Homebuilding Tips

Spring is the time of year when homeowners get the urge to freshen up the look of their home. As the weather warms up, it’s natural to want to do a deep clean, get rid of some of the clutter, and maybe even spice up the look of your home. Luckily, each of these tasks is relatively cheap and easy—and there’s nothing like a fresh coat of paint to completely change the feeling of a home!

It is fascinating to watch how paint color trends evolve over the years. Just like fashion and home design, our collective tastes gradually change, and it can be fun to incorporate a new color into your home. You might be surprised how a fresh palette in your living room or kitchen, throughout your bathroom, or on your home’s exterior can make the house feel brand new.

Let’s take a look at some of the top paint color trends for 2018:

There’s no denying that people love their pets—and can you blame them? Dogs, cats, fish, birds, lizards, and the many creatures in between have the power to bring joy and companionship to any home. It’s no wonder we often treat our furry friends like people. In fact, Americans spend nearly $70 billion a year on their pets.

But you don’t have to be extravagant to show your pets that you love them. With a few simple DIY tricks, you can make your home a lot more pet friendly.

Here, we highlight some of the top DIY custom home features to try for your furry (or feathery) friends:

Year after year, our customers continue to be drawn to homes with spacious, open floor plans. Another important feature is split bedrooms, where the master suite and the other bedrooms are located across the home from each other, providing family members and guests plenty of privacy and quiet.

The Oswego floor plan ticks both of these boxes, which is just one reason it has become a top-selling home. The 1,952-square-foot open-concept, ranch-style home offers three bedrooms and two baths, plus a den and an extended garage with a workshop. The Oswego is a great choice for growing families, because it has plenty of space, but it’s also popular with smaller families and singles who love to entertain—and its one-story design makes it attractive to empty nesters and multi-generational families who prioritize functionality.

We’re sure you’ll love the Oswego as much as we do. Join us as we take a room-by-room tour of this popular floor plan:

Over the last several weeks, we've focused on every task that you and your builder will need to accomplish in order to make your dream of a custom home come true. Stage seven is when it all comes together—when you wrap up the building process and move into your brand-new custom home.

This step begins when construction of your home is nearly complete and you can see the finish line, but the process isn’t quite over. There are still several important steps you must take in order to ensure everything in the home is complete for move-in day.

These include:

By the time you get to the construction phase of building your new custom home, you’ve already gone through a lot of steps. When most people envision building a new home, they see construction vehicles, crews, and materials on their site. However, these are just a few of many components of the homebuilding process.

Before the Superintendent can begin work, you must finalize your budget, make decisions about the floor plan, submit permits, and coordinate the site development work. Once you’ve done all this, then what? The good news is that the construction crew does most of the work from this point on, but there are a few items you still need to pay attention to.

At this point in the process, you are well on your way to building a new custom home. Even though you haven’t broken ground yet, important steps have been checked off the list. You still have a few more to get through before you see activity on the site, but every task that is completed brings you closer to move-in day. 

After you have completed the contract for your new house with Adair Homes, the next couple of months will involve a lot of planning. Before construction can begin, the drawings must be completed, the PreConstruction meeting must happen, and permits must be submitted. In addition, a visit to the local jurisdiction is key to your PreConstruction success. While you are probably eager to see work start happening on your site, these are important steps towards building your house that help ensure construction goes as smoothly as possible.

As you’ve seen in our previous site development blogs, the custom homebuilding process involves a series of important steps that get you ever closer to your dream home. In our last blog, we discussed one of the most exciting stages, Stage 3, where the buyer gets to decide on a floorplan, make customizations, and select finishes, such as flooring and countertops. Making these choices helps to make your new house a home and is one of the biggest joys of going the custom homebuilding route.

But Stage 4 is just as important to the overall process. During this time, you’ll work with your builder to complete the contract for your new home. This is the stage that kicks off the actual construction process—and it’s a pivotal point for a homebuyer.

Let’s take a closer look at what Stage 4 entails, as well as your responsibilities during this time.

Purchasing a home is a significant milestone in life, and sometimes it can be a stressful process. It’s no wonder that so many customers assume that building a custom home is even more chaotic. In actuality, we have the process down to a science and make it easy by breaking it down into manageable stages.

As we explored in our last blog, Stages 1 and 2 involve getting your financial information in order, determining your budget, completing your pre qualification paperwork, and working with the construction superintendent to evaluate your land. Now, you’re ready to move on to the actual design of your home—which, for many homebuyers, is the best part of the custom home building process.

Here we break down the next steps of building a house so you know what to expect:

After you have received prequalification for financing, you and your construction Superintendent will schedule a site visit to evaluate your land. When building a new home, a site evaluation produces two important pieces of information. First, Adair Homes will provide you with options of where on your land it is possible to build a home. Second, the conditions of the land will inform the estimated costs for site development.

With this information, you can decide where on the site you want your home to be located and choose a floor plan that fits within your remaining budget.

The idea of building a new home can be intimidating, especially if it’s your first time. You probably don’t know all of the steps that will be involved, and you may not even know where to start. This series of blog posts will take you through all of the steps in detail, so you will know what to expect when you decide to build with Adair Homes.

The more prepared you are in advance, the smoother the journey will be. This is important not only for your peace of mind, but also for your budget because a faster build is less expensive than a lengthy one. Building a new home is not as simple as picking a plan and letting the builder run with it. As a homeowner, you have opportunities to be actively involved throughout the process in ways that will help you build equity and keep the project on schedule. This includes making timely decisions and managing certain parts of the project.

We’ll cover more of those details in future posts, but for now, let’s cover the first steps to building a house.