From the monthly archives:

July 2008

Budget Reduction – Goodbye Custom Casework. Hello IKEA.

July 31, 2008

I guess it should come as no surprise that we are turning to IKEA for budget reductions in the kitchen and possibly bath as well. Maybe I was crazy thinking we could fit a custom, “Urban Kitchen” into the 100K budget or maybe I just wanted another project since I’m not busy enough already. The [...]

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Investors for Future 100K Homes?

July 30, 2008

We have been getting a lot of inquiries for investment opportunities over the past few months. We originally shied away from getting investors involved in the original project due to the affordable nature and lower than normal or expected return. Moving forward, we will most likely will need to involve other investors in order to [...]

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Budget Reduction – Revised Kitchen and Appliances

July 29, 2008

This first reduction is not a big one and is mainly influenced by feedback from our last post on appliances for the 100K House. After reviewing the choices made in that post, I realized that I really didn’t want a bunch of mis-matched appliances from a variety of vendors. Instead I went back and quoted [...]

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Edited 100K Budget with Federal Tax Credits

July 29, 2008

Somehow I forgot to include the Federal Tax Credits in yesterday’s post we will get for the Solar Thermal and Energy Efficient status of the home. $2,000 for each which brings our total down to $111K and change. The spreadsheet is also updated.

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100K Budget Update – Time to Make Final Cuts [edited]

July 28, 2008

With construction only weeks away it is time to review the construction budget and make our final cuts to try and reach our $100,000 target. Our last major post on the budget was all the way back in February. Scott at Build It Green Philly (aka Level 5 Construction) sent over the most up to [...]

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Recycled Rubber Sidewalks Around the 100K Site

July 25, 2008

A lot of the sidewalk around the 100K House lots is badly damaged and broken up. While it’s not required, we had planned to replace the damaged sections and plant as many trees as possible while we were at it. A couple months ago I looked into green alternatives to standard concrete sidewalks and found two main options – Pervious Concrete and Recycled Rubber Sidewalks.

Recycled Rubber Sidewalk Image

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New Facebook Page and Twitter Account for 100K House Fans

July 23, 2008

Nic and I took a bit of time yesterday to increase the social reach of the project to Facebook and Twitter. Below you will find new links to what we have created. I really have gotten into the Twitter lately and realized that having a dedicated 100K account would be a great way to keep [...]

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‘No Haggle’ Pricing for 100K Houses?

July 23, 2008

As we get closer to building the first set of 100K Houses, we have been discussing the sales price a bit more. One of the subjects that has come up is the possibility of using a ‘No-Haggle’ policy for the first and every 100K House we build similar to what the GM brand, Saturn, instituted [...]

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Settling on 100K Lots Soon

July 22, 2008

My wife called this afternoon with some good news on the land for the 100K project. We have been waiting for months (our initial settlement date was Jan 15th) for the the seller to clear up some title issues that came up during our routine title search months ago. We spoke to the selling side [...]

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Good News for Renewable Energy Assistance in PA

July 21, 2008

About two months ago I posted on a quote we received for a Solar PV system that would cost over $30K to install and still not cover 100% of our electricity demands in the 100K House. This was meant to show, even with all of the efforts to make the home energy efficient and minimalist, [...]

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