The new way to Design Homestead Buildings

Until now you had two options for planning a new home or outbuilding:

  1. Hire an architect or professional home designer to develop custom plans. If you pick the right person you can get a handsome building that is just right for you and your site. Pick the wrong person and you could end up with an ego statement about the designer that may have little to do with you or your land. This option adds 3% to 15% to the cost of construction. We do this type of work all the time (usually for 3% to 5%).
  2. Look through magazines and stock plan books to find a house or building that's close to what you want. Complete home plans with enough sets for construction and permits might cost you $300 to $600. But this is only the start since you usually have to get local changes and additional drawings done. These are needed to meet local codes, earthquake, wind and snow loads, and to change out materials called for in the plans but not available locally. This can add several hundred dollars to the cost of the plans. (This is assuming you don't start making changes to the plans themselves. If so, your costs can approach the price of a custom design.) Garage and barn plans are less expensive and usually easier to build as a stock plan.
  3. The New Option 3 — Design your own!
    Powerful home design programs have made it possible for the homeowner to do their own floor plans. If you read the marketing blurbs on the boxes for programs like 3D Home Architect, you would think the program can produce plans you can take right down to your building department or give to your builder to start construction. This is overblown marketing BS. These programs have absolutely NO STRUCTURAL information! I'm sure many people have taken plans from these programs in for a building permit only to be laughed back out onto the street.

Using such a program CAN let you design the building you want and save you time and money ONLY if you have the right structural and planning information at the right time. That information is not in the program. What you need is a professional designer to serve as coach and detailer for your design.

With help and support at the right time, people can design and produce professional construction plans for their own buildings.

This is a kit of step by step design tools and a six month consulting service that will help you develop your own set of plans from initial ideas to the permit and construction drawings stage. This is how you turn your ideas into buildable projects.

What do I get?

The initial design kit package costs $295. Here's what you get:

When you've finalized your floorplan and cross section in 3D Home Architect (on your own time schedule), we will put together the structural details necessary for your design and send these to you to be include in your completed plan set. This review and detail phase will be billed separately. A typical set of construction details would cost $200. In complex designs, charges could run more. You will get a fixed price for this work before it is done.

Please note:

Click the e-mail link HERE and I will keep you informed as this project progresses. This is a special limited seating on-line interactive teaching/consulting project. If you are interested, let me know. Let's make that move in '99!

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