Congratulations amberm.

I finally get to join in this post. Been lurking here for about a year. Took forever for us to get land from my dad's farm transferred over to my name, with all the surveying, etc. Hoops, hoops and more hoops to jump through, but we finally broke ground today. Yeah!! Can't wait to get to know everyone and watch these beautiful houses go up.

This might not be the right forum for this question but didn't find one that matched exactly so going to try :)
We are in San Francisco Bay Area. The housing market is crazy so buying our own bigger home (we own a small town home currently) seems like a distant dream. I am trying to find out what is the typical price that contractors charge for building in this area? Is it $100/sq ft or $200/ sq ft or somewhere in between?
What are prices for construction in other parts of the country?
Thanks for any insights.

SF, I would recommend starting a new thread for your question. But generally, you can't build for less than buying.

SF is the hottest market. I think you're way under what it would cost to build. My guess and it's only a guess is you're probably in the $300-$400 a square foot.

My update for yesterday, we got all our permits complete. As far as the city is concerned, we're done!

Walkway got repaired yesterday. Another $600 cost to us. Grrr. The front porch is now waiting until mid-late Nov, since it's going to be snowing again this weekend, as it does EVERY weekend DH is in town and able to finish it. So BIL is going to do it when he finishes another project.

And he finished installing the central vac last night, so I can clean my floors!

I'd guess 250 bare-minimum per sqft in SF area.

We are in Portland and are at 143 sqft + the land. I had quotes from one builder at sub 100 per sqft but it was VERY VERY basic materials. Crappy carpet, laminate, cheap and minimal cabinetry, cheap tile.

SF-we are building on central coast CA. I'll have to ask my husband what our cost per square foot was(we should be done in three weeks). I do know it was quite a bit more than we were first quoted. Make sure you check into all permitting- we needed to go "green" which got us a discount on cost of building permits, cost us a lot in time,energy and money getting things that met the standards required. I don't think we'd build from scratch again. I think our builder won't do it again either, at least in the town we're building in(and I think our architect felt the same way-too many requirements and permits). It may be easier in San Francisco but please check it out to make sure you want to take it on. Our latest craziness was needing to provide spec sheets on everything-from building materials, faucets, toilets, caulks, glues, flooring, appliances, etc.. Then we needed to supply all manuals so that the builder can give us a manual for the whole house when it's done. It's stipulated that the manual has to stay with the house for the life of the house!

On a lighter note, we're on vacation and my husband and I are laughing at ourselves. We find ourselves checking out faucets, toilets, furnishings everywhere we go. Are the handles/drawer pulls matching? Faucets in tubs and sinks matching? It's quite amusing.

SF- just checked with dh. $250 sq ft. Only for construction-not permitting or land.

Mid month update? Second floor beams are installed and the LiteDeck is being laid. Rotunda is starting to come together.

Wow what a week. We have footer forms in and cement to come on Monday. Exciting. Tuesday we will have basement walls. Congrats to all on their progress.

Finally Framing!! After a 10 week wait - looks like our framing will start Monday. Let's just hope it doesn't rain. :/.

Framing. :) :) :) Kitchen sink and dining/great room views. :) I'm pretty happy... may have hugged some of these trees.

treehugger those are amazing views. Totally envious. :)

Here's my home as of October 17th. I didn't get there this weekend - yesterday I pulled up cannas bulbs, did housework and laundry, and went to work for an hour or so.

Today I'm heading up shortly to the Connecticut Fall Home vendor event. Where I will look at the latest in kitchen ideas, and other home-related ideas.

Here's my build: It finally has windows!!!

Enough dirt has arrived to fill in the garage, and soon as this can be flattened enough, the slab will be poured. Unfortunately the dirt-moving Kurbota that the builder rented broke down that day. But I was able to walk into my garage for the first time ever.

They're beginning to lay out for the kitchen -- the logs won't be exposed behind the oven/range and it will locate between the mark for the penninsula and the window. This means I get to decide on tile or paint for a backsplash -- I'm leaning towards paint as grout can be painful to clean grease from. The penninsula will extend into the room further than depicted.

And here are the rooms at the front of the house... we are standing in my living room, looking at my future wood burning stove flanked to the right by the coat closet and the left by the hallway. Peering through walls, we see the guest room closet, the guest room, and finally my office.

