Our future home...we don't need or want it to be too big.  2000 - 2700 square feet should be big enough for 4 people, our offices and a guest suite.  We really don't need a formal dining room or living room, just what we'll use.  I picked up this book "Creating the Not-So-Big-House" by Sarah Susanka.  It's a great book full of wonderful ideas.

I had considered a modular home before (back in 2001), but looking at the floor plans and houses it just wasn't appealing.  A few weeks ago, I spoke with Lauren at BuildMax.  She was very helpful and mentioned modular homes as an option, so I decided to give it another try.  About 3 days later, we went to a birthday party and I met a guy there who also wants to build his own home.  We talked about modular houses and he mentioned Dwell Magazine's Home Design Invitational and the winning house created by Resolution4Architecture.  It's absolutely breathtaking and perfect for an upsloped lot.  I sent an email to them about cost, but haven't heard back yet.

In visiting fabprefab.com, I stumbled across the Glidehouse which debuted at Sunset Magazines Celebration Weekend this past May.  The house is gorgeous and had the exterior we're going for.  Unfortunately, it's cost about $120 - 180/sf to make AND shipping to LA is about $10K per truck.  At that rate, the house will be a little over $325K, not including pool, garage, landscaping and appliances.  In otro palabras...over our budget. 

Tooling around fabpreb's website, I also found the weeHouse.  Wow!  Simplistic in every way, the modules work to give you all the room you need without wasting space.   With just 4 modules as the home, it comes out 1904sf at $237K.  Sure, that's a little over $124/sf, BUT their shipping to LA is only $3500 per truck. 

Last week, the Los Angeles Times had a story on modular homes and mentioned Rocio Romero's LV House.  I had completely forgotten, but I had read an article on her house a few months ago.   These are pretty basic, but they don't come already made.  The pieces are just shipped to you.  Granted, that means that even me and Adrian can put them together, but how is that different from me just ordering everything from STOCK Lumber cut to size?  Anyway, we're thinking that the Fish Camp will be a perfect pool cabana/outside entertainment area.  It runs about $10K, so we'll see.  Otherwise, we'll just use the weeHouse module instead. 

The best thing about the modular houses are that most of them come with the interior and exterior finishes, flooring and ceilings and walls.  The Glidehouse comes with bamboo flooring, slate floors and countertops in the bathroom and kitchens (which is cool if you're impressed by slate...we aren't), all interior/exterior finishes, your choice of paint color and they'll work with your landscaper with site design.   The weeHouse modules has Andersen doors and windows (yawn...we prefer Dynamic's doors and windows), Ikea frameless birch cabinetry, and a Kohler one-piece toilet (hopefully low-flush).  The LV House, is just a kit.  It's up to you and your contractor to place interior walls, finish the flooring and doing all the finishes inside.  Also, no insulation and guarantee is offered.  It's $31K, so you obviously get what you pay for.  According to the site:  The total cost of ownership, depending on regional labor cost and your own finish preferences to run $75,000- $113,000 or more. Depending on the fees paid to a general contractor this could increase by 10% to 20%.

We'll be working through this, but the weeHouse modules are in the lead as far as a modular home is concerned.  I'll get my working changes up soon.

Anika

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