212 NW Ruby Lane College Place, WA 99324

212 NW Ruby Lane
College Place, WA 99324
by the Owner/Builder
If you are considering the purchase of our house, you already know that a home is a huge
investment. With most homes, what you can't see are the realities lurking beneath the ground
and in the walls. So, in a very real sense, you don't know what you are getting when you
purchase "real" estate. In this document, I am going to solve that problem for you. In
descriptions and pictures, I am going to show you why this particular house is far superior to
other houses you might compare it to. This is no "production built" house!
Construction
There are construction details hidden in these walls that can only be detected by looking
for the subtle evidences of the quality.
You'll find no squeaks in the floors of this house. Notice them in other houses that are a
couple years old or older. When we built the floors of this house, we "screwed and glued" with
a method not used by other builders, so the floors are solid units that don't separate and
squeak. And we had a king-sized water bed in the master bedroom for years. No settling,
squeaking, or support issues. These floors are built.
On the point of floors, notice the bonus room floor. It is rock solid and doesn't bounce at
all! Other, "track" style homes, like the ones that came up around this one, all use steel I-beams
if they use beams at all. Why? Because these are the cheapest way to go. But steel I-beams
bounce, and you can really notice it with multiple people walking in the room, or with anybody
jumping (like a kid). With this house, we used a huge glulam beam. Much more expensive! But
the bonus room floor has (noticeably) zero deflection or bounce. Jump up and down, and check
it out. That floor is built!
You'll find no settling cracks in the corners of the drywall. Look for them in other houses.
This house's foundation is built, and it has not settled at all!
We used solid-corner framing, rather than the typical "California Corner" construction
method. It's more expensive, but it means that every corner is basically a solid pillar from
foundation to roof. And we employed double-wall construction everywhere, even where code
didn't require it for sheer-walls.
Another example of the thoughtfulness that went into the construction can be found in
the downstairs half-bath. It has a wall adjoining the living room, so we wanted to be sure that
sounds from inside the bathroom could not providing living room "entertainment." We did this
with alternating-stud construction; the drywall in the living room is attached to studs that are
offset and alternating from the studs on which the bathroom drywall is hung. That, coupled
with heavy insulation in that wall, ensure that typical sounds cannot be physically transmitted
through that wall. Again, this is just another example of the details we considered in building
this house.
The exterior walls are Hardie-siding, rather than the typical aluminum, vinyl, or
composite. It is fireproof, rot-proof, impervious to expansion and shrinkage, and impervious to
insects. Again, more expensive, but nothing lasts longer or has its benefits.
The garage is insulated and drywalled. You typically don't find both at this price range.
And the garage door and opener are from Martin; the most expensive, but life-time
guaranteed. If you have the slightest problem, just call Martin, and they will arrange a
technician to come out and resolve it... at no cost to you. Even the garage door is insulated.
And look at the shelving in the garage. There are thousands of dollars of just shelving in
that garage.
The roof is clad in 30-year roofing, and all of the edges are sealed down. In the high
winds several years ago that damaged countless roofs in the area, we didn't lose a shingle.
Nothing even moved. It would take a literal hurricane to damage that roof.
Countless things that you don't typically think about, or take for granted, we did think
about. And they are done right, far, far exceeding code and even industry standards!
Giant brackets and many hold-down straps go beyond code to tie this house to its foundation.
Big glulams support the bonus room floor system.
This floor system is built and secured like nothing else around. We expended the time and
money to make the floors solid, squeak-free, and far beyond code.
Notice the solid-corner construction, and every tiny gap between studs is foam-insulated!
Alternating-stud and insulated wall construction to sound-proof the downstairs bathroom.
Every interior wall and even the ceilings are insulated.
Infrastructure
By "infrastructure," I am including such things as plumbing, electrical, and HVAC. These
are the things that make a house "function." Yet, being largely hidden from view, these are the
very things most buyers do not really consider in their home purchase.
However, think about a few "simple" things that can make a house very irritating to live
in. In virtually all houses, if somebody is taking a shower, and somebody else flushes a toilet
elsewhere, that flush affects water pressure and even temperature. In most houses, you can't
run the dishwasher, do a load of laundry, and take a shower at the same time. In most houses,
particularly two-story houses, some rooms are too hot and some are too cold; and it's difficult
or impossible to have the upstairs and downstairs an even temperature. In most houses, you
depend upon wireless Internet, and you can't get a good signal in various parts of the house. In
most houses, you have simple on/off light switches, etc. And you don't know what you're
missing until you've had adjustable lighting and fans.
By contrast, this house was custom-plumbed by Chris Johnson Plumbing, and if you look
closely, you'll see some visible evidence of the excellent job he did. For example, in virtually all
houses the plumbing-drain venting just pokes through the roof in all sorts of places. It's like a
shotgun blast of plumbing vents through the roof! This is pure laziness and cheapness, as the
plumber just punched a hole in wherever he wanted to run a vent pipe straight up. By contrast,
Chris plumbed all the drain lines into a single vent pipe, which meant laborious angling of vent
pipes throughout the house. The result is that you can see only a single vent pipe on the back
side of the roof. This is just one visible example of the attention to detail that went into every
aspect of this house.
