Who Has Built A House?

Zoning changes will be highly depending on the particular jurisdiction where the house will be located. Best thing to do initially is visit the county web site and start looking through their zoning info. And many nowadays post minutes of monthly zoning meetings in pdf format, so you may be able to read through a bunch and see if there were cases like yours, and also how the zoning board voted.

May I ask what caused "you" to go so over budget? Because that is the one thing I'm worried about.
Our 2500sqft turned into 3000sqft and at about $350sqft to build, that tacked on a bit of $$$.
We're really at our limit of where we would be comfortable.
We are very close to finalizing plans, and at that point our builder can actually bid our job, and give us a real number.
But I'm afraid its just going to be too much at this point. The plan was to build a house and even have some money left over in the bank from selling our current house. I wasn't trying to spend everything we have on this place!
Beautiful home btw!

Ah gotcha.
So the quote we are getting is for a finished house. Mostly.
We obviously have to fill it with furniture and electronics, but other than that it should be mostly turnkey.
I feel somewhat at ease, because my builder is a buddy of mine. I know him, I know his work and I'm hoping for the best! Hah.

Sometimes even your friends don't have your best interests in mind.
In our current house, the master bath had a leak in the shower pan.
We took this as our opportunity to completely re-do the bathroom since it was a little on the small side (I think I posted pics earlier in this thread).
Anyway, this was our first home renovation ever, so we hired a friend of our who was a budding contractor in the area.
He had already done a handful of renovations, and had multiple projects at the time...and I think that was part of the problem.
Like you said, @marco , the guys that came in to do the work were total amateurs!And that is when anyone showed up at all. A week would go by and we wouldn't see anyone!
A project that was supposed to take up to 6 weeks took around 3 months. The end result was nice, but still.
So many headaches along the way. We ended up going through "3 project managers", and a handful of guys - just on one tiny bathroom. I don't think I payed him the last few thousand we owed him...but he also didn't even ask for it lol.
When we did the kitchen, we pretty much did it ourselves except for the removal of a wall and the electrical and adding of lights.
But we did the demo, we installed all cabinetry, we coordinated the countertops and we buttoned it all up.
It took us months because we were just working on it during the weekend, but it was still a much better experience lol.

In other news, We had our final design meeting with the architect yesterday.
Our builder is going to review, then they are going to do some 3D renderings, and then it is off to construction documents and permitting.
And just an FYI, we're currently about $100k over our initial budget .
I'm hoping to bring that back down a bit since we were given some pretty generous allowances for interior finishes...

I suppose that is just the nature of the beast.
Our architect is building a personal home in the mountains right now.
He said he was aiming to be around $400k and is around $650k hah.
So that all sounds about right...

FYI, architects often do not have a good handle on pricing for various materials/ systems.

Yeah not really their wheelhouse...

I'll definitely keep you all posted.
We were getting to the point where we were starting to think that we may hold off on the whole thing for a bit.
To you point, @ATWG , things are just crazy expensive right now. Not to mention these current interest rates.
But, I don't think anything is getting cheaper in the next year or two.
So at the end of the day, we always come back to the same conclusion...this is an investment, not an expense - whats the point of waiting?
We are building our forever home for our 2 girls (currently 2 and 5) to grow up in, and for us to get old in.
And I say this is an investment, but we don't plan on ever selling. So to me that does not matter, but it is nice to know that we would be in a good position on the property, even from day 1.
So even if we have to stretch the budget a bit I think it will be worth it in the end....
I'll share some of the renderings once we get them. I expect that to be a few weeks down the road at this point.

We built our addition in 2011, when the economy was doing poorly. Two stories (basement and main floor) with ~1,100 sf footprint. We also gutted the adjacent kitchen, living room and dining room, and made a new large kitchen and a large dining room. Cathedral ceiling in upper level w/ shingle roof. 3 dormers and 2 skylights. A full bathroom with jet tub. Put in a long steel beam to carry the top floor loads from the original part of the house so there would not be interior columns in the new kitchen. Reinforced concrete foundation walls. Brick veneer for the first few feet above grade, and hardiplank siding above.

We used a construction manager to break out the various trades and bid to specialty contractors; he had worked for a large homebuilder and was biding his time during his non-compete time-out doing small consulting gigs. The subcontractors all worked new construction for high-end subdivisions, and their pricing was way less than I would have imagined -- and I deal with commercial construction daily. And the architect worked mainly for homebuilders, and produced an excellent set of drawings in a very short period of time, for a very reasonable fee.

All-in we were at about $250k, so $110 or so/ sf. And out of that the kitchen cabinets and counters were $60k. We were lucky we were able to time the project while the economy was still doing poorly and contractors were looking for work. I would hate to think what it would cost today.

Oh I'd be happy to tell you lol.
But again. We're in a great position.
When we're done, we could turn around and sell the place for double what we will have into it.

Demo day for the existing structure.