Moving Right Along...

It seems Jeff and Kate are doing much better at documenting this process than I am, so please look at their blog [http://www.squarerootarch.com/blog/] which has videos and describes in more detail the processes that are happening.

In our world, we were told that we were responsible for buying 38 of the 50 light fixtures in the house. We were a little surprised by this thinking that IBS would be providing more of the fixtures than they are, but at least we have the ability to pick out things we like. We met with Kara Manning at Lightology who was incredibly helpful in helping us pick out reasonably priced attractive fixtures that are also energy efficient. For our LEED Platinum certification we need to have at least 28 of the 38 fixtures be energy efficient (LED or flourescent) which is not that easy to find. Fortunately Lightology had a lot of solutions. We are saving our "non-ultra-energy efficient" selections to some of the more fun lighting options, such as the pendant light over the dining room table where we don't want to skimp on style or ambiant lighting. A question did come up for lighting options that can be "retrofit" with energy efficient options and whether that would meet the LEED rating since a future owner could go ahead and put regular old incandescent bulbs in without recourse. We are still following up this and will keep you posted.

In the meantime, we've been struggling to get Peoples Energy to come out to the site to set up gas service. They've been a little difficult and slow to respond. Thank goodness for our superintendent Tom Cichy who seems to have the patience of a saint. We called ComEd, and they seem to be a little more on top of things, but service needs to be installed after the modules are already on the site.

We are still assuming that the modules will be set the first week of November (or maybe slightly later). Will definitely post pictures of the setting, but more important hope to get pictures of construction in the factory to show you.

Day 10

Michael took this picture on the way home from work. Major progress! We are meeting with Helios and Jeff tomorrow so will definitely get status report and more pix.

Reality Check

So there's a couple of things we've encountered which we weren't expecting. First, there's an education problem. Since prefab hasn't been done in Chicago to any great extent, most general contractors are not going to be able to bid on a prefab project in a precise manner. For example, a portion of the electrical work will be completed in the factory, and then a portion of the electrical work is required to be completed on site. Unfortunately, it is unclear to the general contractor what portion of that work he is responsible for until, of course, he is educated on the specifics of what the factory is doing. To get that general contractor to understand the process, he or she has to be selected by the developer (us) so that they will invest the time and money to learn about process. This becomes a "chicken and egg" problem, and that we cannot really know if a particular GC's bid is more competitive until we hire him/her. Now when I say "us" of course I really mean Jeff because him and Kate have been combing through the bids of four general contractors that they solicited the project to to try and determine which is the best fit. There definitely are a couple that are in the lead, so they say, that have shown flexibility and innovation in how they intend to structure the project. All in all, we have remained positive, but this was not something we thought of initially.

Second, and you are probably not surprised by this, things are more expensive than we originally thought. We were happy to float along thinking we could afford things like floating staircases and FireOrbs, but in reality, this is not necessarily the case. At a minimum, we are going to have to make some changes, and some hurt more than others.

One change that should be a substantial savings is to eliminate the full basement and replace, instead, with a crawl space. In theory, I like this idea. Generally, when you have a giant place to store things, you end up filling it up with crap that you don't need. I'm reading about living a simpler and more meaningful life (The New Frugality by Chris Farrell) and like the idea of deciding what is or isn't important. On the other hand, I was thrilled to think we could put the cats' litter box downstairs and avoid the discomfort of having it on display when guests come over. Supposedly we can save between $50-$65k by eliminating the basement --- no litter box embarrassment is worth that.

Another change we are making is forgoing the floating staircase. Jeff assures us that we can still have a modern staircase with bamboo treads and steel handrails, but the floating quality is going to have to go (apparently this type of staircase alone could cost in the area of $30,000).

As it stands, we are still going to have to "value engineer" this project at all ends. We have been faced with tough decisions, such as, how important is a garage (important), how important is hardwood floors on the second floor (not that important). Can we save money by contracting out certain line items ourselves, rather than have the GC do them --- interior painting is a good example of this. Can we postpone some of the improvements at a time when we have additional funding. As it stands, it looks like the solar and PV panels may need to be but on hold.

I hope I'm not sounding disappointed with the project, because I'm not. It's become a challenge, now, to bring in the best possible project for the least possible costs, without sacrificing the things that are most important to us. Yes, it looks as though the price point is going to go up to, say, $175-$200 a square foot. I know this is not affordable to everybody.

