Spring 2015 ADU Announcements

Here's a few ADU-related activities that I'm helping to head up this spring.

Build Small, Live Large: Portland’s Accessory Dwelling Unit Tour – Spring, 2015

Announcing the 2nd Build Small, Live Large, Build Small, Live Large: Portland’s Accessory Dwelling Unit Tour – Spring, 2015. The tour will be two days long this year, and will have twice as many ADUs as last year. The tour dates on Saturday, May 30th (NE Portland) and Sunday, May 31st, in SE Portland. I'll be teaching a Friday evening class on May 29th. Attendees can register to attend whichever portions interest them.

It's very likely to sell out early, so if you're interested in attending, don't wait too long to purchase tickets. In case you can't make this one, note that we'll be running another ADU Tour in the fall of 2015, on November 7th, 2015.

ADU Specialist Accreditation for Realtors

Earth Advantage is going to start an ADU designation this spring as an add-on to their Earth Advantage Broker designation. If you're a realtor who has taken one of my ADU classes, you'll be eligible to take an exam to receive the specialist accreditation. Earth Advantage will reach out to those who have taken one of the classes to notify them of this new add-on designation.

On the class admin front, we're also going to start offering CCB credits for contractors who attend either of these classes.

Accessory Dwelling Strategies, LLC

I've started an LLC dedicated to ADU related work called Accessory Dwelling Strategies, LLC. This company is designed to help others build ADUs.

Along with the homeowner and realtor ADU classes, I also do on-site consultations with people who are interested in building an ADU on their property. The classes cover a huge amount of information which is intended to synthesize everything I wish I'd known before I started to plan for my ADU. The on-site consultations are useful for providing more customized feedback on-site. Many ADUs have a unique set of design criteria, site constraints, and financing models. The purpose of the individualized consultations is to distill an extensive amount of information about what has worked and why, and what doesn't work and why.

Contact me through my Google profile page or email me at kolpeterson at yahoo dot com if you'd benefit from a one-on-one consultation. I also offer ongoing consultations throughout the ADU planning and design phase of the project for a fixed rate. See ADU Class page for more information.

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. 

Finishing The Stairs

(Editor's note: I've authored a related post called Staircases in ADUs on AccessoryDwellings.org)

I'm authoring this post a year after we completed building and moving into the ADU. Dare I say, this is the last substantial construction project for my ADU.

Over the last year, Deb and I have slowly tackled various projects which I've described previous blog posts (the artistic sound barrier, the artistic handrail, landscaping and more). But, as any homeowner knows, it seems as though the work is never done. Once we moved in, it was easy to let the final stair riser tiling project slip off our immediate calendar.

With the ADU being on the upcoming Build It Green tour on Saturday, September 22nd, we motivated ourselves to put the finishing touch on the stair case (the end of this post includes several ADU related announcements which may be of interest to readers).

The finished stair tile risers.

From the outset, the stairs have posed an intriguing design problem. Complying with stair codes is sometime difficult in small and stout houses, such as ADUs. Portland's code requires that an ADU roof must be no taller than 18ft at its mid-point, so fitting a stair with adequate head room (6' 8") on the top stair landing, can prove to be a tricky design challenge.

There are two common design solutions. One can position a straight, simple staircase in the middle of the house, which can interfere with the spatial layout of the main floor. Or, one can position the stairs along the side of the house, and turn the top of stairs toward the center of the house before you reach the 2nd floor landing to avoid hitting your head on the ceiling.

My architect worked through many sketches before finally figuring out a functional, compliant, attractive, and space-efficient staircase design, consisting entirely of "winders". The final stair design consisted of 14 "winders": stairs which are not rectilinear, but have an angled curve as they rise upwards.

This is the architectural drawing of the winding stairs from above

The master framer would built this stairs claimed to have build over 2,000 stair cases and said that he had never built a staircase in which every step was a winder. It was a wonderous feat to watch how he constructed the framing for them.  

In addition to the unique bend of the staircase, we added a few other design elements to the staircase. When staining the stairs, we stained the nose of each tread a lighter color so that it would be easier to see each tread in lower light. Additionally, we added an LED rope light under the nose of the treads, to create an attractive perimeter/safety light solution for climbing the stairs in low light.

The LED rope lighting under each tread accents the stair below it. The nose of each tread is stained a light color in contrast to the rest of the tread, which makes each tread "pop" nicely in any kind of light, such as the low light as shown above.

Then, we added the amazing salvaged steel handrail, part of which is shown below.

Last but not least, we finished the stair risers with tiles this week. We acquired these tiles in New Mexico last year, knowing that we wanted to eventually finish the stair risers with Talavera tile. Here are some pictures of the process and finished product.


Here's a video of the finished product.

Some other ADU announcements:

• As mentioned earlier, this ADU, along with seven others, will be the Build It Green Tour on September 22nd. As part of the tour this year, there will be workshops throughout the day. I'll be leading a short workshop on ADUs at 9am.  

• The next ADU Class for Homeowners will be on Saturday, November 5th. This course is filling up so I'll likely offer another full day class shortly thereafter.

• For the first time, I'm also able to offer CE credits to Oregon's real estate professionals who attend this class, thanks to the Earth Advantage Institute. The class will equip them with substantial knowledge about ADUs, enabling them to help more of residential clients identify suitable properties for ADUs, and provide information on how a residential client can proceed through the ADU financing,designing, and building process.  Please tell Portland realtor acquaintances about the class.

