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New Home Design Questions
- I want to have a custom home designed. Where do I start?
- How can I visualize my home from a set of two-dimensional drawings?
- How can I avoid ending up with a design which turns out to be impossible to build on my lot?
- How do you work with clients who have strong ideas of how they want their home designed?
- If you design my home, how would your firm be involved in the building phase of construction?
- I read in a home plan catalog that custom-made plans cost 5% to 15% of construction costs. I’m planning to spend $200,000 to build my house. Would a custom home plan really cost from $10,000 to $30,000?
- Just what does a home designer do?
- We are planning to build a house on a steep river front lot. What questions should we ask our contractor regarding soil, foundation, and erosion?
Answer: Start with the home you imagine. As you confront such practical aspects as land, costs, and choosing a builder, let your own personal vision remain your top priority. Then it will truly be your home.
Get a copy of the our Custom Home Design Guide to help you describe your dreams and organize your ideas, both creative and practical.
Before beginning to actually draw a house, we go through several preparatory phases.
The first phase is Site Research, which may be done either before or after purchasing land. A simple suburban lot might require a very little research, where a challenging site with many legal and physical restrictions would require a great deal. Such restrictions directly affect the design, and it would create extra work to design first and find out about restrictions later.
It would also be very disappointing to end up with a design you loved, only to discover that it could not be built on your site after all.
The next step is to fill out the Peter Asher Designs Custom Home Design Guide. The purpose of this is to focus your thoughts on what you really want and need in a home. Simultaneously, we suggest you collect photos from magazines, friends’ houses, showrooms, home shows, catalogs, newspapers, and any other sources of inspiration. These will illustrate to your designer what you have in mind. “A picture is worth a thousand words.”
Next, meet with your designer to discuss your new home. A good designer will ask you extensive questions about your specifications and desires. Site Research and the Design Guide provide important data, but it is also necessary to talk to your designer, answer his questions, and ask your own. If your designer does not completely understand what you want, he may create a design that does not work for you. Having your plans repeatedly changed and redrafted could add considerable time and expense. A small detail, such as a few inches difference in bathtub dimensions, can sometimes cause a chain reaction, requiring the redesign of the bathroom, adjacent closet, nearby stairway, upstairs bedroom, and so on.
Lastly, it is best to do a Cost Analysis before the plans are finalized. If the estimated costs are too high, sometimes the budget can be increased, but often the design must be altered to fit the budget.
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Answer: People are different. Some have no trouble envisioning their home from plans, for others it is nearly impossible. There are ways your designer can help you.
If you have trouble visualizing the design, try one of these ideas:
- Have a perspective drawing made.
- Have a model built.
- Go to the homesite and use stakes and strings to roughly mock-up the floorplan on the site.
- Post a large copy of the proposed floor plan on your wall. Look at it every day, imagining that you live there. Think about the people in the house and their daily activities. Where would you put furniture and store your belongings? Draw in your furniture. Is there enough room for everything, and can you move around it easily? What noises would you hear from different parts of the house? What views would you see? Are there any problems, such as not enough space, or rooms too far apart or too close together? Imagine the presence of children, pets, visitors, houseguests. Imagine yourself living there twenty years from now. Finally (for resale value), imagine someone else living there.
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Answer: Research the site before beginning the design.
If you use a stock plan, you must take it to a designer or architect to have it adapted to your particular lot. Each lot comes with its own physical and legal limitations.
We have developed a service we call Site Research which may be done either before or after purchase of land. We investigate various aspects of a particular property, including legal, geological, and weather conditions, sun and wind directions, title restrictions such as easements and CC&R's (Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions), topography, soils and vegetation, availability of utilities, road maintenance, fire protection, features shared with neighbors, and so forth. We generally do Site Research before or in conjunction with the early phases of design work.
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Answer: With clients who know their own needs and desires, a good designer will work closely with them to find out what they are trying to accomplish.They may have already found a good solution to a particular problem or desire, but sometimes the designer will be able to find an even better way to achieve their goals.
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Answer: As designer-builders, we specialize in following through on a custom home project from start to finish. When the client uses another builder, we can provide additional services to insure the design is correctly built:
- Providing detailed construction specifications.
- Helping with material and fixture choices.
- Inspecting during the building process to make sure the structure is built as designed.
