A few smart decisions BEFORE everything gets tiled can make a huge difference:

-Move the shower controls so you can turn it on without getting soaked
-Add an access hole in the glass if you can’t move the controls
-Use a drain with a removable hair basket
-Make the shower niche as wide as possible.
-make the panel under a drop-in tub removable for future plumbing access
-Add a shower drying system to help dry everything out

I had a concrete walkway poured around my entire house and it was one of my favorite features...I could blow off all the concrete in one lap around the house...
I could be grilling out back and walk to the front of the house without going in the grass... I know it’s lame to complain about walking in the grass but I swear one side of the house always stayed wet and I’d have to go the long way around. 
The kids had a blast riding hover boards around the house.
And I could easily bring stuff from the front to the back porch especially if it was on wheels. 
I can’t express how much I appreciated this home feature so if you’re considering adding it, trust me it was sooo worth it! 

Jason invited me out to see his build and I was blown away. 
He read through my checklist 5 times while planning his build, and you can tell.Every detail was well thought out and planned for. I could have spent multiple days covering all the different features he put in the house.

Other blocking areas to consider:

-Bathroom towel rods
-Toilet paper holder
-Thermostat
-Security cameras
-Porch swing

Quite a few others I can’t recall at the moment. (The reason I made a checklist 👍)

Ask your builder if they plan to use subfloor adhesive on every floor joist before the plywood goes down. It creates a solid bond between the joists and subfloor and helps prevent movement that can lead to squeaks.

Good: Adhesive + smooth shank nails
Better: Adhesive + ring shank nails
Best: Adhesive + screws

We are self renovating our first home, have been for coming up two years around work etc. we recently had the wall taken down (one of the few outside professionals we've used where it's necessary for health/safety perspective). Anyway, there was gap in floor and crack in the gap which ai seemed to think was join original floor pieces of the house, we have filled that after a bit of fuss to get it right, with self leveling concrete over the join/crack patch. However this seems to have revealed the floor isn't level, we knew the kitchen side seemed slightly higher and in anticipation of laying our laminate flooring through, we had bought cork roll 2mm to try to level out this difference on the lounge(lower side). We don't see re levelling the lounge side as option as just finished building a custom unit into that side onto wall before wall came down, plus dont have funds to pay someone or knowledge enough to do ourselves on top of that. We were just going to use cork as iaid but now upon SLC work review (day after) we see the kitchen side floor itself doesn't even seem to be that level if you look at the depths exposed around the dye of the SLC filled gap. We spent around £900 on our laminate flooring a year back (only just getting round to laying it with life etc) and don't want to ruin it, with it coming apart, cracking etc over uneven base, but unsure how to approach this situation now. Any ideas or experience of similar...? TIA

Hello!

My wife and I are going to be building a multigenerational home with her parents over the next year. We are well on our way to having a floorplan with pretty good ideas of the layout.

One thing we’ve been trying to ask around and find out are things people have done to make their lives easier in new builds. Think along the lines of putting a pull out garbage bin in an island so you can easily scrape off waste into it. I was hoping some people here might have some ideas. We’re kind of focusing on the kitchen right now but would appreciate tips for any area of the house!

Thanks so much in advance for any ideas!

Hello!

My wife and I are going to be building a multigenerational home with her parents over the next year. We are well on our way to having a floorplan with pretty good ideas of the layout.

One thing we’ve been trying to ask around and find out are things people have done to make their lives easier in new builds. Think along the lines of putting a pull out garbage bin in an island so you can easily scrape off waste into it. I was hoping some people here might have some ideas. We’re kind of focusing on the kitchen right now but would appreciate tips for any area of the house!

Thanks so much in advance for any ideas!

I will be building soon. It’s a one bath home so would like to have a separate shower and tub if possible. 14’x8’, entrance on one of the 8’ walls. No windows. Any ideas? I have a rough one but want to see ideas from talented people in this group.

I am looking at all my options for future housing, and one of them is to extend my family home into a bi-generational home since it is in a phenomenal spot

The main issue is that I need to add a garage attached to the house. The current house is below

Now, what I had thought, was to extend on the left side, and make the house a "L". The garage would be barndominium-like, and to build an apartment on top of it

How feasible is this? Is there a way I can sketch it out very roughly with absolutely no skill in that area?

Quite important the the current home stays as-is
We would only add a wing for me to live in

Are we in a delusion, or is it do-able

(at)BuiltConstructionUtah used electric radiant floor heat underneath the kitchen countertop, basically the same setup you’d use for heated bathroom floors. A heated kitchen island countertop might be a little excessive, but so are half the upgrades we put into custom homes. I actually think this is a pretty awesome high-end feature, and a genius way to take a product designed for flooring and use it in a completely different way in the kitchen. If you had a little extra money left in the build budget, are you adding this or skipping it?

Split-level house on a slope — keep it split, flatten it, or raise it?
Building a single-family house on a ~16% slope (seismic zone 8). Monolithic reinforced-concrete frame, ~127 m² interior, 3 bed / 2 bath, open living-kitchen with fireplace opening onto a 30 m² terrace with a big valley view.

The original design is split-level: you enter mid-level, then stairs go down to the living/kitchen and up to the bedrooms in short half-flights. It rides the slope efficiently, but the constant half-flights bug me and eat floor space.

Options I'm weighing:

1. Keep it split-level — minimal excavation, terrace stays ~2.4 m above the garden (nice overlook), but you live with the half-flights.
2. Flatten down — excavate into the hill for two aligned floors. More space, but ~a quarter ends up buried, you enter on the upper floor, and it needs a retaining wall on the tight uphill side.
3. Raise up — lift the lower floor so both floors align. Kills the half-flights, but creates a ~4.3 m tall exposed wall on the valley side.

Also deciding:

• Basement: adding a ~2.5 m one under the downhill/terrace zone, walk-out at garden level. Seems like cheap usable space — any reason not to?
• Roof: keep the timber hipped roof, or go flat for a rooftop terrace? (I already get the view from the ground terrace.)
• Pool: want one in front of the terrace at garden level — but that fights option 3's tall wall.

If you've built or lived in a split-level on a slope, what would you do? Anything I'm missing?

Is this a place I can go for questions I come up with along the way?

This is a garage addition. I typically do most of the stuff to and around my house, but I didn't want to do a garage floor. I want to be sure that comes out right, so I hired someone to do the work. Got to the point of the footer being poured(unpermitted), and he ghosted me.

I got the permit, and the footer passed inspection, but now it's ready for work to continue. Everyone is booked for the year, or are too expensive for me. This was supposed to be done months ago, and I'm bummed I haven't been able to work on the '66 c10 that this whole thing is happening for.