It was the end of May when our home arrived on 3 trailers from Boise. You can read about what led up to this purchase here. There was a lot to do, and just the week prior I had been made aware of several things that I wasn’t ready for.

There was a list of subcontractors required to finish off the home. My contractor and I were tasked with lining them up: they were an electrician, an HVAC guy, a plumber, a painter, and a cleaning service to go through the house before occupancy. The major miscommunication here was that all of these contractors were to be paid by IndieDwell as part of their scope of work. I missed that little detail somewhere, and as we were on a tight budget, I thought I’d need to handle the plumbing, painting and cleaning myself. Additionally, I had hired an HVAC guy to “make the final connections in the system” which is what I was told needed to be done. While the coolant lines were already run through the home when it was delivered, all of the HVAC equipment was still in boxes and my HVAC contractor hadn’t planned to be at my home for the amount of time it took to do all of that installation work. But more about HVAC later.

Our house didn’t come with a roof, and as the building market was in overdrive in the summer of 2020, my contractor couldn’t get a framing crew interested in bidding such a small job. So I decided to do it myself. I’d never built a roof before. I had lots of help. I think there were probably 20 different friends of mine working on it with me, including the recently retired head of our church network who rode his motorcycle from western Washington to help me for a couple days.

Everything would have been ok I think except that after the house arrived on May 27th, we needed to remove its temporary protective tarp roof in order to fit the trusses on. And on Sunday, May 31st, it rained. A lot. The seams between the containers hadn’t been sealed yet so there were gallons and gallons of water in our crawlspace that had poured down the walls and through the floor of the our house. It was a mess. We used commercial fans and shop vacs to clean it up. Unfortunately, later in the year we found mold throughout the subfloor in the girls bedroom. But more on the subfloor later.

We had the roof all done and watertight by June 6th. Longer than a crew would have taken, but it didn’t rain again until we were done…and there wasn’t a crew to do it, so there you go. It was a really stressful week and a half. If I had known what I learned in that week and a half, so many more things would have gone more smoothly. Most of it didn’t cost us money, other than an extension at our rental house because the timeline went so long, but lots of wasted time that I could have prevented had I known better what to plan for. By the time I was aware that IndieDwell was covering the cost of all those subs, I was begging anyone I could find to come do the work at the last minute. The plumber did an ok job, the HVAC was stressed (more about that later), the painter was confused about the process and we could never get the cleaning company to show up.

The lack of communication did cost me some money though. The plans we received called for a series of 18” and 24” long steel anchors welded to plates that would sit flush with the foundation wall and that the containers would be welded to on site. along the side and in all the corners.

I happened to notice this at some point early on and thought I would get ahead of the process. I would need to purchase the anchors, have the plates fabricated, and hire a welder to weld them before I could give the things to the foundation crew to set in the wet concrete when they poured the foundation. So I went down to our local fasteners store and showed the clerk what I needed. He laughed at me. He said the length and diameter of anchors that I required did not exist. However, after looking into it, he found a source somewhere on the east coast that would make them and ship them. It would take 6 weeks and these steel rods cost me $1500.

This was just the cost of building an unconventional house. Except when the home was delivered, they had with them a revised plan set that noted that the ridiculous anchors were unnecessary and much smaller and more readily available parts could be used. I would have likely saved over $1,000 had they sent me current plans. That was frustrating to learn.

Overall the crew that came up with IndieDwell, as well as all the office staff that I corresponded with in Boise, were great. Super nice, friendly people that seemed to really care about the success of the project. We got our occupancy on June 25th, almost a month after the house arrived. It was a difficult process, but it was worth it we thought. Just a few punch list items and everything would be done. More about that next time.

Our IndieDwell Home, Part 2, or, Great People, Poor Planning