Ah yes, wrapping all this design stuff up to where you finally have a set of docs to get permits, bid, and build the project. While waiting for the structural engineering to complete, we focused on a few things..
Lighting
Part deux. I've been spending a lot more time looking at lighting. Picking exterior and interior lights. Learning about recessed lighting knowing that questions of which light to buy are coming. So we went and visited a few nearby lighting shops to see what we could learn and it's changed my mind from CFL (fluorescent) to LED lighting (particularly for the recessed lights).
The main reasons people tout to select LED over CFL for recessed is:
- Last longer (~25k hours) vs CFL's which in a recessed application don't last the claimed 10k hours due to heat. They've seen them only last 1.5-2 years. This seems like a pretty compelling argument.
- Draw less energy then CFL
- CFL's have mercury in them and must be disposed carefully. This is true.
- CFL's initially only light up to ~80% brightness and can take several minutes to reach full brightness. You're often out of the room in 30 seconds. While true, this didn't matter to me much since they were plenty bright.
- LED's function more smoothly in a dimmable application. I don't know how true this really is.
- LED's have a more pleasant color. I don't know how true this really is.
- LED's project light more evenly distributed. This looked true in the lighting store but was mostly negligible.
For me the first three arguments weigh more on my mind and might be worth the added upfront cost for less headache down the road. The others make some sense but I thought were mostly negligible in the sense that I wasnt convinced that there was enough of a problem there to warrant a higher upfront cost. As a whole though, going LED does carry some merit when you look down the list.
Story Boards
Influenced by my years of watching various HGTV and DIY programs, we started a set of story boards to plan out what furniture, lighting, materials, and colors each room will get. you see this sort of thing done a lot on interior design type shows. As we run around shopping (or search on the internet), we print out and staple photos or materials of things we like on said boards. Ideally at some point the story board will give us an idea of what each room will look like and if the items work together (as well as the rest of the house). It's been very helpful to visualize in what direction we want the room to go..
Landscaping
We met with the landscaping designer referral that my architect recommended. She described the general process and what she does. Threw some ideas around, showed us some of her work to give us an idea of what she does. She had a quirky book-like and nature-like personality with what was clearly a sort of studied background (i.e. she's been doing this 10+ years and specifically studied the field before then and it resonated in things she said).
The whole design is basically her marking up my plans with landscaping layouts and elevations. Working with us on things we like and want (a series of meetings and revisions). It takes about 4 weeks she estimated. Her estimate came back at $1200.
We then went to a home show nearby and spoke to several landscapers there. they all quoted a design cost of $1000-$1200 so pricing for the design seems to be somewhat consistent. The estimates for doing landscaping for a property such as mine (based on my description) tended to vary from $25k-$40k or so the landscapers thought.
Much like with the architects and builders, each had different personalities, backgrounds, and experience. Since there is no real way to know who might do the best job and given prices are similar for the design, I find myself left to evaluate them based on their personalities, their background, and perhaps mostly importantly their portfolio of work. We definitely thought some people's portfolios of photos looked better then others..
One interesting guy that we met did nothing but exterior lighting. He showed a fair amount of pretty nice work where he put lighting down to light up pathways, trees, pergolas, etc.. Basically he comes in after your landscaping is done and will design your whole property and install quality LED lighting for what seemed like not a whole lot (~$2500-$3000). I might explore doing that sometime down the road so i kept his card (his business is called Epic Lights)..
Anyways, for now we won't be affording any of that yet so it was more exploratory and educational then anything.
On a related note, we visited an open house at a nearby residence and liked what they did for some plants which is inline with what we'd like to do for a small herb garden..
Structural Engineering
While waiting for my structural engineering, I learned a few minor details from my structural engineer. He is not dong a site visit to do his part of the work on the plans since in my case the entire roof framing is being removed. Also, a common question around here, which I also asked, is what magnitude earthquake can the house withstand? Well, to that, there is no real answer. The structural engineering gets done to building code which tends to get revised every 4-5 years based on the performance of the houses in recent earthquakes.
In the end, this whole process took longer then I anticipated mostly due to vacations and things that i didn't factor in. The structural engineer seemed to also procrastinate without me pushing. I originally was told it'd take him about 2 weeks but when you add to that vacations and the fact that he doesn't necessary start right away, it ended up being about 5 weeks.
I wasn't sure what to expect back from structural engineering but now that I got the pdf's of the design back, it looks like a lot of mumbo jumbo to me. What it essentially shows is all the detail around the home's framing, roofing, and foundation. What size beams and boards go everywhere, how they're to be connected, what directions they run, and so forth. To me it looks like all the detail a builder needs to build the home. Here is some of what it looks like..
In the end when my architect and I reviewed the work, there were enough things wrong that we sent it back to him for corrections. Things like asking him to highlight certain things better, correcting the fact that he put a sheer wall in where there wasn't supposed to be one around the staircase, and his marking some parts of the plans as existing construction when in fact it was new construction. Nothing terribly major but enough to where we wanted to fix it before submitting it. The biggest one was probably the sheer wall which was then replaced with a steel beam. Unfortunately for me, steel beams are expensive but in my case it allows me to retain the wide open great room design that i'm after without an unsightly column. Having your architect review the engineers work and walk through it with you particularly pointing out any added columns or bulkheads that it might be adding was well worth it. In my case no columns or bulkheads were added..
T-24 Energy Report
This was a X page document with more mumbo jumbo that I mostly don't understand due to it's technical nature that outlines a lot of HVAC, plumbing, insulation, and electrical requirements and figures. It basically tells everyone involved what minimums need to be satisfied from an energy standpoint. One interesting thing that I spotted is that one of the minimums it outlines is that for lighting of different wattages, what the minimum lumins need to be.
The View
On an unrelated note, I climbed up on top of the roof the other day to see what my view might look like from the 2nd story master bedroom and stitched this panoramic together. Not quite as nice as i'd hoped but you can sure see a lot more. The trees block my view of the mountains more then I anticipated and I realize I can sure see a lot more of my neighbors up there (but thankfully not too much into their backyards)
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