I’m sure there are amateur owner builders out there who have the wherewithal to design and build their own home from start to finish, but those people probably don’t live in Montgomery County, MD, possibly one of the most regulated counties in the country, or so we’ve been told. As an aside, my husband and I being two former Federal regulators, we have a healthy respect for the purpose and value of regulation. Although I’ll discuss permitting more in my next post, I do think it has kept Montgomery County an attractive place to live that is relatively easy to get around – relative of course being the operative word when talking about the Washington, DC metropolitan area.
Thus, with reams of engineering and building code requirements, including wind shear, snow loads, etc., it was never a question that we would go either the kit or the architect route. Mostly, the decision came down to money. Remember, my husband wasn’t initially too keen on rebuild over renovation, but the turning point came when we found this company Shelter-Kit that specializes in kit houses that amateur owner builders can put together themselves with ordinary tools. Being our own general contractor and being able to do a lot of the work ourselves made the whole project seem within reach financially.
I will also confess to being a bit of a control freak, as well as very focused on the functionality of the house. I wanted a comfortable house that had the flexibility to meet our current as well as future needs, but since it was going to be our labor as well as $$ going into the house, I wanted to minimize wasted space, so no long hallways, no matter how architecturally interesting or aesthetically pleasing they could be. I also wanted environmentally sustainable features such as a southern orientation that could maximize passive solar gain in the winter and plenty of roof space for solar panels. I have no doubt that there were architects out there who could support these goals without leaving me feeling frustrated and diminished, but at least within our time frame and budget, I couldn’t find one.
The design process with Shelter-Kit could hardly have been simpler. I emailed our project manager with some hand sketches and we went back and forth until we had a design that my husband and I were happy with. As long as it worked engineering-wise, whatever we wanted was done. You won’t find psychological services listed on their website, but maybe they should because our project manager patiently talked me off the ledge many times during the long permitting process. There have been some minor errors like being sent a set of wrong-sized screws, but these mistakes have been quickly and painlessly rectified. At this point, I really can’t say enough good things about working with Shelter-Kit.
The only potential flaw in this happy picture is my low-grade anxiety that meeting all of our functional requirements won’t add up to a harmonious home. If you watch any home building shows like Grand Designs or Extraordinary Homes (I highly recommend Grand Designs so you can take comfort that you’re not the only insane people out there building their houses with the help of YouTube – in fact, there are people waaay more out there on the edge – the guy who dug a cave out by hand comes to mind), you will learn that architects visualize how houses can best sit in the land, use views for drama and pleasure, and create what I loosely call the “feng shui” or the intangible feeling of comfort from the proportion of architectural features or interior design overlooked by the untrained eye.
I worry that if we’d only added a foot or more to the living area, guests won’t feel so cramped, or the opening over the dining area will feel like an air shaft, or all my grand ideas about the house location and the views won’t turn out the way I thought they would. I worry that these potential deficiencies will gnaw at me, and make me regret the path we took. But then I remember that the size and layout of the living area is based on our current home, and we’ve been happy with it. The opening is as large as we could make it without creating costly engineering fixes, and it has a functional purpose – to allow more light from clerestory windows, use those windows in the summer to create a chimney effect to release hot air, and circulate warm air in the winter to the back rooms. And finally, the house location was driven by many factors, including zoning setbacks, septic field requirements, and our personal desire to optimize the site’s solar window as best as we could calculate it. There are many great views, and they will be best enjoyed by going outside, which is why we bought the property in the first place. If the “feng shui” of room proportions is off, I will just have to be resourceful, and use lighting, furniture placement, or other interior design techniques that I can research and play around with to improve it. My sister, who has an artist’s eye, will help me.
The problem with these house building shows is that they create an illusion that every point in a house should bring perfect joy, and they tend to gloss over the realties of the tradeoffs that need to made. Building a house is a process that runs the gamut from bruising discoveries to fist-pumping triumphs. Who doesn’t imagine themselves at the end of it sitting in a light-filled kitchen sipping their favorite beverage, protected from the stresses and uncertainties of life by the sturdy walls they’ve built? House kit or architect, there is no right answer. Consider everything: your finances, your priorities, psychological factors, and when the future comes, remember that you made the best choice you could with the information and the options you had.