Seven Steps to House Construction: What You Must Know About The Design Process

When it comes to adding on to your house or building a new one, the greatest enemy you have is ignorance. Here are the first four of seven critical things you must know about the design process:

1.      You meet with the Architect or designer you have chosen and communicate the three big priorities to them: What you want, When you want it, and How Much you want to pay for it. Because you have completed the ‘Realize Your Dream’ section (See the previous post), you are able to clearly communicate to him the vision you have for your work. The architect will then be able to tell you by way of a generalized rough cost analysis if your project is feasible or not, and how you would need to change it to bring it back into the realm of possibilities. If you would like to see a rough 'not to exceed' Architectural Estimate Calculator, check out our link here.

2.      If generally determined to be feasible, the Architect will then get to work on the creation of the plans for your house or addition. He will do this by first of all creating a master list of the rooms that you want to change, the changes you want to make, and specific requirements for each room. This master list is called the Architectural Program. You may find out more about it here.

3.      If you do not have pre-existing plans of your house, the architect will need to complete them; often, this process of completing ‘as-built’ drawings is an ‘additional service’ which documents every relevant item that can be seen or accessed. These drawings then serve as the basis for the completion of the design work that will come afterward.

4.      The architect will check out the zoning and any special requirements that your lot may have imposed on it from city, county, state or federal agencies. At this point, there will be either major or minor surprises. These surprises may include the realization that you can’t complete the project in the way you wanted because you have to maintain a certain perimeter of yard space around your house. Your expansion options are thus limited, unless you want to challenge the ordinance. This process can become long and involved and thereby cost much money, but it is possible to get ordinances overturned so that you may be able to accomplish what you want to accomplish.

We will finish the remaining four phases in our next post.