Modern Victorian
In this issue we would like to show you a recent home built by a student of the school. This home, a pseudo Victorian of approximately 3,724 sf of living space built on a somewhat difficult lot (more on this later) was designed by Garry. Built as an owner builder home, with Owner Builder Homes doing the consultation, providing the subs and suppliers, and the financing, the total construction costs, lot not included, was $277,349 which was almost right on budget except for one small (small?) overage.

During the dig out of the foundation it was discovered that the developer of the lots in this area had dumped fill on this lot. Not only had fill been dumped but the original vegetation had not been removed prior to the dumping. What this amounts to is a layer of grease. As the vegetation rots it becomes a very slick layer of decomposing plant material greasing the skids of the loose soil laying on top. When our excavator discovered this we immediately opted to dig down to undisturbed soil, an average of another four foot depth of dig. This caused the cost of the foundation to go over budget by $10,582.

When the excavation goes deeper than expected this impacts a number of things further on in the construction. Naturally, the excavation will take longer, and at $100.hr, the common cost for a trackhoe and operator, this can add up. The foundation walls will become higher at approximately $62/cuyd for the concrete and $120/cuyd for labor/steel/etc. Also, if building on a standard lot this extra dirt removal will necessitate hauling off the dirt since there is no place to lose it on the lot. Usually on acreage, you can dump your dirt someplace on the back forty. So you have to find a place that will accept the dirt, track hoe time to load it into the dump truck, and dump truck time which will depend on how far your dump point is. In addition, the deeper dig will affect the bottom floor. If you are doing a slab in a basement or garage, you have two alternatives: 1) you can fill the empty space with gravel up to the proper level, or 2) you can opt to build a wood floor over the empty space instead. This decision will usually be determined by how deep you went. Trying to fill a four-foot deep hole for a whole basement with gravel can become prohibitively expensive. While a wood floor for the basement isn't usually a problem, and may in fact, give you a warmer and more comfortable floor, the garage is a different story.

The garage must be concrete for you to drive on. This necessitates building what is called a pan deck. A pan deck is a concrete slab poured over a wood floor engineered to take the weight of the cars sitting on it. It becomes an expensive fix. In this case we decided to fill the garage portion with gravel and to use a TJI wood floor for the rest.

This problem of the foundation only empathizes that old construction adage: "you never know what the foundation is going to cost until you dig the hole in the ground". When we teach the Estimating part of the Homebuilding/Remodeling class we emphasize that this part of the estimate should have a contingency to help compensate for unknowns during the dig. In this instance the overage was too much to have been taken care of by any contingency, but it would have helped.

The finish included the owner installing his own hardwood floors throughout the home. This, however, brings up another subject when one is doing an owner builder home. In this case the owner paid $3 a sf. for materials and $2 a sf. for a professional finish. If, for instance, our hardwood floor sub-contractor had done the job from start to finish the cost would have been $7 a sf. In other words for two bucks a foot he could have watched the work rather than the then provide the sweat equity. This brings up the subject of the areas that are most cost effective for an owner builder to contribute their labor. Some are better than others, a subject discussed in detail when we go through the Estimating section.

This house, however, even with the foundation overages, was constructed for to $74.48 per square foot (sf.). This is a most outstanding cost per sf. in the Portland area where costs typically run for a home of this level of finish run consistently over $100 per sf. This home had a custom design, cedar siding, hardwood floors in the dining and living room, granite tile countertops, tile floors in the kitchen and baths, custom ash cabinets, lots of custom woodwork, including wainscoting, and coffered ceilings, and a wrap-around porch on two sides of the house. We usually assume that the owner will save at least 20% by being their own contractor/manager of the project. If they do some of the physical labor, a good rule of thumb is that a house is about 55% materials and 45% labor.

Some of the older styles of home, Victorian and Arts and Crafts in particular, are becoming more popular again. In our opinion this is a good thing. Both these styles have a grace and warmth of design that many of the more modern styles lack. One can build a new home with all of the amenities and modern construction techniques that are better than the old, while retaining the older style. If you are interested in building a less contemporary style home, give us a call. We can design it with you.