Thanks everyone for your valuable inputs for the SF bay area costing! Good luck on your builds

artemis, I'm liking your build so far! Please keep posting!

Here is our build so far. Many delays, many frustrations with contractors..

I have to learn patience, and have to stop and tell myself how blessed we are for all of this. The saying "I didn't say the journey would be easy, but it will be worth it" is so relevant.

wrock99- Beautiful site! Looks kind of like our 'back yard' in SC.

We picked paint colors this weekend with an interior designer and it just feels like things are coming together now. There are a few remaining hiccups but I'm trying to let the minor stuff go for the sake of my sanity.

In electrical: I need to add an outlet / CAT6 into the office floor. I said so in the walk-through and DH said we didn't need it. Now he thinks we need it. Go figure. There is a built-in in our office that has no power. This was an oversight as we'd like to have a printer and small stereo on that built-in. Whoops. I hope we can solve those two things easily and for not a whole lot of money. The electrician will be out anyway to wire the appliances and lights so I hope this doesn't generate an extra visit.

I met with a landscaper that was supposed to get back to me Weds but has not yet ... hmm. Will call someone else today.

Blinds being re-visited next weekend. Ouch on the price tag but we do need them in some locations right away so biting the bullet there.

Trim carpenter is doing our wainscoting and interior molding now. It's fun to watch that come together. It absolutely shocks me that they don't paint the walls until that trim is in. What? I just wonder how much it's going to cost me in extra labor. Yikes.

The best news of the week though is that I've almost finished my Christmas shopping! Amazon is coming through big time. About 50% has been delivered AND I've wrapped it. Considering our move-in is scheduled for Dec 14 I feel really good about this. I'm going to take all of the gifts to my FILs house this next weekend so the kids can't find them and they aren't in the way when we move.

Mama Rachel- I'm picking paint this week and wish I would have hired a designer -- eek! I hate paint and it is so overwhelming to coordinate the whole house. I'm down to edgecomb gray or useful gray for my main color so at least that's progress. :). I love your Christmas shopping idea. I've gotten about 50% done as I like to work ahead but I didn't plan for it with our move and all my wrapping paper is buried somewhere and despite that I have 20 rolls of paper I'm going to have to buy some. Cost of the move I guess! We don't have a target move date yet but we aren't too far behind you, I'm very hopeful for January sometime. Our current setback is waiting on electric company for hookup. Still plenty they can do, but pretty soon we are going to be waiting on hvac to install wood floors. It's all really going pretty quickly though, I truly can't complain!

Costco has great Christmas wrap, nice quality with the grids on the back like Hallmark. 11.99 for 4 very large rolls.
Costco also had great gift tags and ribbons. Tags were 8.99.
Target has magic tape, 2 small rolls for $1.
I've got a few more packages coming, then stocking suffers and DH to shop for.

DH is probably getting towel bars for Christmas, and a power driver. His stocking will be filled with command hooks, picture wire, miscellaneous hooks.
My kids are getting bedding and curtain sets with posters, and room decor as one of their gifts. Star Wars. The paint I picked will match.

I used Sherwin Williams designer service. It's $95 for a 90 minute consult at the house and the designer brings the larger color swatches. Totally worth it! You get a $50 gift card at the end toward paint or supplies.

Tile started today! The color on this picture is wonky because it was dusk with a work lamp on but the flooring in both the master bath and laundry went in today.
Also, misc trim. The under side of our patio was trimmed in tongue and grove pine today also. Lots of progress!

Thanks for the tip about the sherwin Williams design, I had no idea and that sounds like a steal!

So, we've got our first reno added to the list before the house is even finished. We had originally planned to do wall to wall cabinetry under the TV in the living room. Before drywall, DH put in surround sound speakers. He also told the electrician to put a bunch of extra outlet for charging laptops/tablets/phones, etc on top of the cabinets. He put them in assuming we'd get 3' high cabinets. I suggested at the time we go lower. Nope. He wanted 3' cabinets. Shouldn't we go lower? I mean, it's a modern style house? Nope. 3' high cabinets. Fine, the outlets and speakers are all higher than 3'. And I ended up not getting the wall-wall cabinets because I just didn't love the idea of 3' cabinets enough to spend the money it was going to cost. Now he tells me he put the speakers that high because "that's how high cabinets are". What? The space would have needed semi custom cabinets anyway. So getting them 6-12" lower would have been no charge, or at least low charge. But he thinks he saved us money by putting the speakers so high. And now, if we ever decide to put cabinets in, it's going to require ripping off the drywall and fixing the speakers. Because I was willing to get them that high when I thought he liked the look. But I refuse to get built in cabinets that don't fit the space because he didn't know you can get them made lower. :facepalm: And because this is an exterior wall with high attention to insulation and air sealing, it wouldn't be as easy as just cutting a hole lower, moving the speakers and patching the holes. The drywall needs to come off, the foam boxes around the speakers moved, and vapor barrier replaced.

