Permit drawing set submitted!

Nancy and I submitted the plans to the City of Denver Building Department on August 14.  We are relieved and very happy to have reached this milestone after nearly a year of work.  We would like to thank Joe and Jason at KL&A for a great structural set, Julie and Judy at the Brendle Group for lots of assistance on energy analysis and mechanical specifications, Ron at CO Engineering for the surveys, and Mike at CO Geoscience for the soils and shoring report.  We will keep our fingers crossed that the plans will make it through without any major hiccups.

We have selected Curtis Welch for the contractor on the project and are excited that we will be using SIPs for the exterior walls (Structural Insulated Panels).  He brings valuable experience with this type of construction to the project, in that he is one of the few in Denver who has actually built projects using them!

Contractor Selection

A big day for us - we’ve made the decision on which contractor to use for our project.  It’s been a challenging process, as the final three were all very qualified, and some had experience in areas that we valued a lot.

Ultimately, the one with extensive SIPs experience won out, in that he is comfortable with them, and will not be charging us a significant premium for framing all the exterior walls with them.  It’s amazing how many contractors in the Denver area do not even know what SIPs are!

Many of the custom home-builders are charging a premium for their services in Denver.  Even though the market as a whole may be slowing, custom outfits in the metro area still aren’t hungry yet.

We are very happy to have made this milestone, and now the focus is on getting the permit set into the city and the project started ASAP!

Schematic drawings are done!

The months of hard work have come to an end as we have completed the schematic pricing set up drawings. Yahoo!  It feels great to finally reach this milestone and be able to move on to the next phase of the project.

Over the last week we have been meeting with contractors and printing set after set for review.  Now we wait for the bids to come in...

Contractor Discussions

We started talking to a few contractors around town, and each had a different take on the project. We explained that although we wanted to build a new house, it would be small by Denver standards (2400 sf), and simple and modern. One mentioned that he didn’t think it’s possible to build a custom home for under $200 a square foot. Another stated that $150 is totally doable. Time will tell.