It appears AR readership was not sufficiently impressed with my horror story, so I have realized that I need to share the white-knuckled truth about something that happens all around us and can create so much anguish and pain... but is rarely reported.
Oh the horrors!! The consternation!! The wringing of hands!! The nightly sweats!! The arguments, the compromises, the waiting -- oh the endless waiting. And wondering...
What exactly are we talking about here!??
Oh yes, this is one of the most fraught ridden endeavors a human being must undergo: the design of a custom house. 
Why is this such a tough thing to do? What hidden issues are at stake? Why do people simply refuse to go through this process and rather spend months looking for the best compromise -- a house previously occupied by another human being?? Yeechh.
Why do that if you can get a NEW unhaunted house that is completely clean, under better warranties, without blemish, and is uniquely YOURS??
Oh, let me count the reasons why designing and building a new house is a horror -- a total impossibility for so many who may dream to go the hidden path...
1. Failure to plan in time: think two or three years out to get it done right. If you have to move right away then you must buy a USED house. Tch tch. If you rush a custom house you will sow what you reap: bad decisions, inability to comprehend the results of your actions, potential lawsuits, divorce, and much much more!~
2. Failure to agree with a spouse: one of you likes tomatoes, the other bananas. Oh well, you will find a nice brick house with Palladian windows somewhere without any crown molding and with a flat roof built in the 50s. If you don't agree on style or size or location -- you are doomed. Actually, one house I recently completed is 'Mediterranean' on the outside and 'French' on the inside!
3. Failure to visualize space or understand how to 'read' it on a two-dimensional drawing. This may be the most difficult aspect of starting from scratch. Most of us don't look at floor plans yet those pesky architects keep shoving them in front of our noses!! This is the only real effective method we can use to organize rooms and activities that will fit properly and be oriented correctly to scale on your property. People who plan to design a house from scratch need to study floor plans intently. For starters: find a house online or in a magazine that you think you would like to build and then take out a tape measure and compare the rooms illustrated with your current house. Go to show houses and write on the floor plan brochures to note sizes of rooms.
What starts as a 2-dimensional idea very quickly turns into a 3D reality. Floor to ceiling heights also important. Do you like 9 ft. or 12 ft. How about two story spaces? You have to be familiar with scaled drawings of houses in order to properly evaluate what you are being shown. Architects can sketch things out in a perspective as well to get a feeling of the space. When everything is on a computer (the design of everything on the walls, floor, and ceiling -- including the colors and materials and furniture) then you can have a photorealistic rendering created. But not before all items are decided upon. A conundrum indeed. What if your decisions do not 'show' properly in the end?? Oh Noooooo!!
4. Budget does not match your Dream House -- if you plan to build 5,000 SF but have only $300,000 to spend or borrow then in most areas you will be disappointed. The basic walls, slab, and roof of any house are pretty much a fixed number. Your interiors can skew the budget up or down 30% or more. There is $3/SF ceramic tile and then there is $20/SF Italian marble. A kitchen can be had for $75,000 or $150,000 depending on the quality of the cabinets, countertops, and appliances. Suggestion: visit new homes for sale in your area and note the size and cost. Subtract the value of the land and you will know what a particular house cost to design, build, finance over 1 -2 years and then market. You will spend a little less yourself.
5. Unrealistic expectations. Very often we want many many rooms, spaces, and activities with most of them facing a view. And all on the first floor. You cannot create an economical design that way and if you are looking to have a period style box on box rectangle then you have to have rooms on the second floor as well. Sometimes two-story spaces on the first floor will help.
If you have developed a sketch on graph paper and it scales to 6,000 SF but you have forgotten to include some closets, wide enough halls, space for air handlers, have incorrectly sized your bathrooms, etc. and hand it to an architect to scale out, you may end up with a real design at 6,800 - 7,200 SF which also includes the thickness of the interior and perimeter walls!
