I find it a bit nerve racking to decide what to design and build on speculation in Spokane in this economic climate. I can only do them one at a time and so whatever I come up with needs to sell quickly so we can move on to the next.
   Our last house, which we began June 23rd and completed October 15th, sold as soon as we had it framed. That told me the floor plan was strong and so was the location. I also built it with the empty nester in mind. This new house has a much different floor plan, but it is still geared for the last-time home buyer.

Here are some features I am re-using and in some cases improving:

*  No-step entry- This is a sought after feature that most builders don't bother with because of the extra hassle and because they don't have to go to the extra hassle to sell homes when times are good. But I know it was a main selling point on the last house.

* Ranch style- Not only do older people not want stairs going into their house, they don't want them in their house. I've lived in a rancher for 14 years and love it. I think one level living is the only way to go.

* 3' interior doors- As with the no-step entry, wide interior doors are a concession to impaired mobility. But I have been putting in 3' doors in all my specs for years. They are are just more practical for moving around furniture and they do not cost any more.

* Covered concrete back porch- Folks who have owned and maintained their own homes for years do not want wooden decks if they can avoid them. They always need maintenance and they always show their age even with maintenance. A concrete patio is the most maintenance-free. Having it covered is an added bonus.

*Soaker tub and walk-in shower- Some times both people want both a shower and a tub, but normally one doesn't care about the tub and the other has to have it. It is usually the wife, but not always. At any rate, I would not build a home for the empty nesters without both.

* Large laundry and pantry - The laundry room was perhaps the most popular room in the last spec. Not because it was fancy, but because it was decent-sized. So many new houses have a tiny laundry/ mud room that you pass through going in and out of the garage.
   I think a utility sink is crucial and it should be near the garage for the man to use and near the kitchen so it can be used as a back-up sink during large meals. I really like where I put in this new house.

* Bonus room- This is the area that people loved most  in the last house. Everyone that went up there had their own personal vision for it. We heard it would make the perfect sewing room or weight room or guest bedroom, or grand kid's playroom or man cave. People loved the charm and old fashion feel of the sloping ceilings and dormers.
   Because it was so popular I made this one much bigger and added a bathroom.

* Over sized garage- The main reason the bonus room could be bigger is because the garage beneath it is much bigger. I have always wanted to try building a spec that basically had a shop attached, but did not look like it from the road.
   Everyone wants a 3-car garage, but they are kind of ugly.  I went with the two doors and a tandem bay for the third vehicle. I reason that most empty nesters do not drive three cars regularly. They may have three vehicles but usually one is in storage most of the year. 
    The tandem looks much better and lends itself to a shop area in back.

    Those are the main features that I am betting will sell this house. But it is a gamble, especially these days.
To see our last house and why I think this one will do well if we can do as good a job, click here.   

   
     In 1989 I moved back from Annacortes after moving there a year and a half before. A lot transpired in the 18 months or so that we lived there. We moved there in January of 1988 because I was laid off in Spokane and I thought I could find work over there. Turns out I could not and so I got a bond and license and started siding and doing finish carpentry for house builders.
   Once I got the first job, I never missed a day of work and soon I was working 7 days a week to keep up. I also worked a lot to pay for the arrival of our first child, Jesse. The ironic thing is that I got the idea to move to Annacortes while visiting family there during Christmas vacation and got the idea to move back to Spokane while visiting family here during the Fourth of July. Both decisions were totally spontaneous. They were ideas that just popped in my head one day and within a week I was moving to and fro.
   The reason I came back was the apartments pictured above which are located at the bottom of the Argonne hill in the Valley. My dad was putting in the foundations for Bill Lawson of A&A Construction and he heard they were having trouble finding anyone to side it. So I met Bill there and he offered to give me 50 cents a foot which I thought was fantastic considering that I was only getting 27 cents a foot on the coast.
   So I went back to Annacortes to finish up what I had going and cancel my future obligations. I was shocked when a few of my builders told me that they would give me the 50 cents a foot if I would stay. But my mind was made up and so I came back to Spokane. It turned out to be a move that has had an impact on many more lives than just mine.
   One of the first guys I met was a kid named Rick Holmes. He was the hardest working guy I had ever seen and I decided that I would hire him if he were available and I needed a good man. But at the time I had no employees. But after I got the first of four buildings sided, Bill gave me the finish work and so I started hiring. One of the first people I hired was a guy named Tim Park who had been a friend since kindergarten. He was working at a saw mill in the Silver Valley and wanted to be a carpenter.
   Elaine also helped me through the entire job which lasted about nine months. She was pregnant the whole time and delivered our second child Eli, at the end of the job. That was more than twenty years ago.

