When the daughter of an old client of ours decided she was ready for her 1st homedad said give Craftsman Construction a call. We love this kind of customer loyalty. Dad is a retired architect, so he drew up the plans for his daughter’s new house. Since she had modest needs, we wanted a small compact house that still had a lot of character. Our new client is an artist and the house had to accommodate her needs in this regard as well. Craftsman Construction was brought in early in the design process to help consult and to value engineer the project. After the final design was set and drawn up by our client’s dad, wetook his drawings and converted them to CAD Format so as to more easily modify and distribute the drawings amongst the various trades. Dad was old school and never learned to draw in CAD.
Once the permits were in place, we broke ground. The lot was heavily wooded, and we ended up taking down quite a few trees to make room for the house. As we proceeded,we ran into a lot of rock trying to dig the foundation and had to give up on getting the house any lower down on the property. We formed up the foundation using Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF for short). These forms look a lot like giant Lego blocks, but they are made of Styrofoam. After assembling them they are filled with concrete. The advantage here is that you get a very high R Value foundation wall keeping the cold outside.
This house had a poured concrete 1st floor. The client left the floor as is with just a high gloss sealer applied (lots of money saved on finished flooring). All the exterior walls were framed with 2x6 lumber, this gives you greater strength as well as more room for insulation. The floor joist where Engineered I joist (very strong and Green for the environment). The entire exterior of the house was sheathed with Zip Board. This is a high-grade sheathing material that has a 35-year rot warranty and does not require the installation of house wrap. We used JELD-WEN Windows and doors and PVC trim for all the exterior trim. PVC trim will never rot, is insect proof and can be left unpainted if you like white trim. All the siding was by Hardi Siding (this is a fiber cement product). Hardi siding is fire proof, rot proof and pretty much impervious to anything. The whole house was sprayed foamed with 2lb. foam.
This is one very tight house. We custom built the staircase to the client’s specs. All the kitchen cabinets were made by a local cabinetmaker. On the 2nd and 3rd floors (yes, I said 3rd floor) we installed pine T&G flooring then hand sanded everything and applied 3 coats of hand rubbed oil finish. All the interior trim details where designed and installed by us. We used solid core doors throughout the house (I have a real pet peeve about hollow core doors). We installed all the tile work in the 2 bathrooms.
Finally, the entire interior was sprayed with 2 coats of primer. The client wanted to do all the interior painting (remember she's an artist). The house came out great and the client couldn't be happier. Note, a year after we built this house, I called the client to make sure all was well and did anything need repair. She said that she was having some issue with the lock on the front door. We came over and 2 little puffs of powdered graphite in the lock and all was well. Now that's what I call a short repair list, must have had something to do with workmanship!!! A year later and that's all she could find wrong with the house, WOW.
