Guide to Designing and Building Custom Homes
Author: Peter Asher Designs (?)
Helpful Information
What Is a Custom Home?
Custom means “made-to-order.”
Some people think a custom home has to be expensive. Not necessarily! Any kind of home can be custom built, from a mansion full of expensive fixtures and materials to a tiny economical cottage. What they have in common is that the features are specified by the homeowners, rather than by the builder, based upon what he thinks will sell.
When building a custom home, options are evaluated only on the basis of what is important to the homeowners. Any home may be kept from becoming more expensive than necessary, by eliminating wasted space, unnecessary maintenance, and unwanted features. Simple design details, not expensive to build, can change a plain design to a charming one.
There are, of course, degrees of custom. It might be just choosing flooring, cabinets, or where to place extra mirrors. It might be making minor alterations to a existing plan to better fit personal needs.
A fully custom home is designed and built entirely to your specifications. It blends your dreams and heart's desires with the property of your choice and is tailored to fit your budget.
Why Custom Build?
Should you?
To buy all the parts that make up your automobile, you might have to spend upwards of four times the cost. And then you would still have to put them all together! Custom building a house is not quite as bad as that, but it still costs more than a ready-made builder's product. So why build a custom home?
If you answer, “Yes” to any of the following questions, you are a good candidate for considering a custom home.
Have you looked for a ready-made home, but have been unable to find one which fulfills your desires and preferences, your family’s needs, and/or your aesthetic sense?
Do you have very particular and specific desires about what you want in a home? When you look at existing homes, do you seem to want to change everything about them?
Do you have unusual requirements for a home, such as special-purpose rooms, a particular layout, built in major fixtures or systems, accessibility, an accessory dwelling, or out-buildings?
Would you like to make use of alternative energy sources, ecologically sound or non-toxic building materials, or any other fixtures, methods or materials which are not generally found in ready-made homes?
Have you been unable to find a home which works for you in the right location or neighborhood?
Do you wish for a home with particular views, water frontage, zoning, or type of trees or vegetation, and have been unable to find an existing home which has them?
Are you in love with a particular piece of vacant land?
Are you already the owner of a particular piece of vacant land?
Do you own, or are thinking of buying, a divisible lot, with an existing home on one part? If so, you might build a custom home on the vacant part, and then sell the exiting home.
Do you own, or are thinking of buying, a lot in a good neighborhood with an existing home in such disrepair that it should be torn down?
Do you own, or are thinking of buying, a piece of land with a mobile home? If so, you might build a custom home while still living in the mobile, and then sell the mobile.
Do you want to make sure that your new home is structurally sound and has been built under newer building code requirements, such as those which afford precautions for earthquakes, slides, floods, fire or hurricanes?
Why Custom Design?
If you are planning to have a home custom built, you may be wondering if you should find a library plan or stock plan that you like well enough and have it built as drawn. Of course you would still specify the colors, fixtures and materials. This can be done, and it would create for you a home that is custom built, but not custom designed. What reasons might you have for also having your home custom designed?
The design of a home begins with the approximate size, location and layout of the spaces for living, cooking, sleeping, playing, entertaining, conversing, relaxing, studying, working, washing, and so forth. How these spaces are placed will affect how you and your family live every day.
- Planning a short route from your car to your kitchen may save you more time and energy than an easy-clean bathroom counter surface.
- Each square foot of a house adds to its cost, so you should be the one to decide whether to put that square foot into the bedroom or the living room.
- If you are hunting for a stock plan for a narrow lot with a room-sized pantry and a sauna, but with only one bedroom and one bath, you may have a very long and futile hunt.
Next comes the design and placement of windows and doors, according to the way you will use the rooms.
- Windows that have been placed to take advantage of your views might have a great effect on your family's morale.
- You may need doorways and hallways wide enough for a wheelchair, either now or at some point in the future.
- You may want different kinds of doors. Swinging, bifold, bypass, French, atrium, or pocket doors each have their own spatial and structural requirements. They are not necessarily interchangeable.
- You may want to make sure that upper-story window sills are high enough to protect children from falling.
Also, there are aesthetic considerations. If you grow tired of decorating schemes, wall treatments, fixtures or cabinets, you can change them. But, short of major remodeling, the design and overall shape of your home (both exterior and interior) is permanent. If you love the way your home looks and feels, you’re likely to feel happier when you come home.
Finally, there are the practical aspects of the home site. Many lots have characteristics which make it difficult to use a stock plan.
- If your land has a severe slope right where you’d like the house to be placed for the best views, custom design is essential. The home must be fit carefully to the land.
- Other examples are water frontage, easements, oddly-shaped lots, and areas with slide, flood, erosion, fire, wind, or earthquake risks.
- For some sites, you will need engineering work done to satisfy the building department or to ensure the durability of the house. The plan needs to take the engineering requirements into consideration, without sacrificing livability.
What if you want some changes made to a library plan or stock plan? You may want more of your own personal touches. Or you may have special needs which will require you to commission extensive redesign and redrafting. You may want to make the house accessible, enlarge the garage, fit in a second washer and dryer, move the fireplace, or add a laundry chute, whirlpool bath, separate shower, or powder room. These kinds of changes require walls to be moved, layouts to be changed, and structural support systems to be redesigned. It might make more sense to start from scratch and end up with the home you really want.
