Monday, September 15, 2014

All About ADUs - A Primer Course for Brokers

Starting this fall, I'm going to be teaching a new 4 hour ADU course designed for real estate professionals through the Earth Advantage Institute. If you know of realtors who may be interested in this class, please let them know about it. More information about the ADU course is available here.



In case you missed the ADU tour announcement on AccessoryDwellings.org, my company Caravan-The Tiny House Hotel will be running another city wide tour of ADUs at the end of May. So, we’re starting to look for candidates for the tour and here’s what we’re looking for:
  • Recently permitted and completed ADUs in inner Portland.
  • Homeowners who are willing to open their ADU to hundreds and hundreds of visitors. The hosts from the last tour said that hosting was one of the best experiences of their life. Many hosts compared the experience to their wedding day—no joke.
  • The homeowner must be willing to have their ADU profiled on AccessoryDwellings.org. This profile involves sharing the design/build costs–so there’s a degree of transparency that is required by owners, in order to make the tour useful for attendees. 
Lastly, an article was published in Portland Business Journal that correctly differentiates ADUs from tiny houses on wheels. Oftentimes, media conflates these two building types when in fact, they are completely different from each other. Since I have my feet submerged in both ADUs and tiny houses on wheels, it was good to see an article that actually differentiated the two. 

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Build Small, Live Large- Portland’s Accessory Dwelling Unit Tour- Sunday, June 1st, 2014

Update 5/28/14: There's been a huge amount of interest in attending this tour, which is fantastic. Over 800 people have registered to attend. 

To allow for ample access to the ADUs for attendees, we have decided to cap the ticket sales.  Tickets sales have now ended. We really wanted to sell more, but feel that this cap is in the best interest of the tour registrants and the ADU hosts. 

This blog focuses on the design/build process for my ADU. Occasionally, however, I make other ADU related announcements that will be of interest to readers. In this case, I'm very excited to announce Build Small, Live Large- Portland’s Accessory Dwelling Unit Tour. This will be the first tour of its kind, and promises to be a fantastic event.

This ADU, ten other finished ADUs, and one under construction, will be featured on the tour. Homeowner, architects, and builders for the ADUs will be available to answer questions. There will also be a series of expert presentations held throughout the day. Additionally, attendees will be able to see eight tiny houses on wheels.

The day will jam packed with small and tiny houses, networking opportunities, and access to ADU professionals and experts. If you're planning to build an ADU, this tour (and the ongoing ADU classes I offer) are the best ways to learn from others about the ADU designing, permitting, and building process.

Here's the press release from Caravan- The Tiny House Hotel, about the tour.



Caravan- The Tiny House Hotel, in partnership with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, the City of Portland, and Metro, is hosting Portland’s first citywide tour of Accessory Dwelling Units on Sunday, June 1st, 2014 from 10am-6pm. ADUs are secondary living units on single-family lots.  Modeled after the City of Portland’s Build It Green Tour, Build Small, Live Large: Portland’s Accessory Dwelling Unit Tour offers attendees the rare opportunity to see the interiors of eleven ADUs in a variety of locations across the eastside of Portland. The self-guided tour gives attendees access to the homeowners, builders and designers of the ADUs, and to comprehensive, educational case studies about the building process of each ADU. There will also be workshops throughout the day presented by local and national experts about a range of topics related to ADUs, from permitting and financing, to designing and building.

Portland has seen a six-fold rise in the number of ADUs built since 2010.  This dramatic increase is the result of a 2010 City of Portland waiver of System Development Charges, which reduced the cost of building permits for an ADU by up to $11,000.  Before the 2010 waiver, approximately 30 ADUs were built in Portland annually, but in 2013 alone, there were almost 200 ADU permits applications.  The waiver’s popularity caused the Portland City Council to extend the waiver until July, 2016, spurring local ADU leaders to develop Portland’s first ADU tour.

