Everyone sets out in life to accomplish certain goals and achievements.  When this house is complete, it will be another feather in my life's cap to be able to design and build it.  Paying for it is a whole other story.

The first stage of building a custom home is the design process.  This seems simple and mundane, but this is really exciting and fun.  If you are considering building a home and want a custom designed home, I can't encourage you enough to start this process much earlier than you would ever anticipate.  The only prerequisite, is you need the land, or you'll have to find land that the house will fit on.  This process can easily take 2 years.  The benefit of a well thought out design is that it will allow you to re think and change what may at first seem perfect.  Having everything in place is essential to have an accurate bid.  An incomplete design will only lead to frustration about the cost of your build down the line.

We set out to design a home that fit our "needs" and dreams.   I wanted a media room, a bigger fish tank, an exercise room and a cassita.  Our parents are not getting any younger and we may need a living quarters from them in the near future.  Tammy wanted a utility room that doubled as a craft room; or she wanted a craft room with utility functions.  I also wanted a house that had a huge amount of entertaining potential with an indoor out door feel. 

We have just about completed the design phase (14 months later), and we are in the process of actually picking out material for the house.  This is a DAUNTING task!  I'm sure lucky to have a wonderful wife that has almost 100% equivalent tastes to mine and is able to perform the bulk of the work load on this.  Having a designer is also a must.  This seems like money that may be wasted, but in fact is well spent.

We are hoping to break ground in July.