Design-Build
A designer-builder oversees the creation of your home from the first brain-storming sessions until the moment you turn the key in your own front door.
A designer who is also a builder brings to the design process his practical building experience and his knowledge of materials and structures. When he solves a problem in the field, he is able to apply that new knowledge to his future work on the drawing board. And, since he knows his own building skills, he is not likely to draw structures with which he is not familiar.
A builder who is also a designer has a professional concern that the design be built just as he envisioned it. Therefore, he will not deviate from the structural systems as shown on the plans.
Finally, with a designer-builder in charge of the job, design changes requested by the client go much more smoothly, with a minimum of delay, because there are fewer parties involved. Sometimes even major changes can be accomplished in “mid-stream,” rather than being delayed by back-and-forth communications with a separate architect or designer.
The Solution Is Design
What if you have found a lot with a fantastic 180-degree view, but it slopes steeply down away from the road. But there is also a lot on the top of the hill, with a nice level building pad, already bulldozed. The price of the hilltop lot is twice that of the steep lot! The real estate agent says, “I don't know how you'll ever build on this steep lot without spending a fortune on the foundation! You'd be better off spending the extra money on the hilltop lot.” Sounds right, doesn't it? After all... a fortune.
This would be a good time to consult with a designer. How much will a foundation for the steep slope really cost? What about the geology of the site? Will you need a geology report and some engineering to really know what type of foundation you will need? You may be surprised to find that the steep lot with the better view costs less overall than the hilltop lot, once the dollars and cents are added up in reality, not just in the imagination. Or, of course, the opposite may be the case! With the aid of a professional, you can take a lot of the guesswork out of choosing a lot.
Another situation which calls for design is an irregular “footprint” for the house. This occurs when there are restrictions regarding the buildable portion of the lot. Restrictions might include the shape of the lot, the easements, set-backs, driveway, well, or septic system. It may seem there is just not enough of a “building envelope” left in which to fit your house! But a designer can work with an irregular shape. You may even find that a bizarrely cut-up lot is a fine bargain, because nobody has yet envisioned a design for it.
When designing a view house, we start with the view. We might go up on a thirty-foot scaffold to take pictures of the view from the proposed living room level. Once, we went up with a client in a huge man-lifter rig. We were able to see over the trees to plan the house location and floor heights.
One problem a lot-hunter might encounter is a peek-a-boo view. It will take some planning and, well, designing to figure out how to be able to see the mountain from the living room. Again, the lot may be a bargain because of this, and a designer can solve it for you.
These are some examples of the kinds of problems that are solved by design, but actually the design of any house is one big puzzle. Data about needs and preferences come from the client. Data about restrictions and limitations come from documents, building codes, geological reports, and zoning regulations. Added to that is data about what workers and materials can and cannot do, and what different structural methods can accomplish. The designer brings his creativity, expertise and experience to bear—to solve the puzzle.
The solution is design.
Shop for Price or Shop for Quality?
A home is by far the largest investment most people ever make, yet plans and framing—the most important aspects of creating that dream home—are the very items which people tend to shop for the lowest prices!
People spend years collecting books of plans, hoping to come across their personal Xanadu. It rarely occurs. The possible combination of spaces, shapes, sizes and styles for homes is practically infinite.
Homeowners do not always realize that a skillful and experienced designer, who can listen and visualize, can rather swiftly develop a design which takes into account land, weather, and your personal needs and desires— in short, your dream.
Having done so, the designer is perfectly positioned to see that the home is created as a high-quality, enduring and satisfying product. He can do this either in cooperation with a builder, or as the builder—the “Designer-Builder.”
That leads to the other area where expertise is more important than price. The frame of the home is its “bone structure.” Many builders feel that it is sufficient to frame according to accepted local trade standards. In fact, building codes and building inspectors often allow for a lot of leeway in framing techniques, the very techniques which will ultimately limit the movement of the building's skeleton. Except in cases of soil problems, many of the defects homes may develop years after being built are the results of imprecise and corner-cutting framing methods.
In the quest for true quality, the material used for the frame is as critical as the building techniques. Plywood is superior to “flake-board,” and 5-ply is vastly superior to 4-ply. In lumber, moisture content and grain are both critical to dimensional stability. Some builders hand-pick much of their lumber to ensure its quality. Also wherever the design would be better served, “engineered” timber is indisputably worth the extra cost.
Competitive bidding brings out enormous price variations in framing labor and material. It also can be quite difficult to pin down a builder on what he will actually be delivering in terms of quality and technical expertise. Alternately, you can work as a team with a designer and builder you trust to ascertain the costs of the job. This “cost analysis” method ensures that choices of quality versus price will be made by you.
Cost Planning
Competitive Bidding
It is a very common practice for clients who already have a home design to ask several builders to give them “bids.” A bid may be a flat price for the project, or it may be an estimate.
