House Plans – What do I need to know?

We are Fry Design Company and we are: Inspiring future owners of custom designed & built homes to understand and appreciate the value of home design.

Answer this question; you have finally decided to design and build your first custom home. With all that excitement flowing through your veins, ask yourself, should the plans (blueprints) that I purchase to build my house be just the bare minimum or should they be complete and comprehensive?

I’ve never come across anyone who has answered this question with “just the bare minimum please!” Why? Well, of course this is a house. My house! I expect my plans are complete, comprehensive, and free of errors. Right?

Maybe you are asking yourself, aren’t ALL blueprints complete and comprehensive? Well?

Sadly, the answer is, “No.” In fact, most house plans that you buy off the internet, order from a designer’s plan book or get from your home builder are dreadfully incomplete and quite frankly, just the bare minimum. In fact if you will read all the disclaimers on house plan websites they will tell you that these plans are the minimum required to obtain a building permit and may in fact need supplemental information just to get a building permit!

Now, don’t get me wrong, there are many wonderfully designed houses and good sets of blueprints available on the internet and from your local designer, but the overwhelming majority are nothing more than the bare minimum.

So how do you know whether you are getting a complete set of plans? It can be very hard to tell as most people don’t know what all information it required to successfully build a home. Moreover, many builders who receive a complete and comprehensive set of plans will immediately push back stating that this much detail is either overkill, will cost you more money to build, or both!  Excuse me…what did you say?  Giving the builder more information on what to build is going to cost more? Does it cost more money to get instructions on how to assemble your child’s Christmas bike?

I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard a builder actually say that.

There are a few issues to unpack as it relates to a bare minimum set of plans versus a complete and comprehensive set of plans. So let’s start pulling the wool off our eyes….

First, let’s look at what you get when you purchase a set of plans off the Internet. I’ll go to a popular website,  www.houseplans.com . I’m going to search for a 4 bed, 3 bath home around 2,500 SF. OK, I’ve got it. It’s plan number 17-2682. A nice traditional brick home that I could see in almost any neighborhood. The website says I can buy this plan “starting at $1,100.00” Right off the bat, if you’re going to purchase plans you have options:

1.     Select your Plan Set Options
2.     Select Foundation Options
3.     Select Framing Options

Wait a minute. I just want to buy some house plans! Aren’t the plans “complete and comprehensive” for the $1,100.00?

No.

In small letters you see “What’s included?”, and you think, Ah ha! This will clear things up! So you click on it and you see a full page describing what you get:  (paraphrasing)

·       Foundation plan: Most plans are available with a slab or crawlspace foundation.
·       Floor plans: Each home plan includes the floor plan showing dimensional locations of walls, doors, and windows as well as a schematic electrical layout.
·       Elevations that describe finished materials of the house.
·       Cross section views are available for an additional fee.
·       Kitchen and bath elevations.
·       Miscellaneous details
·       Roof overview plan.



This might sound like an impressive set of documents, but in all honesty rarely have we seen kitchen and bath elevations, and additional details whatsoever, nor any useful cross sections. Also, you are probably not very familiar with what exactly these different plans actually are and if they are or aren’t important! So, you trust the internet, trust your builder and you make the best guesses you can on the options you need to select and you buy your plans off the internet. Just to cut to the chase here, at a minimum you’ll need 5 sets of the plans with the non-editable PDF file, so there’s $1,450, but if you wanted 2x6 exterior walls, add $300, flip the drawing so the garage is on the right side, add $200, add a lighting layout $100, add roof framing details for $150, add wind bracing design $250, add RES Check Energy Certificate (required at most building departments) $200. So if you needed these options or some, your $1,100 house plan just jumped to well over $2,000.00.   Wait….I want to “tweak” a couple of things! I don’t really like the master bathroom layout and the kitchen is way too small! You mean I can’t make changes?  Yes, you can, but of course that will cost more.

And so it goes, and to be honest, this is still the fun part of the process! Remember, you’re excited to get started! Yet, you’re all alone in this making these decisions and feeling like you should know more than you do, but not wanting anyone to know how overwhelmed you are.

The saddest thing to this whole scenario folks is that even going through this and arriving at a set of plans to build your house, the plans are still not complete and comprehensive. Yes, there is certainly more information, more detail and more instructions, but there’s really nothing within those documents that is “custom” to you, the owner.

I’m going to leave you hanging a bit and show you a better way in my next blog post, so if you’re in the midst of this very situation and can’t wait until next week, please contact us right away for a personal consultation to show you how you can be certain that your dream home is designed and documented fully, completely, comprehensively and accurately!  #designmatters

https://www.frydesignco.com/

Inspiring future owners of custom designed & built homes to understand and appreciate the value of home design.

Throughout my 30+ year career, my over-arching goal has been to deliver the perfect design solution to each client’s own specific, challenging, and personal building needs. Much of that has been in commercial building design to include office buildings, schools, and churches, but nowhere does it really affect the human condition as much as working with one family on one home. Their home. And I have learned that nowhere is design more important than when given the gift of designing a family’s new home.

Most people rule out hiring a design professional to design their home due to industry misconceptions that it is cost prohibitive, too time consuming or the belief that we “over design”, meaning we are incapable of designing to a budget. All of these are gross over-statements if not pure myths about design.

I argue the opposite as a matter of fact. I argue that good design is much more cost effective, saves time and virtually eliminates buyer’s remorse. I cannot speak for every design office, but those are the goals we set forth with every design commission we receive. Our thoughtful process to learn everything we can about the homeowner; their needs, aspirations, dreams, and desires leads our design process to fully deliver a design solution that meets those objectives as well as budget and schedule. We, as designers, have the same access to cost and scheduling information; therefore, it is an integral part of our design process. That is the essence of good design and this is exactly why #designmatters!

This introduction to our practice is meant as much to introduce who we are as it is to encourage those of you who are considering a custom home in the future to call upon us as a resource to learn as much as you can about the custom home industry so that your future project is a success. Here we will seek to educate, encourage, and inspire you along your individual journey. We also hope you will follow the journeys of many of our clients and learn from their experiences and challenges. But most of all we hope that you will learn and appreciate the value of design. We hope that you will understand fully what good design is and be more aware of poor design and how it can cost you time, money, and frustration.

A custom home designed just for you should be one of those crown jewels of your life. It should be as unique as you yourself. It should fit your needs perfectly today as it would in twenty years. It should be your refuge, your comfort, your place of peace. Achieving all of this is why #designmatters is so very important. https://www.frydesignco.com/

Welcome To Fry Design

Hello and welcome to the Blogger page for Fry Design Company. Our main purpose is to educate the community on the advantages of design-led custom home building and to equip homeowners with the knowledge and information to Build their Custom Home with Confidence. We welcome interaction, dialog and of course, sharing our page with your Friends, Family and Co-Workers!