chiefuserrick

I'm building in NC and the difference between my material cost and grand total is actually over 40%.

Not sure if this is valid number as we are not building this house to sell but the price and sq ft are very close to my final price as well as the sq ft. Thanks

Hi, all, thanks for the advice. The materials list contains EVERYTHING that is in the design including the two cars in the garage and furniture. Framing, roofing ,siding, trim, cabinets, soapstone counter tops, flooring, fixtures ( stove, sinks,refrigerator, bathtub, toilets), decorative beams inside and out, insulation, windows, deck, all doors (including $3000 garage doors) hinges, door knobs, lighting, switches, outlets, a $15,000 hot tub, $5000 outside grill, fireplace, concrete driveway, sidewalk, some landscaping, drywall, paint + $5000 well, $5000 septic and $25000 HVAC. All for $271,000 not including furniture and cars which we own. We also own the property. So on top of the $271K , i added 20% contingency and another 20% labor/profit for a grand total of around $380K or just under $150.sq ft. some of the items have labor in them so my markup is 40% (in reality) over material cost. When the time comes I will get 3 home builders to quote the job but I want to be armed with an idea of raw material costs so that I can mange their expectations rather top of the head quotes (eg $700K) to manage my expectations. I'm an engineer and project manager and this is how i think.

I have recently completed (as best as a novice user can) a house design for a potential retirement home in the mountains. My goal was twofold, learning Home Designer Pro and determining if the house plans of our dream home are in our estimated future budget at all. So I downloaded the material list to Excel and have attempted to estimate every item in the list. Not finding a good source on the web for building material costs, I mainly used Home Depot's website. At the end of a long day I added costs for a well, septic and HVAC system. But this is mostly just materials, does not include waste, nails, staples, caulking or adhesives and such. I added 20% for contingencies and 20% (material cost X 1.2) for home builders labor and profit. The final number is affordable at roughly $380K or about $150/sq ft living area. The home will be built in the western mountains of North Carolina not Manhattan. What prompted this was a very brief phone call with a local builder who looked at the original architects plan brochure and high estimated it a around $700K (not affordable) due to the "40 corners" on the house foot print.The house is a 3 2 1/2 with a two car garage at 2600 sq ft living. All of the corners on the design are what gives it charm as we don't want a rectangular box to live in. So my question to the forum is, did I use reasonable means to price the materials and is a 20% markup high or low for the home builder.

Voila, replaced the light. I think what happened before was that I placed the light on floor 2 but my camera was on floor 1.

updated my video driver, I don't get a black screen anymore but I also do not get shadows from the exterior light either using final view with shadows. Any Ideas? During daylight I get sun shadows.only.See thumbnail.

Thanks all, I reset my preferences and got textures back in preview but still get almost black view when I render outside light at night with final view with shadows. Going to update my video driver today.

I believe I have a capable video card but I am having difficulty rendering a camera view of my front door and outside light. I only have a total of two lights turned on and when I shut the sun off and request a final shot with shadows my entire image is black. Perhaps related, up until today when i setup a camera shot, I got all of my textures. Today I have to request a final view to get the textures and I get shadows also. I am not enabling the "final view with shadows" but I get shadows except when I try an outside night shot as described above. What am I doing wrong or what settings did I accidentally enable? I'm still a newbie but leaning quick. I am running windows 8 , 64 bit, Home Designer Pro 2016. Video card is NVIDIA GeForce GT 740M/PCIe/SSE2 with 2GB of video ram

Hi Eric, home designer Pro

Can anyone suggest a method to create arched ceiling beams as are depicted in the attached picture?