There’s nothing quite like designing your dream home, watching the ideas you’ve carried around in your head for so long taking physical shape. However, there are a few pitfalls you should watch out for and features you should consider as you move ahead with this project.
Pad Your Budget
Renovations are notorious for going over budget, and this is true if you are building your house from the ground up as well. No matter how carefully you plan, you will most likely encounter some unexpected expenses along the way. Make room in your budget for miscellaneous costs so that these are easily dealt with instead of major sources of stress. Also look ahead to your future homes value and think about home remodeling ideas that increase equity. Since you are starting from scratch you have a blank slate to make choices today that will benefit your bank account tomorrow. After spending so much money to build your dream home, it is essential to protect it with insurance for home owners. Damage to the interior or exterior can occur unexpectedly at any time.
Give Your Architect Visuals
If you’re working closely with an architect, provide them with lots of visuals so they can get an idea of the look you’re after. The more you give them, the better they will be able to come up with a design that reflects your wishes. It’s not a bad idea to make an empowering vision board and spend some time collecting photos of rooms and houses that you like. There are online sites that will help you facilitate this, and having a lot of photos can help an architect get a sense of the range of your taste. There are also free tools you can use to create buildings online. Your architect might not be able to exactly recreate your ideas in reality, but they can get close.
Consider a Lift
If you are building a home that has more than one floor, a stunning and useful architectural feature you could include is a lift. These look great as part of a house, and they are also convenient for older adults or anyone who has mobility problems. If you or a family member are aging, a wonderful domestic lift can make it possible to stay in the home and move about freely.
Think Storage and Maintenance
Two big potential errors are not including enough storage space and not thinking about how difficult it might be to clean and maintain some spaces. For the former, think about creative, built-in solutions that give you a lot of storage space throughout the house. As for maintenance and cleaning, things like light fixtures in high ceilings can make both of those things difficult. That doesn’t mean that you should abandon high ceilings if you love them, but you should think about strategies that could make cleaning easier.
Consider Your Furniture
Another thing to think about is how well your existing furniture will fit into the home both in terms of size and design. Consider as well whether there are areas that it will be difficult to move furniture in and out of because of tight corners, stairs or some similar combination of potential obstacles. If your design means that you’re going to need to buy mostly new furniture, be sure to budget for that. You may want to talk to an interior designer as well as your architect about what type of furniture would complement your other choices.
