So many of the houses look the same, so why not the apartments too?
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Valid point. I guess the thread…and I…have taken it away from just ‘the same’, to ‘the same and cheap’. Orulz has correctly pointed out in another forum, that along Hillsborough st, many of the smaller new apartment buildings, do in fact have pretty varying looks to them. So maybe it comes down to size…the bigger they are, the more monotonous looking they become.
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Funny you say this, because at least three of those smaller apartment buildings are pretty much copies of each other, but as a group are different from the other developments going up. They’re also all designed by the same local firm (New City Design). The same thing is happening in Durham – there, Center Studio Architecture is designing many of the apartment buildings of this scale, and they’ve got an obvious similarity to each other.
I think this is also a wider problem with most of the multi-family developments in the Triangle. Often, the developers hire out-of-town architects that have no stake in the game. Or when local architects actually are hired, it’s the same mediocre firms that have a reputation for doing developer-driven work quickly and cheaply. J Davis, New City, Cline Design – we see them doing the same thing over and over and over and over, and the result is an urban fabric severely lacking in architectural diversity, at least in the residential market.
I know some of the New City guys…they freely admit to being boxed in somewhat (unofficially of course) but like having steady work that is more than just adding a room to a house as you might imagine. What I really want to know, is your thoughts on the ones that look alike to you. I don’t pay a ton of attention to the small ones because I am so blinded by the overwhelming apathy emanating from the big ones.
What I really want to know, is your thoughts on the ones that look alike to you.
For the most part, they’re fine and probably some of the best apartments in the Triangle. It just saddens me that the bar is so incredibly low. At least they’ve got decent ground levels and are clean in appearance compared to J Davis’s apartment blocks (The Lincoln, The Edison, The Gramercy, Elan City Center, The Metropolitan, West at North, and 401 Oberlin are all some of the worst offenders of sloppy, jumbled elevations and poorly crafted design in Raleigh.)
2811 Hillsborough’s the best of the bunch, 2604 is fine too, but 1301 is just bad. The front elevation is lazy and the materials look cheap… I was walking past it with a colleague and the yellow spray-paint-looking cladding stopped us in our tracks; we still don’t know what it is lol.
I ran across this story this morning, another story on the rise of the stick built apartments that are popping up all over the nation, not just DTR. Enjoy the reading!
Yep - Developers profiting on peoples terrible taste and responding to a general lack of craftsmanship. Most people have no clue that these buildings are awful and in most cases they prefer it because its new and nice and better than the (historic?) eye sore that was there before. People suck and developers know it.
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I “love” how the GA legislature overturned a local ordinance against these stick-built apartments. 
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Its why I wont hire people to work on my house - 90% of “contractors” are incompetent and the remaining 10% are too expensive.
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Those are reasons I built my own house. Building inspector was baffled by some of the things I did, mainly because were way over code. Even had to point some things out in the code book because had never see a builder do them. Also saved a lot of money by going the DIY route. 30 years on, only maintenance (also DIY) has been paint and repair deck crushed by large tree that fell on it during ice storm along with hurricane force winds (common up here). Tree crushed railing and split some decking but did not damage structure of deck. Most speck builds put money into what looks pretty to make house easy to sale and skimp on anything they can that does not show up until later after they are long gone. A custom builder, where you can oversee their work, will charge you a huge markup because they can not cut as many corners and even bigger markup if they think you really know how a good house should be built.
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I brought my friend (used to live here in the 80s) from Chicago to Cup a Joe and he was horrified at the frame units going up nearby. “I thought you guys had a fire, what happened?” was his response. Almost forgot about the downtown fire altogether.
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Exactly! Don’t even get me started on that. I was displaced and then they decided to just rebuild the Metropolitan with the same wood frame.
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Kudos to you for taking that on and doing it right! It must be very rewarding to have built your own home, especially going above building code in various areas. Speaking from the perspective of a custom home builder here, in order to do this, one has to be:
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Dangerously familiar with architecture (to ensure it flows and looks right) and engineering (even if reviewing PE plans, it helps to understand if there’s an opportunity to replace a steel beam with a flitch beam, or if small alignments can be changed in the roof/walls to downsize some of the beams, headers, and loadpoints)
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Compaction and PSI ratings for all load bearing soils. Will there be settling years down the road?
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Well and Septic? Does soil perc? Traditional system or $40k pretreatment system?
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MEP (Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing, Low Voltage) for obvious code reasons, like is there enough ventilation per floor area and operable window area ratio, but also to look out for little things like how will the range hood vent? Oh no, there’s an LVL in the floor system above, so we will have to re-engineer that load or route flue pipe around. Did the trim carpenter tap a nail into the condensate line of the 2nd floor HVAC system that will rust out and cause a wall leak several years down the road? (seen it happen) Better have a framing and MEP rough-in record to mark caution areas for nail penetrations after sheetrock.
