Pre-construction meetings - Article from HGTV Pro

The following article from HGTV Pro illustrates how important it is to have good basic ideas about what you want before building. My advice would be to determine budget first, then decide what you can do for that amount of money. If it isn't in your budget don't do it. If you begin to veer off of your budget you will be under more stress and have to sacrifice something later.

To ensure that the homebuilding process goes smoothly, it's important that both the homebuilder and buyer understand each other's expectations and responsibilities before construction starts. A lack of understanding can result in construction delays and eventually an unhappy customer.
Builders expect their customers to understand the rules for building homes — what can and can't be done. The customers need to know that within those rules there are times when they'll need to make decisions. If the customers do their work on time, the builders can do their work on time. The result is a quality home that's delivered on time — the way everyone envisioned it.
For the builder and the buyer to reach a mutual understanding, it's important for them to sit down and discuss each other's expectations. The best practice is for the builder and the homeowner to have pre-construction meetings.
These early meetings will range from the very start with the sales representative, through the point where they choose their styles and colors, to a pre-construction meeting with the construction superintendent that goes through, again, what the process will be in terms of homebuilding. This way, the customer understands the process. And if you communicate with them on a weekly basis, there are fewer surprises. Historically, construction began as soon as building plans were drawn up. However, the work flow was interrupted every time the homeowner had to make a decision. As a result, homes rarely finished on schedule, and customers were often unhappy.
By making decisions in advance, the work flow is fluid from start to finish. Customers understand what can and can't be done in the building process, and their expectations are more realistic — thus ensuring a better overall experience.

HGTV Pro website article - wall panels

Article available at www.hgtvpro.com. When given the choice of using manufactured roof trusses or building the roof on site, most builders would agree that trusses save them time, money, and headaches during the homebuilding process.
But for some reason, builders don't think what's good for the roof is good for the rest of the home.
Pre-fabricated wall panels have all the same time- and cost-saving benefits as roof trusses, yet in today's market, only the most progressive builders take advantage of the technology.
Pre-fabricated wall panels are factory-built units produced in an indoor environment. Builders provide the construction details of the home to the factory where the building plans are fed into a computer program that designs the wall panels for the home's specific needs. Manufacturers are able to cut, nail, and screw the units together in a quality-controlled environment that creates a stronger, more durable wall structure. Pre-fabricated wall panels also tend to be dimensionally more accurate since they are made with higher quality lumber from a large inventory of material the factory has its disposal.
After the wall units are built, they're labeled for assembly and shipped directly to the job site. When the builder is ready to install the wall panels, they simply follow the installation and assembly procedures defined by the factory specifications.
Traditional wall framing construction relies on the trade contractors to assemble all the pieces on the job site while the home is being built. Though the builder can usually inspect the process to ensure a high quality home, making sure each wall unit is built according to the plans and in a consistent manner can be difficult and time consuming. Bad weather, scheduling conflicts, construction errors, and maintaining a qualified labor force can all lead to work delays or expensive re-builds.
Besides quality issues, there are other drawbacks to the conventional wall framing method. Because the trade contractors need raw lumber on the job site to frame the home, the builder is more susceptible to theft. Traditional wall framing also produces large amounts of jobsite waste which adds to the costs of building the home by increasing clean-up and disposal fees.
Like roof trusses, pre-fabricated wall panels can provide builders with a chance to gain a competitive edge, higher profit margins, and faster cycle times for construction. What's good for the roof, is also good for the rest of the home.

Ready for delivery

All of our foundation work has been completed. We are approaching Christmas so we have a delay in getting our house package delivered. We are scheduled for January 15th and 16th for delivery of our wall and roof system. We will have the windows already installed in the walls but chose to construct our floor system locally. We had the option of purchasing our exterior doors and having them delivered but chose a local option on that as well. Our lot required a crawl space and cost a little more than I anticipated because of the slope. We will have 5-6 steps up to our front porch where I thought there would probably be 3-4. Concrete and block are more expensive these days than you might imagine!
At this point we are shopping siding, shutters, brick, shingles, garage door, and thinking of how our interior stairway should look.

No handyman

If you know me you know I am no handyman. Until recently I cringed at the idea of hanging a picture. Seems our walls never had any studs behind them. I did learn though that if you want to save yourself alot of money it pays to pick up some skills and there are lots of opportunities to make that happen.
When we decided to build a house we also decided to turn some of our expense and learning into an income building idea.

Some jobs should be left to an experienced professional but you can learn to do just about anything. Learning to do a flooring job or painting or insulation will save me thousands. If you can't figure out how to the hands-on aspect of a job then you need an expert. That is where a builder consultant comes in handy. We sent out letters to contractors in the area and used a website called www.servicemagic.com. It didn't take a week before I had good candidates for a builder consultant along with potential business partners for building a future line of business. For our building needs, Ray Phillips turned out to be the right man for the job. Ray has been working in this area for 30 years and seems to know everyone. On top of that he is a hard working honest guy. Sometimes I think he is as excited as we are. As we move through the construction process Ray and I are working together to try and build a flow of business with our family's house being a model to work from.

Building it yourself

When our family moved from Florida to Tennessee we imagined big savings on buying land and a home. Come to find out many others have had the same dreams! East Tennessee is a growing area with lots of homes being built and of course prices were higher than expected. We couldn't find "the right home" to buy so building started to sound attractive. The problem with building was the cost per square foot in the neighborhoods we liked along with the cost of land. Turns out a mountain view is popular :)

By chance we happened on a well- developed but not yet well known idea. The idea of building your home yourself isn't new but employing the use of a "system" to make the job easier, faster, and more cost efficient is a growing area of the market.

After researching companies in the construction industry we found Eagles Nest Homes in Canton, Ga. Eagles Nest uses a building concept called "panelized" construction. Panelized construction means the framed walls are built in panels in an indoor computer precise factory method and shipped to you on site. You erect the walls and roof on a proper foundation and in about 7-14 days have a home locked down or "dried-in" with doors and windows. At that point you would be ready for plumbing, electric, dry-wall, shingles, etc. Check out www.eaglesnesthomes.com and see that the company offers numerous house plans but you can also have any custom plan built that you like. We invested in becoming independent reps with Eagle's Nest Homes and are building a business around the savings an owner/builder can experience compared to their local market. Ask me how to get started on building your home for up to 25% below appraisal value.