I am going to order floating shelves for next to the TV, trying to decide between 3' or 4' wide. Obviously still a lot of crap to put away.

Amberm I feel your pain. A few weeks ago I had a thread in the kitchen forum about DH and how he insisted he hated the microwave drawer we have now. So I had instructed the KD to put it above the oven. So I was talking to him, and mentioned that it was going above the oven. He insisted he did not like it above the oven and then said to me, "Why aren't we getting a drawer microwave like we have now?"

I wrote the KD and told her to put back the drawer MW. I also told my builder that if I say that hubby wants something to next time wait a week and then ask again if he's changed his mind.

Happy Camper here! As some know, we decided to eliminate a room upstairs to try and save money and because it was space we didn't need or want. The builder just called me and by eliminating that room we are saving a nice chunk of change and that doesn't include the allowances. Meaning he didn't lower our allowances but only included the actual build cost. Happy Dance!

We head to FL tomorrow and will be meeting with the builder for a long drawn out session on Thursday afternoon to go over all the details and hash it out so we can finally get moving. I love the house we have now.

CPArtist.. I am SO READY for you to start!!!

AmberM.. I'm afraid someday we'll realize we're married to the same person. ;) We need everything in writing just to prove them wrong!

Treehuggergirl- LOVE the views!

Met with the closet guy today to go over the shelving and bars for the whole house. This is such an exciting stage to be in.

Question for you all... we are painting our master bedroom SW Ponder SW 7079 Yes I'm shocked DH agreed to PURPLE, which is my favorite color! So exciting!

The master bathroom will be Comfort Gray

I wanted the master closet, which adjoins the master bath by a pocket door (which will let's be honest will be open all the time) to also be painted Comfort Gray so it appears to be "one room" as neither the master bath or closet are huge...

However, the custom closets are going to be installed already before they paint (except the closet rods). These closets are made out of shelving board, basically unfinished MDF.

Would you paint the closet this comfort gray color? Or, should I leave the closet our trim color which is either Pure White or Ivory Lace?

Trim color.

Bummer, really? I love the comfort gray color but I am worried it will create a color cast on our clothes that will make it hard to pick out things that "go" together.

Mamarachel I'd be worried about that too and would go with your trim color.

Builder just asked me if we are doing door headers on second floor. It never occurred to me to trim doors differently on different floors. Below is what I asked for on first floor, simple craftsman style casing.

If we don't do this on second floor it's just a flat 3.5".casing all the way around. Thoughts? Anyone else done this? First floor is 9' ceiling with 7" baseboard, second floor is 8' ceiling with 5" baseboards. Maybe doing crown molding in dining room and master on first floor, not sure yet. Definitely no crown on second floor.

Oh and he needs to know tomorrow of course.

In actual update news, our ONE siding guy is finally supposed to get a crew and lift equipment tomorrow. What you see so far is one guy that comes a few hours most days for past three weeks! Crazy.

But they say it will be done by Friday. Drywall also finished on Friday. Paint starts next week, and cistern should be in by then too. BUT the one thing that got me so excited this is actually happening....meet my kitchen island slab .
Silly, but it's the thing that's making this seem "real" finally!

Farmer we are doing the same as your builder is suggesting.. on first floor only. I'm only doing it because of budget, but honestly just the plain trim looks good... Just not AS hood..

Ps.. LOVE your slab!!!!!!!

Amber - thanks so much, very helpful! We have a lot more doors on second floor so I'm hoping saves us $ and we can do a little crown on first floor. Can't wait to see more of your pictures, if I remember correctly your house has a similar style to ours and looks like you are a few steps ahead of us, so exciting! Thanks I never dreamed we would end up actually getting marble even though it is what I wanted, but it was less expensive than the granite we liked and we loved the marble so much more. I'm sure it will etch the first day we move in but I don't mind patina.