To prevent corner-cutting and erroneously-learned trade practices from compromising the integrity of the structural design, we produce separate, thoroughly dimensioned floor plans, specifically for framing,
Whether we are building or inspecting the house, the excavation, foundation and framing phases are the most crucial. Peter prefers to meet with framers before they are hired, to make sure they will use framing techniques which are correct for the structural design, and to make sure they know the structure is to be built as designed. Much of the structural success of the remainder of the house depends on these first phases. While this early supervision and inspection is the most important, Peter can also inspect the job during the later phases.
We can also set up rigorous specifications for your builder before you go to contract. We like to do this by communicating in detail with him about his preferred building techniques and those of the sub-contractors he likes to use.
In addition, we can help with your many, many choices regarding materials and fixtures. We provide checklists and research to help you make these selections, and then write up your choices in a format which is easy for the builder to use as a reference.
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Answer: Custom design rates vary widely between different architects and designers, and for different types of construction, from as little as $1 per square foot to as high as 20% of construction costs. The highest plan fees are charged by registered Architects who have studied the design of everything from small residences to massive high rise structures. They are licensed to certify many aspects of construction not used for private homes. On the other extreme, there are draftsmen who will draw a plan to order, usually a one-of-a-kind floor plan rendered in a conventional look-alike style. "Custom" does not necessarily mean "best." Despite the fact that design ability can somewhat be taught, the best work is the result of a combination of talent and experience. A designer should be chosen because of the successful results of his work.
Our rates are based on the square footage of your house and the elaborateness of the design, but usually our design fees come to 3% to 4% of the construction costs.
To purchase a set of stock plans and have them modified to suit your building site, local codes and personal needs, could cost anything from $1000 to $3000, sometimes more, for a 2000 square foot house. A comparable custom design from Peter Asher Designs might cost $4000 to $6000. So, while using a stock plan does usually cost less than a custom plan, the savings could be as little as 50¢ per square foot.
In almost all cases, for less than you would spend on upgraded flooring or custom cabinets, you could have a one-of-a-kind Peter Asher home plan instead of a stock plan. Not only would your home be unique, but it would be designed exactly to suit you and your site.
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Answer: Turns dreams into reality!
When I have a design problem or idea, I sketch and draft and dream and then, after many hours figuratively biting my pencil, I finally show it to Peter, our chief designer, and tell him what I am trying to accomplish. He always has ideas of how to solve the problems I’ve been chewing on.
When we start to work with new design clients, there's a lot of sketching, describing, and waving hands in the air. We've also developed some questionnaires for the purpose of bringing out the clients’ needs, wants, goals and ideas. We have brainstorming sessions with them.
Once Peter has a good idea what they want, and has studied the site and the legal and physical restrictions, he spends a lot of time staring into space, muttering, and sketching. At some point he starts drafting, and eventually there is a preliminary floor plan. Then we either meet with the clients in person, or fax the drawings and discuss it on the phone. Refining that first floor plan is a very important step. We like to allow ample time for it so the clients can get used to it, imagine they live there, and see where alterations are needed. Peter refines the floor plan until he has a layout satisfactory to the clients.
Next, he works on the roof lines, which define the exterior shape of the building and the interior shapes of the rooms. In conventional houses, with flat ceilings, the roof lines really only determine the exterior shape. One of the things that makes a Peter Asher design is that the insides of the rooms have exciting ceiling angles.
If a client cannot visualize the shape of the house from elevations, we might go on to a model, a perspective drawing, or a 3-D rendering in a CAD program.
Once we have a shape that the clients like, the basic design is complete. Peter then draws the plot plan and the design section (a view of a slice through the house).
Before he draws the framing plans, or as part of that process, he must work out the load paths, since the weight of the roof must eventually be supported by the ground. These paths can be very complex in this type of design. Sometimes he must make alterations in the roof lines as he calculates these load paths.
Answer: Ask an engineer your questions, not your contractor.
You have identified some crucial data for the longevity of your house. Do not depend on a contractor to have sufficient knowledge of soils and foundation methods for an erosion-prone site. He may know a lot, but that is not his specialty. I suggest that you have a good talk with a city or county Planner. You may find that a geological or engineering report is required. If an official report is not required, consider obtaining an on-site consultation from a geological engineer anyway. If the foundation is later designed by an engineer, make sure the contractor builds it exactly to the engineering specifications, perhaps by hiring the engineer to make site inspections.
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