I know several members of Azine have built homes within the last year and posted pics and such. But, no one has really mentioned where the house plans came from.

The wife and I just purchased our dream lot and are beginning the process of trying to find some good plans.

Any ideas on specific sites to start looking. Being in the South, wife immediately went to Southern Living.

Anyone willing to offer their

 

I just went through this process for me the best thing was to go to a local library and get a ton of books of floorplans. Go through them and just copy the ones that have things you like once you narrow it down just keep going through your copies and taking out the ones you dont like. In the end I had 3 that I really liked that fit my lot. and sat around figuring out how I would combine the best parts of each to make what i want.

 

We went about it by choosing a builder first. Actually, we found a neighborhood in development that we really liked, and there were 4 or 5 builders that owned the lots in this development. And those builders have their own base plans, usually anywhere between 5 and 20 plans to choose from and then modify as you see fit. Some charged for major changes and (of course) square footage increases. Personally I think this is the way to go since the builder finances all the construction (including the lot), then sells the house to you when everything is done at a predetermined price.

But you've already got the lot, which changes the situation a bit. To answer your question on the actual plans. I think the first thing you need to do is look at what you want in a house. Looking at builders is good for making these choices because they have model homes that you can walk through, which (at least for when we were starting to look) is a hundred times better than looking at a plan on paper. Many of the main choices we found ourselves making about the plans were these:

Formal Dining room or no formal dining room? formal living in addition to family room?

one story or two? If two, just a bonus room on the second floor or multiple rooms? (hint: the more of your overall square footage that you have on the second floor the cheaper the price per square foot)

Kitchen open to the living room or separated?

2 car garage or 3 car garage?

How did we want the house to flow from entry to kitchen to master bedroom to laundry room, etc.?

and the list goes on....

Basically, come up with a list of characteristics that are important to you and go from there. The way we did it, we were able to find a builder with great quality work in the neighborhood that we liked, and we used their basic plans and modified them to fit the characterisitics we were looking for. This was fairly easy for me because I have experience with architectual drafting, so modifying plans and providing overlays on their plans wasn't a big deal. I've noticed that some people without that experience get locked into the base plans of the builder and don't recognize the potential that those plans have, so they decide to go away from that and start their own plan from scratch.

Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is be careful with going about it this way. I remember when my dad built a house by finding/buying a lot first, then coming up with a plan, then finding a builder to build it. It was a nightmare to do it that way, he and the builder always seemed to be at odds on how to do things, of course it probably didn't help that my dad is an engineer, but that's beside the point. I learned from his experience and tried to stay away from going that route, and instead found a quality builder first that I felt we could work with, THEN we came up with the house plan. I must say that everything has gone relatively smooth. and we close within a couple weeks.

This is kind of an incoherent response but it's 1am here.

 

We did the same. Picked the builder based on plans available and then did a semi-custom by moving things around a bit.

 

Exactly what we did both times we built. Semi-custom, all the way... and it's mor then suited our needs. They were able to accomidate any request we had, so we got what we want w/o having to worry about plans. Honestly, I don't think I could ever buy a lot and act as a GC or hire a builder to build off of plans. We had friends that did that and every single one of them had nothing but headaches and delays when building. Example, we had friends who bought a lot in West Palm Beach, FL in winter of 2004, then signed a contract with a home builder in Feb 2004.... they just moved in this past March 2006, and they really didn't even deviate much from the plans. On the flip side, we signed our contract in August 2004, and were in by the end of March, 2005. So even though they signed their contract 6 months before us, we moved in a full YEAR before they did... even though we delayed our closing 2 months b/c of the timing of our transfers, so our house was actually ready sooner then we were.

When looking, we went from community to community (must have visited about 35-40, no joke) looking at different builders and neighborhoods until we found one we liked. As mentioned above, we chose the house we liked first... then the lot within the community. There were actually 1 or 2 times where we loved the house, but didn't like any of the lots they had left... so we didn't buy their and just kept looking. Eventually we found a floor plan we loved with a lot we loved, and that's the one we went with.

Anyway, to answer your question, I would go to Barnes & Nobles, Lowes, Home Depot, etc. and thumb through the house plan books they have. I would also HIGHLY recommend that you research local builders, and see if they have a model you can visit. I can't tell you how many floorplans we found that we loved, only to visit the community, tour the model, and hate the layout in person. I could never buy a house based on plans alone b/c what looks great on paper doesn't always translate to the real world... so if you can walk through a model it will make all the difference in the world.

 

www.dreamhomesource.com Enter your criteria and start looking, if you don't find exactly what you want, you'll be sure to at least get a few very good ideas.

 

Great site for research