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