How Floor Plans Can PREVENT Mistakes When house plans are drawn to the homeowner’s actual selections, then mistakes are prevented. That sentence may not make sense to you. Aren’t house plans drawn based on what the owner wants anyway? During discussions and plan...
The typical home building process is broken in many ways, from the homeowner’s perspective. The broken parts of the process cause stress and issues for owners going through a custom home build. In this article, I’d like to bring to your attention 2 areas (of many)...
Perhaps I should say: What a homeowner truly wants for their kitchen layout should drive the design decisions for the entire house. The kitchen is the heart of the house and should be treated as such during design. Meaning, it comes first. Find out what you really...
Allowances are the #1 key to control costs when used the right way. Notice that I did not say reduce costs or manage a budget? The reason is that allowances are a strategy to employ, not just a list of items with a price. When used the right way, the owner can...
To ensure that your money stays safe and the project moves along smoothly boils down to this: use a proper Schedule of Values when paying your builder. It's a standard that investors and residential developers swear by, but homeowners often miss out on. In this...
Here's a look at the nuts and bolt of employing the Schedule of Values as a STRATEGY to control costs in your home building project. You’ll want to read The Only Way to Pay Your Builder for context and definitions, before the strategy training that this article...
Principles of Good Design: Here's a quick look (with photos) to illustrate a few of the key principles and to highlight the bad! Be informed about what you are looking at as you browse for your inspirations. Also, we each have inner sensibilities when it comes to what...
Here, I explore other factors related to how you view symmetry or asymmetry in design that are not talked about much, if at all. These are important aspects in design and a quick search online provides numerous articles about these concepts as they relate to home...
It is entirely possible to control costs in a custom home build, if you have these 3 must-haves in your construction contract. Once in place and used the right way, the game changes in favor of the homeowner. Otherwise, the door is open to misuse of change orders by...
