When setting out to construct your dream home, it’s good to work with builders who are transparent about their processes and the steps it takes to properly build a custom home, from laying the foundation to installing the final finishes.
We start with an initial consultation with prospective home buyers, followed by the vision meeting, where we discuss the styles you love and the designs you are inspired by. This will enable us to make the conceptual drawings for your house for you to begin to see your dream take shape on paper. After pre-construction, which will involve making land improvements and getting permits, we can break ground on building your home. Once construction commences, you will have multiple in-person walkthroughs to approve the progress that’s being made and meet with our vendors to discuss your final selections for things like lighting and trim.
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Our Steps in Planning and Building Custom Homes
Each custom home builder has its own process to take home buyers from start to finish. Let’s go step by step through Blythe Custom Home’s general process so you can get a feel for what to expect if you would like to build your own custom home with us in the beautiful Midlands of South Carolina.
The Initial Consultation
Our process begins with an initial consultation where we get to know each other. During this meeting, we will discuss the goals of your project and answer any questions about our design and construction process you may have. We will determine if Blythe Custom Homes is a good fit for your project, and if it is, we will work together to establish a target budget to build a house for you.
We give our home buyers a notebook to help them stay organized so they can keep track of their paperwork and decisions. We also discuss the budget upfront. We want to stay within the target budget. If home buyers decide later that they want to do something different that adds to the total build cost, they are welcome to. But this is a decision the individual home buyer makes to go above the target budget without any pressure from us.
We are honest about the cost of change orders and what to expect cost-wise if a home buyer does decide to make changes during the process.
We also provide a contact sheet with all the vendors and subcontractors for home buyers so that they can get in touch with anyone they may need to, if necessary.
The Vision Meeting
This is the fun stuff. We go through a 5-page questionnaire to help us understand your vision, style, wants, and needs. We look at homes you’ve found online, pictures of features you love, and discuss anything else that helps us meet your goals during the home-building process.
We provide a color selection sheet that helps buyers keep their decisions organized and helps them see everything in the color scheme of the entire house as a whole. This is especially helpful when a neighborhood only allows certain colors.
We provide a schedule and timeline for certain key decisions. Most builders expect home buyers to make all decisions before any building begins. But we understand that people may need some more time. Certain decisions do have to be made early, but other ones can wait a bit, like hardware selections.
Getting House Plans and Design
We can help you design your dream home, or we can use established plans you have already drawn up. Custom home designs are an additional cost to be factored into the budget. There are three steps in our home plan design process: conceptual drawings, hardline concepts, and construction plans.
Conceptual drawings are the basic preliminary floor plan designs and elevation sketches to convey the overall intent and flow of the house. You’ll see where each room is in relation to one another, its size, and the basic information.
Once conceptual drawings are approved, we develop real dimensions and elevations for a hardline concept plan. Seeing your home plans on paper can give you a real feel for what your home will be like after it is built, enabling you to better assess the initial selections you’ve indicated to see if they pan out as intended.
Finally, the construction plans include a fully dimensioned floor plan and elevation along with a foundation plan and electric plan.
Confirming Specifications and Building Costs
During this phase, we determine the allowance for each portion of the build – a lighting allowance, a plumbing allowance, and so on. We decide how to frame the house and how the foundation will be constructed. We create and discuss detailed specifications and a budget that outlines all of the aspects of construction, so you know what to expect entering into it.
Realistically, it’s difficult to make all decisions at this point, and we understand that. We are experienced in our field and can adapt as we go along, but the more that is decided during this phase, the smoother the process will go. If pre-construction decisions cannot be made, we can help determine accurate allowances for you with our quality vendors and trades.
Pre-Construction
During pre-construction, we schedule a meeting with you at your home site to discuss the placement of the house and its orientation and to conduct a land evaluation (to determine which trees need to be taken down and other prepping). We also prepare a plot plan to help you visualize your future home on the property.
At this time, home buyers ask any questions they may have before construction begins. It’s much easier to make changes at this point than it is after the building starts.
