The cost of owning a house

[snowdude 44]

I'm not thinking about future value at all. I'm just thinking about making a really nice place that we want to live in.

It's a real education, I have learnt so much since we started this.

It's interesting how our expectation levels have risen along with that, taking a few jump ups in the process.

Good job we added that 'contingency' ne.

 

I know what you mean, it certainly is educational, I too have learned so much about house construction, etc, etc.

 

We too start building around the end of this month!

[snowdude 44]

Good luck with it all, house making people!

 

 

Thanks

[DumbStick 13]

Met with a few dudes from the company yesterday, and was happy to be able to make our main balcony windows wider and larger..... this was a point that I just couldn't get out of my head, it was lingering. Was initially told would be difficult because of the placement of structure but they agreed to make changes and move things around a bit and those windows are now 2.3m wide x 2m windows rather than the 1.8m wide x 1.8m that were in there. Very pleased about that.

Still kind of worried though that I'm overlooking something obvious (when pointed out), there's just so much to take in and think through. Now is the time to make those last changes!

[NoFakie 45]

Sounds good. You'll not see much of the sky out of a window 1.8m high when standing unless you bend down a bit. I know because we have a couple in our place. I'm only 5'10.

We spent all our budget and contingency and about another 5%. I also failed to leave any money for the exterior.

My FiL is a whizz with a backhoe, so we've done most of it ourselves, but a garden can swallow huge amounts of money.

[DumbStick 13]

Yeah I was always thinking about those windows. The 1.8 was bigger than the default, but I didn't give it much thought until recently. Glad I got to thinking that through in time as for me 1.8 just doesn't feel big enough for patio/balcony type doors.

Phew!

 

Good to have that FiL!

We're going to have about 14m x 9m of potential 'back garden' once the house is built, and some on the side too.

But I think I'll think about that later! Nothing set aside for that though really, like you mentioned above.

[mushibutsu 0]

Hi

 

Interesting thread.

 

We had a house built last year so all this talks brings back lots of memories. The good and the bad, though it was mostly good.

 

Our place, including land, cost us 25 million yen. Initially we were gunning for 20 mill, and thought that 25 was our upper - and that's kind of how it ended with all the other stuff added in.

Totally no regrets though it was great to see the house being built and then moving in.

 

Oh yes another thing to remember. Stuff for inside the house!! That lot adds up too.

[DumbStick 13]

Hi mushibutsu

 

Furniture!

[snowdude 44]

Tomorrow we atr going to do our house ceremony before the building starts about a week or so later.

We will also get to meet some of our new neighbours tomorrow as well.

 

 

[muikabochi 208]

Have fun!

Must be exciting.

Hope the neighbours are cool.

[snowdude 44]

Thx.

Yeah I hope they are nice too..

 

Will report the events tomorrow evening.

 

[DumbStick 13]

Have fun!

I enjoyed ours, seems like a while away now.

 

At last though, they are breaking ground on our land from Tuesday, hurray!!

 

Met with the building company today, he came armed with all my quotes for me that I was eagerly awaiting.

I did a lot of thinking and preparation before today so I went in knowing as much as possible about prices of things.

I had spent ages coming up with a detailed chart, trying to break down costs and guess at how much 'extra' everything would be over the initially budgeted costings if they came in at 50%, 55%, 60%, 65%, 70%, 75% of the quoted showroom prices.

I told myself if it wasn't far from my acceptable estimates, I wouldn't be bothered probing and making a fuss, even if the details weren't crystal clear.

 

Anyway I got presented with a fairly detailed list of how much 'extra' all of our requests would be if we went with them. This is the upgraded kitchen, bathroom, dresser, toilet room, flooring, siding, etc.

 

I did quite well with my educated guesses actually.

Some of my guesses were actually too high, so they either did a great job on getting discounts for those or I just made a mistake.

 

A few, including the kitchen and bath, were a bit low.

But from my reckoning, and I might be wrong, the costings they are showing me come in somewhere perhaps just under 60% of the showroom cost.... that includes all the installation and everything by official Yamaha dudes.

 

Anyway in total, of all the things listed, it came to about 400,000 yen over my guesses.

While that is a fairly big number all on it's own, in the big picture it's not that massive especially considering what we have gone for.

I think I will be trying to cut a bit more off that lot before agreeing, we'll inevitable go with all our lovely beautiful choices as is.

 

No doubt there'll be some more things later...

 

 

.....but..... what's money for, hey.

[grungy-gonads 54]

Sounds good.

 

400,000 yen over many years. Go for it, I say.

 

[snowdude 44]

Thats pretty good.

We have ended up actually about 800000 over in the end but considering how much we added and upgraded we are quite happy too.

 

Not long now before we start to see our personally designed house start to take shape.

[DumbStick 13]

Oh this is over our 'revised' budget, snowdude.

 

We were already over 1m over our 'original budget' before this round.

 

 

Not a complaint!

[muikabochi 208]

Nice one, DumbStick.

 

The lesson I am leaning from almost everyone I know who has made a house is......plan for a heady chunk of 'extra'!

