July 30, 2008 AsktheBuilder News
What's in This Issue
FEEDBACK ABOUT JOYCE
PRICING A NEW HOME
CONTEST
TOOLS FOR WOMEN
PAINTING FIBER CEMENT
I NEED YOUR HELP NOW
LATEST COLUMNS AND VIDEOS
Feedback About Joyce
Last week as I was in my room at Fred and Sandi's Bed and Breakfast in New Hampshire, you brought tears to my eyes. The situation was unique indeed as I was thoroughly beat up from two solid days of driving a 35-foot-long truck with a 26-foot-long auto-transport trailer attached to it from Cincinnati, Ohio to Meredith, New Hampshire. Wow, do I have renewed respect for over-the-road truck drivers who do so much to bring us what we all need. My rental truck and trailer was almost as long as a big rig.
Add to that the emotion of arriving in New Hampshire to begin my relocation process, the closing on the house, the emails you sent to me, and you have the recipe for emotion to boil to the surface with the slightest amount of effort.
Guess how many emails I received about Joyce who complained my newsletters were too off topic? If you said over 200, you were close. The vast majority of the emails said that you love the style of this newsletter and appreciate me sharing what is going on in my life. Four people were in the Joyce camp and thought that I was full of myself and some other adjectives I prefer not to publish here. So you know, I never had any intention of changing the newsletter style, I was just explaining that the last newsletter had an element of risk in it.
Because of all I had to do last week with closing on the house and moving in, it was impossible for me to send you an individual email to thank you from the bottom of my heart. You have no idea how moving your email to me was. I never realized I had so many friends out there. Thanks so very much for taking the time out of your busy life to write.
And have no fear, not only am I sharing the events in and around my life, you are going to get all sorts of new stories about my new adventure and friends in New Hampshire. As for building tips, I will be setting up a journal to give you the play by play about building my own home.
Pricing a New Home
Tonita, a subscriber to this newsletter, emailed me asking me about pricing a new home that is being contemplated by her mother. She wanted to know if there is a way to reverse engineer or check to see if a bid price given by a builder is fair. The prices they are getting seem very high she told me. The answer is *maybe*. There are many factors involved.
If the house you are preparing to build is fairly common, with a minimum of custom features, you should be able to get close to the retail price per square foot. The challenge is to find other model homes in the same neighborhood that are nearly identical to what you plan to build.
The next step is to back out the price of the lot in these finished new homes that are for sale. While not easy, an experienced Realtor who deals in the new-construction market may know what the lot value is for a new home that is on the market.
Once you have all of this information, you just need to do a little math. You take the asking price of the new home and subtract five percent. This backs out any commission the owner of the house may have added to cover a real-estate sales commission. Then you back out the cost of the lot. The resulting figure is roughly the retail cost to build the home. All you have to do now is get a fairly precise calculation of the square footage of finished space in that home. You divide the resulting retail cost of the home by the square footage to get to a dollar figure per square foot for construction costs for that type of house.
You have to be really careful doing this as all sorts of things can come into play. The house you use as your pricing model must be as close as possible in quality, fixtures, size, location, style, etc. as the one you intend to build. The more you deviate from these things the less accurate your price will be.
Contest!
How would you like to win a custom motorcycle? If you have the best story about different and unique ways you have used a Vise-Grip locking pliers, then you may be the lucky person! Go here for all of the details. (Contest has ended.)
Tools for Women
Over the years, I have been fortunate to witness the birth and growth of a market segment in tools. I am talking about hand and power tools made specifically for women. I can distinctly remember seeing some of the first ones years ago at the National Hardware Show. Not too long after that, these tools were visible at the annual Builders Show. If you are a woman and have an interest in tools, then you probably know there are quite a few manufacturers that are targeting you.
Cindi is a subscriber to this newsletter, and she has contacted me numerous times about items in my newsletter. About a month ago, she sent me some samples of women's tools to get my opinion. It was a little hard for me to do since I am not a woman! But all in all, I was impressed with the quality of what I was sent.
If you would like to discover more about tools for women and how to sell some as a cottage business, talk with Cindi. She seems to know all about this. (Her site is no longer in service.)
Painting Fiber Cement
SuAnn emailed me about a new home she bought that has painted fiber-cement siding. What a coincidence! The house I closed on in New Hampshire last week has the same thing.
SuAnn wanted to know if the paint can really last ten years, and what needs to be done to repaint it. The lifespan of the paint is a function of the quality of the paint and how well it was applied. It reality, a great paint can last at least ten years and quite possibly 15 years. Paint has an easier time sticking to fiber cement than it does wood.
If the paint is not peeling at the time you wish to repaint, all you have to do is clean it well with soap and water. I prefer to use the brushes that people use to wash RVs. I have one, and it does a splendid job of getting siding clean.
Here is a tip that may extend your paint job. Houses get dirty just standing there. If you regularly wash your house say every three years, it will often look as if it was just painted. I last painted my house with a urethane paint that had a slight sheen or gloss. When it is dirty, it looks pretty bad. But I have washed it twice in seven years and after the rinse water dries, the paint looks like I put it on last week. So maybe you don't need a paint job, just a great cleaning. Go wash a small spot on the side or back of your house to see what a difference it makes. If you are just removing dirt, liquid dish soap is a great cleaner.
I Need Your Help NOW - Today and Tomorrow
You may be a new subscriber or you may be one of my friends that goes way back. If you are a newsletter veteran, then you have heard me talk about my Stain Solver oxygen bleach.
It is an amazing cleaning powder. In fact, just an hour ago, I got this customer review from Sue Darte who lives in Texas.
Sue said:
"I've got to tell you that my tile floor looks great. I followed the instructions, poured it into the grout and walked away for a couple of hours. After the short wait period, I just used a nylon brush and loosened the dirt. Then I washed the floor after completing the process and it looks terrific. I will be buying more and have already told my friends about it!
Great stuff!"
Thanks Sue, but what she didn't say is that there are many other uses for Stain Solver. Laundry stains, carpet stains, cleaning decks, pet stains, pet odors, cleaning boats, mildew and mold removal and cleaning anything that is water washable. It is the ultimate green cleaner as it cleans using oxygen ions not some harsh chemical.
If you have been a subscriber for months, then you might remember I was trying to sell the Stain Solver business before leaving for New Hampshire. The sale never happened, and Kathy and I have decided to keep the business. But we MUST move it from our home to a new location. As if my life isn't crazy enough now with everything else, this move is happening in days.
So how can you help? Well, the less product, boxes, bottles, lids, buckets, etc. I have to move from here to the new warehouse, the easier the move will be! This is a true Inventory Reduction Sale, not some gimmick.
If you would consider buying some Stain Solver today or tomorrow, it would be an enormous help to me. I have created a special discount to make this worth your while.
If you order a 12 or 50-pound size, I will give you a 25-percent discount. But this is only good for the next two days. Please consider this and act quickly.
Here is the promo code to use at Stain Solver: liquidate
Remember, you have to react now....... The code expired on July 31, 2008.
Caveat: If you respond and I get overwhelmed with sales, your shipment may take a few extra days as we restock at the new warehouse. I will let you know if there is going to be a slight delay in shipping.
Latest Columns and Video
Here is a timely one if your attic reminds you of Hades.
Have you ever wondered how to use muriatic acid to clean brick mortar from brick?
This past video about Patching Blacktop is very timely as you may be thinking of doing this job soon.
Index of past newsletters.
