Building Our Custom Home – Part III – Finding an Architect

When I started looking for lots, I also started to look for an architect to design our home. I looked through the list of registered architects in our area and found only a handful of names. There are only a few rare homes designed by architects in the US, most architects do commercial or industrial design and very few work as residential architects. Anyhow, I don’t know that I had any specific criteria, but I picked out 3 names from the list. I believe if it is meant to be, it will be. I could go through the whole list, but if instead I find what I need among the 3 why go beyond. And if not, I can always expand my search.
The first architect I met had pretty much retired and had last designed and built homes in the 70s and 80s. He lived in a house that was designed by him in the style of those times. His portfolio also contained homes of that style. It was difficult for me to judge if he could give me what I was looking for in a house. He did ask pertinent questions regarding our needs for the house. There were 3 things that made me decide against him – I wasn’t convinced he could offer what I wanted design-wise, he had his own ideas of what should be in the house (independent of my own requirements) and finally he wanted me to pay him $20K, which I thought at that time was quite steep, especially considering that I would only get blueprints from him, and then my builder would have to develop construction documents from them.
So on to architect #2. He was part of a firm that did both commercial and residential work. His portfolio was impressive. He also offered a very reasonable suggestion – for the money I wanted to spend on an architect he said, I should look for plans in books or on-line and find something that I thought matched my interests the most and he would amend them for a more custom fit. While I agreed it was a reasonable suggestion, I still wanted something truly custom designed for us. Although at this point, I was beginning to realize this was maybe a pipedream. But I said thank you and good bye to him as well.
Finally, architect #3, he was at the point where he only planned to do residential architecture, his passion. He had a staff of drafters, architects, and interior designers but he was the principle architect. As soon as I met him, I knew he was going to be our architect. The first thing I said to him was – before we start discussing anything, I should let you know, I studied architecture. Most of the work I saw in his portfolio was modern, that is what he liked to do. I also knew he had designed a home for another Indian family and he told me he designed one home in India long-distance! But as you can imagine, most of the homes he designed were upwards of a million dollars.
I laid out my requirements to him. In short, I wanted a house no more than about 2500 sq ft, within a budget of $350k. He accepted my job right away; I suspect he did it because I studied architecture and because I gave him a challenge.
I had prepared a long list of requirements for our home. Some important ones were – walk in closets in all bedrooms, even if the kids’ rooms have a little smaller walk-ins. I didn’t care if the bedrooms were small, even the master bedroom, I didn’t plan to put a sitting area in the bedroom. Who uses that area? Of course, my original quest for a larger foyer area, and especially a working mudroom. I also wanted a walk-in pantry and a large front porch. My list was 10 pages long. I had information regarding how I wanted the spaces to flow. For example, I wanted our guest room on the main floor so they wouldn’t be close to our or the kids’ rooms, which meant the powder room had to be a full bath. But when you decide to build a small house, you have to realize some compromises, the powder room had to be close from the mudroom, situated so the guests didn’t have to see or go through any private spaces. But unfortunately, this meant we couldn’t have it attached to or next to the guest room.
The architect told us to expect the plans to take about 6 months to complete…

Copyright Kalpana Kanwar August 2009

Building Our Custom Home – Part I – Why?

We bought our first home in 2000, the year our first son was born. Even as we moved into the house we knew we wouldn’t be there for long. There was nothing wrong with the house, we just felt that we would find something more “us” later.
So another son and three years later, I set out looking at homes. There was no hurry on our part, and I could take my time to look. After living in our home for three years I had a better idea of what I wanted in the new home. Three things that bothered me in our home were – tiny entry and hallway, non-existent mudroom, and small closets in the master bedroom.
The tiny entry and hallway made it difficult for more than 2 people to stand there, so if you had to open the door for guests you could only let in one at a time and if that involved taking off a jacket – fuggetaboutit. Now my kids were still little then, but there was hardly room to even put some hooks up for their jackets or a boot tray to set their dirty shoes on. It made it difficult to keep the carpet clean, because we usually ended up in the house to get our jackets and boots off in the winter. Not to mention my husband would walk into the house, sit on the couch to take his shoes off. So you see, it was hard to keep that outside dirt (and it can get real messy in a rain or winter) off the carpet. Now I don’t have many clothes, but still there is the winter and summer to consider. It was difficult to fit all my clothes in the closet. Not to mention, there was no closet organizer in there, just a shelf and hanging bar. I installed closet organizers and that helped, but was still insufficient space. Before you get the idea that I only sought grand spaces, let me tell you, our master bath only had a shower in it and it was plenty fine with me. Our bedrooms were small and that was fine with me too.
Our house also had some wonderful qualities that I knew we may not be able to duplicate. We lived on a cul-de-sac which meant less traffic. We were lucky and had many kids come over to our cul-de-sac to play and it felt very lively and enjoyable to my little ones too. We had a pie shaped lot as we were at top of the cul-de-sac and so did the house behind us. So we had an unusually long distance between our houses in the back. Not to mention the house behind us had planted a forest of trees, so we always felt a great sense of privacy. Although I thought it was excessive, we had a living and family rooms at opposite ends and sides of the house. Depending on the time of the day, the living room felt wonderful in the morning light and the family room was just fine even in the evenings. Maybe because the living room was empty but for a couple of sofas and coffee table the kids didn’t spend much time in there, which also made it attractive to sit and find some quiet time.
Anyhow, back to the house hunting. I started out by telling our agent that we wanted to buy a house about $400k. She started showing me some homes that were pretty close to the size and style of our home and with the same drawbacks. So I upped the budget and said how about $500k. The houses got bigger, there were walk-in closets in the master bedrooms, entry ways also started getting grander and wider, but the mudroom still continued to be non-existent. So we upped the budget again to $600k, I finally walked through a home that was 6000 sq ft, it had two sets of staircases, the main staircase from the front foyer and another back staircase from the kitchen. The finished basement had a sauna room, a wine cellar and a family room big enough to hold a mini-bar, pool table and a TV area. After all this, the house still barely spared 50 sq ft towards the mudroom!
So I said, this is nuts, I don’t want such a big house, I just want a house with a mudroom. That is what my mantra became at that time. And so we decided to build a house. Now we had to find a lot…

Copyright Kalpana Kanwar August 2009