Quote:
Originally Posted by barrelhorses
I'm thinking about a 3 or 4 bed/2 bath ranch, full basement, oversized 2 car garage. I would probably go with brick exterior.
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For my 2,600 sq foot ranch on a slab with a 3-car attached garage, 12 years ago the brick facade siding cost around $10,000 more than painted masonite lap siding would have cost. That sounds like a lot, but it was less than $4 per sq ft, so I think it will be a good investment when my kids sell the house after they throw dirt in my face.
Basements are cheap square footage, but they are not free. A "full" basement under a 2,000 sq ft ranch will cost a bunch of thousand dollars more than a slab or partial basement. Consider doing what one of my previous houses had: A partial basement. Basement under the main part of the house, but not under any wings. So if you have an "L" or "T" shaped ranch-style design, putting a slab under part of the house could save you a bunch of thousands of dollars. And you'll still have as big a basement as most two-story houses would have.
Design can play a big part on cost per sq ft. In my case, I went with max sq ft and minimum expensive frills - other than the brick siding. I have 100 percent ceramic floor tile, but my 2,600 sq ft of floor tile was the least-expensive available at around $1 per sq ft. So I don't have any cathedral ceilings. All cabinets are the put-it-together-yourself cabinets from Home Depot or Lowes, but with real oak doors. Bathroom countertops are all laminate, i.e., Formica. Kitchen countertops are the same ceramic tile as on the floor. All windows are the normal dual-pane stuff you can buy at Lowes for less than $100 each. Faucets in the bathroom and kitchen and laundry room and sink in the garage are the plain Delta brand for less than $100 each for the lavatory faucets and less than $200 each for the sink faucets. Interior doors are the cheapest they had. Exterior doors are plain steel doors with half dual-pane glass. All plumbing fixtures are ordinary - nothing fancy other than a Jacussi-style bathtub in the guest bathroom, and a urinal and bidet and seperate shower stall in the master suite. All built-in shelving in boolcases and closets are 3/4" painted particle board instead of the more expensive real wood.
I did all the work myself except concrete slab, septic tank, HVAC, and bricks, plus a few days for a carpenter crew to stand up the walls and install the roof trusses. I designed the engineered roof trusses, but had them built by a pro truss company. It took me about 18 months of 7 days a week doing nothing but building a house and going to the stores 25 miles away to buy more materiels and supplies. If you're not retired, you probably don't have that option to have that much fun for 18 months.
I already had the 9-acre lot, and the other materials and minimal labor and pros I hired cost me a total of about $45 per sq ft in 1995/6. Today my insurance company insists that it would cost over $120 per sq ft to replace it.
But go with more expensive floor tile or carpet, cathedral ceilings, better windows and doors and plumbing fixtures and faucets and light fixtures and countertops and such, and the bid jumps up in a hurry. Add all that stuff plus a full basement and mine would probably cost you over $200 per sq ft today.
So as roofeditor indicated, count on a minimum of $100 per sq ft if you have absolutely no frills and no basement. About $150 per sq ft with normal upgrades to make it a medium-priced house in a normal neighborhood of 2,000-sq-ft homes. But count on $200 per sq ft if your wife insists on all the frills.
One thing I learned with my design. I built more walk-in master closet that I thought anyone could ever need for a couple of old folks = 76 sq ft. But it's not nearly big enough. Next time I'd make it a minimum of 100 sq ft so Darling Wife will have room for all her stuff.
Also, remember that a ranch-style house costs more per sq ft than a two-story. You can add an elevator to a two-story design and still get by with less cost per sq ft than a ranch-style that doesn't have any stairs (except basement stairs if you have a basement). Plus, an elevator can serve the basement as well as the upstairs bedrooms, so you can design the laundry room into the basement instead of your wife requiring precious sq ft for a laundry room on the bedroom floor.
I love my big ranch-style house on a slab, but I could live with a design that had a basement downstairs and the extra bedrooms upstairs - as long as the master suite was on the ground floor and there was an elevator to get old folks up and down without having to climb stairs. I had one similar to that once upon a time. 2,400 sq ft 4-bedroom two-story, with the master suite on the ground floor. But it was in San Antonio back around 1980, with no basement and no elevator. The kids were big enough to maintain their own rooms and their bathroom up stairs, so Darling Wife never had to climb those stairs.
