How to get the most for your money...

Most people have a limited budget to use in creating their new dream home. Often the dream exceeds the budget. We can help you find ways to make the dream and the budget coincide.

We use a process called Value Engineering to help you design and build your new home and keep it within your budget. In this process we consider both the original cost and the long term maintenance cost of the home. First we analyze your dream home wish list and your lifestyle to help prioritize your new home needs and desires and then focus on the things that are most important to you. We then create a design concept based on this analysis and then check it against your budget to see if the plan is financially feasible.

If the plan is feasible, we then get down to the "nitty Gritty" of the designing and maximizing the value of your new home. We figure out how to get the things that you want in your new home in the minimum number of square feet. New home cost is based on the amount of square footage in the home and how it is finished. Square footage provides the basis for the cost of the home and finishes such as wood, ceramic flooring, and fancy trim can alter that basic cost a great deal. If we start withthe minimum and there is money left over in your budget, you can always use it to expand a particular high priority area of the home or add additional amenities that are on your list.

Somtimes, people have a square footage stuck in their mind based on homes they have seen and don't realize those homes have a lot of wasted space built into them. Most of the time we can show you ways to get everything that you want into your new home and do it in less square footage, thus saving you money fot other things.

Somtimes, people have an image in their mind of the look that they would like to have in their new home that is based on another design. This other design could be very expensive to build. We pride ourselves in going the extra distance to show our customers how to achieve the same look or effect in a more cost effective manner. For example, a large impressive living room may be high on their priority list because this room is a major focal point of their lifestyle, thus the tendency would eb to increase the square footage of this room. If the extra space is actually needed this is fine, however, if it is just being done to create an effect, there may be more cost effective way to create that effect. We might consider vaulting the ceilings or opening up the room with additional windows. We could also combine spaces to increase the overall feeling of space throughout the home.

Often people see finish treatment that really appeals to them and want to incorporate it into their new home. It may be an expensive exterior finish like stone. Because stone is so beautiful, they will want to finish the entire front of their home with it. When they get the home finished, they discover that they have spent a tremendous amount of money to build a house that looks like a big pile of stone. If they would have mixed the stone with other, more cost effective exterior finishes, they would not have only saved money, but would have enhanced the effect of the stone and made it more striking.

There are a hundred things to consider which cannot all be covered here. The following is a short list of things to consider and think about when designing your new home:

     Where do you spend most of your time when you are home? This defines the most important
     area of your home.

     What time of day are you at home? This has a big impact on the design of your home. Some
    homes look great and feel great in the day time and are dreary and depressing at night.

     Do you have special needs or is there a possibility that you may have someone with special needs
    living with you in the future? It is more economical to build these features into a home initially 
    than to go back and remodel at a later date.

     How much time will you have to maintain your home? Low maintenance features such as
    windows, exterior finishes, Flooring, and interior paint, shuold be considered initially in the
    design of your home.