By Katherine Salant
Say architect-designed, custom-built house, and most people see dollar signs and big price tags. The house is large, the finishes lavish, and only the rich and famous, or at least the very well-to-do, can afford one.Not true, say architects who specialize in residential design. In recent interviews, they all concurred: A designed-for-you, custom-built house can be big or small, extravagant or simple - it's all up to the clients. The common characteristic is not cost or size, it's the tailoring. The house is designed for a specific lot, orientation (do the main living spaces face north, south, east or west), views, location of neighboring houses, the size of the household, and the lifestyle of the owners.
Any custom-built house, architect-designed or not, will cost more than a tract-built house of similar size (and even a tract-built house that is considerably larger). And if you hire an architect, you will have to pay him or her a design fee. But, the architects said, an architect-designed, custom-built house can still be an affordable proposition with a modest budget if you can be disciplined and pass up most of those tempting extravagances like a steam-bath feature for the shower in your master bathroom.
Accepting that you can have some of the things on your wish list but not all of them can be hard, the architects acknowledged, especially at the outset when clients always have high expectations and are not very knowledgeable about costs. As Washington, D.C., architect Norman Smith succinctly put it, "They all want $250,000 worth of stuff for $200,000."
It can take some time to absorb the cost of construction (it's always much higher than you think) and get a sense of all the things that can impact seemingly minor design decisions. "A window in or out is not just the cost of the window itself; you must also add in the cost of the framing, painting, trim, installation and overhead. It's not $350, but more like $800," explained Bethesda, Md., architect Jim Rill. And, he added, it can also take some nudging by the architect before clients take this budgetary imperative to heart: "When you get to the bottom line of your budget, if priorities are not paid for, they won't get into the house."
If you can't have everything in your new house, though, what is a sensible way to decide which ones will make your final cut? Washington, D.C., architect David Maudlin advises his clients not to get wedded to specific materials or details until he's worked out a preliminary design and floor plan with them. Once you have a design in hand, he said, the priorities can be obvious. If you end up with a house that is oriented to the rear, "it could be worth it to spend $10,000 on a patio and scale back on the kitchen finishes."
Another strategy that helps with a modest budget is to view the design as a "mini master plan" with work to be done in phases. The first one will be the house you are building now. Subsequent phases are the things you can add over the 10 to 20 years that you will live there. If your budget is really tight and your household is as yet small, for example, you could start with a patio next to your eat-in kitchen that could become a screened in porch and eventually an enclosed family room, sun room or home office.
Another way to decide what to include in Phase One is to start with the big things that are central to the character of the house and harder to add later, such as a $30,000 wrap-around porch. It is more sensible to spend your money there and get modest finishes for the kitchen. For a typical kitchen in a 2,500-square-foot sized house, the cost difference between stock cabinets with plastic laminate counters and custom cabinets with granite counters can be $13,000 to $17,000 or even more.
Planning the work in phases can be tricky, though, because you don't want one room or one part of the house to look noticeably better than another, Rill said. "Since the bedrooms are more separate and you can close the door, a difference in the quality of materials and level of detail will be less noticeable." But if you want wood paneling he would hold off until you can do it everywhere. "If you only do [the paneling] in the library, it will make the rest of the house look cheap, especially in the rooms that flow into one another."
Most residential architects bring in a builder early on to review the design and see if it can be built with your budget. Once you have a basic floor plan, roofline and a preliminary specification list - usually about ¼ of the way through the design process - you have enough to get critical feedback from builders. You may happily discover that you can add the bonus room over the garage or get the hardwood floors. Or, you may have to scale back. But if you can resist the temptation to get more elaborate as you work with your architect to refine the design, your actual construction cost will be close to the price estimate at this point, said Los Angeles architect Gina Moffitt.
To get the actual construction price, architects have traditionally prepared very detailed construction documents and supervised competitive bidding from qualified builders. But many architects, especially when the clients have a tight budget, prefer to hire the builder when they reach the preliminary design review stage and have him monitor the design for costs as it is completed. Though residential architects know prices generally, a builder is in the market every day and knows prices to the dollar. He can provide a constant reality check that will keep the project on track budget-wise. (Hiring the builder to work with the architect during the design phase is called a "negotiated bid.")
Another plus with the builder on board is that he often knows ways to get the effect homeowners want at a lesser cost. He may suggest alternate ways of framing to get the desired volume in the family room or ways of using less expensive, look-alike materials to achieve a desired look.
Another way to cut costs is to do some of the work yourself. When budgets are tight, Moffitt suggests that her clients purchase some of the items themselves, but only those things that aren't needed until the end of the job. This ensures that client purchases won't hold up other trades should there be a problem. Moffitt also limits client purchases to things that the average homeowner can do knowledgeably. For example, she says, "It's rare for a homeowner not to know a good paint job." Other items on her list: kitchen and laundry appliances, carpeting, and plumbing fixtures such as toilets and sinks.
You can also cut costs by using the architect's time efficiently. Most architects charge by the hour and estimate their fees as a percentage of the final construction cost. Since much of the architect's time is spent researching materials and designing what he or she thinks you want, giving as full a description of what you want and bringing "shoeboxes of clippings from magazines" keeps the architect from going off in the wrong direction. An architect can also spend a lot of time researching materials and tracking down product selections, some of which you may not like. Visiting showrooms and doing the legwork yourself will also reduce the architect's billable hours.
Making changes after the architect has completed the construction drawings also runs up the meter. With computer-aided design, clients think the architect can change things with a few clicks of the mouse, but it's much more complicated than that, pointed out Columbia, Md., architect Roxana Sinex. Minor changes have to be cross-referenced on many drawings so adjusting a roof pitch by a few degrees can take several hours.
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