  
                                        Rick on our current job , 21 years later
     
       After the apartments were done I became partners with my mom and brother at Homestead Construction. I remember the day Chris came by the apartments as we were finishing them up. He said there was a building boom coming to Spokane and that we should position ourselves to take advantage of it. Bill Lawson wanted me to go to Southern Idaho to do the finish work on a Perkins restaurant he was building but I chose to stay in Spokane and team up with my family.
   It turned out my brother was dead on and we took off. I soon had to hire more guys and so I looked Rick up and found him working as a hod carrier and eager to become a carpenter. When he started he knew nothing, by the time he left me about 8 years later he could frame anything. He ran my framing crew for several years and he was always the hardest working guy I had. They nicknamed him Monster.
    And he did very well on his own until the boom busted and his main builder slowed way down. So when I needed a hand framing the current house we're building, I once again called Rick and was lucky enough to have him available. 

  
                                    This is Tim helping on the same house.

         After the apartments, I built homes with Homestead for the next 10 years. Our best year we did 86 houses.
At one time I had a 17 man crew doing all the framing, finish carpentry, painting, flatwork and roofing. Tim learned to do everything and work with us until about 1999 when he went to work for his brother in law in the Silver Valley where Tim was still living. 
    I left Homestead in 2000 and  built houses for a few years with Elaine before opening our restaurant, The Rock Inn. We were there 4 years and then went back into construction. Tim called me about a year and a half ago and has been with me ever since.

  
      
         And this is the kid that Elaine was pregnant with while we were building those apartments. Eli is taking a year off from college and helping us out. For Tim, Rick and I , those appartments in Argonne were a long ways back at the beginning of our careers. For Eli, they were a full lifetime ago and he is just now at the beginning of his career. Though hopefully  he'll stick to his education and not have to be out pounding nails at our age.
     

   Fascia is the piece of  6"-wide trim that runs along the bottom of the roofline. There are always a few spots on every house where a piece of facia is brutally exposed to winter weather and goes through several freeze-thaw cycles. Those are often the places that are hard for the painter to do get to.  It just seems to me that painting the facia before it is installed is a good idea on a few different levels, especially since I am both the carpenter and the  painter on the houses that I build.
   First of all, it is far easier and safer to do a good job of painting when the boards are on sawhorses as opposed to when they are one or two stories off the ground and often higher on lofty gable ends. It also speeds up the building process because I can get the roofer in as soon as all the fascia is up and we skip cutting in with a brush at the roof-line if the roof is not on before painting.
   You also get a much better paint job on the backside of the board. If you look closely at new houses, the small amount of fascia on the backside where it extends lower than the soffit and faces the house is almost always under-painted. That is because it is a difficult piece to hit with a paint-sprayer and because it is usually a manufactured board  and so the the backside soaks in more paint than the soffit which is normally painted at the same time.
   Additionally, painting the boards this way makes it easy to roll the entire back of the board and seal this part of the board that the manufacturers do not pre-coat like they do the front, sides and ends of the board. Also, since both sides of board are painted, I don't have to worry about which way is up when I am nailing them on and can use every board, anywhere. 
  So that is why I do it, now here's how I do it.




   The back and sides I roll first with body-color paint. I only give them one good roller coat because most of the back and one of the sides will be hidden and not exposed to the weather. The exposed, bottom side and  one inch or so of the back of the board will be given a heavy second coat with the sprayer when we paint the house later. The bottom side of the board I usually hit with a short-nap, small roller. That edge I paint the color of the body because it is the natural stopping point for the paint-sprayer when we're shooting the soffit.
   After giving the paint a decent time to dry, I turn all the boards over and paint the front of the boards with my 3" roller. It works out better to paint the front of the board second because it is better to have the inevitable paint-bleeding  on the sides of the board rather than the more visible face of the board. Also, since I give the face 2 coats, it makes it more efficient to paint the back of the board, then flip it over, paint the first coat on the face, let them dry over night and then give them a second coat  first thing the next morning and be done.
   After I put on the boards and caulk the joints, I can give the whole job a quick third coat with the roller. By the time we get done, it is a well-coated piece of trim. Having done several fascia repair jobs as a handyman carpenter over the years, I have seen first-hand that fascia is a piece of the house that can take a beating from the weather in our neck of the woods and it can always use extra attention to help protect it from the elements.  

