Building Your Dream Home, Whose Opinion Matters?
Building a custom home for the first time is an extremely fun but challenging process that takes months to put together, before you actually see the end results. During the process from beginning to end, you will have opinions that are thrown at you that some people believe should be taken as law, from the overall floor plan to paint colors to what type of appliances you should choose. This article will hopefully lead you on the right path to whose opinion matters and whose doesn’t and make a challenging process as fun and rewarding as possible.
Architects or draftsman are great at their jobs. They have great ideas, and know the local building codes, and they have a network of local building contractors that can help with the building process from start to finish. The key to finding a good architect is to make sure that they listen to you and your ideas, and incorporate those ideas into your custom home. If you have an architect that doesn’t listen or keeps telling you that your ideas won’t work, it will make your experience miserable. Therefore, make sure that you are comfortable and that both you and the architect are always communicating.
General contractors are your next choice in the decision process. Finding a contractor to oversee the construction process is vital to building your home. Finding the right contractor compliments your design, ideas as well as the structural know how, makes your home your dream home. When choosing your contractor, keep in mind you are going to be married to him/her for the length of the project. So, make sure that you interview them at length about their work history and try to get some personal details about their life if they are willing to share. Details about their families, hobbies, and other items, it will may make you feel more comfortable in the selection that you’ve made by knowing the type of person that is building your home.
Family and friends can be the greatest help in the designing and building process. They can also be your greatest enemy, un-intentionally of course. Friends and family always want what’s best for you and want your home to be perfect. Unfortunately their designs and ideas are what they think is the perfect choice for you but may not really be what you want. Keep in mind, that your friend’s can be a great resource for ideas. So, therefore listen and research what they tell you, but stay true to what is going to make you happy.
In short, take your time in selecting your architect, and contractor and make sure you can communicate with both of them. Listen to their advice because they have good ideas from their experiences, but it’s your home and it’s what you have worked very hard for, so make it what you want and don’t be to hard on your friends and family they really are only trying to help.
John Radford
