Add an Addition?

Placing an addition on your home can be a daunting task. What spaces do I need to create? Are my existing spaces not suitable for today’s styles? Would a future buyer be more likely to purchase this home if we added this…? Can we even put the rooms we want off this area of our home?

Start Here…

Design your own home...

Have a plan that works for your family and life…

Why use someone else's idea of how you live…?

Your needs are unique and considerate…

What do you need?

Play Space?

Storage space?

Utility space?

Family entry?

Home office?

Home theater?

Entertaining?

Great views?

What do you think?

Let’s start with your ideas and build a house that your family makes a home.

Having a builder move into your home for several months is the number one consideration when doing a remodel or addition to your home. I believe that this item is even greater than the price of the addition. You will be living with this person and their trade contractors for a long time. If you are comfortable with them and their style then the process will be much smoother and easier. Everyone though, does reach the breaking point where they just want it all done. But you need to look at it like a long car ride, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” and when you get to the end you say, “Well that wasn’t so bad!” Enjoy the journey because it will make for a more comfortable home that fits your needs in the end and enhances your quality of life. Isn’t this why we started this process anyway?

As far as the spaces to create and the areas to remodel you are making choices based on homes you have seen that have been built recently. Some of the ideas that are incorporated into new construction are spaces that you would like to create and enjoy. You have not thought of adding on a Pool room for nothing more than a Pool table but rather looked at the rooms you have and thought that there is a way to expand upon this and not recreate the home. Many people are adding on specifically because of where they live and the outrageous costs associated with moving to a new home with these amenities. Most recently in Richmond and I’m sure other markets the cost of land his risen so dramatically that the costs of the house is out of whack with the space you would gain by adding onto your home. I have heard many times that the cost associated with my addition would not get me anywhere near the some square footage I will have if I went and bought new.

Taking the time to get you where you are comfortable with an addition and filling your needs are all part of this process. Very few people ask to have an addition designed and have answered every question or thought every thought when we first sit down. Many thoughts and ideas will come up during the process and your builder will even have a hand in this process.

Having some professional advice about how the spaces are to be added and available yard for this addition are the first two items that need to be addressed before we can move forward with completing the design for a new addition to your home. C. L. Shade Drafting strives to guide you in the best possible use of the space you want to create and make sure that this can be added to your home.

Please visit my website

www.cshadedesign.com

I look forward to hearing from you

On Demand Hot Water Heater

My family and I have been living with an on-demand tank-less hot water heater (HWH), or instant HWH for nearly a year now. There are several things that I have learned during this time that I believe are good to share with future buyers.

1. Having a tank-less HWH does not mean that you will have instant hot water when you turn the faucet on. The water still has to travel thru and heat up the same pipes as the tank type water heater that you used to have.
2. The bigger the better. Even in the best of circumstances when the second shower is cut on the first will cool and need a little recovery time. While this is not objectionable it is a bit exciting when you are rinsing your hair in the winter and the water gets cooler.
3. We live in Virginia and have always enjoyed low electricity rates. This combined with what are reasonable gas rates make the payback for the unit about 20 years. I do not believe this to be a deal breaker. In our case there were space issues that the tank-less helped with. It is nice to be able to turn it down in the summer and up in the winter saving gas costs.
4. Summer water temperatures around 115 degrees allowed for cool showers and clean dishes. When I set the temperature below this I noticed that the dishwasher did not work quite as well. The winter temperature is now at 125 degrees and we may move it to 130 as the daily outside temperature drops lower coming into January and February.

SET THIS HIGHER TEMPERATURE ONLY IF YOU ARE COMFORTABLE THAT YOUR FAMILY UNDERSTANDS SCALDING AND POSSIBLE INJURY FROM THIS HIGH TEMPERATURE.

5. Environmental friendliness? Maybe. I do know that it is a choice for each family that bears a high upfront cost especially for replacing a tank HWH. My plumber stated that this was the first one they had done as a replacement because it costs 2-3 times as much as a conventional tank gas HWH.
6. Electric tank-less HWH use a lot of power, somewhere in the neighborhood of 120 amps or more. Your panel box would need 6-8 blank spaces to accommodate the breakers and the electric meter would look like an anemometer in a hurricane.
7. The aerator, that's the piece on the bottom of the faucet that makes the water stream pretty, needs to 1.5 gpm or higher. We had a .7 gpm aerator and it did not let enough water pass thru the system to ignite the HWH. You may want to limit your water usage but this can get you in trouble.

Hopefully this will give you some more choices in deciding about a tank-less HWH.

Please contact me at

www.cshadedesign.com

if you have other questions

Cost per Square Foot?

The number one overriding desire of everyone in the home building business is to build a home for the client. To that end the value or cost of the home is foremost in the mind of the builder and their efforts and recommendations are biased to that goal. IT is very rare to meet a client who says just go spend whatever and send me a bill. All clients fall into the cost per square foot trap and believe that if they are at some certain cost per square foot then they are gong to get what they want.

Cost per square foot is probably the greatest misnomer in the home building business. This does not take into account the porches, garages, unfinished basement space, potential attics, screen porches and other amenities that can drive the cost of a home. Also the basic requirements of supply and demand will drive this cost. An owner moving from another city or area of the country may be used to one cost but that cost may not be reflected in the new area. Equally different is the material and building techniques from one area of the country to another

As an example two clients are each building a 100 square foot kitchen. One client wants a Wolf range and the other wants a Kenmore. Virtually the same product but the cost of each is vastly different. The wolf at $5000 costs $50 per square foot whereas the Kenmore at $1000 coast $10 dollars per square foot. How much is the addition going to cost to someone else and how can the cost per square foot be applied to a third party? All though this is not as pronounced in a house because of the magnitude of the square footage the principle still holds the some. Your house and you neighbors house probably are not the same cost per square foot.

Many clients over the years have found ideas thru plan sites and other books that you can pick up at the home center. All of these plans have a square foot number for the plan and some even have some build costs associated with them. In the decades that I have been building homes I have never seen one of these to be compatible with actual square footage of the home. Most plan book plans will only count stair areas once and do not count two story areas in their second floor listing. This provides a misleading accounting f the actual square footage of the home since everyone charges for that “empty” space. In most instances it is harder to not build a floor in a two story hours than it is to complete that floor. Additional beams, bearings, and columns are required to carry what are normally floors that no longer have walls below.

Welcome Homeowners

Good Day and Welcome to A Homeowners Guide to Homeowning. My name is Charles Shade and I have been in the Residential Building Industry for nearly three decades. I have seen and been a part of many changes and ups and downs.
My experiences have led from being a flunky, a carpenter, a builder, a general contractor, and now a home designer.

In my time in this industry I have done everything from digging footings to putting the last shingle on the roof. Now I spend my time designing new custom home plans for builders and homeowners.

I hope that this blog can become a resource for homeowners looking for common sense answers to questions about homeowning. Maybe not how to fix a dripping faucet but how to talk to a builder. What to expect. Where to make the best choices for a home.

Please visit my website at

www.cshadedesign.com

and drop me an email at

yournewhome@cshadedesign.com

Regards,
Charles Shade