3 Tips for Building a House

We built our first house in 2018. Although we had lived in a house previously, it wasn’t a new build. To be completely honest, I enjoyed 100% of the building process. At times it was a little stressful and overwhelming, but we worked with a great team, and I loved picking out every single thing myself.

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With that being said, there are SO many components to building a house. I thought I knew a decent amount about houses before we built, because I’ve always loved real estate and probably spend too much time looking at different houses for fun. But, I had never even thought about so many of the decisions we had to make.

There are definitely a lot of different approaches builders take in their process. I’ve heard stories from friends and family who built a house and their experience was completely different from ours. For our development and our builder, there was a floor plan picked for our particular lot. We loved the floor plan from the get-go. There were certain things built into our plan and a certain included budget for different pieces of the build (for example, a lighting budget). Any changes that we made to the plan would be an extra cost (or a lower cost in some cases!) and we would need to approve that change order.

It would be so nice to have every single decision that needed to be made from the beginning so that we could pick and choose what we wanted to do based on budget and other factors, but that’s not always how it works. In order to keep the build moving, decisions often need to be made quickly. For example, we wanted to add a tongue and groove ceiling to our front porches and this was one of the first decisions we actually had to make. It wasn’t until a few months later that we started looking at interior trim options. If we had known the cost of all of these things at the same time, I might have considered adding crown molding in our upstairs and increasing the height of the wainscoting in our dining room instead of adding the tongue and groove outside (see my dining room reveal here!).

Today, I’m sharing my top 3 tips for building a house (with a builder not by yourself!). These are pretty broad tips – I could definitely give tips (or just my thoughts anyways lol) on all of the little things, but I figured I start with these!

1. Review the Building Plans Thoroughly // Pretty much the first step for us was approving the building plan. We had walked a house with the same floor plan and we loved pretty much everything about it. However, at the time we walked it, we didn’t know that the owners had changed some things, like vaulting ceilings, which were things that made us fall in love with it. So, we had to decide if there were any of those changes that we also wanted to make. Although we love the layout of our house, there are definitely some things we would have considered changing, but just didn’t think to do it at the very beginning of the build. For example, our walk in closet is at the front of our house and our master bedroom is at the back, but we have a lake in front of the house (the other house we walked with the same floor plan didn’t have the lake view). So, it probably would have made sense to flip the closet/bathroom/bedroom layout so that we had the best view from our bedroom. Also fairly early on in the process is reviewing the electric plans. Take your time with both the structural and electric plans! It is super difficult to change these things once they are built!
2. Stick to Your Guns // In general, your builder shouldn’t try to push you one way or another – it is always your decision! But, our builder and designer generally had great suggestions and we relied on them for a lot of things. If there is something that is really important to you or that you feel strongly about, you should go for it. You will be the one living there! I had seen some pictures of a herringbone backsplash that I absolutely loved. Generally herringbone backsplashes run horizontally, but I wanted ours to be vertical. Although this wasn’t something our builder/designer ever did, I really pushed for it and it turned out amazing!
3. Consider Landscaping Early in the Process // I truly believe that landscaping makes or breaks a house (within reason of course!). Landscaping makes a huge difference with your first impression. The house could be absolutely beautiful inside, but if the landscaping is a mess, you will have a negative view of it to start! Window placement, neighboring houses, building plans, etc. all play into landscaping. If there is any particular type of landscaping you want to do, and hardscaping, like a patio, you should consider that while building the house. Landscaping is generally towards the end but it could affect your other decisions. We are just finishing installing a pool now and if we had decided we were going to do the pool earlier we could have saved ourselves a lot of hassle!

And a 4th just for fun // Don’t be afraid to speak up // If you are unhappy with anything, don’t be afraid to ask what can be done about it! Worst case scenario – nothing can be changed – but at least you asked! Building is a long process that is time consuming, usually expensive, and you should get everything you want! We had shelves put in our butler’s panty that I wasn’t 100% thrilled with but I definitely could have lived with them. I didn’t want to make a big deal about them because they were already a change we had made to the plan. During our final walkthrough, our project manager asked what I thought about them and I responded honestly, but he said yeah, I don’t think they’re quite right. A few weeks later we had new shelves that matched the rest of our house so much better!