The well-groomed whiteness of small houses surrounded by flower beds is the general impression of American reality. And not only of reality. This has been the case for centuries. It is one of the components of the American dream. Romantic Victorian-style houses look at us from the canvases of old masters. Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov wrote about the amazing "one-story America" in their travel notes at the beginning of the last century.
Affordable Dreams
The prosperity of the country changes, people change, fashion changes. But the dream remains. It is a separate house with a plot of land for each family. Depending on the owners' income and taste, the house and plot differ in size and are more or less distant from the city. But it is necessarily a detached house. In an apartment (a flat in a shared building) people usually live temporarily. Or these are black Americans, who prefer to settle in large multi-apartment buildings near the city's business center.
Against this common background, there is much diversity. In Iowa, Ohio, and Michigan, even small houses are two-story and have cute turrets. Moving from north to south, you notice that houses get lower, as if they are growing into the ground. The hot climate and strong winds of Oklahoma and Texas dictate their own conditions. Ranch-style buildings are preferred here: spacious, single-story, so a tornado cannot whirl them away, with awnings over the windows to protect from the scorching sun.
In the northeast of the country, in New England, where the first colonies of settlers from Europe appeared, small bungalow-type houses are still popular. They are easier to heat.
In Florida, many houses are built in the Spanish style: covered with red ceramic tiles, faced with stucco, with high ceilings that keep the house cool. The attachment of Florida residents to the color purple is amazing. Even after moving to another state, they repaint not only houses on their property, but also all statues and gazebos in a bright pink color.
In the mountains of Colorado, where every flat pebble and every inch of land in the narrow valleys of mountain streams is used, the houses are small and log-built, and flowers are planted in every conceivable and inconceivable place: on windowsills, steps, railings. Pots of flowers are even hung on telegraph poles.
I am not talking about New York. It is a country within a country. It is not America. Everything is different there.
All this climatic and geographical diversity is unified by the construction industry. Construction companies will renovate a hundred-year-old house or build a new one in strict accordance with the money invested. It will be a neighborhood in the city center, on its outskirts, or in a rural area, but always in accordance with your social status.
Luxurious mansions of millionaires are rarely seen just by driving along the roads. They hide in secluded places, shielded from prying eyes by parks, and private driveways lead to them. The homes of bohemians and farmers also stand apart. Bohemians have been drawn to nature by the bustle of city life. They prefer to spend about an hour on the road, but to rest body and soul in a country house, which they place on a hilltop or at the edge of a forest. Nowadays it is fashionable to live "in nature." Even in an ordinary urban settlement, houses near a park or with a view of a river cost twice as much.
Farmers sell their land only in cases of extreme necessity. They are so attached to their fields, houses, and way of life, passed down from generation to generation, that quite often you can see fields with grazing cattle in the city center. Surrounded by shopping centers and small industries, farmers resist their onslaught but do not give up. They do not sell their plots for any money.
We are acquainted with the Conrad family. This large family has owned many plots of land in Tulsa for several hundred years. On their fields they grow vegetables and sell them in their store, which is known not only in Oklahoma but also beyond its borders. They are constantly pestered by construction companies asking to sell this or that plot of land located in a scenic area. This year they directly attacked the head of the family, trying to buy the 80 acres on the riverbank. Housing prices have risen by almost half, and the business has become very profitable. But they could not tempt him with decent money, only made him angry.
The big construction companies of America also infuriate me with their blatant greed. I hate their construction concept, which was born in recent years and has taken over the whole country, bringing big profits to its "fathers." Here is how they work: they buy a plot of land, cut down everything that grows there, lay roads and utilities, put up a fence with a nice entrance, and start "individual" construction. "Individual" is in quotation marks, because although customers choose a house to their taste, it is a choice from a few standard options. In each such neighborhood, several designs are used. The houses differ in finishes and materials, but at their core there is significant uniformity. All these new settlements are completely faceless, stamped out. The houses are like mushrooms with caps pulled down low, surrounded by luxurious lawns with thin, scrawny little trees.
If the neighborhood is expensive, both the fence and the houses are brick, with numerous decorative elements. In simpler neighborhoods, the houses are the same size, but they are clad in vinyl siding, and the fence is wooden. In neighborhoods for middle Americans, the houses also have three or four bedrooms, but all rooms are small. This size is commonly called cozy - 'cozy'.
Life in communities is strictly regulated: what plants to plant, where to walk animals, in which bins to put out trash, etc. Our friends live in one such neighborhood. All their houses are covered with wooden shingles. This is now considered fashionable and romantic. But it is absolutely clear that this "romance" is extremely flammable. So some residents decided to replace the old wooden shingles with ceramic ones, but... the governing committee banned it, because all houses must be in the same style. They have been suing for several years now.