Kitchen Design-Beyond the Triangle

Kitchen design should emphasize planning for proper work flow. Aesthetics, cabinetry and appliances all matter, of course, but a truly successful kitchen design must also relate to cooking a process. That's because cooking is not a single operation but a series of independent subsystems; grocery intake and storage, food preparation, cooking, baking , cleanup and so on. These activities take place in a certain order, on a predictable, routine basis.

Few residential kitchens actually work this way. Why? Most are based on the so-called kitchen triangle-an idea that emerged from a small-house study conducted at the University of Illinois in the 1950's. We have talked about the kitchen triangle in all it's many modes in some of the previous kitchen articles. The study concept identified three major workstations-the refrigerator, the sink, and the stove-and placed each at one point of a triangle. It concluded that each side of the triangle should be between 4 and 9 feet, and the sum of the sides should add up to at least 12 feet, but no more than 26 feet. According to the study, this arrangement provided the best economy of space and movement. Thanks to its simplicity and ease of application kitchen designs have been using it ever since.

The triangle concept is practical and useful, up to a point. Unfortunately, its highly inflexible. A kitchen that has been designed on a triangular plan can't be readily compressed or expanded to accommodate smaller or larger amounts of food preparation, because everything is located according to a rigid formula. Also, the triangle makes it difficult for more than one cook to work in the kitchen at the same time. The triangle focuses on a geometric shape rather than the cooking process. If you add a fourth or fifth point, a second sink and oven for example, the plan becomes more flexible (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Where's the triangle? Without altering the size or shape of the room (left), the addition of a second sink in the island prep counter immediately improves flow and functionality in this plan (right).

Figure 2 High-end refrigerators install flush with the cabinets. To make a standard refrigerator look built in, recess it into the framing of an interior wall. Adding matching side panels and an upper cabinet can also help create a custom look.

Figure 3 For easy access, the bottom of a microwave should be between 24 and 48 inches above the floor. Provide a minimum 15x16 inch landing area immediately above, next to, or below the appliance.

Figure 4 Often there's not enough knee space at eating counters. Provide a 19-inch overhang for table-height counters (left); standard counter height (center) requires 15 inches; and at bar height, a 12-inch overhang is necessary (right). Generally, a seat occupies 24 inches of counter length, but allow 30 inches for wheelchair access at table height.

Unlike most residential kitchens, commercial kitchens start with a specific plan of action. The design of a commercial kitchen needs to know the dining room capacity. If it seats 100, and is expected to be filled 2 ½ times during a meal, the designer knows that the kitchen must be capable of producing 250 meals in something like 3 hours. If your dining room seats 12, the kitchen should be planned to serve 12. However, the number of diners per meal will probably change from one day to the next, so a residential kitchen needs to have the ability to expand and shrink.

Appliances--For a kitchen to function smoothly, one of the major considerations is the correct selection of major appliances. The appliances and equipment that are used most frequently should be chosen on the basis of features and functionality, placed where they will allow the cook to work efficiently, and should be installed to permit easy access. The refrigerator is by far the most frequently used appliance in a kitchen. It should be convenient to counter area and the prep sink and be configured to eliminate excessive bending and stooping. The three styles of refrigerator are side-by-side, freezer-on-top and freezer-on-bottom. The freezer on top means you are bending and groveling for the veggies on the bottom. The freezer-on-bottom means you can get to the veggies but every time you want something frozen, which is more than you imagine-I speak from experience-you are trying to unbury the ice cream. The side-by-side gives you some tall and some low for both freezer and refrigerator, and seems to me to be the best arrangement.

The Disappearing refrigerator-While not everyone can afford a $4000 Sub-Zero, a free-standing refrigerator can be made to look build in at a fraction of the cost, simply by adding wood side panels and a deeper cabinet above. Another solution is to recess the refrigerator into the stud space of an interior wall (Figure 2). You can pick up 3-5 inches depending on the stud size. In some cases, you may be able to recess the refrigerator into an adjacent space, such as a closet or garage. This will keep the refrigerator from dominating the appearance and improve the traffic flow because you don't have to walk around it each time you go down the aisle. In addition, the minimum practical allowance for a work aisle is 42 inches from countertop edge to countertop edge-if you've backed your refrigerator up you won't have to compensate for its intruding onto the aisle.