While there is the notion of 'cheap square footage' this can only be used as a negotiating chip with a contractor if the house is sufficiently large. For example, you work out the perfect floor plan at 4,100 SF but it can be oh so more perfect at 5,000 SF. Sure, the number of cabinets, windows, doors, light fixtures, etc. are nearly the same. And in this case the extra 900 SF should be merely the elbow room that you cut out initially -- and that extra amount should be less expensive per SF to add back in. But on a smaller house, this is tougher to negotiate. (I will write separately on this)
6. More unrealistic expectations: You have created the perfect design with your architect but have seen another house style in the meanwhile that you like better. Sometimes the cosmetics of the exterior can be managed but not always especially if changing from a contemporary to traditional house or vice versa. There may be a lot of redesign at this point. Are you going to build an impregnable house to withstand hurricane forces? Great. Want something all concrete with storm shutters? OK. Concrete floors and ceilings? Check. Guess what? The weight of this albatross will require heavy foundation work and if you are on the edge of the water most likely will also need expensive pilings. Your house now costs 40% more to make it immune to hurricanes but is now unaffordable.
7. The overall largest setback in creating a house from scratch is that you have no idea exactly how it is going to turn out, how it will 'live'. This is a well-founded fear. You are taking a leap of faith. You are one of the few, the daring, the unknowing... How will you know that what you start from a blank sheet of paper will be a great design for you and your family? Will the space flow, will the rooms work together, are they properly sized, is the house too small or too large, and will you be able to sell it if not?? AND WHAT HAVE YOU LEFT OUT???!!
If you have disagreements with a spouse about the new luxury car you would like to purchase -- in terms of brand, color and appointments -- a custom home may not be the best idea.
7. The number of decisions you have to make is unending... you must decide: the style of the house, number and types of rooms required and their approximate sizes, the maximum allowable livable area to be built, the quality of all materials: doors/windows/roof/cabinets/countertops/plumbing and light fixtures/flooring, etc., the decorative theme of each room - colors, moldings, door handles, paneling, fabrics, accessories, furniture, the design of your kitchen backsplash and tile in all bathrooms, the style and size of knobs on all cabinets, the pulls and quality of drawers, etc. and you have to determine your maximum budget...
All these fears are more easily overcome if you seek professionals who know what they are doing and have designed countless houses in the past, who show an eagerness to work together, who understand your vision and are confident they can provide you with a spectacular house in the end. Here is a quick video summary:
Consulting with a real estate agent along the way is also a great idea, especially to verify if what you build will be attractive to others should you decide to sell sometime in the future...
Well. What is the upside??
1. When you take the time and effort to make improvements on a piece of land, the separate items -- hard and soft costs -- do not simply add up to a single expense and that is it. No, you have created something much more valuable than simply putting the pieces together. The overall costs have resulted in a valuable piece of real estate that should be worth several factors more than your base investment.
2. You will have created something of which very few people can boast of doing. There is a great satisfaction to know that YOU did it. And such a house may end up being a heritage investment for your family.
3. Every day you live in that house you will be reminded of all the effort, time and expense that it entailed. You will be SATISFIED that you overcame many hurdles, that you kept the faith, that what is there works specifically for you and your family. You will realize at the end that it was WORTH IT.
BONUS BITS OF TERROR!!
- You've saved a lot of money on architectural fees and your commercial architect relative is willing to design your house for a charity fee. You end up with the ugliest house in the neighborhood.
- The interest on your loan continues and...The weather is bad for three months and nothing can be built on site.
- The interest on your construction loan continues and...The contractor cannot find subs to finish the house due to a booming economy.
- The interest on your loan is ticking upwards and the Review Board in your gated community is still not satisfied with the design of the house, picking at it endlessly.
- The wood framing and plywood on the roof is halfway installed and it starts raining for two weeks and the wood is water soaked.
- Three quarters finished and a massive crack appears in the slab due to settlement.
- The marble and other items you ordered from China are 5 months late.
- The contractor has a family emergency and cannot attend to the house for 5 months.
- You've told your architect exactly what you want but 6 months later after constant revisions, you fire him and start over.
