BiggerPockets Founder · HI · Member since 2008 · 16k+ posts · 5k+ votes
Back in March 2013, BiggerPockets and J Scott collaborated to release two books -- The Book on Flipping Houses and The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs (check them out here if you haven't already). As part of the book package, J was planning to do a detailed case study of one of his renovations (even more detailed than he does for most of his projects on his blog). We decided that instead of doing a case study only for those who purchased the books, he'd instead do one publicly here on BiggerPockets.
In this thread, J is going to provide a practically day-by-day diary of his first new construction project, from acquisition through sale -- including pictures, spreadsheets, invoices, bids, etc.
We hope you find this valuable! I know that I'm planning on following it closely so I can pick up a thing or two.
1/5/14 Update: The project is complete . . . read on!
2/19/14 Update: We've taken all the content of this thread and converted it into a free ebook for everyone who may be interested. Get your copy here: Diary of a New Construction Project Ebook
Investor · Sarasota, FL · Member since 2008 · 17k+ posts · 17k+ votes
13y
INTRODUCTION
I'm currently working on my first new construction project in downtown Atlanta (with a partner). While we both have a lot of residential rehab experience under our belts (over 100 projects between us), we have absolutely no new construction experience. The purpose of this thread is to chronicle in as much detail as I can, the process of acquiring an existing house, tearing it down, designing a new house, getting permits, construction of the new residence and finally the staging/listing/sale of the house.
My hope is that this thread will end up being part case study, part diary and (if I don't screw up too badly), part textbook. I plan to provide links to everything that might be useful throughout the process -- pictures, videos, budgets, schedules, plans/drawings, contractor bids, invoices, etc. And if there's anything I don't provide that you want to see, just let me know.
As of this writing, I'm currently about 4 months into this project, but we haven't even started to build yet (you'll see why as we move through the thread). I'm planning to start at the beginning (I've been keeping copious notes), and over the next couple months, I'll try to post updates at least several days per week, and hopefully catch up to real time by the end of the project.
Lastly, I hope this thread will be interactive. There are a lot of BP contributors with new construction experience (Rich Weese, @Karen Margrave, Aaron McGinnis and many others). I hope they'll jump in and provide insight, and I hope others with less experience will ask questions and help us all learn from one another. And again, if there's anything you want me to provide in this thread that I'm not already providing, feel free to ask!
Realtor, General Contractor, and Developer · Redding, CA · Member since 2009 · 7k+ posts · 4k+ votes
13y
J Scott I always tell my husband that I'm amazed at the power we have to control the weather! All we have to do is set up to break ground on construction project and .. RAIN!! I thought for sure in So Cal our power would be challenged, but, nope, it worked here too! Now I see you have been imparted with the ability to control the weather too!
Contractor · Atlanta, GA · Member since 2008 · 978 posts · 985 votes
13y
Originally posted by Karen Margrave:
J Scott I always tell my husband that I'm amazed at the power we have to control the weather! All we have to do is set up to break ground on construction project and .. RAIN!! I thought for sure in So Cal our power would be challenged, but, nope, it worked here too! Now I see you have been imparted with the ability to control the weather too!
Don't forget the ultimate weather-control device... a concrete truck full of fresh, wet concrete. Works better than a rain dance.
Investor · Sarasota, FL · Member since 2008 · 17k+ posts · 17k+ votes
13y
DAY 169: DELAYED AGAIN
This time I can't even blame the government or the weather. My grading guy didn't show up this morning; apparently one of his trucks (with the Bobcat) broke down about an hour from Atlanta the night before and they're still working on getting the equipment repaired and on-site.
Tomorrow is Friday, and he assures us he can get the work done in one full day...so in theory, we start tomorrow and then get to work on the foundation at the beginning of next week.
Investor · Sarasota, FL · Member since 2008 · 17k+ posts · 17k+ votes
13y
Originally posted by Jon Klaus:
I'm curious, how far behind is the diary from real time? And when is your targeted completion date?
Hey Jon,
Project started on January 1 of this year (that was Day 1 of the diary). So, we're only about a week behind real time at this point -- I've been trying to catch up to real time by the time the interesting stuff starts...
We anticipated 8-12 weeks for construction once we broke ground, so we're probably about that far from completion right now (sometime in September).
Investor · Sarasota, FL · Member since 2008 · 17k+ posts · 17k+ votes
13y
DAY 171: BREAKING GROUND (CD0)
First, it appears my calculation of days was off by one, so today is Day 171 (not 170). And today is the day we're breaking ground, so I'm considering this to be "Construction Day 0" of the project (CD0).
Today, we completed the installation of the silt fence (the fence that keeps the dirt from being moved or washed away off the property) and excavation/grading of the site in preparation for the foundation.
Here are a few pictures:
And here is the invoice from the grading company (there will be another $500 worth of work at the end of the project to clean up and grade the back yard:
Today is Friday, so there won't be any work done the next two days. We're expecting to have the foundation footers dug and foundation forms built on Monday, with inspections on Tuesday and pouring of concrete next Wednesday. Then we build the wall forms and pour the walls at the end of next week.
