Hello everyone! We’re 35 weeks pregnant, and our builder reached out just in time with our dream house initial estimate! I’m so excited that we can finally give an update on our home build journey! This is just the beginning of all the fun stuff I’ll have to share about our home, and I can’t wait to get further into the process and see everything come together!
Now, if you’re doing a custom home, you’ll understand how hard it is to figure out how much money your dreams and ideas are going to cost. When we started down this path, we had an idea of what we were hoping to spend.. then we decided we could go up another 20%.. then we started following Dave Ramsey and learned we most certainly should not unless we also increased our down payment LOL. Which after waiting longer than we thought to get started on our build and sticking with our dedicated savings plan, we were able to do but still preferred our original number (not +20% !). Well, let’s just say I’m glad we (happily) came to terms with waiting on the finished basement because without it, our estimate came back 14% higher than what we’d originally wanted to spend. We knew that this was more of a target to aim for than something that was realistic, so given that we came in pretty close to it, we’re happy with what all we’re getting for the price!
Going over the estimate, there were a mix of items called out as included (some with the brand/style specified) and items like countertops/cabinets/flooring that just had allowances. I was a little worried seeing the allowances because while they seemed like healthy amounts, I know I have a taste for the finer things when it comes to home design, so were they based off the standard options or what I had in mind? That was definitely something we noted and when we reviewed with the builder, I was so happy to hear that they did take into consideration what we liked and for example, the cabinetry was quoted from CKF using the Summit door style and colors I had referenced. This alone was a great relief!
Below, I’ve included a project picture of the Summit door style from CKF.
Now a big potential budget breaker was regarding the deck off of our bedroom. This was estimated as a wood deck, with nothing underneath. We noticed this meant that the additional square footage we requested to the basement footprint must’ve been left out by mistake, and that could substantially increase our budget. When we met with the builder, we were pleased that they were onboard with what we were thinking for a primary patio, which is best described by a picture such as this:
In our case, this would be a smaller patio of 20’x6.5′, covered, and would be above a bedroom in our walkout basement versus above a garage. If we didn’t want the missing square footage in the basement for a fourth bedroom, we would’ve been just fine with a deck. However, as a soon to be family of five with plans to have more babies in the future, extra bedrooms were a top priority.
As far as numbers go, the builder didn’t seem too concerned about how this would affect the estimated price of the build. Before our meeting, I had taken the current price per square foot (total construction cost/main floor square footage) and determined our absolute worst case scenario by multiplying it by the additional basement footprint, but the builder assured me it wouldn’t be that expensive. The basement walls don’t actually change, they just flip from being an inside corner to squaring off, so no increase there! We’ll of course have more concrete for the basement floor and additional floor trusses to support the upper patio, but the builder’s main concern was making sure that part of the basement wouldn’t leak with its ‘roof’ exposed to the elements. He’s got a few ideas, but he wants to make sure he picks the best option over good/great, so this is likely where we’ll see the majority of the increased cost. Overall, I felt so much better once we got this question out of the way!
On the topic of increasing price, I did request smooth walls versus orange peel texture. For this, I got some (well placed) hesitation around flaws/shadows being more apparent, but I knew I would regret it if we didn’t push on it. I grew up with a dad that drywalled our house and smoothed the walls to perfection all by himself, so I know it’s doable. Plus, having smooth walls would put us in a good position to do wall treatments in the future. The jury’s out on how much this would increase cost, I was expecting around $5k, but the builder made it seem like it might be more of a cookies/beer bribe for the drywall/paint guys than an additional cost in the estimate!
I also requested that the trim height be raised from 3 1/4″ to about 5 1/4″, which is more standard for 9′ ceilings (per my research). We have teeny tiny baseboards in this house (where we have baseboards – the house is primarily carpeted!), and I’m not a big fan of the look in our house. This was estimated to cost about $1-2k more, primarily because we have a lot of square footage to cover on our main floor.
The final item that we thought may increase cost was the herringbone lay in the primary bath. Overall, the concern appears to be more around finding an LVP that comes in herringbone and will match whichever main (straight lay) LVP we choose. It makes sense in hindsight, but they can’t just click the flooring in diagonally if it wasn’t manufactured to do that. So there’s really no additional cost here as long as they’re able to find one we like! Worst case scenario, we just go with a standard flooring lay instead of herringbone.