   

    When I can, I shoot the soffit before the roofer gets there. The time saved from not having to mask off is huge and it makes it  easier to put on a good heavy coat in those tough places like the back edge of the fascia that Tim is spraying in this picture.
  

To read more about what I do to protect this vulnerable piece of trim, look at this post.
  

    As a house carpenter who has spent years framing, siding, finishing and building decks, I have used just about every type of saw a guy can use to cut through wood. The saw that I like the most is the Skil wormdrive Magnum. When the Hardie Plank siding first came out they recommended using nibbblers to cut the stuff but I could never see myself taking the time to nibble through a board when I could saw it a lot faster. I understood it was all about the dust, but I could always use a dust mask.
     I have heard people say that it ruins the saw, and so I designated an old saw just for Hardie. While I do not put on Hardie everyday, I have sided several houses and put down a lot of underlayment over the past four years and that same old saw is still going strong. I use a diamond blade and it cuts the stuff like butter.
   But still, there is a lot of dust and so I broke down and bought the Rigid fiber cement saw.
 
   

   Taking it out of the box I could tell it was well made, it just felt solid. I was quite skeptical about using a saw with a hose hooked on it since cords are usually all I need to contend with but I figured I'd have to get used to it in order to have cleaner air. Then as I was loading the blade and looking the saw over more closely, I made a discovery that shocked me. It did not have a blade depth adjustment. I kept reading the instructions to find out where the adjustment was but there was no mention of one. I'd never seen a saw that did not have a depth adjustment. It has the usual angle adjustment but nothing for blade depth. That just made me mad and I almost took it back right there but I love new tools and I wanted to play with this one even if I had to tilt the saw forward to manually raise the blade as I made each and every cut.
   So I went at siding the front the house that I was building and I really liked the saw and the way it controlled the dust compared to the old wormdrive. It really did fine and I was glad that I bought it. Then I let a friend borrow it on his underlayment project and I learned a very dirty little secret.
   He got just a little ways into his project when the blade went south, and I mean it went down past Peru somewhere. Every carbide tooth was gone. I had only sided the front of a house and he had only gotten 6 or 7 sheets layed down and the $20 blade was very burnt toast. 
   My friend happens to a be purchaser for a large store that carries some tools and so he called his Freud rep (Freud makes the Diablo saw blades). When the guy heard how long the blade lasted, he told my friend that we had gotten lucky. He said the blades don't usually make it that long. Turns out the guys at the Freud company told the guys at Home Depot that a carbide tipped blade would never work and that the saw needed a diamond tipped blade. Home Depot said the customers would not pay the extra price and that it had to be carbide.
   The first thing I'd like to know is why does a 5 1/2" blade with only something like 6 cabide teeth cost more than a 7 1/2" blade with 24 carbide teeth?  Seems like there is a lot less material there. But beyond that, I'd like to know why they are selling a blade and including it with their new saws when they know it will wear out immediately if not sooner. I guess they plan to make the real money in saw blades.
    So I wanted to verify this for myself and so I got a brand new blade and started siding my next house which was an 1800' rancher with siding all the way around. Sure enough, all the teeth on the blade were gone before I got half way through the house. So I could either keep buying blades like candy or I could scrap the saw or I could out smart them. I went back to Home Depot and bought a 4 1/2" diamond blade that they recommend for using in grinders for $13. Now I have a good saw and a good blade and a bad taste in my mouth. I would still recommend the saw but not Home Depots marketing strategy.

  Here is an update: I have sided 2 houses since this writing with the diamond blade so far and it going strong.

There are three categories of builders : custom, production and design/build. The custom builder and the production builders rely on plans drawn by a draftsperson and the design/builder drafts unique plans for each house he builds. That is what I do, but I go one step further than any builder that I have seen. I actually put the boards and plywood together in such a way that the vision from my imagination that I put on paper as a plan becomes a physical structure.
   I am very fortunate when I get to work as the framer or sider or painter on one of the houses that I designed because it is not like going to work. Every day goes by too quickly because there is always more that I want to get done. I am excited the whole way through to see how it is going to turn out. There is a big difference between the idea on the plan and the actual house in three dimension.
   I have drawn many plans for homes and additions that I have not built and I have built many homes that I have not drawn. I believe it is the most rewarding to be not just the builder of my own plan but the carpenter as well. I think I am a throw-back to many years ago when the builders actually built the house with the own two hands.
   The actual building process for me is an extension of the drafting process. Some things you have to stand back and look at as you go and determine exactly what looks the best. The dormer shed on the house that I am building is an example. 