One area that we probably could save money, but are sticking to our guns, is the high-end appliances and cabinetry from EcoUrban. In the big scheme of things, the EcoUrban cabinetry is not going to cost an outrageous amount of money, especially compared to some of their European competitors, but, yes, the Miele refrigerator is expensive. What can I say? We're suckers for integrated appliances, and don't want to compromise on these items. We are willing to pay a premium for them. Can we compromise on other things? Yes, indeed we can.

What I will leave you with is a positive thought --- one of the bidding GCs told Jeff that if the project we are building would be built on site, it would cost thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars more to build, and certainly would be assessed that way in the market. So essentially, even though we are spending more than we thought, it will be worth more than we paid the minute we move into it. That certainly helps.

Construction Loans

So, we've been rolling merrily along, firming up pricing, in order to finally apply for a construction loan. What I've found is that there are very few banks in which will provide new construction loans for single-family homes. This isn't very surprising, but it is a concern nonetheless. What is surprising is that Abraham had found a lender that specializes in financing the construction of modular homes. This company, based out of Minnesota, is called Land Home Financial Services Inc. (http://www.land-home.net/modular_program_details.html). They offer a "One-Time Close" which modifies the construction loan into a permanent mortgage at completion. While this sounds perfect, it doesn't look like we will have a lot of opportunity to shop around for rates, so we are hoping that Land Home is competitive.

I did call Land Home and spoke to Jason Pachl who handles the territory that includes Illinois. He was very helpful. He said that the average time it takes to get approved for a loan is 30 to 45 days, so if we want to really start this project in March, we will hopefully get our final pricing in soon so we can apply with full knowledge of what the loan amount will be.

In other news, Jeff has bid our project out to several general contractors who he feels will be on board with what we are trying to achieve. We should get bids back in the next couple of weeks, so then I can announce with better certainty what the pricing will be. So far we are estimating that the complete home, including our fancy tastes (i.e. floating staircase, PV panels, high-end appliances, etc.) will estimate at $175/sf. Jeff still believes that the home could cost $125/sf if completed at the factory with their specifications and selections, so this can still be a model for affordable housing in the city. The nice thing is that it can be modified to the owners specifications if they (we) are willing to foot the bill. I still think $175/sf, if that's a solid number, is pretty amazing for all that we are going to get!

By the way, we were interviewed by reporter Lisa Skolnik for a piece in the AIA's monthly trade magazine's March issue. Once it comes out, I will certainly post here. Very exciting!!

Is Prefab in Chicago Impossible?

Well, that's what I have been told by developers. My husband and I have been in love with modern prefab designs for years, but did not think it could ever be done in Chicago. We were actually thinking of relocating to Seattle --- well, for other reasons, really, but partially because they are sweet on prefab in Seattle. Not only do we love the modern design, but the sustainability features and cost are attractive as well.



Michael and I like clean lines and modern spaces. We had looked for homes that were "modern," but in our price range we could only find condos, and we really want a single-family home. There are many beautiful modern single-family homes, but they didn't fit our needs for several reasons: 1) they were over a million dollars, 2) they would have over 4,000 square feet of space, which is completely inefficient for two people who do not expect to have children, 3) they would often be attractive, but not necessarily energy efficient, and 4) did I mention that they are over a million dollars?



We toyed with the idea of buying an older home or two-flat and rehabbing it, but the expense and the inconvenience of living through it seemed overwhelming to us.


Well, lo and behold, I was able to find, through the help of some colleagues, an architecture firm in Chicago that has the same philosophy that we do. Square Root Architecture + Design http://www.squarerootarch.com/ is a local Chicago architecture and design firm headed by Jeff Sommers. Apparently he has this same prefab dream, and also is sustainability conscious, and has been working on a design for a prefab model for a while now. He and his staff have designed what they are calling the Urban C3 or U-C3 http://c3prefab.squarerootarch.com/. Take a look at the website and see what they're all about. We fell in love with it right away.

Square Root is ideally trying to design a model that not only is incredibly energy efficient, but also affordable. They are currently modifying the design to make the model as cost efficient as possible --- ideally the U-C3 baseline model will cost approximately $125 per square foot. Also, Square Root has designed the building to meet all the zoning and building codes in Chicago - no small task. I will continue to discuss this model in future posts.

So, long story short, Michael and I are signing on --- we want to build the first U-C3 in Chicago, and, as far as we know, the first prefab in Chicago. Our goal is to have this home built before the end of 2009! My hope for this blog is to highlight the process for anyone else who is interested in this type of architecture, so that they may learn from our successes and mistakes. More to come!