Now the fun part, things that bring the cost down. The biggest change we made was actually Brandon’s idea! I would’ve never thought of this on my own, but he suggested we put a gas line in the office but wait to do that fireplace since it only affects one room. It’d be a very easy fireplace to do later since we were planning on framing it out from the office wall anyway versus having it built into an existing wall. This would not only slash our fireplace cost in half (about $15k was quote for two fireplaces), but we’d be able to get the fireplace material we want down the road instead of putting something in that’s more temporary. Even though we were planning on doing a fluted marble tile here, that was still more of a step in the right direction versus the statement I would make if I had endless dollars. For the fireplace in the living room, I believe the estimate was done with more standard materials, so we’ll likely pivot from the marble tile we had picked out and do something more simple like a black porcelain tile and black wood/MDF surround. These fireplace changes may come close to covering our additional cost for that basement square footage!
Another cost effective decision we made was to keep casement windows in a few key areas (where we didn’t want a slider obstructing the view), but otherwise using sliders. We have sliders in our existing house, and they still slide well after being installed in the 70s! For us, we didn’t feel strong enough one way or the other to not make this a cost based decision, though some say that casement windows are more energy efficient.
We were also able to remove the tiled kitchen backsplash cost from our estimate because we’ll be using the laminate backsplash that matches our perimeter countertops. Lockers/bench were included in the mudroom, but we cut that out since we get by ‘fine’ today. (Fine in quotes because the coat hooks don’t get used as often as we’d like and shoes usually end up right in front of the door!).
Another substantial budget drop was with our bathroom shower. Ugh, you know we had our hearts set on marble tile in there. However, we were already fine with going the onyx countertop route for our primary bath vanity for now, so we opened our eyes to the idea of an onyx shower, too. Our goal is to not go above the initial estimate we were given (which was technically over our original budget), so we decided this was one place where we’d be picking a highly rated cost effective solution in the meantime and getting what we want later after we tackle more important things like getting the basement finished so the boys can have their own rooms again and guests can have a place to stay. What also made us fine with this decision was the fact that our builder hadn’t worked with marble much, and although we fully trust them, some of our marble dreams may be best to wait on just so we can get someone who’s already experienced with the material.
For the shower, we’d still be able to keep our two glass top pony walls with a hinged door (similar to this example), as well as a bench.
The main cost savings we’d have with this shower system is less expense around water proofing, especially for the shower floor (per the builder). I’m thinking this could be a great example of where we could go with something simple (like this white subway tile look or possibly the full panel walls) and then see if we can add some marble pencil trim around the border and/or possibly a marble ledge for the top of the pony walls? The builder said we can mix and match where we have tile vs. onyx in the shower, so this will just be something we work with their designer on!
Finally, the drywall niches! The entry way niche will be almost exactly as I want after some back and forth on what I was thinking (and why LOL), as well as demonstrating with my Sketchup render! We’ll be able to have the sconces inset in the niche and do our shelf surface! I’m still TBD on the material, onyx was brought up by the builder, but here I’d even question if we should just build our own surface with laminate/contact paper as our own side project. For the primary bath niches, I originally wanted three on each side as separate dry wall cavities (the top being arched). The builder suggested we do one drywall niche with shelves inside of it, which isn’t exactly what I was going for look wise. However, they also weren’t too keen on arching the tops, so it may make sense to just have the open space and then add in drywalled and framed shelves, an arched top, and cut marble shelf ledges ourselves as a little weekend project sometime, too.
As much as I would love to have every little detail jam packed into our house right from the get-go, as Brandon says, ‘we need to wait for the money to catch up to us’ (LOL). Also, every detail is another thing to manage, so I want to make sure I have all my focus on what needs to be done right at build time (floor plan, flooring, windows, wall texture, etc) and pick more standard options for other things that are easier to update later on if we aren’t happy. Plus at a certain point, these custom details just delay the build and us being able to move in/stop paying interest only payments for construction.
Overall, we had a great time meeting with the builder. Homework for us is to send my updated basement render (which I can finally share now that the main floor footprint is finalized!), so they know where to place bedroom windows and plumbing rough ins. Also, we learned that the central placement of our stairs in the basement will require us to locate the water heater and furnace in a less ideal location than the initial draft showed. I think we can make it work, but it will disrupt the flow we had planned for the common area of the basement. In addition to that, we need to also follow up on a painted vs stained door casing/jam question. As for the builder, they’ll send off all the tweaks and revisions we’ve made on the draft and estimate so elevations/renders can be drawn and the estimate updated. It’ll be interesting to see how the numbers change after our meeting yesterday. Honestly, I could see it staying roughly the same or otherwise slightly heading in either direction. Once we get the estimate, renders, and elevations back, I believe we’ll work through the contract phase which is where we’ll need to do the sign off with city/bank. Then hole in the ground!
It’s been SUCH a long time coming, but I’m glad that we never once stopped working hard on both our design and savings for the dream house. All the prework we did is starting to pay off, and we finally believe that we’re building this year! In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if our yard was torn up in April!
Thanks for reading!
Davien
fluted wood & marble 
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