When we have someone come into our office, the first question is what level of service they desire. We may be a little bit unusual in that because we have start plans where people can have a much less expensive option. They can come in and look through about a 1000 plans in our office (and we have access to several thousand more) and choose a plan that they like. Then the consumer can go with the plan as it is, and that could cost as little as $500-600. Then they can also take that start plan and customize it. They will take a plan that already exists and add the things they would like. We do quite a bit of that as well where people come in, they find something, then we change it to what they need, and that's a still less expensive option. You will still get a custom home. Then we have other people that come in and they want something completely different. They have a very specific idea or they just would like the special treatment and they want a custom home design. Often times they bring information to us. I tell them that I am a visual person and so the more visual things they bring to me the better. I have had clients in the past tell me a style they wanted. In my perception, what it was is completely different in their perception, so we had to go at it again another time and that's okay. We will always work with someone as long as it takes to get it to what fits. We start with what they are wanting and either we interview them and find out what kind of house they would like or they bring information for us to look at. Often times they have information and we've talked about what they are wanting and they will come back in a week or two. I will come back to them with free hand sketches where I have designed floor plans, elevations, and other things that are critical to what they want for their home. From there, they look it over. Sometimes they need to kind of take it home to look at it and think about it and go over it. They want to see if their furniture fits or different things; often times I have to tweak it and sometimes I have to toss it and start over again. I am trying to get what they would like, so we work hard to get people the best fit for them. Sometimes people come in and they don't know what the best fit is. I will throw ideas at them and they think of things or they see things that they had never thought of before. It's a team effort. We are working with them and I am going to find out what works for them, but then I am going to propose things that maybe they haven't thought of often times, to get the end goal of the best design for them. Once we pass the design process, then I will make sure that they are okay with it. Then we start into a preliminary phase where we start putting my drawings into the AutoCAD and we get them a 50% completed plan hard- lined in AutoCAD. Then they look at that and make sure it's still okay because it changes a little bit from my sketch to when it gets laid out on the computer. Then once they are okay with that, we finish it up with all the details that are required to build the house. We don't go as far as picking colors; we don't do the interior finishes or trim packages. Things like that are extremely time consuming and that's not part of our usual service. We provide the plans that you build the house from: framing plans, cabinet elevations, roof plans, the floor plans, electrical plans, exterior elevations, cross sections, sections that show how stairs go- but not trim details.
