House number 2 (or actually house number 3, but we won't talk about the first one). We decided to stick with Debie's SunPlans designs. I wanted something quite a bit smaller, as I figure we could go with smaller bedrooms (how much time do you really spend in there), but my wife is used to much bigger bedrooms. We decided to go with something in between. I have to admit, I might have suggested the 1400 sqft house for the "shock and awe" factor, but I think it would work. There would be some culture shock, but it would work. I grew up with 3 siblings in a house about that size. We just spent alot of time outside. She also insists on a basement, which I like, but question the bang for the buck. Don't get me wrong, I want one, I just don't want to pay for one. Given the plague of storms and tornadoes that have swept through the southeast, I lost that battle.
I really liked tower in the Windy Corner, but it didn't have enough bedrooms. We liked the layout of the Fairy Tale, but I needed a bit more character. Since you can alter plans if you purchase the copyright release, we decided to do that and purchased the Windy Corner plans. We'll meld the two plans together and call it what? The Windy Tale or the Fairy Tale Corner?
We had decided to go back to Rhonda at Southland Custom Homes in Dawsonville, because she was such a joy to work with. They have the most transparent pricing model with near realtime pricing on most things that are considered "normal". Rhonda is a real asset to the company. With her price book, you can immediately know what that extra item will cost you. This makes it easier to decide just what to add, and what you can live without. If it's not in the price book, she's happy to get a quote from their vendors. She even entertained some of our "wild" ideas, like geothermal HVAC, SuperiorWalls for the basement, those "special" high SHGC windows, and installing a custom masonry heater like the ones from HeatKit.com. Not that these are wild ideas, but they are definitely not the norm.
Basically, with Southland Custom Homes, you can pick one of their many homes and tweak it to suit your needs. They have pricing published online, which let's you get a feel for how much it could cost to build your home. This is great, because we didn't find alot of websites that showed you actual pricing. There are things that are not included in that sticker price (basement, stone, brick, and fireplace), but those are clearly stated. Site prep is another thing that can be quite pricey, depending on how much "prep" your lot needs (sewer or septic, water or well, electricity, gas, clearing trees, permits, driveway, etc...), but Rhonda went over all of this during our initial meeting. You can get a pretty close estimate after a few hours with Rhonda, if you need to tweak the design to suit your needs (after all, making changes is what makes it your own).
After you've decided you are ready to take the plung, you sign a drafting agreement with Southland Custom Homes and pay them a fee for their time to draft the changes and do a more formal estimation. Let's say you have your own plan or you like one from another site, not a problem. They will purchase the necessary copyrights or formally draft the one that you've hand drawn. Alan took our purchased plan and incorporated all of our changes into it. He had to tweak a few things to account for structural concerns about spans, but the first pass was pretty much what we asked for. Of course, after we got it back and reviewed it with Rhonda, we saw some changes that needed to be made for increased functionality. It's all part of the process.
More to follow, I'm being called to dinner.