Another family had to sell their house in a fashionable area because of allergies. The whole family was allergic to flowers, so they stopped planting them around the house, leaving only a green lawn. Endless conflicts with the management began, and it turned out to be easier to move.
When I first lived in America, I lived in exactly such a neighborhood, and I have hated them ever since. I hate their builders too. The houses are so close to each other that you are constantly aware of all the neighbors' affairs. You go out into the yard to have a cup of coffee, and there's the neighbor, a nice woman, chatting on the phone. And of course, I have to say: "Hi, Pam! Would you like to have some coffee with me?" On the other side of the house, two black eyes are visible. That's the neighbor's girl watching for us to appear, so she can dart into our house for fun.
Building such neighborhoods is "cheap and nasty," but living in them, in my opinion, is convenient only for those who spend the whole day at work and return home only at night. Besides comfortable home interiors, they need nothing else. I prefer old city districts, the suburbs, where every house is unique.
Expensive neighborhoods are located near parks and golf clubs, while cheap ones are near roads. The poorest Americans live in mobile homes, which are nestled on islands between highways. These are cheap prefabricated houses that are produced at a factory and then transported to the desired place. Inside, everything is the same as in a normal house: three bedrooms, two bathrooms, air conditioning. But the house is very light, and therefore it is the main prey of tornadoes. We call them "flying houses" and consider it dangerous to live in them where tornadoes and hurricanes occur.
When we moved to Oklahoma, we bought a house in the suburbs. We liked the house for its originality: three stories, with high vaulted ceilings and large rooms. But the decisive factor, of course, was the lot: five acres of forest with a green lawn in the middle, a stream, and a pond. And no neighbors in sight! The house was equipped with the most modern technology: all services could be controlled without getting up, just by pressing buttons on the remote control. It was comfortable and easy to live in, but when lightning struck it, it burned easily and quickly.
Just surprisingly quickly. When the inside of the walls was exposed, it turned out that the house was built of glued wood, very strong, but it burns like wax. The builders saved on wood, because the buyer cannot look inside the walls. In addition, they built using the "new technology." That's when the distance between the supports in the wooden frame of the house is twice as much as it should be. No, they didn't violate building codes; that idiotic distance became the "new standard," but decent companies still use the old one—it's more expensive, but stronger.
Our friend's mother decided to buy herself a small house on the coast in California for vacation. She chose a new house so there would be no maintenance hassles. It was a typical offspring of one of the modern large home-building companies. The house had already been selected, all documents were drawn up, all that remained was to sign them and write a check. But at night a hurricane passed and neatly folded the walls of the house to the ground. And not only that one, but also several other houses in this new neighborhood, which were built according to "lightweight standards." That is, in a beautiful package you are sold a cheap product. That is why, to get a truly quality home, it is better to build the house yourself, according to an individual design. For construction, you should hire not a large company, where there is eternal chaos and you can't find any ends, but a small firm that values its reputation.
Individual Design
After the fire, our insurance company offered to restore the house to its previous form. In that case, the owners have no hassle—the company itself hires builders, oversees the progress of the work, and besides, the house is built very quickly. But, mindful of the "engineered wood" and "new standards," my husband decided to do the project himself. We learned from our own experience that centuries of experience cannot be discarded, that in Oklahoma one should build not three-story houses but flat ranch houses. In that case, air conditioners are easier to regulate, and winds are not frightening.
David is an engineer by education and works as a designer of high-voltage power stations. Designing with a computer is a familiar task for him. He bought a professional program for architects, entered the initial conditions (house area, type of structure) and began to create under the wise guidance of the whole family.
I can't say that designing your own house is a very pleasant creative process. My daughter wants a room with a view of the pond. My son doesn't care—he never even raises the blinds, but ideally he wants five fans blowing from all sides, and instead of walls, shelving units with shelves. As for me, sometimes there isn't enough space between the bed and the window for a nightstand, sometimes the bathroom door opens the wrong way, sometimes the kitchen stove is not in its place. In short, David made the house project in two days, but then he spent more than a month working on details, redoing...
Larry came that same evening. He carefully inspected the site and made several very interesting suggestions. Then we met a couple more times, discussing his revisions. We received all the drawings exactly on schedule. The work was done solidly. I was, admittedly, a bit disappointed because I had expected more: no decorative additions were made, he only professionally detailed David's project without bringing anything new. So our house remained without style.