Construction
During construction, we have multiple walkthroughs with you. Additionally, you will meet with our experienced team of subcontractors and vendors to discuss cabinets, paint, plumbing, lighting, and many more selections. You will meet with our team as many times as necessary throughout the process to finalize selections and allow you to make decisions you are satisfied with on the features that are important to you.
Once we have completed construction, we do a final walkthrough to inspect your new home. You can address any concerns or problems you may see. We tie up the loose ends so that your new home is completely ready for your family to move in.
Move-In Day
This is the moment you have been waiting for! All the months of planning and the fruit of all of your decisions finally pay off. After the final inspection and paperwork, you get to experience the joy of moving into your new dream home and enjoying every moment of it.
We trust that the rewards of this building process will continue for many years to come. And we hope you will take as much pride in your home as we do. We want your new home to be the perfect fit for your family and we know that, if you are satisfied with a job well done, you will share your experience with Blythe Custom Homes with your family and friends. We are so thankful for the word-of-mouth recommendations our customers give to others.
The Technical Process of Building a Custom Home
Within the general overview of our process for building custom homes, there are many technical aspects that require significant experience. For example, the initial stages of land preparation are some of the most crucial in construction, particularly if the site is not suitable for building. Home buyers will likely have to obtain permits, which could factor into the total budget for the build. While the day-to-day construction work is for Blythe Custom Homes to handle exclusively, we will keep you updated as necessary and invite you for regular walkthroughs.
Land Preparation
Before we can begin construction, we must ensure the land is suitable to build on. This generally requires us to make land improvements, which could entail excavation, leveling the land, removing trees and other landscaping, and even enriching the soil to improve its stability. Many of our clients wish to beautify the exterior of their homes just as they do the interiors, including outdoor dining and kitchen areas, expansive pools, and other features in their yards, and we will factor these into land preparation as well. Most importantly, land preparation will enable us to prepare a flat building pad for the foundation according to the home’s plans. When assessing the land, we may identify areas to fortify to prevent erosion and plan and create access points for the building site.
Obtaining Permits
Also before building, we must confirm that the property is properly zoned for its intended purpose and obtain the appropriate permits to build. Residential building permits for new construction may be obtainable within several days or weeks, provided all necessary documents and information are provided. To get a building permit for your new home, you will need detailed house plans, which is why we spend time ensuring that the major elements of your home are up to your standards early on in our process. Homeowners generally need all required permits before they break ground on any construction work, and we can help with this process to avoid unnecessary delays.
Developing a Target Budget
Generally, clients have an estimate of their target budgets before approaching Blythe Custom Homes. They may even have existing plans they have developed previously, with an indication of the cost based on the general size. However, much goes into developing a target budget that we can clarify in the early stages of the process. For example, after discussing your vision with you and identifying possible selections you might prefer, we can consider the cost of materials, including permitting fees, and assess the cost of land preparation. When we get the specifications and building costs for your new home build, we will confirm that it is still within your target budget. At this point, we can make allowances for the future, such as for lighting or hardware decisions you might make during later walkthroughs of the site with our vendors. If you have yet to purchase the lot you plan to build on, your target budget for the build might dictate whether or not you buy the land outright or get a loan. This could also affect financing for your construction project, which we provide in certain situations. (We recommend that you have your lot before we begin the building process. But check with us if you need help finding the lot you need.)
Daily Construction
The daily construction work done on your property will make up much of the process. When your home is still an active construction site, you will still have regularly scheduled walkthroughs to see its progress and confirm your decisions. For example, after the foundation is laid and the house is framed, we’ll plan a visit. During this time, you can survey the site and address any concerns you might have, particularly things that have to be decided at that point in time, like the mechanical placements.
We will invite you for additional walkthroughs as construction turns into adding in the finishes, like cabinetry and trim, to make sure the specifications you selected previously are still in line with your wants. Implementing BuilderTrend into client relationships enables us to keep them updated on daily construction through the app, and we can clarify any confusing technical aspects of the building process to ease questions or concerns that might arise.
Build Your New House with Blythe Custom Homes
Schedule a consultation with Blythe Custom Homes to discuss building your new home and get started today.