- The contractor underbid your house and cannot finish. He went on for months robbing Peter to pay Paul and he finally pooped out.
- Two years after you've moved in, the faux slate roofing is starting to fall apart and a lawsuit is started to recover funds and get a new roof built.
- Two years after you've moved in a crack develops across the entire marbled foyer. It is determined that the structural engineer designed a slab under the minimal requirements by code and did not put in any extra steel or intermediate footers to tie in the 30-foot distance between the double curving stairs.
- Halfway under construction, YOU file bankruptcy due to a business failure.
- When the slab is poured you go out to the site and determine the house feels too small.
- As the house is ready for appliances the installer claims that your top loading dryer's door won't stay open because it is too close to the underside of the secondary stair.
- After three years the sheetrock on your house starts dissolving and is found hazardous as it was purchased from China at a competitive rate.
- The lot you purchased in your new subdivision was filled in with unstable dirt and soil and your house is cracking from one end to the other.
- You want a myriad of rooms and spaces but have a limit on the size of the house and strict budget. You instruct your architect to create a warren of rooms despite the fact that all will be too small in the end. You continue to argue with your spouse as the house goes under construction. The first contractor is fired and a second hired. Finally, the strain on your marriage is too much and you file for divorce. The huge investment sitting in the ground goes unfinished and while the court case continues it remains unattended. The divorce is granted but funds to divvy up the estate are locked into the house that is unfinished. Months go by and there is no buyer because the plan is unattractive. The gated community takes matters into its own hands and condemns the house. Front page news in your paper a couple of months later shows an aerial view of your house getting demo'd.
- Your neighbor claims after 6 months under construction that the right side of the house is 2 feet over your setback. They demand reparations.
- You decided to build 2 feet over the maximum allowed height and after the roof was framed in the local inspectors caught the egregious mistake and made you saw that 2 feet off.
- Halfway through construction, you decide to buy a house down the street that has everything you've always wanted...
- Your structurally overdesigned house is getting bid while you are on a two-month vacation (you want to survive a Cat 5 hurricane on the edge of the Intracoastal); you've always promised your wife a new extravagant house but are relieved that the bids have come in so high that you don't have to build now. So you don't pay your structural engineer or architect. You even specified stainless steel nails and screws throughout to make sure!
- You accepted the low bid from a contractor who seemed reliable but had little experience and you ended up with a little house of horrors.
- You thought you would go tech-savvy and superinsulate the house and working with the contractor you decide to caulk between every stick of wood on the perimeter wall of your $6 million house and install vapor barrier on both sides, leaving it sit like that for 8 months in the steamy Florida summer before getting dried in. 6 months after finish and move in you find out that moisture was trapped between the vapor barriers and the wood started to rot. Not only that but termites smelled the wood rot and began to devour the wood. Water infiltration was also detected at every single window that was built and installed by a local manufacturer. Which added to the wood rot and termite feast. Fortunately, you sold it to a sucker before it completely fell apart.
- You are telling your architect one thing, your spouse wants it a different way, your interior designer has an agenda, your relatives are on your side, and your Realtor thinks you are going in the wrong direction. Your architect, after 9 months of going back and forth with constant changes, loses his mind and fires everybody. He goes to Tahiti for R&R, unable to go any more extra miles...
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THE END
Please understand: The majority of custom home projects turn out great, everyone is pleased, and there are few glitches. Considering the fact that such an involved process requires months of planning and execution with multiple suppliers, trades, and scheduling -- without ever building a prototype and testing it, as in automobile manufacturing -- the custom home is a testament to ingenuity, planning, and coordination.
If you'd like to create a house from scratch and have the vision, stamina, a stable marriage, a great location, an adequate budget, realistic expectations, happy and agreeable friends and relatives, the ability to make logical decisions, the time to interview and select qualified professionals, the willingness to be flexible, the patience to meet unexpected setbacks, and finally the will to go where no human normally ventures and create something unique that will make you proud, pleased, and answer all your lifestyle requirements.... then please contact me.
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