however, some things you might not have ever thought about but as a result of this post will consider doing. That is what I’m trying to accomplish with this; save someone time, money and frustration by offering my ideas up front.

Please let me know if you have any ideas or additions to this if you have ever built a house. I know there are a lot of people I know that have gone through the building process and I welcome the discussion.