That's assuming the weather and the inspections department don't work against us...
Investor · Sarasota, FL · Member since 2008 · 17k+ posts · 17k+ votes
13y
DAY 174: FOOTER FORMS (CD3)
Construction Day 0 was a Friday, and nobody worked over the weekend, so here we are on Monday (Construction Day 3) and the foundation guys are putting the forms in place for the foundation/footers and digging the footer holes.
This is a one-day task, and they'll call for an inspection of the forms and holes for tomorrow. Once we pass that inspection, we should be good to start pouring concrete for the foundation/footers.
Here are some pictures of the forms going into place:
Investor · Sarasota, FL · Member since 2008 · 17k+ posts · 17k+ votes
13y
DAY 175: POURING FOUNDATION/FOOTERS
We built our foundation forms and dug our footers yesterday, and the foundation guys called in an inspection request before the concrete was poured.
It's been raining since last night, and our project manager is bailing water out of the footer holes while waiting for the inspector. The inspector finally shows up, pulls our plans out of the permit box, looks at them, looks at our project site, and then says, "The plans call for #5 rebar for the concrete, and it appears you have #4 rebar installed. Also, you don't have enough detail on your foundation wall drawings, so I can't let you proceed with wall construction either."
The inspector then fails us, telling us that we'll either have to replace the rebar (several hundred dollars in materials and labor) or get our plans revised (several days/weeks waiting for plan review). And we'll need to get our wall detail revised either way.
My partner calls the foundation guy to see what we should do. The foundation guy asks who the inspector is, and when we tell him, he says he'll call us back in 30 minutes. A little while later, he calls us back and says, "I talked to the inspector and it's taken care of...it will cost an extra $100, but we passed the footer inspection. As for the wall detail, we have a standard cross-section diagram you can use that the city should approve. We can start pouring concrete this afternoon for the foundation/footers, but you'll need to get the plans re-approved with the new wall detail -- just go downtown and they should stamp it right there."
Turns out the $100 was for a third-party engineer to review the rebar change (absolve the inspector of any responsibility should it be an issue in the future). And the foundation guy got us a copy of the wall detail for us to take to the building department to get stamps as part of our drawings.
With inspection passed, we had the concrete truck on-site a couple hours later and was pouring concrete that day. Other than the fact that we were about a half-yard of concrete short, so a couple of the footers and section of foundation didn't get poured. But, that will be done along with the walls.
Real Estate Professional · West Palm Beach, FL · Member since 2012 · 23k+ posts · 13k+ votes
13y
Michael, that's a rotating laser level on the tripod in the Day 174 pic. And you use a receiver on a grade rod to check "level" anywhere within a few hundred foot radius.
By the way J Scott, thanks for doing this. I know it takes a lot of time, and is Very informative and interesting.
Developer · Garland, TX · Member since 2008 · 8k+ posts · 4k+ votes
13y
We now work closely with third party engineers. If they stamp it, the city usually OKs it. We also have them do inspections before the city does their official inspections. We hardly ever fail anymore. Costs a little more, but saves a lot of time and aggregation.
Investor · Sarasota, FL · Member since 2008 · 17k+ posts · 17k+ votes
13y
DAY 176: MORE DELAYS
We headed down to the permit office to get the wall detail drawings approved so we could move forward with building our wall forms and pouring our walls. Unfortunately, it turns out that once you have an reviewer assigned, you need to continue to use that reviewer for all changes/updates. And our reviewer is on vacation this week!
We called our expeditor, and she is trying to work around the absence of our reviewer, but I'm not confident we're going to get this signed off this week. And given the rain we've been having, I'm not sure it would matter anyway.
Best case now is that we get the sign-off next Monday and can make a little progress next week. But next week is 4th of July (on Thursday), so I'm guessing we won't make much progress, even if we do have permit approvals.
Here are the wall detail drawings we're hoping to get approved:
Investor · Sarasota, FL · Member since 2008 · 17k+ posts · 17k+ votes
13y
DAYS 177-180: STILL WAITING
The permit reviewer is on vacation and there's nobody else who can review the wall detail drawings for our permits and allow us to get moving on building our foundation walls.
Not that it really matters -- we've had thunder storms every day for the rest of this week. Due to the reviewer being out and the weather, we've lost Thurday through Sunday of this week.
Hopefully she'll be back in the office on Monday morning, and hopefully the weather will clear up...
Investor · Sarasota, FL · Member since 2008 · 17k+ posts · 17k+ votes
13y
DAYS 181-187: APPROVAL...RAIN, RAIN, RAIN...HOLIDAY
On Monday, the permit reviewer finally returned from vacation and we were down there bright and early with our wall drawings looking for sign off. Surprisingly, there were absolutely no issues. I guess she was embarrassed that she missed it in the first place (and the inspector had to catch the mistake), but within just a couple minutes, we were approved to start the wall forms.
Except that it was raining...all day. And the next day. And the next day. Then it was 4th of July. Not that it mattered, because it was still raining. And raining. And raining.
