Best advice if you have built your own home

What kind of questions do you have?

Add USB plugs to all of your outlets.

Create a roomy enough foyer for guests to enter your home, remove shoes, etc.

Your laundry room can NEVER be big enough.

Outlets, outlets, outlets

Get the best quality flooring you can possibly get.

If you have room, make the garage extra deep so that you can park your cars and still have room to walk around, store things, etc.


What kind of house are you building? Ranch? Do you have acreage? More information from you will help get more information from us. I've built several homes, and remodeled several more, from little homes to 6,000 SF homes.

I'm no help as I'm almost, kinda, maybe in the same boat. We're just starting to toss around the idea of possibly building and it's very overwhelming. Dh and I have different ideas of what we like, he prefers country w/ a wrap around porch and I prefer craftsman style. We sorta agree on size though he leans more towards smaller and I would have a mansion if funds allowed. The lot we're looking at is 10 acres, so space is virtually limitless.....budget is not.

Anyhow, back to your regularly scheduled posting, I was just adding my semi-related unhelpful two cents to say I understand being overwhelmed and I'm not even to the point you are yet

Don't make decisions based on what glossy magazines/websites say you should do. Think about your actual lifestyle--actually walk through an ordinary day in your mind and think about what would make it work better.

An example might be open shelving in a kitchen. Very trendy, looks great, but difficult to maintain if everyone in the house is not a neat freak. I personally can't stand my kitchen counters to be cluttered with a bunch of stuff (e.g. a Kitchenaid mixer left out) so I have enough storage to keep stuff put away. But in retrospect, those suckers are heavy so I would have assigned it a spot in an elevated place where I didn't have to bend down to get it out.

The splurge vs save issue. Again, should be very particular to your lifestyle. We put a jacuzzi tub in our master bath at great expense because we thought all master baths had to have tubs and would help with resale value waaaay down the road. We are not bath people and this tub has been used maybe 10 times--an expensive stupid dust collector. Put money into what's important to you. If you're debating between two options to stay on budget, put money into things that would be difficult to do at a later time or really need the expertise of a pro, and postpone\DIY the other.

Wall to wall carpet is gross...

put laundry next to bedrooms.. less hauling.

My best advice is to choose the right builder for you. Visit some homes each of your perspective builders did and talk to the homeowners. Find out how happy they were with the process. Did they like the subcontractors? Did things happen on time? there will always be delays but you want someone who knows how to manage them. How accessible is the builder? Do they take your calls or does it take forever to call you back?

Splurge on:
- Kitchen cabinets
- Flooring, especially tile
- Tile in the bathrooms
- A porch for the area facing the west setting sun
- Bigger than recommended central AC unit
- Loop for water softener (if needed in your area)
- Third car garage/bay
- Sprinkler system
- Kitchen oven range hood exhaust that leads outside
- Two springs on the garage door versus a single spring
- A mud room

Lots of good advice here, so I'll just add as an aside that you should watch the old movie, "Mr Blandings builds his dream house".

I have not built a house unfortunately but have done some remodels. A trash (and recycling) pullout cabinet is amazing if you have the cabinet room.

Also, adding on to what someone else said..laundry room near master.

Sounds exciting!

Central vac ROCKS! I'll never have a house without it!

In addition to what others have said about outlets....

On demand water heaters are awesome. We've had ours since we built in 2004 and have had NO problems with it. It's a Noritz brand.

I love having tile throughout the house. We have ONLY tile in the whole house (2600 sq ft) AND did the huge covered back porch in the same so it's a seamless transition. We did 20x20 tiles so they're really big. We did the same tile in the bathrooms on the counters and in the master shower and as the backsplash in the kitchen.

Granite counter tops are great. I will never have anything but.

Oversized garage is necessary for us. We can put our boat in the garage and still have room to get around it. 3 car garage and we have 2 cars, a 23 foot Sanger boat and a motorcycle. Still have room to work at the workbench that is along the back wall.

We have a Nana Wall between the living room and the back porch. This allows us to open up the wall completely to have seamless indoor/outdoor living. It's 4 panels and makes an opening 8' tall by 12' wide. When we were designing (designed and built ourselves) DH wanted 2 Anderson French doors. I told him I wanted fully open. He said that if I could find it, we would put it in. Well, I found it and got it. It was a tiny bit more than the 2 doors would have run us.

Oh!!!! Soundproof bedroom walls. The wall between our master bedroom and the living room is soundproofed. It's amazing! I can go in there and shut the door and it's dead silent! The TV is on the wall between the 2 rooms.

Counter in the laundry room and space to hang dry clothes. BIG utility sink too!

Pot filler over the stove.

Ceiling fans.

Surround sound wiring.

Keyless garage entry. We use this quite a bit when we are going to be gone or people need to get into the house and we're not home.

I LOVE designing and building houses. When DH and I first met, we built houses together during the summer and I taught during the school year. Now, we have 2 kiddos and haven't built together since 2008. He's built a few houses in there but he primarily stays home with the kids.

Yes!  Full extend pull put shelves and drawers!