by Alison Moore Smith | Jun 20, 2009 | Design Your Own House, for Home
While reconfiguring the house plans, Sam asked for a complete list of appliances. For some people this is easy, but for me it's been a chore. I've purchased so many rotten appliances in my life — dishwashers that can only clean pre-washed dishes for example — that...
by Alison Moore Smith | Jun 16, 2009 | Design Your Own House, for Home, for Money
On Monday we met with the first builder to come up with a bid for us. To say the least, it was disappointing. The total came in at $804,266. And that's after we bought the lot for $248,000. Seriously. We've built a million dollar home. And this is not it! This house...
by Alison Moore Smith | Jun 2, 2009 | Design Your Own House, for Home
When we built the Eagle Mountain house in 2003, we chose to put fans in most of the less formal main living areas for comfort. Each of the seven bedrooms had a fan, as did the family room and “the canyon.” (This was a three story high area adjacent to the...
by Alison Moore Smith | May 25, 2009 | Design Your Own House, for Home
When we designed our first custom home in 2002, we didn't pay much attention to size. Since we had five acres of land to play with, we had few constraints. The biggest problem we had was getting height approval by the city. We focused, instead, on function. We made...
by Alison Moore Smith | May 15, 2009 | Design Your Own House, for Home, for Money
One of the most stressful parts of home building can be the financing. When you buy an existing home or a home through a large-scale builder, there are few unknowns. In those cases, financing can be just a matter of researching interest rates, filling out an...
by Alison Moore Smith | May 7, 2009 | Design Your Own House, for Home
After considering our construction options, we came to the conclusion that acting as our own contractors isn't in the schedule. We've ruled out using an owner-builder system as they are generally structured. We have been given several references and will be sending...