When you shop for price, as you do when you request competitive bidding, you may find enormous variations in the price of labor and material. How are you to know exactly what would be the differences in the final product? Not every stick and nail will be spelled out. You will be given a price, with some specifications, by each builder. But the specifications are likely to be on different items from builder to builder! One builder may be very specific about the type and grade of siding he plans to use. Another builder may be rather vague about that, but be more specific about the thickness of the asphalt drive. Two such bids would not be comparable. It would be like comparing apples to oranges when trying to determine the price of “fruit.” To truly compare bids, you would have to have a full list of specifications and make sure that each builder described each one. This could involve thousands of items.
Since a builder is generally not paid to provide competitive bids, he is unlikely to be able to afford to spend a great deal of time and effort in detailed analysis. To save time, the builder may use reference books, software, or a system of his own to estimate items in the bid.
Specifications in the Bid
The bid will usually include allowances for various fixtures and materials, or a list of specific items upon which the bid is based. To improve the accuracy of the bid, decide what are the actual products you will want the builder to use and provide that data in advance. Still, when you receive the bid, you may find that there are other items specified which you did not think about and even some you did not know about. Whether the specifications are provided by you or by the builder, there may be extra charges later if you decide to use different materials or fixtures.
Specifications in the Model
One of the attractions of a model home is that, theoretically, it is a promise that other homes based upon it will have the same materials, fixtures and methods, unless specified otherwise. If true custom design is not important to you, you might consider having built a variation on a model home. There might be fewer surprises. First, make sure that you are perfectly satisfied with the quality of the workmanship and the materials, and that the contract is clear in its specifications.
Specifications not in the Bid
When you accept a builder's flat-price bid, the price of the project is set (with the exception of price variations or homeowner changes which are allowed by the contract). But the only specifications that are set are those included in the final contract. The builder is not committed to use any other particular materials or methods. Any specifications which are not listed in the bid or clearly indicated on the plans will be determined by the builder.
For example, if the bid simply states, “8-inch tight-knot cedar siding,” the following aspects are omitted:
- Proportion of long boards to short boards
- Portion of the lapped board which is exposed
- Type of house wrap underneath
- Type of finish to be applied
- Type of weather protection around the windows
- Type of caulking
- Type of fastenings
- Details of corner boards, trim, and/or soffits
If not specified, these variables will be up to the builder, who must then choose between using more expensive methods and materials on the one hand, or additional profits for himself on the other. He may also make decisions based upon what products he or his sub-contractors find easiest to install, the track record of the manufacturer or the product, or upon his own personal taste. Even if the homeowner later tells the builder what he prefers, the builder is not obligated to provide it within the contracted price.
If the builder has set a flat price for the job, then he has planned a certain portion of that to cover the costs of the project. The remainder will be his own earnings. If the costs are lower, his profit is higher. The lowest bid must have the lowest costs in material and labor. One way for him to keep the costs under control is to compromise on specifications. The low-bid contractor must keep material quality (and therefore costs) as low as the specifications allow. Also, he must hire the cheapest labor available, and then get them to create the product in as few hours as possible.
A truly disreputable builder could cut corners extensively to achieve maximum profit. It would be difficult for most clients to be able to tell what corners were cut. But even a competent, well-intentioned builder may simply choose not to spend more money on a particular specification, because he doesn't see it as important or because it isn't his own preference. What the client wants might not be a factor, if the item in question is not delineated in the contract. Or, if unforseen factors have caused other costs to be unusually high, the builder might find he must reduce quality in order to complete the job profitably, or in order to complete the job at all. Given the choice between going out of business and down-grading the quality of their work, most builders would prefer to stay in business.
Beyond what is stated in the contract, the client has no control over specifications or quality. Now, in theory, one could write an exacting list of materials and an intense description of structural and craft quality. But such a list would hardly attract the low bidder. Also, who would enforce the criteria? Would it be necessary to hire and pay someone to supervise construction? Some architects and designers will perform inspection services to make sure that their design is being faithfully rendered, but even that would not prevent all possible alterations or affect the choice of all materials and techniques. And finally, if the specifications have been violated, what recourse is there (other than to spend money on a lawsuit)?
Construction Methods
How can you know what particular methods will be used by the builder in construction? To become familiar with his work, you can probably visit homes which he has built, and at least see them from the outside. Look at all the construction details you can see. If you are not familiar with construction techniques, try to take someone with you who is knowledgeable.
Cost Planning
More and more builders and designer-builders are adopting a different method of pricing, sometimes called “cost analysis” or “cost planning” or even “value engineering.” (The term cost plus may or may not refer to this system.) In the cost analysis method, the builder goes over his rates and fees for general contracting, administration, and labor, including his price for doing a cost analysis. If the client then decides to order a cost analysis, the builder obtains prices, quotes and estimates from subcontractors and suppliers. He gives quotes for those portions of the project that will be built by his own company. This is all put together into charts and compared with the client's budget. If the project appears to be over-budget, the client alters the specifications of the job or increases the budget. In this way, the builder and the client work together to make the client's expectations and budget meet. With the “cost planning” approach, the builder and the client form a team
