My Dream House Construction Experience

[basha_skj]

Dear setty,
I am also eagerly waiting for reply regarding wood cost and timber depot details.. you have mentioned that, buying log is better than buying cut pieces, can u explain what way it is better, and is there any price difference between both the options?
Basha

[KVS Setty]

Sorry for some missing details regarding wood purchase, here I try to give some more details.

# the wood I purchased is Burma Teak, All doors and window frames (vasakal) and shutters including bath room doors is teak only.

# the engineer has prepared the complete list having sizes and section thickness details and the total requirement of wood in CFT.

# i bought the wood from M/S Venkateshwara wood and manufacturing Industries, New timber Layout. PH no 26745490. and the contact person is Harilal ,mob no is 9448495052. he sells sal and honne in addition to teak wood. Good and trust worthy person ,You can refer my name if you want ( please note i have no business or any other links with him )

# you can negotiate the price after some market research and the exact price depends on the log you select, it depends on Girth and grade of teak wood, I had selected M grade ,you can see that in my pics.The price range is 2800 to 3500 per cft.
# if you are doing interiors you will need lot of teak beading, which you can get it from the log purchase at a negligible cost as it will cut from the so called waste pieces of your log ( so it is not at all waste). If your requirement is very less then ready cut sizes may work out economical.

Hope this helps to some extent to all the members who replied to my post.
For anything more, please PM me.

[manjuprasad.m]

Dear Settty,

Thanks you for the post, even i am starting my home construction soon, this post and this forum is really useful

regards,
Prasad.

[KVS Setty]

Hello to All,

While I was busy with purchase of wood , here at the site these guys have raised the the pillars in the GF ( my house is SF+GF+2F) and today they made a layout of GF with a single course of blocks indicating various areas of the floor like living hall,bedroom, kitchen toilet etc., and asked me and family to come and inspect the thing and asked for any changes we need. After carefully checking every aspect like spaces ,door positions, window positions and comparing with the final drawings, we did make some minor changes and gave them green signal to go ahead by afternoon. By evening walls are already coming up and here is the snap shot taken in the evening.

DSC_0450.JPG (151.21 KiB) Viewed 8851 times

You can see the single course of blocks placed in some areas, this gives us some rough feel of how the house is going to be and in fact while all workers out for lunch ,me and my son walked through the layout as if we are in the finished house considering our routine and regular movements in the house based on our life style and that led us to some minor changes in the layout which they implemented after some discussions of pros and cons of changes.

[KVS Setty]

Guys,
In my house plan the architect has shown sky light at two places and i was always thinking how to implement this feature with lot of safety , leakage proof from rains and aesthetically good with out any sound during rain and long lasting also. so many things to meet .

In my area, a house was almost in a completing stage of construction and I took permission to see the house,after introducing myself and informing about my house construction. The owner is so nice,he happily and readily welcomed and showed me each and every aspect of his house and told lot about his experience and ordeal he went through during construction . In fact gave lot of advice and important things to take care of.I heart fully thanked him and told him we rarely find people like you.He was happy and went one step ahead and said ,come for any help at any time i will do my best. wow ! glad i met him.

well, let us get back to the subject. these are pics I took at his house for the sky light they have done. Thinking of adopting the same . Your comments and feed back on this is welcome.How to do this ? no problems ,I have a great helping hand , the owner of the house.

[sahu.mgse]

Dear KVS;
what is approximate size. I think due to parapet wall some masking of light is happening.
What i have seen is most common design is pyramid shape. Can you find out why he has not gone for that. Is there any grill work under skylight for security.

sahu

[chakra_krish]

Dear KVS
its a lot of learning for people like us to read your construction experience, thanks for the same, can you pls also share on cost of your construction ? or you going ahead with Labour contract or Material contract? how much is the estimation, can you pls share the same

[bscshekar]

@KVS

Appreciate all your efforts in updating the blog, it is really very useful and gives lot of insight.

I understand even Bevu (Neem) is used for house construction apart from Honne and Mathhi where you do not prefer teak. I feel teak is the first opton but due to cost, if we have to go for others Neem, Honne and Matthi was suggested by a few of my friends. Any idea on this or did you hear about this from your carpenter or in the timber yard.

Regards
Chandru

[manjuprasad.m]

Hi,

As I know Apart from Teak (all type - Burma, Malaysia, Australia, Guinea, Ghana, Africa, finally Karnataka) other wood like - Bevu, Gobli, Honne, Mathi, Sagu, Mahogany and Jungle wood is being used. The best of this would be Teak, that too Karnataka teak. If you buy it from forest department along with certificate they will give you 100 Year Guarantee for Oil redundancy (I got to know this from forest action guy) not sure how this is going to work

Regards,
Prasad

[KVS Setty]

Hello members,

Back again just to reply for the responses.
@ Sahu ,Actually there are two Sky lights, one is bigger around 4ftx6ft second in the pics.and the other is smaller in size around 4ftx3ft .Don't know the reason for his choice of it's shape ,i will find out and get back to you with more details.

@chakra Mine is full material contract with lot of freedom to choose basic materials like cement, steel, wood ,flooring materials, sanitary fittings, switches ,cables and hardware fittings.For all these basic materials basic rates are fixed, if i choose a material whose actual price is more than the basic rate fixed i need to pay the rate difference amount. for example steel the basic rate is 47k per ton and usage of steel is 3.5 kg/ sft , I choose JSW steel which is 48k per ton so one K more per ton i need to pay also Architect ensures that maximum of 3.5 kg/sft is used, if more i need to bear the extra cost.

@bcs baskar Regarding wood ,we had pre determined to use teak,so didn't think much about alternatives.

@Manju Prasad Yes, Karnataka forest depot is one of the best and reliable source for Hunusur teak/Karnataka teak, which is more expensive compared to Burma teak .We went for Burma teak,as it is more popular and lots of imports happen.

For any more specific details ,please PM me.