    

   First I built the wall and stood it where I thought it felt best from the inside and then I put up a board where I thought the roofline would look best and then I went down on the road and took a look.

    

  I did not like the way it stood out in the first picture and so I went up and moved it back in a foot and I thought it looked better that way. I also moved the roofline up later because that looked better as well. Also, notice the little angle board on the upper right corner of the garage door.  I put that up there and thought about it for several days. Did I want square garage doors or should I bob the corners or should I arch the top? I really wasn't sure. I waited until I had the the dormer built and the gable windows in and the the whole thing sheated and then I knew what to do.

  

   I knew that doing the arches would be way more work but that is what I need to do to make it look the best. The stone work and the siding treatment for this area of the house are still being mulled around in my head. I'll know what to do by the time we get there. 

    The advent of digital photography has given us a cheap way to cure an old headache: the buried outlet. It doesn't happen on every house but it happens enough that I have found it to be a good idea to walk through the entire house and take pictures of every  wall and ceiling so that I have a record of every thing that is going on inside the walls that will soon be covered with drywall.
   The window of opportunity occurs after the mechanical and wiring are done and before insulation.

 

   There are other benefits beyond keeping track of where all the outlets are located. For example this picture will be a permanent record where the kitchen cabinet backing is at and how the stove hood is vented. Also it shows how the wiring is run to each outlet.

  

    These pictures will be put on a CD that the homeowner can keep on file. After I am long gone and the remodeling contractor comes along to remodel this bathroom in 50 years, I will be his hero. He won't have to worry about what he is getting into behind the walls, he'll just look at these pictures and know where and where not to drill a hole or run his sawzall through the sheetrock.

   

    So why did the new home we are building sell at the end of the framing stage while the new home just down the road and dozens of others like it sit empty month after month? I could be humble and say that we just got lucky. I feel we were very fortunate, but luck was not a big part of it. The luckiest part for us was that a very pleasant couple bought it  and so working with them on the rest of the project will be fun. I enjoy working for nice people who appreciate what I do.
   It could have sold to a couple with one or perhaps both of them having a cantankerous dispositions. That would have been bad luck. But the point is I think it was going sell quickly to a certain type of couple and it had nothing to do with whether they were nice or not. It had to do with them being empty nesters who were looking to get out of the house they had raised their family in and wanted to move into a home they could live the rest of their lives in. If you think about it, there are a lot of people out there who fit that description.
   The reason the house down the road is sitting is because the builder is afraid to death to do what I did. He is like nearly every other builder in this town in that he wants to build for the largest portion of the market, reasoning that this will give him the best chances to sell his product. The realtor who sold us our lot tried to talk me out of building a home without a basement. His name is Niel Thompson and he is arguably the most experienced and successful realtor when it comes to new construction in the Valley. My mom has been building homes in Spokane for nearly 40 years and has built literally hundreds of spec homes. Not once that I can remember has she ever built a spec home targeting just the empty nester. 
   So I said to myself, if almost no one is building a house for the empty nester then there has got to be an opportunity there. While the market may be smaller it is still a market and one that needs to be catered to. Most builders are going for the typical family. But all those typical families with 2.5 kids turn into empty nesters one day and a lot of them have there where-with-all and desire to buy  a new home that fits their stage in life. Let the other builders go for the 2.5 kids that grew up and started there own families, I'll go for the parents they left behind.
   Turns out I was right. The couple that we sold to said they had been looking for nearly three years and had not found one house for sale, new or used, that was just right for them. Ours was the first. Besides them we have other people interested in having us build them a house exactly like it or something similar. Its not that I am a genius, but every once in awhile I have a good idea. I am just grateful that in an undertaking so risky and expensive as building a home on speculation in Spokane in this economy that I was lucky enough to listen to my own intuition and not follow the traditional line of thinking. 

The facsia is the one board that goes all the way around every house and nearly every inch of every board is exposed to the elements. In my years as a home improvement specialist I was called on more than a few times to replace every piece around the entire house.<< MORE >>

I believe there is a big difference between the way I build and the way most builders build and that big difference comes from a lot of little things. The crawl space access pad that I put in is a case in point. << MORE >>

I believe there is a big difference between the way I build and the way most builders build and that big difference comes from a lot of little things. The crawl space access pad that I put in is a case in point. << MORE >>