Construction
In America, the usual way of working is this: you contact a company with an order, they come, assess the scope of work, and send by fax or mail an estimate of all stages. By mail — so as not to embarrass the customer, not to force them to say "no" in case of refusal, looking them straight in the eye. The customer chooses the best offer and then contacts the company they like, pays them a deposit, and the work begins.
First, we lost two weeks with a neighbor. He is a professional builder, has built many houses in the area, is now retired, but continues to take small orders. Our house was to be large; we wanted to move into it in five or six months — the contractor would have had to work at a furious pace. The elderly man understood that the task was beyond his strength, but could not immediately admit it to himself and to us.
Then David approached a large firm. They came immediately, said they would build the house in two months, took the project and left to make an estimate. We waited a month for the estimate and finally received an eight-page document with a total of $480,000. Moreover, for "conducting" the construction alone, the contractor took 29%. That is exactly how much money the insurance company allocates for all our construction.
David contacted two more companies. Again several weeks of waiting; finally, from one of them we received a proposal for $250,000. We continued searching for a contractor, using all our contacts. Many responded — they came to look at the site and the project, and then disappeared without a trace.
Maybe the issue is not the contractors at all? Maybe we overreached with the project? Maybe it really costs several times more than we can afford? We sent a letter to the insurance company asking them to adjust the calculations in accordance with the changed situation on the housing market. The most interesting thing is that within a month we actually received an additional check that increased the compensation amount by half.
We started checking the house construction proposals made to us by various contractors. And what a coincidence — we sent a request to the same electric company that one of the prospective contractors also used! In the "electrical work" line, his amount was 30% higher than what we got through direct contact. Then we checked the lines for other types of work and materials. It turned out that in every section the rates were inflated by 20-30%. That is, the contractor officially takes about 30% of the house's cost for labor, and the same amount adds to individual construction subcontracts and materials. It turns out that half the cost of the house goes straight into his pocket.
And what exactly does the contractor do? He hires crews and pays them, monitors the schedule and quality of work. I don't understand anything about construction and can't supervise quality. But David is capable of it. And I can handle purchasing all materials. After all, we have to choose doors, windows, faucets, lighting fixtures, etc. ourselves.
And we made the decision. David took charge of construction. It was good that we already had a small company and no documents for representation were needed. Working in the name of the company is very advantageous. In that case, most suppliers give a significant discount on materials — up to 50%.
I loved watching the Dobsons' crew work. They would show up around nine in the morning in two pickup trucks. They quickly set up their equipment: air compressors, power saws, and electric jackhammers, turned the radio station playing rock music to full volume, and the "ritual dances" began... There's no other way to describe it. They didn't walk — they ran, dancing in rhythm. They worked in pairs, barely speaking, occasionally one would loudly sing along to a favorite performer. When a large section needed to be lifted, Dave would start clapping loudly and everyone, dropping their work, would quickly gather at the right spot. I couldn't keep my eyes on their hands moving with the heavy electric jackhammer. At that pace they worked for two hours, then spent an hour lying in the shade of trees, sipping iced drinks from huge paper cups through straws, chatting and laughing. Then another two hours of "dancing" and another break. In total per day — two breaks and five and a half hours of intense work. And that in forty-degree heat...
As construction progressed, I learned to choose materials correctly and place orders with various companies. "Correctly" means at the lowest price for materials of the same quality. I simply amazed my husband when I found granite for the countertop at the price of plastic. It was a small company; they supply granite from Slovakia, and therefore it is twice as cheap as elsewhere. Countries of the former socialist bloc are used here like third-world countries: prices for imports from France, England, and Germany are twice as high as for American goods, while goods from the Czech Republic, Belarus, Russia, and China are five times lower.
We built the house in four months. We surprised the specialists not only with speed but also with quality. When our architect came to see what had resulted, he walked inside and outside for several hours, carefully examining every detail. Then he couldn't help but exclaim: "Where are the cracks? There should always be cracks in cement!" There were none. The specialists couldn't find fault with the wall surfaces either. Glaziers usually struggle with mirrors in bathrooms. If the mirror is large, it is very difficult to attach it to a crooked wall. The work of the Dobsons' crew pleasantly surprised even them.
Among the positive results we can also include the monetary balance: for $200,000 we built a house that belongs to the luxury house category. It was appraised by the insurance company at $250,000, which means it is worth even more on the market. It is also pleasing that the doors in our house are made of real wood, heavy, and close with a soft click. After all, you can't slam loudly with plywood doors...
Valentina BAKMASTER.
Specially for "Zagranitsa".