All Forum Posts by: Lynn Currie

@Lon Breitenbach @Keith Bloemendaal 

I'm not doing them, but have a buddy who is. In his experience, there is a fairly small group of folks wiling to pay the extra cost for solar and rain water collection and he'll only do it as a custom project.

He and I talked about doing a small subdivision out it Dripping Springs that had all homes wired and ready for all of the installs  but as of yet, the numbers just don't seem to work to do the installs in a spec environment.

@Kent Verge Here's a view of the gantt chart portion of Smartsheet

I used Merlin many, many, moons ago (yes, I'm a total nerd). I liked it but find that Smartsheet is much simpler for me to use.

@Karen Margrave The 7" looks fantastic!

I installed it in my house and we're in the process of putting everything back together because, you know, if you install new floors, you have to put in new baseboards. And if you install new baseboards with new paint, you have to paint all of the door trim again. And if you re-paint the new baseboards and trim, you have to completely paint all of the walls again. And if you re-paint all of your walls, you MUST get new rugs and re-arrange all of the furniture. And if you're re-arranging all of the furniture, you MUST get new bedside tables and a new desk.

See how this is playing out?

Thanks for the responses @Karen Margrave @Will Barnard @Steve K 

The project is MF-4 zoning, which is multi-family, medium density in Austin. I can go up 60' with a 75:1 FAR. There are other standards for MF-4, but in the case of this lot, the FAR will be the driver of the ultimate project.

With the design that we're contemplating, we aren't required to add an elevator, but we might add them to a couple of the units.

I haven't had the soils report done on this project yet, but don't expect anything out of the ordinary of what we usually deal with in that neighborhood (let's hope I didn't just jinx myself!!).

Thanks again!

@Keith Bloemendaal Great post topic!

I run a paperless office and have whittled everything down to a few basic tools.

Evernote

Evernote is the cornerstone of everything I do. Every piece of paper that comes into my office gets immediately scanned then shredded. I use Hazel on the Mac to OCR, auto-name, and file the the regularly sent stuff (like invoices from vendors, etc). They are named using the main words that I would search for the document by. 

For example, if I have a receipt from the company that supplies my doors, instead of naming it the company name only, I name it, "Company Name Receipt Doors" and it gets filed in a notebook for that particular project. If there is also trim in the order, I name it "Company Name Receipt Doors Trim." This makes finding things super easy with minimal thinking on my part.

I'm also a big fan/believer/user of the Getting Things Done (GTD) system. I have stand alone cabinet setup just for that in Evernote with my to do lists, tags, and locations.

Recently I've been asked by several folks to do a video and screencast of my paperless office system in action, accompanied by some videos showing how to set it up. These are in the works and I'll share on BP Nation once they're done.

Drop Box

If I have docs that need to be regularly edited, they live in Drop Box. There is always a reference to them in an Evernote note though, since that is my main system.

As a side note, I also use Drop Box to back-up my ridiculously large photo archive. I'm moving all of my permanent backups away from random hard-drives, CDs and DVDs and to the cloud.

SmartSheet

All timeline management is done here. It's like Excel on steroids. The reason that I like it is that it's simple. As a nerdy person, I've tried and setup many, many project management systems but discovered that most of them fail because they're too cumbersome to use. Apparently some companies missed the memo that managing a project via software should never be more complex than actually managing the project, itself. I've got a public SmartSheet that I'm using as part of my Video Diary post. You can see it here:

http://publish.smartsheet.com/087c5862de4748299010...

@John Blackman Thanks for the response.

We're not doing a 3rd floor attic exemption, we're going up 4 floors, plus having a rooftop deck.

I've talked to a couple of folks that that say stick, balloon framing is still possible, but we might want to use some concrete piers or steel beams, as well.

Of course we'll bring in the engineer to design the structures, I'm just trying to get a feel for any additional cost that I should account for.

Hello BP Nation!

I do residential development in Austin and all of my projects have had a 32' height limit, meaning that I don't go up more than 2 stories. 

I have a project that I'm picking up that has a different type of zoning, allowing me to go up 60'.

My question, what percentage should I plan to add to my budget to accommodate for any extra structural needs?

@Karen Margrave  @Will Barnard Any thoughts on this?

Thanks!

I use this tub in my higher end builds in the master:
http://www.build.com/kohler-k-1123-soaking-bathtub/s559078

Here's a photo of it installed:

Agreed @Jonna Weber !

I read a book called The Not So Big House about 10ish years ago when I was remodeling my own house and one of the things the author talked about was huge entries and how they make houses feel. Ever since then, I can't look at those entries the same!

I'm guessing that part of that though, is the size of the house. I can't imagine that someone with a 5000+ sq. ft wouldn't want an entry to separate things.

Different strokes.

@Ryan Palakiko I'd start with the city or municipality and make sure that you can build more houses on the property and find out what steps will need to be taken to remedy the non-permitted structures.

Above all, make sure you've done all of your due diligence before closing on this property if that's what you decide to do. The proverbial devil is in the details and missing something can cost you.

The other thing to really weigh is the time and risk. Is it more worth your time to wholesale it and make some quick money, then rinse and repeat (because that's your specialty) or develop? 

Once you know that information, you can decide what makes the most sense for you.

Good luck!