Everyone has an idea of what their dream home would look like. The style, the layout, the fixtures, and the details are all up to you when you are designing your dream house. That’s both a blessing and curse. Having nothing to start with except a blank slate and the confines of the zoning requirements of your city can make the design process a bit overwhelming. When you think you are 90% there and then you need to incorporate another “must have” into your layout, you may reset back to 50% of your progress to start much of the layout over. Then, balancing the layout with the appearance of the building is another challenge that is immensely important to get right. If this is your first house, working with an architect will be important to design the house and produce the construction documents, but it isn’t required in most cities in the Bay Area. It is, however, required to work with a licensed civil and structural Professional Engineer to design the structure and grading/drainage. Having built several houses, I have designed and made architectural drawings for my two most recent houses instead of working with an architect. Here’s why:
- Inefficiency – Architects are busy and the back and forth with architects makes the process inefficient
- Cost – If you pay by the hour, the bill will be significant. If you pay by a fixed amount, it’s highly possible, you won’t receive great work product.
- Work Product – There are many architects out there (including big name ones), that turn out some truly ugly houses
So how do I do it? First of all, it starts with good software. I use ChiefArchitect. This software is also used by many residential architects and can be a great tool for you to purchase/lease even if you have an architect by cutting down on communication time and making changes in real time. I must warn you that this software has many features and does have a significant learning curve but can be worth it if you find yourself doing more houses in the future. In addition, this software does 3D rendering quite easily which can be a significant cost and time savings down the road when experimenting with different designs and finishes. Many architects charge extra for 3D rendering even though ChiefArchitect makes it very simple.
Now that I have enough experience with the software, with city zoning guidelines, knowing what I want in home layouts, and having my own templates, I save significant time and expense on the upfront design of each house. Designing the house is the fun AND frustrating part and something you will spend a lot of time on whether you are just the home owner or designer as well.
Making the construction documents is the time-consuming part and something you should outsource to a draftsperson for much less time and cost. The other benefit to designing yourself is that when you make changes to your design mid-build (and you most likely will), you will also be able to save significant time in being able to make changes and resubmit to the city on your own with less hold up to the project. Email me if you have specific questions on designing your own house or using ChiefArchitect to do so.