Throughout the day, attendees will also have the opportunity to tour four custom-built tiny houses on wheels at Caravan- The Tiny House Hotel. Caravan has received national media attention for being the first tiny house hotel in the United States. Caravan will host a late afternoon networking event from 4-6pm where attendees can meet local advocates, designers, builders and leaders of both the ADU and the tiny house movement. Real estate professionals can earn up to 6 CE credits. Attendees will have the opportunity to earn a special $25 discount to stay at Caravan, as well as enter a raffle for a free stay at Caravan.

Early bird registration is only $25. Learn more and register at http://accessorydwellings.org/adu_tour/

...or Eventbrite - Build Small, Live Large: Portland’s Accessory Dwelling Unit Tour

Thursday, February 27, 2014

Refinishing the Concrete Floors

Finishing up the ADU construction in the summer of 2011, my partner and I were attempting to make tens of good, long-term design decisions about the final look and feel of the ADU. From the placement of outlets, to the colors and style of granite countertops in the kitchen, to how to build attractive built-in cabinetry in the bedroom cheaply, there was so much to figure out quickly.

Having never worked with concrete, I was at a loss about how to correctly finish the concrete. I went to Home Depot and found a concrete stain and was able to easily apply a beautiful, rich red stain to the floor with a roller brush. Then, I applied a sealant, and voila, within a matter of hours, the drab grey concrete was a glossy red. It looked awesome.


Fast forward 2 years, 6 months, and I was no longer so psyched about the wonderful looking concrete floor. Over time, the stain gradually wore off to the point where it diminished the aesthetic of the ADU. It was a cool process to observe where it wore off . Any guesses where the it came off quickest? Answer: The kitchen- where we apparently spend the most the time walking around.




At first, there were just little white nicks, but eventually, the concrete looked ragged. I was frustrated because I'd stained and sealed the floor, but I came to learn that the product that I'd used wasn't really an absorbent stain; it acted more like a paint. And, like paint, it eventually peeled off. 

In January, I decided to bite the bullet and re-do the floor altogether. I researched options on how to refinish concrete floors, and eventually learned that the only viable approach to getting a good finish on the concrete floors would be grind down the existing surface. Then, we would have to re-stain the concrete with an acetone mixture that would actually penetrate the surface and stain the top 1/8" of concrete. 

The process included grinding down the existing concrete with a 4 grit, 8 grit, 16 grit, 32 grit, 64 grit, all the way to an 800 grit, to give it a polished finish. The stain/acetone mixture was sprayed onto the floor into the final passes. This concrete staining process is referred to as acid-etching. Lastly, a very thin protective was layer was applied. 

To prep for this job, we had to move everything off the ground floor of the ADU. Then, we took off on a road trip for the long weekend, and let professional concrete contractors work their magic. A big part of their job was taping off the entire first floor so that the concrete dust wouldn't cover everything. They were extremely thorough, nonetheless, concrete dust still managed to seep through and coat some of the walls. 


Here are pictures of the process. They spent two long days re-doing the 500 sq ft concrete floor. When they were finished, the floors looked awesome, as shown below. Unlike the paint-like stain process I did initially 2.5 years ago, this new stain should remain looking glossy and rich for years and years to come. 




This job cost $2,500. It wasn't cheap. I asked the contractor how much this job would have cost if I had hired him outright at the beginning. He said it would have cost the same amount, which surprised me. So, in the end, my initial stain job wasn't a mistake that ended up costing me more money. Rather, it simply required some additional work to move everything out of the house for the weekend. 

In hindsight, I would have sought and asked for a concrete foundation company that would have been willing and able to do all of the concrete work, down to the polished finish, and sought input on how best to get to the final glossy look that I was seeking initially. This would have allowed me to avoid the annoyance of refinishing the concrete floors. Like many building trades, concrete work has a lot of specialized processes, and I have found that having specialists scope out, advise, and in this case, execute the project, was critical to getting a final product that met my expectations. 
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