The entire week was lost to rain. And they're calling for rain through Sunday evening. Hopefully next week will be a little drier and we can get our walls formed and poured.
Rental Property Investor · Milwaukee, WI · Member since 2013 · 6k+ posts · 4k+ votes
13y
Originally posted by J Scott:
Except that it was raining...all day. And the next day. And the next day. Then it was 4th of July. Not that it mattered, because it was still raining. And raining. And raining.
Sounds like you need some sort of "construction dome". :)
Investor · Sarasota, FL · Member since 2008 · 17k+ posts · 17k+ votes
13y
DAY 188: WALL FORMS
It's Monday and the sun has finally come out (though our site is a swamp, as you'll see in the pics below). After losing a complete week and a half to bad weather, we got our wall forms installed today. Only issue is that because we didn't finish pouring two footers when we did the initial concrete pour, we were unable to build the forms for those two concrete piers. The concrete guy suggests that when we do the wall pours, we actually pour the concrete footers first, and by the time the walls are then poured, they can have those two forms in place and those two piers poured as well.
I'm not sure if the inspector will go for it, but we'll give it a try. The other issue is that we finished the walls late at night and the city's computers are down, so we can't call in the inspection for tomorrow. The foundation guy knows the inspector, so he's hoping to make a call tomorrow morning and pull some strings and get the inspector out there...I guess we'll see.
Investor · Sarasota, FL · Member since 2008 · 17k+ posts · 17k+ votes
13y
LESSON: PLUMBING/SEWER CONDUITS
If you see my most recent post above, you'll notice that we're finally jumping into the core of the actual construction. We've done a lot of renovations over the past 5 years (a couple hundred), so I'm pretty comfortable with the basics of construction, but what I'm learning is that there are a lot of intricacies when it comes to new construction. I figure I'll discuss some of those intricacies as they come up.
As we've been working on our foundation, there have been a couple things I've realized/learned:
1. Once the wall forms were up, my partner and I realized that one of the big jobs of a GC/foreman is to ensure that the trades are doing what they're supposed to be doing, and doing it right. Certainly, the city inspectors are checking for the big stuff (hopefully), but there are lots of little items that they certainly don't check for. And we have no idea what all those little items are!
For example, while we were out there, we decided it would probably be smart to verify the foundation is both the correct size and that the foundation is square. We grabbed a long tape measure and measured all four sides of the building -- all were within about 1" of being correct, so we were good there.
In order to verify that the structure was square, we measured corner-to-corner along both long runs. We were pleased that they were exactly equal. So, we were confident that the foundation was properly sized and square.
But, that made us realize that there were probably a dozen other things we should be verifying/checking as we go through the process. Luckily, our project manager has done plenty of new construction, so I'm sure he knows what to look for, but he's on vacation this week, so it's up to us.
It's always scary when you don't know what you don't know...
2. Our foundation guy asked us where we wanted our plumbing and sewer conduits. In other words, the main plumbing line and the sewer line would need to run out of the crawl space to the city hook-ups in the street, and we needed to decide where exactly they'd be coming through the foundation.
Both my partner and I independently decided, "They can run under the footers/walls." We told this to the foundation guy, and he was good with that. But, luckily, before we poured the walls, our plumber happened to stop by while we were there. He opened up the manhole cover for the sewer, measured the depth and realized that the footer for the house was lower than the bottom of the sewer.
Because the sewer waste is carried by gravity ("**** flows downhill" :-), the sewer line coming out of the house needs to be situated above the sewer in the street so it naturally flows from the house to the street. Luckily the plumber realized this, and we were able to let the foundation guy know that the sewer line conduit needed to be embedded in the foundation wall, well above the height of the footer.
Also, the plumber advised that, because we plan to build a front deck that is inaccessible underneath (it's only about a foot off the ground), we should have the water and sewer lines run towards the corner of the house, so it's more easily accessible in the future, should there be an issue.
While neither of these mistakes would have been overly costly, it made us realize that there are a lot of intricacies that are very easily to overlook when you're doing this for the first time.
The foundation guy showed us how to situate the conduits in a way that the concrete guy would know what to do with them when he came to do his job:
Investor · Southeast, MI · Member since 2012 · 2k+ posts · 1k+ votes
13y
What are the tiny forms in the middle? I'm assuming that they are to hold up a steel beam that runs the length of the house. If so, why have concrete hold them up instead of steel poles like in a basement. Wouldn't that be easier/cheaper/better?
Realtor, General Contractor, and Developer · Redding, CA · Member since 2009 · 7k+ posts · 4k+ votes
13y
J Scott Looking good... aside from being able to control the weather, I forgot to mention that without fail, when it's time to get permits or something critical, it's a holiday and the person you need is THE one that is on vacation!!
Those forms look great! How exciting. I love that stage of the job where everything in the neighborhood is about to change, and a new building comes up. Then all the neighbors start stopping by, to find out what's going in, and viola!! A buyer shows up.
Though, I learned something on the last house we did... don't put a price on it until you're close to completion, because the market is moving upward and you may end up with less than you could have. From now on, I'm doing "starting at"