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Builder’s Risk, Liability, and Workman’s Comp insurance, and ensuring all workers have green cards at minimum if you want to remain legal.
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Details of a quality finish: Like varying floor material thickness. Shoot, that 3/8" tile doesn’t finish the same height as the 3/4" flooring I picked out. Guess I have to install a now-necessary transition threshold. Checking framing for plumb and square, and checking drywall for plumb. Trim carpenters will always blame drywallers for wavy crown if they can. Square cabinets don’t look great against unsquared walls. Best to use engineered studs behind cabinetry and tile backer. Installing polished nickel or chrome plumbing fixtures? Better check water for silica levels.
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Water, Water, Water: Flashing details where walls meet porches/patios, roof valley flashing, flashing at chimneys, flashing at windows and doors, low roof pitches and ice/water shield, etc. These are the worst to get wrong. If a licensed, reputable contractors installs incorrectly, they will likely fix under warranty or you have a claim within NC GC licensing board at worst case.
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Energy efficiency: Spend $5k on a spray foam upgrade or $10k on an HVAC upgrade? Best practices for air sealing? Solar on a leaky house is like a wind turbine on a F-350.
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Hablar Espanol
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So much other minutiae
99% of people don’t want to become the responsible party for the totality of all these things. Thus it is worth the margin paid to a General Contractor to get the details right on the most valuable financial investment most people ever make. To your point Scotchman and Phil, many skilled tradesmen have moved out of the labor market at this point and the skilled labor pool is constantly making mistakes. However, a good GC is constantly checking after subcontractors for quality control and often times training them on best practices for their own trade haha. We make trades rip stuff out and redo it if we catch a poor or incorrect installation.
Interestingly, not many people self diagnose and treat their own medical conditions, try their own court cases, or even grow their own food to save some money, but many people think they can perform some aspect of their home construction to save a few bucks. We are wrapping up a $1m+ renovation of a home that was built 5 years ago because of that mindset. 
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Did they ever figure out the cause of that fire?
Just playing devil’s advocate, but now that the Metropolitan is built, it has fire breaks all throughout the structure, intumescent coating on flammable materials per code, and a sprinkler system design to stop fire from spreading. All per code. Of course anything can burn if someone really wants it to.
To my knowledge, no they never found the cause. If anyone else can shed light on this, please do.
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Nope. Investigation closed with no cause. Insurance companies probably weren’t happy about that.
I in no way am suggesting that someone that is not sure they can do it take on a building project.
Oh guess should have mention that I went to trouble to get a contractors lic before I built. Also started out at NCSU in Engineering before quitting and going in to computers.
Some things I did, 8" outside walls and special ordered windows that were only sold in Canada and far northern states. Result is a 33,000 BTU heating system heated 2500sf in -0f climate (has hit -20f on a few nights), switched to Solar as primary heat 12 years ago. There is a lot of steel in framing being knew would be very strong winds in winter, no movement or creaking even with official weather station on another mountain about 10 miles away often records 100+ mph winds. I did hire out pluming, electronic, mason and roofer (for shingles) mainly because I was not lic in those fields but was at house to make sure did as I wanted as they did the work. On soils anything more than 1’ deep and on solid granite, had discussion with inspector who wanted me to blast out to 3’ and convinced him that pins in the stone with concrete to make it level would work just fine being the granite had a much higher PSI than an concrete I would fill put back in the trenches. Around 10 years later when built a large 2 story garage did not even need to have discussion as was standard procedure on solid work then ( LOL wonder if I caused that). 30 years later and no settling or water leaks (did replace shingles about 5 years ago). Also had well and septic approved before starting.
So all in all I would say I knew what I was doing and put a lot of thought into what to do, such as sub-floor heights between carpet and tile.
Here is a picture as I was repainting this summer. 2 story garage in background.
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Wow, awesome! 8" walls definitely require extended window and door jambs. What insulation specs do you have in the walls and attic? Is it on a crawl space?
Used 8" fiberglass in walls and two layers of 8’ overhead. foam was not option in area at time, used standard jams and just warped finish into windows, makes nice window shelves. On slab over 4" foam board, would be have had to – Wound have been lot’s of blasting to make basement to even crawl space. Put radon venting under slap just in case was needed, but tests have shown a very low level.
EDIT — would be have had to — fingers not doing what I told them
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The funny thing is, and if I am remembering correctly, balloon frame construction is said to have originated in Chicago. Ironic, huh?
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