Value

Soon we're going to have to get an appraisal done on the house, which is both exciting and nerve racking. How did we do? Did we effectively work all year for $20 an hour? $40? negative $20?

The magic number we're hoping for is $210k. That lets us take out a really good 80% loan, pay off everyone, build the garage, and have a little left over.

We've put plenty of money into the house, and it's gotten fancier as the process went along. We didn't originally know we'd have radiant heat, or cherry cabinets, or nice built-ins, etc. We know we could have built a simpler house just to make money, but I'm glad we built a truly nice house.

We're starting to get glimpses of what the house might be worth. The insurance company thinks it will cost $240k to rebuild just the house. Add on land value, and we did really well! But I don't think it would sell for that much. The City appraised the unfinished house for $194k. This is really good. Houses here sell for more than the city appraised value. And that's without siding.

All we can really do is wait a couple months, and finish the house!

Microposts

It seems like some of you actually enjoy reading this blog. Since the stairs were the last big thing on the inside, and we won't work on the outside until May and then the garage maybe in June, I thought we'd start doing some little microposts about various things we really like (like the Jenn air stove) and things we don't like, or screwed up on, or would do differently.

It might be interesting, or it might help if you are thinking of building your own house some day. Stay tuned...

Stairs!

Our stairs are, for the most part, in! We need to finish two of them and then do the railing, but you can get an idea of what they look like. These were essentially a gift from my dad. He bought the wood and spent weeks finishing them offsite at his shop in big Lake. Another big thanks to Dad for all the help on the house! They are very stout, made from solid Ash with a mahogany inlay. You can really jump on the cantilevered portion with no worries.

Here's a closeup and also a new angle of our great room to show how the loft hangs above the kitchen and everything integrates together.

Kitchen

Our kitchen is in and mostly functional! I installed the sink and dishwasher today, which finishes off plumbing for the house. A certified installer is coming tomorrow to hook up the propane for the stove. It's only $90 - well worth it considering the risks. After that, we're good to go and all we need to do is a little trim and a couple lights.

We really like the kitchen, and we better because it's the one element of the house that went significantly beyond our estimates, like double. But I think in the end it's worth it.

Instead of buying in stock cabinets, we ordered nicer cherry cabinets. Then there's the Jenn-Air stove, which is very expensive to begin with and I didn't have time so paid someone to install the downdraft ventilation, which is so tricky that it took a couple days.
Granted, it does save the cost of a stove hood, and it looks super nice. Plus we bought a cast iron sink, and a fancy faucet. But it's all part of our philosophy with the project, which is building small and efficient but very nice.

Also, a while back we finished the downstairs bathroom, so our room mate Paul can shower and stuff, but I don't think we ever posted a photo.

One of us is a reader

Marcy was happy to be able to fill our big built in bookshelf. She left one spot for me, but I wasn't quite able to fill it so she put some of her extra books in there as well. My books include such classics as "Do it yourself homebuilding" and "residential plumbing"





The Kitchen Begins
Also, our kitchen is finally underway! We can't wait to be able to - what's that word? Oh yeah, cook! Brandon, who has helped with trim work and roof sheathing, it setting the base cabinets and did the Jenn-air duct work, which is a major pain. Hats off to his patience. He does a wonderful job.

Merry Christmas!

We had our first Christmas in our unfinished house, but it was very nice. Our living room has been construction central, but we finally cleaned up some of the tools and ladders for photos. Plus, today we cut down a tiny birch shrub as a Christmas tree!


Since our last post, we've finished our built in bookshelf with Danish oil and two coats of polyurethane. It's real cherry, which was very expensive but it looks awesome and will darken with age. Some of the wood has some really excellent curly figuring, and it almost shimmers in the light, a phenomenon called chatoyance or directionality.
















Here it is in relationship for our office upstairs in the loft.

Also, we made our first furniture purchase! Part of our plan with building a small house involved leaving enough to invest in nice furniture right away. We weren't going to buy this so soon, but I surprised Marcy and was even able to sneak it in the house while she picked up her folks at the airport. It's very comfy, but we'll have to cover it up while we make more dust.


Thanks everyone for your continuing support and we hope you had a wonderful Holiday!

Superceding Andrews Energy Blog with Pictures!

Andrew and I have been pretty lazy lately with the blog posts so guess what...you get 2 in one day! Sometimes I forget that Andrew is a photographer until he takes super sweet pictures. He makes our house that, in reality looks pretty messy, into a land of unicorns and fairies. We have actually been working on stuff in our house these last couple of months. We swear. It's hard to believe that we only just moved in about a month ago. Anyway, I don't have much else to say so enjoy!

Below is our upstairs bathroom. It's so close to being done, there are only a couple more things to do yet. How do you like our super awesome inset linen closet with the open shelves? The towels and stuff give it some color. Plus my days as a house keeper come in handy now. I can fold our towels all fancy.




