Chapter 3 - Using an Architect

You have a vision for your new home.  You know what the outside will look like and what type floor plan will work for your family.  In your mind, you can see the country kitchen and almost smell the homey scents of bread baking.  The great room you picture is a gathering place for friends and family.  Your elegant master suite will be your haven for rest and relaxation after a hard day's work.  And the hot tub, let's not forget the hot tub, soaking under the stars with a glass of chardonnay.  Your paradise.  Your oasis.

How do you make this happen at a price you can afford?

Most people would say you begin with an architect to draw up the plans. That's fine if you've got an unlimited budget.  

Having an architect draw plans for a custom house is the most expensive, most time consuming and most frustrating way of coming up with plans for your new home.  It's an old way of thinking that will take a huge bite out of your budget and is, frankly, a waste of your hard earned money.

Over the years, we've used two architects.  One for the renovation of a partially completed apartment and one for the new house we built.  Both architects had excellent reputations and did come up with good plans but, in the end, their designs were useless to us.  A lot of money and a lot of time wasted.

We had given both architects budgets for the projects and our ideas.  We sketched drawings plus had them visit the sites. 

The apartment was in a barn and we weren't sure about the safety of the structure so we thought it was prudent to hire an architect.  The plan he came up with totally gutted the space, moved existing support beams adding, instead, new supporting structures.  He closed off charming, existing wall windows to bring in light and air through the ceiling.  I could go on and on.  It was gorgeous and belonged in a magazine but it wasn't anywhere near the parameters we gave him. 

His plan was four times over our budget and he admitted he thought it might be more.  He told us it was impossible to finish the apartment with the budget we gave him.  We were shocked.  He offered to re-do the plans - but for what?  We'd only have to pay him more and there was no guarantee he'd do any better.  He couldn't have ignored our plans - they were very complete.  We figured he must have lost them and tried to wing it.

You can't return an architect's plans.  You can only pay him more to change them or cut your losses.  We live in a small town so we paid his HUGE bill to keep the peace and chalked it up to a lesson learned. 

We eventually hired a builder whose engineer drew the plans we needed to finish the apartment our way.  There was no charge and the job came in under our budget.

Our second dealing with an architect came when we built our new house.  We thought we were wiser from our first experience but it turned out to be a similar and a waste of money.

We had, again, given him our detailed drawings and we had several meetings to discuss preliminary plans yet, when we went to pick up the final drawing for the house (before he made the working copies for the builder), it was totally different from what we had sketched and discussed.  We were flabbergasted.  Don't these guys LISTEN?  It's almost like they want to draw their own designs even though they say they want your in put. 

But this time we called him on it.  In the beginning, we discussed fees and agreed on a firm price for the job instead of an open, hourly rate.  Oh sure, he'd rather of had an hourly rate but an hourly rate is impossible.  How would you ever know what to expect to pay?

He re-did the plans and everything seemed fine until we got into the building stage.  We learned (much later!) that the plans were very incomplete.  They looked complete to us but what was missing was only something  an experienced builder would know.   But now we know and we'll share it with you later.