Chris also plumbed the water lines will plenum connections. What this means is that
every junction didn't just branch off and then branch off and then branch off, which is the
source of the pressure/temperature fluctuations you experience in most houses. Chris took the
hard road and plumbed with much more water line footage, to ensure that every fixture has its
own source from strategically placed plenums. This means that when you use water in one part
of the house, it has no effect on water flow/temperature in other parts of the house. Go ahead,
try it. And, with a 90-gallon hot water heater, you will enjoy virtually endless hot water (with no
fluctuations) to do anything you might want to do simultaneously.
The whole house is wired for gigabit networking, with outlets in every room and
multiples in most rooms. So, you can enjoy secure, flawless networking and Internet
connectivity anywhere in the house via hard-line! Even the switches already exist in the lowvoltage panel in the utility room.
TV/Data cable and phone are everywhere as well. We spent a lot of money wiring the
whole house with low-voltage lines. So any kind of connectivity you want can be found
everywhere in the house.
A major issue with two-story houses is heating and air-conditioning (HVAC). Virtually all
builders take the easy/cheap road here. They use no-name systems, and they just run six-inch
flex line as ducting throughout the house. This means that it is impossible to regulate the
temperatures upstairs relative to downstairs; so in the summer the upstairs is too hot, while
the downstairs is too cold. In the winter, it's even worse! This is a fact you don't find out until
you have bought and lived in the house for a year.
By contrast, College Place Heat and Air did an engineered, custom job installing our
Trane HVAC system, all with custom-formed, sheet-metal, insulated ducts and a baffle system
in the garage to enable you to finely regulate the upstairs vs. downstairs temperatures. The
whole house just feels great all year 'round, and that's because the time/expense were
expended to do this right.
As another example of the care we took with this house, all of the interior walls are
insulated. This makes the house feel solid, and it great reduces sound transmission between
rooms. It's just another expense we invested in the building that you don't get from the "track"
style homes this house would normally be compared to.
Outside, notice the landscaping and automatic sprinkler system. Many houses have a
sprinkler system. But this one is buried 24-inches deep, rather than the typical 8-inches! The
main line is even insulated! And it has an easy-drain system. With this system, you don't have to
pay every year to have somebody come and blow out your lines to keep them from freezing. It
would take an amazingly-cold winter to freeze the lines 24-inches underground, even if you
didn't drain them! And there are drip lines running everywhere that there is a bush or plant.
The system even has a rain detector, so you don't have to change your settings just because it
rains.
Even the risers to the sprinkler heads are flex-lines. They don't break or freeze.
Deeply buried and even insulated lines.
Notice that even the risers to the valves are insulated.
The list goes on and on. And the hidden infrastructure is designed to make this home
livable and comfortable in countless ways that other homes in this price range just can't come
close to matching.
Amenities
This house has amazing amounts of storage space! Along both walls of the bonus room
you will find large, easily-accessible storage areas. Under the stairs you can have a food storage
or extended pantry area. And the high-pitched roof provides space that we turned into a
massive storage area! There is a deck up there to walk on, with shelving in place already. It's
even lighted; notice the extra light switch in the bedroom with the drop-down stairs into the
attic. You would be hard-pressed to fill it all up. Here in Colorado, we have a 2100 foot home
now, and we can't fit all the things we had in that house in College Place!
With other houses in this price range, you are almost certainly not going to get a gas
range in the kitchen. (In fact, you probably aren't going to get gas appliances at all.) You
certainly are not going to get a Jenn-Air gas range with convection oven! Look it up and see the
huge difference between convection ovens and the typical ovens you'll find in other houses.
There is no comparison, and Jenn-Air is the brand.
Throughout the house, you'll find the Kenmore Elite line of appliances. At the time we
purchased these, they were the top-rated appliances on Consumer Reports. As just one
example, the dishwasher is silent and incredibly powerful! And you can do a full load of laundry,
washed and dried, in under an hour. The dryer is gas, and there's no comparison with electric.
Again, there is nothing low-end, "track," or cheap here.
Notice the custom, beech cabinets and Silestone countertops. Once you've had
Silestone, there is no living with anything else... not even granite! Silestone is stainless,
fracture-proof, impervious to temperature, chip-resistant, and even has an anti-microbial
compound permeating it (BacterioStatic with Silver... see the Silestone site).
Take something blazing hot off the stove or out of the oven, and just plop it right on the
countertop. Right next to it, chop vegetables right on the countertop (you can't hurt it or stain
it!). When you're finished, wipe a paper towel across the surface, and you're done! There is
literally nothing like it. It's expensive, but it works and lasts like nothing else. Just try to find
another house in this price range with Silestone.
With this house you get top-quality carpet, a tile entry way, marble tile in the master
bathroom, and the list goes on and on. Notice the windows in the bonus room. Notice the
electrical/low-voltage panel in the utility room. Notice the adjustable light switches and fan
switches. Notice that the bonus room is wired for 7.1 sound. Notice the fully-fenced, secluded,
and clean back yard. Everywhere you look, you will see things, like a great, gas fireplace with
Silestone mantel, that you just don't get in other houses at this price.
In short, there is really no comparison between this house and other "comparable"
houses in its price range. And with this house, unlike other houses, you really know what you
are getting, both what you can see and what you cannot see. Everything, and I mean
everything, about this house is top-quality!
Sincerely,