So next is our upstairs bedroom. As you can probably tell we don't have much furniture. Currently we our using our plastic moving totes as bed stands and such. Check out the super cute mini-bifolds! They're on the window that looks down on our living room, from our bedroom. You know, the pants less oration window. The mini-bifolds are one of the custom doors that the finish carpenters did for us. Also I think our closet looks pretty neat. We got some of those nice wooden blinds for the windows. I think they match the rest of our wood really well.




Lastly you have the mock kitchen that I set up last weekend. We don't get our kitchen cabinets in until after New Years. Sorry Mom and Dad, we'll have to take you out to dinner on Christmas or cook a turkey in our microwave. The hall way picture shows our front door and the doors opening into the downstairs bathroom and Pauls room on the right. You'll notice the awesome tile floor. This is my favorite aspect of our house. I think it came out stupendously. All of the grouting is done, boy was that hard work. And the last picture is of our Utility room. It seems we can do our laundry but can't cook a decent meal.




That's it, more to come when we get more finished. Plus we now have super fast DSL so that may mean more blog posts. Yippeee!

Energy shock

Our first energy bills are starting to come in, so we can begin to see if our efforts have paid off...

Most people are feeling the effects of high energy costs, especially those here in Fairbanks. Not only do we have high demand thanks to -40 degree weeks, but energy sure costs more than it used to. Both electricity and heating oil are about 50% more than a few years ago.

We were aware of this in the planning and building of our house, so we took great measures to build an efficient house.

We added 50% more insulation value to the walls. 100% more in the ceiling. Our boiler is 90% efficient. Our radiant heating feels like 70 degrees when the air is only heated to 67. Our vapor barrier has 1/6th the normal number of penetrations, and all of these are double sealed with acoustical sealant and special tape. Fresh air will be brought into the house through an HRV, which extracts 80% of the exhaust heat, compared to 0% for older houses which get fresh air only through leakage. All indoor lighting is energy star compliant fluorescent, which uses about 1/4 the energy. Our front loading washing machine uses 1/3 the water while washing better. The list goes on.

So has it paid off? Hard to tell at this point. Our first 35 days of heating and producing hot water had an average outside temp of 10 degrees, which represents 1/7th of the average annual heating load for Fairbanks. During this time we used about 70 gallons of heating oil, which could be off some based on the tank filling method.

This number is quiet good, but not at all outstanding, which was our goal.

However, during that time, construction was (and still is) very much underway. We had only a temporary door half that time, which was completely unsealed. The HRV has not been installed, and without it our extra-tight construction causes a buildup in humidity (due to wet paint, showering, etc) so a window was cracked most of the time. We also did painting and other wood finishing, and opened several windows for about a week total to exhaust the fumes.

We're now locked down a little better, the HRV should go in this weekend, and we're expecting some of that great cold Fairbanks weather, so the next months should give us a good feel for just how well we did. Stay tuned.

Moved-in

Apologies to all for this pictureless post. Andrew and I are now moved into our house. We finished up the final cleaning at our rental on Wednesday at 5pm. Our house wasn't as finished as we would have liked when moving in but that's just how things go I guess. Since the last post we were able to lay all of the tile, but not grout everything. We got the guest room, downstairs bathroom, and half of the living room grouted. Again, thanks to Craig, we got the boiler running and light switches in. Then the rest of the time has been spent moving and cleaning out our other place. Plus we both have a cold, so we have been super grumpy. Moving, working on the house, and colds are not very good combinations. But it's done now! Which is exciting. We can just fall into bed after working on the house.

Funny story: So for the entire summer I have managed not to go "Number 2" on our land. As I had at one point stepped in somebody else's leavings. Last night, as a form of celebration, Andrew and I went out for Thai food. Which commonly gives us stomach problems and eventually we both end up in the bathroom. So after Thai food Andrew was installing the toilet and I had to go to the bathroom really bad. Ironically the night we were installing the toilet is the night that I baptized our land with my poop. Sigh.

Flooring

This weekend we did some fun stuff! Drywall and painting is done so finish work begins! We installed laminate flooring upstairs in the loft, bedroom, and two closets. It's Pergo "Colby Walnut." It goes fairly fast, but is actually hard physical work because clicking it together takes some muscle. We're sore. But, other than being dirty already, it looks awesome and makes the place start to look finished!



Then we did tiling downstairs, which is even harder. First we put down a primer and then final coat of RedGuard, which is a waterproofing and crack prevention membrane for the tile. It provides some flex as the heated floor expands and contracts at a different rate than the tile. Thanks to John, we went pretty fast after the critical first row. I spread mortar, Marcy set tiles, John mixed mortar, cleaned globules that got on the tile, selected tiles and handed them to Marcy, etc. It's a good 3 person job.