[NoFakie 45]

It's all part of getting what you want, not letting someone else tell you what you can have. You might as well rent if that's what you're going to do.

Japanese carpenters built all of those lovely temples and shrines, so they've got the skills.

 

Building starts with them drawing the line on the ground, and in many cases it looks really tiny. Then the framing starts goes up and it switches to looking really huge.

When its finally ready it'll be just right.

 

Good luck to both of you!

[DumbStick 13]

Thanks.

 

Wood flooring dilemma.

 

We're "upgrading" the wood flooring that was default and going with a darker shade of brown. Was thinking to have one in one shade and another floor (bedrooms) in a darker shade.

Dilemma is - - will it work? Or more like... how to get it to work.

If there were no stairs to think about, it wouldn't be an issue but the stairs need to be one color or the other. Or do they?

Thinking maybe have the stairs the same as 2nd floor, with perhaps JUST the bedrooms with darker floors. You reckon that would work?

The different shades would be the same grade/make.

 

So difficult to make confident choices without actually seeing it! Any wise words?

[Metabo Oyaji 71]

No idea. We did the same color everywhere, except for bath and toilet areas. I would think that changing color on a single-room basis would look fine, though.

 

Something else to consider though: are you thinking of getting a dog? If you are thinking of getting a reasonable-sized dog, its toenails will dig gouges in some of the softer wood flooring, in which case you might want to spring for hardwood floors. Or else think about laying down disposable vinyl flooring over your nicer flooring as protection.

[DumbStick 13]

Thanks. Wondering if it might just be better to go with the one. Wherever the change is, it'll be noticeable and I think we both actually are leaning towards preferring one of the shades.

BTW this is the one we like

 

http://www.woodtec.c...ed/sapelli.html

 

Going through the wallpaper catalogues today as well. My oh my, who would have thought that it was such a difficult choice. I suppose when you only do one room, but doing the whole house!

[DumbStick 13]

Sorry didn't answer your question Metabo - no dogs or pets for us.

[NoFakie 45]

We've got rooms where the trim carpentry (window frames etc) has been stained different colours. On the darker north side of the house, the wood isn't stained at all to make the rooms brighter.

Those rooms have doors that are dark on one side and light on the other. They are sliders, so you can't see the other colour from the other room. I doubt people would notice it.

Our floor is just local cypress (hinoki) done with persimmon juice (kakishibu) and then a natural oil product called Osmo. Its the same upstairs and downstairs.

Our staircase was originally going to be in chestnut, but I was on a roll and upgraded it to zelkova (keyaki) instead. Its the material used for traditional Japanese furniture.

It was stained to match the big wooden post it's next to, so its a different material and colour to the floor.

 

The books I read on design before building our place talked about including both unifying elements and contrasts in the design.

The Pattern Language book I mentioned many pages ago talks about varying ceiling height and using small cozy spaces like window seats, having darker spaces open up onto light ones, etc.

 

It looks like that Sapelli flooring is a veneer, which is fine in low traffic areas. I would try and find out how deep the veneer is before using it in a high traffic area.

Solid (muku) flooring is best in high traffic areas and all over if you've got kids and/or pets.

[DumbStick 13]

Thanks for that Mr Wiggles.

 

Not sure i could stretch the budget for solid. I'll ask just for the laughs though.

[big-will 7]

Wouldn't full on solid cost a fortune?

 

Actually, my place has I'm pretty sure fairly cheapo flooring and I have been here quite a while. Give it a clean and it looks close to new really. Can't see it has worn badly at all......

[snowdude 44]

We upgraded our flooring to a slightly above medium brown, bordering on the darker side flooring and we use the same for both upstairs and downstairs including the stairs.

 

As we got dogs, we have gone for a pet resistant type and pet friendly type too.

 

We had thought about different shades of colour up and down, but decided that one colour would be safer and would be easier to match all the doors, especially as we are going for brown, and as for us we are going with white walls and will use furniture to decorate/ colour the room.

 

Changing the colours of the floors would mean probably changing your door colours too, unless you are going for white.

[NoFakie 45]

Our floor is solid. I think it was under 5000 a square meter. Its cypress with knots, but they're smaller and much lighter in colour than the knots in pine.

The individual planks are 120mm wide but 3.6 meters long, so there aren't many joins and lots of continuous grain. If knots in wood bother you, its going to be a non starter though.

 

Here's a selection of mostly imported solid flooring. If the budget is tight, cheap wood flooring comes in narrow pieces and in short random lengths joined together. If you want wide pieces of wood that are continuous for say a couple of meters, then yes, you'll have to pay big for a prestiguous wood. For bits that are 90mm wide and joins every 50cm or so, some solid hardwoods aren't expensive.

http://www.sanwacomp...p/shop/c/c3817/

 

I don't know what this company are like for flooring but we bought some marble tiles off them for around our woodstove. Marble might sound super blingy and expensive but it was 7500 a square meter for a massive two and a half square meters. That wouldn't break the budget of many builds.