THE LONG MARCH HOME - Part I

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So here I am finally starting my Blog on Live Modern. I have been reading Live Modern for over a year and have thought many times that I should start a Blog but something kept me from it.

A little history on my house project. We started looking for property about a year and a half ago and soon found an appropriate tear down on a very nice quite street very close to the village of Sag Harbor, NY. For those of you who don’t know Sag Harbor let me tell you a little about it. It is a 300 + year old whaling village on the north shore of the south fork of Long Island, about a 100 miles from New York City Here is a link to info all about Sag Harbor

The land we found is a small flat property (the property is just off the middle left side of the map on the link above), 100 feet wide and 200 feet deep and about 17 feet above sea level. I know what you all are thinking, he’ll be under water sooner then he thinks. The street dead ends on the water, Sag harbor Cove, where you can have a kayak or a sunfish to use when you want to. You can bike to the village in no time or as we will be doing using our scooters (not our Prius) you can do it in 5 minutes.

This was the easy part and in this part of the country that is the understatement of this short century. The hard part has been to design and then be able to build a house that has four bedrooms, two or three bathrooms, living room, dinning and kitchen. To make the house as energy efficient as possible we needed to keep it under 3,000 sqft and preferably under 2,500 sqft. And above it all to build it for $450,000 total in a region where the bottom construction budgets start at $300/sqft. Any one of these would be a feat in its self but to do all three has been daunting. But this is what I do for a living I am an architect in New York City so it should be a piece of cake, right? Let me tell you that doing my own house is one of the hardest things I have done. There is always an other better idea that you need to look at and if that is not a distraction then you always have the opinion of your wife to contend with.

I started designing over a year ago and have done more then twenty houses of which I have developed seven in great detail and have priced four of them. The early houses were on the larger side, around 3,000 + sqft and therefore we chose to move on to smaller designs. House 8 was a one story rach that incorporated all of wants and needs. It had a large Entry Gallery where my wife, a rather good artist , and I could exhibit our art work. The Living room was treated as an outside space (conceptually of-course) with the study, dinning room and kitchen all surrounding it.

House 8 - Plan Front Elev Perspectives 1 Perspectives 2 Perspectives 3

The next house to get serious consideration was conceived as a factory built site assembled type of about 2,600 sqft.

House 14 - Plan East & West Elev North & South Elev Perspectives 1 Perspectives 2

We like this house and it met most of our requirements. It was efficient and took good advantage of solar south and could easily accommodate a PV array. But we had no luck what so ever on finding a factory willing to build it at a reasonable cost (unless you call close to $300/sqft reasonable).

On to House 17, an efficient one story site built idea of 2,600 sqft with a central living space as the organizer.

House 17 - Plan Front Elev Perspectives 1

We met a developer/builder who is the father of one of our daughters classmates and he seemed to think that he could build it for around $500,000 but that did not include any landscaping or provisions for Solar pool heating or PV panels. So back to the drawing board again to see if there was a way to leverage the factory prefabrication to build an affordable house.

Houses 18a - Plan North & South Elev

Houses 18b - Plan East & West Elev North & South Elev Perspectives 1 Perspectives 2 Perspectives 3

House 18a utilized the EccoSteel system while House 18b used a panelized system from Fabrik-International out of Canada. While both of these ideas were great and the price seemed to be in reach they did leave many unknowns about the extreme cost of local labor that need to be utilized to finish them on site.

It this point, one year later and with not much other then loads of drawings to show for my wife was so exasperated that she was ready to sell the property and move into any old house. I remembered seeing the WeeHouse on the Live Modern site and thought that I could Hot Rod it to suit our needs. I called them and had a nice discussion with Josh Capistrant who was very interested in working with us. During the following week I whipped out three designs that worked with there modules and sent him one of them.

House 20 Plan East Elevation South Elevation Perspectives 1 Perspectives 2

House 21 Plan East & West Elev Perspectives 1 Perspectives 2

House 22 Plan West Elev East Elev Perspectives 1

The final version that we are building is House 20. It is a rather efficient layout with most of the rooms on the ground floor. With the Master Suite on the second floor and lots of storage and a Play/Family Room in the basement it should work quite well for our family of four. I am now forbidden by my wife to ever design an other house until we are finished with this one.

We have signed a contract with WeeHouses and are proceeding with the development of House 20 and hopping if all goes well to have the factory start by August of this year.

More Info as I have time to write and as there are developments on the project.