All Forum Posts by: Julie Marquez

@Tim Rostro I could see you liking Skagit County, Washington if you like all the outdoor activities, and some cheaper parts when you go more east where there is also more land

@Corey Wright Small town, old man drafter for $30/hr is how we got that bill for about $750. His son was our general contractor too, so any imperfections were easily understood/figured out. Engineering was $2100 and landscape design (which I never ended up using, I just created my own on BlueBeam) was $500 total. I knew it was cheap, but good to hear from you that we got a deal!

@Nik Moushon Yes, City required 2 covered spaces per side! Totally an extra cost I would have preferred to skip, but oh well.

And yes, after we got it all engineered I figured out the energy credits and could have save so much money if I reduced each side by 60 sq ft! Live and learn. Though they told us that next year the 3.5 is going up to 6.0 energy credits required!

Good luck with your new build - I'd love to hear more details!

@Anthony Ruggieri Thanks! We had to have a certain amount of glazing on the front elevation, so the glass garage doors helped with that calculation - and they look awesome!

@Michael P. It's an odd 9 sided lot, so the north unit get's that back yard, and the south (right) unit gets a sliding door to the south side yard (see picture of the close up of front door and yard to the right). Now each side has separate and private yard spaces

@Ryan Phu Thanks! Or thanks to some of the City design standards we had to incorporate to make it look good on the front elevation

I should probably mention the location. It is located in a "hot" tertiary market of Seattle, about one hour north along the I-5 corridor in Mount Vernon, Skagit County. The subdivision of 31 homes built in 2014 is nestled in an established neighborhood, and this was just one last lot on the street.

@Ryan Hayhurst That's a good question, it was two year ago exactly. I hope it's better now, it seems like a powerful tool and I haven't tried it recently

@Nicholas Lohr Wow, 2 1/2 years is a long project! Did you sell or keep it? It is quite the feeling to be done after such a momentous project! But now you're making me question how many actual hours did we put in to the project. Maybe 1000 total hours between the two of us over two years? I really don't know. And if we hypothetically sold and made $100,000 that comes out to $100/hr, or $50,000 a year salary, and also 100% return on our cash. Anyway, we are keeping and will cash flow about $2000 a month

@Peter Morgan Totally! The rental market in our area is still strong and people are buying and selling and pricing continue to rise