Details! And not just the obvious stuff like cabinets, countertops, tile, and appliances. I want to know the paint color. The small appliances. The paper towel holders! (Yes, I found my paper towel holder based on a finished kitchen post from someone here on GW!) I can't imagine that there's such a thing as too much detail. No one has to read the parts they're not interested in. But when you see the thing in the picture that's THE thing, you need to know what it is!!! Brand, item name, part number, whatever it takes to identify it. And THANK YOU to everyone who posts in the FKB! As well as to starpooh for maintaining it! It's a wonderful resource.

I am also building a modern style, inner city house with an industrial vibe. I tried to avoid the exposed bulb as much as possible because we're trying to go all LED. And LED bulbs are either not so pretty, or the edison versions aren't very bright. First off, bathroom sconces are hideous, in general. They haven't really come out with new styles in about 30 years. I would suggest considering some exterior wall sconces for something less "bathroom of the 80s" than most bathroom offerings. In the powder room, I tried to use a pendant, but I went out of town when the electrician was in, and DH lost my explicit instructions. So I ended up with a wall sconce, and I used an exterior fixture. The hall bath has an exposed bulb, sigh. This one: The ensuite has pot lights in a bulk head above the mirror, and a ceiling fixture in the middle of the room. And I have used a mix of ORB and satin nickel throughout the house. Instead of going full on industrial, I've been considering vintage style lights, such as school house pendants, and ribbed glass shades. Because I'm not a fan of matchy matchy, and I prefer the theme to be more subtle, less literal. Here are some other fixtures I've either used, or coveted. For ceiling fans, I have these: Master bedroom Living room (in ORB) And office

For my husband and I we started looking at older homes in the area last Sept., took only a few weeks to realize we wanted to build new, another few months to figure out that we're not the type that can just go with the typical spec home. We chose a design-build firm in November, met with an architect in December to modify a plan that we sort of liked, and closed on a lot in Jan. Then we made all our tentative selections for allowance items and had them priced out, which added about $30k to the contract price.It took about 3 months to get enough of an idea of allowances that we felt comfortable signing our contract (during this time I also redesigned the front elevation and the kitchen layout). That said, I probably spent 40 hrs a week doing research and planning our house during that time. Most of this was finding the things we had in our heads, trying to find/draw pictures for subs, and doing historical research, as we wanted to give the house a fairly authentic early 1800's feel, while not losing all of the things we love about new builds, and keeping the project remotely affordable. I've done pretty much all the design work since we just went with a design/build firm. They're one of the more detail-oriented in the area, but not enough so for us. Next time we would probably just hire an architect to manage the entire project. It would be a lot less stressful. We've also changed quite a bit as the build has progressed, and we get a more coherent vision of the house, and a better idea of standard specs in the midwest (we're not from around here and that has made things interesting). That added another $30k or so to the project, but we easily could have added another $100+. Most of these changes were on non-allowance items, like mouldings...actually pretty much all of them were architectural details. That seems to be the expensive stuff: detail and anything not made of plastic or mdf. Combine a love of well-proportioned details and natural material, and costs jump up pretty quickly. Be prepared. I found that a lot of our subs didn't want to get into much detail with us until there was a hole in the ground. And I think with good reason. There are some things you just can't fully plan until you're almost ready for them to go in. And some things, no matter how much planning you do, won't go the way you want. Word of advice: don't feel bad about changing your mind! After all, you're the one funding the project. One of the most helpful questions for our subs was "If we do it this way, how hard is it to change it to another way in the future, and how will doing it this way limit our choices?" We were really surprised sometimes at how easy some things were to add or change later, and what things really needed to happen at build time for them to be worth doing. We're in the home stretch now as flooring is in and cabinets are being installed. Just picked out our slabs of marble for our countertops today. We don't really expect anything new from here on out. We also are leaving a few things to do later on, like finishing landscaping and closet shelving, so we have a better idea of what we want. Now I stop by the house a few times a week, just to see how things are going, but mostly to just jump up and down and be excited. All this being said, I'm the kind of monster that will spend an entire day drafting 15 scale drawings of potential kitchen cabinet layouts so my husband and I can choose one when he gets home from work and send it to our carpenter. We're also really decisive people who already had a pretty clear idea of what we like, how we live, and our priorities. The hardest part was finding what we wanted given our resources. I think for most people, if you really want to be able to specify all the little details and don't have an architect that can do that for you, you'll want to give yourself a lot of time and really think hard about how you live, and how you want your home to feel. On the other hand, if you don't really care about the little things, you might not need much time to plan things out at all. Like your friend, you could make all your choices for finishings in a week and be done with it. It took us over a month just to find tile that we liked. Either way, do go into it having thought about your home enough that you know where you fall on that spectrum.

This is a long and positive thread trying to help the OP as much as possible. The OP really needs some experienced and expert local help. There is so much that needs to be explored and evaluated, starting with the basic concept of the cost of having a basement, which, by definition, will not likely be accessible to a child with limited mobility and special needs. As helpful as everyone wants to be on this forum, no one is going to be able to work out a good concept and design, except for a direct, on-site presence with the OP and family. As a former Head of a school of architecture and tenured full professor, I have to say that contacting a university school of architecture is probably not a very good strategy, unless that school has an organized, staffed and functioning community outreach and assistance program. Some universities do; many do not. Most faculty members plan their course-work a semester or year ahead, and focus on teaching a number of cumulative design principles to the students, year by year. As important as this project is, it probably doesn't fit well into an architectural curriculum, unless there is an active community outreach program, as I've mentioned. It's possible, that the nearest local chapter of The American Institute of Architects might sponsor a charette or even a pro bono program of support if contacted with details about the situation. My heart aches that so much help is needed here.