Gorgeous!

farm

We did a spin on Craftsman trim that was much cheaper to execute. The sides are 4x1/2", then a 3/4x6", then a 1x1/2 on top laid sideways. The lengths are stepped 1/2" also so it gives the nice stepped relief appearance but easy cuts and cheap boards. Our specs called for a 6" crown that I didn't care for. I think what we ended up with is simple yet elegant looking.

interior doors have the same trim n (horrible picture, sorry! )

One more paint question...did you match your trim paint to your ceilings and closets? I'm doing Pure White trim, wondering if I should have them do Pure White on ceilings also since we will have crown molding in 2 rooms? Or is the "standard" plain white going to be fine on the ceiling? What about closets? I'm way overthinking this....! But our paint bill is going to be almost 3x the amount of my countertops so I feel a lot of pressure not to have to repaint anytime soon....who would have thought???!

Thanks so much for the trim photos and advice mama rachel! I emailed the builder to let him know we would do the simpler style as Amber has and was going to ask about what you mentioned. He told me trim had already been ordered and was in. I have no idea why he was asking me to decide yesterday when it turns out today I didn't have a choice anyway?

I am SO very grateful to have about 90% of the major decisions behind us. Still working on a few light fixtures, waiting on fireplace stone samples, and then it's just random stuff like closet shelves and bathroom mirrors.

I just did ceiling white. But I don't have crown molding. My paint was probably significantly more than my counters, too. But it was charged in dribs and drabs. Priming, stairs, ceilings and trim, walls, touch-ups.

I'm still looking for closet inserts, too. I've got boxes everywhere with no place to unpack them.

"What you see so far is one guy that comes a few hours most days for past three weeks! Crazy." farmdrmr that is exactly what I'm afraid of, only my one guy is my husband :-/ That slab is gorgeous - what a show stopper!

Amber & Mama Rachel I love your trim ideas - no idea where we're headed with that yet..... somehow a big hole in the ground isn't conducive to thinking about those kinds of details.

Progress pics from today

From master bedroom to back yard

Master bath vanity. I shortened it and added a linen storage closet at the end.

Great room

Entry closet

This closet is in the guest room. I'm going to put a small table inside for my sewing machine and crafting area. It has double-wide swing-out doors.

Left side = storage

Middle for table

Right side for hanging guest clothes ( bar will go under second shelf there)

Stretched so you'll have to click them to see them in normal perspective.

Very nice Mama. Love your craft space idea. Great use of space.

Big Day at our Build today! Framing the basement!!

Mama - craft closet is brilliant!

DLM - if my husband was doing the work no big deal. But we are paying for the job and it's taking forever because they won't send the crew. We got a huge rain last week and water is seeping in behind drywall in a few places due to siding not being done. So now the drywall and insulation in those spots needs to be redone. Not end of the world but could have been easily avoided if they sent the crew two days earlier. But it could be worse! :).

Farmer

It was what was commonly done a hundred years ago to put oak hardwood in the downstairs where guests would see it, but have cheaper pine floors in the upstairs. I guess it still goes today. Most people will put more money in the downstairs than in the more "private" upstairs. This is probably the mindset your GC has. It is fine to have different moldings on the different floors, they will not be seen at the same time and probably no one would notice the difference.

Edited to add, what a gorgeous slab!

For followers of these monthly threads- I'm traveling this week, and may not have computer access. If you don't see a November thread tomorrow morning, someone go ahead and start one. I'll get caught up when I return!

Have a great trip Mushcreek.

Farmer-just a reminder that most people won't even notice the trim anywhere. How many of us paid attention to all the details we're now consumed with daily before we started to build? Just a reminder to help keep our sanity when it all seems too much!

We're still on vacation. We got word that we passes the green point inspection, the town water inspection(we're in CA where our town had had severe water restrictions for many years), and fire. Paver driveway should be finished today. Now we just have to pass the county one. Our builder said we won't pass it on the first go round as the inspector is known for finding something wrong every time-sort of to boost his ego and let others know he's important. Hopefully when we get home next week we'll be able to start moving things in.