Consider the microwave-an appliance that has become essential in every kitchen. Statistics say that while you may only use your oven 25% of the time you cook, the microwave is used almost 100% of the time you cook a meal. Therefore its position should be easily accessible. Not over the range or oven so that you have to be 6 feet tall to get anything in or out, and can burn yourself if something else is cooking-- and accessible to the kids so they can make microwave popcorn easily. For easy access, the bottom of a microwave should be between 24 and 48 inches above the floor according to the National Kitchen and Bath Association (NKBA) (Figure 3). Provide a minimum 15x16 inch landing area immediately above, next to or below the appliance.

Eating counters-- built in to the island have also become very common. The majority of these don't provide enough knee space (Figure 4). Probably because of stock laminate sizes, the typical counter bar has just 10 ½ inches of overhang, not enough for long legs and big feet, all of which my family has. The overhang for a 30-inch, or table-height counter should be 19 inches, a 36-inch-high counter should have a 15-inch overhang, and the typical 42-inch-height snack bar should have a minimum 12-inch overhang.

Countertops-In addition to having the convenience of enough counter space to work in, there is also the consideration of safety. Cooking can be hazardous to your health, as any cook with a few burns to their credit can attest. According to NKBA, a cooktop should have at least 9 inches of countertop on one side and 15 inches on the other. This rules out installing a cooktop or range at the open end of a run of cabinets, where pot handles might hang out over the edge, leading to spills or scalding accidents. These dimensions are minimums. Ovens require a 15-inch-wide landing surface on one side for receiving hot cookware, or 15 inches of landing no farther away than 48 inches across from the oven. The oven door shouldn't open into a major traffic area, since someone could come around a corner, run into the open door, and get burned.

Hoods-ductless hoods are out! When it comes to effective ventilation, they're nothing more than noise with a light bulb. Ventilation fans must be ducted to the outside, and should be capable of at least 150 cubic feet per minute of air displacement. To ensure good exhaust, keep elbows to a minimum, since every elbow introduced into the ductwork reduces the exhaust capacity by an amount equal to 10 feet of straight run. So, for example, a hood that works well connected to a 30-foot straight run will essentially not work at all with three elbows in the line. You could use a more powerful fan to compensate for unavoidable elbows, but this introduces more noise. It's best to plan ahead for the shortest, straightest duct run possible. Always refer to the technical literature accompanying a new range hood for information on maximum duct lengths.

Sinks--Whenever possible, locate two different sink station-one to use for preparation, and the other for cleanup. The objective is to separate the sinks not just spatially, but functionally, so that two jobs can be done at once (Figure 5). The cleanup sink should be next to the dishwasher, and in line with the most common eating area. An efficient traffic flow is crucial. A stream of dirty dishes flowing to the dishwasher across the cook's path will interfere with prepping or cooking, and while this might not be much of a problem when preparing dinner for two, a large family or frequent entertainers would quickly see the merit of independent paths.

Consider Cooking Habits-Different cuisine and diets require different equipment and preparation. A grill, a built-in wok, a rotisserie, a griddle, a cooktop, and oven and a broiler might all find a place in a well-equipped kitchen. Cooking requires lots of water, so a prep sink near the stove would be nice.

When you go to design your kitchen, whether new or remodel, you may want to consider some of the things mentioned above. Even though the news tells us that we eat out a huge amount of the time, I personally believe that these numbers are exaggerated, and that most of us are in the kitchen each evening trying to get something eatable on the table. In addition, cooking has become a pleasant and relaxing hobby for many people allowing them to do something creative, completely different from what they do all day at their jobs, and delicious as well. A few simple guidelines can make the design your of kitchen much more efficient and the whole cooking process more enjoyable.

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