• There will be a one day ADU-focused conference in Portland, Oregon, on Friday, October 26th, held in conjunction with the Portland EcoDistricts conference. I'll be helping lead one session on ADU financing, and there will many fantastic sessions there. 

• Lastly, my ADU was featured in a great blog called Small House Bliss which I'd commend to readers who are seeking inspiration on modern, small house design. 

Another ADU Class and a New ADU Website

I held the 2nd 'Building an Accessory Dwelling Unit on Your Property in Portland' class at the ADU last weekend. There were 11 participants, which was a great class size. I had fun and the participants did too.

I've just posted registration for a class on Saturday, January 21st. If you're thinking about building an ADU, considering attending. From the feedback forms, every participant in the two classes I've held have found the class to be very useful and have enjoyed it. I'm limiting future classes to 13 participants, as the smaller class works better at the ADU. Last class, we visited a couple ADUs that are being constructed and I plan to do that in the next class as well.

As readers of this blog, you may agree that another critical piece to learning information about ADUs is finding a place online where you can find out information about other ADUs. Till now, there has been no such central place on the world wide web. Given the vast scope of content on the web, this surprised me and a few others who work on ADU issues. So, we have decided to fill that void and are proud to announce it: http://accessorydwellings.org/

Accessorydwellings.org is intended to be the one stop shop for information about ADUs. On it, you can find information about ADUs that have been built, information about building one yourself, and references to other sources of information. The site is  authored and administered by Martin John Brown, Eli Spevak, and myself, all ADU aficionados in the Portland area. Each of us have built permitted ADUs, have a strong personal and professional interest in them, and have our own websites about our own ADUs. Collectively, we are joining forces and launching this new site as a mechanism to promote ADUs.

In association with this site, I've also set up an Accessory Dwelling Unit Yahoo Group where people can connect to share information about ADUs. If you're interested in sharing links, asking questions, and connecting with other homeowners or builders that work on ADUs, join this group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Accessory_Dwelling_Unit/

Now that I've had a couple months living and relaxing in the ADU, I'm going to complete a couple more projects that need to be finished before I can consider the ADU property fully complete. Currently, I am working on the landscaping around the main house and the ADU. In the next couple weeks, I'll post an update about the landscaping, particularly as it relates to the ADU design. And, there's a couple more artistic projects that I'll post about in the next two months.

This blog will remain an archive of my ADU project related information. However, with the launch of Accessorydwellings.org, I expect to post to this blog less often and to be more active in managing and posting to Accessorydwellings.org.

When It Rains, It Pours: Five Big Announcements

Today was a big day. Here are five announcements that I am very happy to share:

1) We passed the final inspections, which means that the ADU is now officially verified and ready for occupancy! Building the ADU has been a huge undertaking for me and I am relieved to finally have it officially completed. And a big thanks to Stephen Smith, who has served as the builder for this project.

 

Generally speaking, I've found Portland''s Bureau of Development Services, the building permitting authority, to be fair and reasonable, despite being short-staffed. It took a couple attempts for us to resolve relatively minor building issues (eg. guardrail height, smoke detector type) before we were able to passing the final inspection.

Meanwhile, there's still some more finish work to do in the ADU and throughout the site, and I'll continue to post updates on those projects (look for upcoming posts on the water heater, stairs, and the final budget numbers).

2) The ADU has been selected to be on Portland's Build It Green Tour, a self-guided tour of twenty-two of the premier 'green' new construction and renovation projects around the City of Portland, on Saturday, September 24th.

The ADU will be one of several smaller homes on the tour. I visited 15 homes on the Build It Green tour last year, and found some of the projects, particularly the Passivehauses, to be inspiring from an energy use perspective. There are interesting homes on the tour this year; if you're in the Portland area, I encourage you to check it out.

Portland's Build It Green Tour: Saturday, September 24th, 2011, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

3) The ADU has been selected to be featured on KATU, a local TV news station, to help promote the Build It Green tour. They'll be filming here next week and the piece will be aired the week prior to the Build It Green Tour. I hope that they post their pieces online so I can link to it. It's an honor to have the ADU selected for this news piece from amongst all the great projects on the tour, and it has given me added motivation to get the ADU looking good.

4) Earth Advantage Institute is offering a free hour class on "Creating Not So Big Homes", which will be hosted at my ADU on the morning of the Build It Green Tour. Here's a link for registration information.

5) On Saturday, October 15th, I'll be offering a day-long class for homeowners in the Portland Metro area, entitled 'Building an Accessory Dwelling Unit on Your Property in Portland'

With my personal ADU project nearing completion, I am ready to help others who hope to build an ADU in Portland. This class is intended for homeowners interested in building an ADU on their property. Readers of this blog know that the process of building an ADU can be complex, overwhelming and expensive.

The goal for this class is to help homeowners create a more beautiful and functional ADU space that will augment their property, maximize small space, and lower short and long term design, build, and maintenance costs for the ADU. It will cover the essential ADU design/build elements from start to finish, which will result in a more beautiful space and will hopefully help them save significant time and money.

Here's a link to more information about the class and the registration. http://pdxadu.eventbrite.com/ 

Saturday, October 15th, 9am-5pm. 

$95 (or 8 hours work/trade)

I plan to hold the class at my ADU