Second Draft

So a couple weeks later toward the end of August, they came up with a much better second draft, this time with a 3D model!

Many things had changed:

• This version now had three floors, so the room proportions are better (no small rooms with 17' high ceilings). 
• The house also had a wider footprint. The footprint inspired the architects to think of emphasizing the cantilever and create a concept of two mirrored volumes stuck together. It added a lot of character to the house.
• The square footage increased to around 2100 sq ft. While it's a bit large for what I need, I like the wider proportion better, plus it gives me extra square footage if I ever need it in the future
• The stairs to the rooftop deck were moved from the entry area to the rear lower deck.
• A more substantial entryway was added with bridge and coat closet. It is also backed by a set of windows, so you can see straight through the house and get a very indoor/outdoor feel. Cool!
• The bedroom got its own set of doors to the deck
• An office was added with open walls. It gives the possibility of turning it into a third bedroom in the future if I wanted to. 
• The media room was moved to the new daylight basement along with a large storage room/server closet.
• The location of the kitchen and living room were swapped
• A pantry was added next to the kitchen (by request)

At this point, we were all pretty happy with the general layout of the house and the internal spaces. As far as the exterior, it was nice, but was still lacking that wow factor. I thought that the exterior shell of the house could be a bit edgier to really emphasize the shapes, and I think the architects were thinking the same thing.

First Draft

As far as I understand, Pb Elemental uses a design process called "exploratory design". This involves sitting down and cranking out dozens and dozens of variations of a subject, then picking the best ideas out of those and repeating if necessary. It's rather tedious and time consuming, but it forces the designer to explore all possible avenues of a concept and make sure the best possible variant bubbles to the top. All this happens behind the curtain, so my only exposure to it is through a few incremental drafts. 

Toward the end of August, Pb Elemental settled on a the following concept as a first draft. There would be two separate volumes joined together - one going up, the other going down. In this version, the house would be a split-level.

The garage is on the split.

The second floor is cantilevered over the lower floor and is designed to be the main living area. 

Last, there is a set of stairs leading to a rooftop deck. There would be a large, sloped skylight over the living area, and a green roof over the bedroom. 

The house had around 1600sq feet not including the decks and garage. This design incorporated many of the requirements I asked for, set up a general concept for the spaces in the house, and was enough to get a conversation going. 

I thought that the concept was great start, but it had some flaws, as expected and forewarned. The proportions of the rooms on the bottom floor were a bit off (ceilings too high for the size of the room), and the house was a little narrow for the lot. I would have a useless 5' strip of yard on the left side of the house. 

I made the request to increase the width of the house to take advantage of that strip, knowing this would push up the cost of construction. I think this was the right decision to make, even though it would lead to some tense moments during financing later on. 

Land and Construction Loan Requirements

One thing I didn't know much about are the requirements and processes for getting a land or construction loan with a bank. It is similar to the process for getting a home loan, but with a few more restrictions and a lot more paperwork and project management.

• If you're just purchasing land, you have to get a land loan. These come with high interest rates (4-5% higher than a normal home loan).
• If you plan to build right away, you can avoid the land loan and get a construction loan. 
• Construction and land loans require a 20-30% down payment depending on the bank and your finances
• In order to qualify for a construction loan, you need land, completed plans, a permit from the city, and a contractor in place and ready to go
• The contractor also has to be approved by the bank. In most cases, this isn't an issue, but the process can take a couple weeks. 

If you don't have everything in place, you can always buy the land first and then roll it into a construction loan later on. This, however, does end up costing more because you have to pay interest on the land and close a second time on a construction loan.

I ended up working with Washington Federal to get my construction loan. 

Closing Issues

The closing process ended up not going as smoothly as I would have hoped. In September I found out the title on the land was incorrect because a boundary line adjustment was not filed properly. This meant that the titles on all the adjoining lots needed to be re-appraised and modified. The title company up to 6 months time before the problem was corrected and I could close, but could never give me a definitive date.

Other than the constant uncertainty of when I could close on the land, this meant that I could potentially get all my design and permitting done beforehand and immediately start on construction once the deal closed.

Requirements

The cool part about building a custom home is that it gets to be tailor made for you. In order to give the architects a starting point, they gave me a questionnaire to fill out and also gathered some basic requirements that I wanted out of the house. My list of requirements is obviously very similar to the kind of house I've been looking for:

• Modern, clean design
• high ceilings
• ~1500-1800sq ft
• large, open living room for entertaining
• large, well-equipped kitchen with pantry
• more emphasis on living areas, less emphasis on bedrooms
• garage for at least 1 car
• server closet
• high-tech wiring throughout the house
• media room or living room that can double as media room
• low maintenance/upkeep
• try to use natural materials and finishes

With that information in hand, plus a list of architects and projects that I like, Pb Elemental started on a first draft design of the house.

Finding Land

Now that I had picked out an architect, the first step was to find some land. Pb Elemental helped me out by pointing me at several available land listings around the Seattle area. There were a few good ones, but nothing that really caught my eye.

It turns out that the search ended rather quickly. About two weeks after I started looking for land, a new listing showed up in the Madrona neighborhood that looked very enticing. The land is located behind two duplexes. It's a large backyard that the owner had subdivided. Here's a satellite view of the lot below:

There's currently a large bush in the middle of the lot and no driveway, but the lot has plenty of potential. It's in a very quiet location, there seems to be ample parking everywhere, and I can see bits of Capitol Hill from the northwest corner of the lot.

Since I know that this is about as good as it's ever going to get in my price range, I put in an offer and reached mutual acceptance within a few days on 7/18/2010.

The Search For An Architect

After that failed initial foray, I started to think I needed to be a millionaire in order to build a custom home. Luckily, a co-worker of mine recommended an architect, Jim Burton of Blip Design. I met with him at a coffee shop and found out more about his work, the process, and costs. It turns out that it is possible to build something for around $150-180/sq ft.

During my home shopping, I ran into and talked to another architect, David Foster of David Foster Architects. He's done several projects on 22nd st in the central district. I got to walk through the house that he was building and living in and liked many things about it. 

While both of those architects were very nice, I ended up working and signing a contract with Pb Elemental. These are the guys that designed the house that I almost purchased. I chose them over the other architects for the following reasons:

• I got to walk through some of their buildings and really liked all of their floorplans and clean, no-nonsense layouts with no wasted space. 
• They are very cost conscious and know how to design something cool on a budget
• They're very eager and excited to work on new projects. They've only been around for 6 years, so I think they're still in the process of trying to make a name and reputation for themselves. 
• They're easy to talk to and get along with

If you're ever planning on doing new construction or a remodel, I highly recommend these guys!