will work for roses - The gables in the front will cost more than not having any gables in the front, but any house over 2000 sq.ft. and on two levels will "need" a few gables and "juts/cuts" in the roof line or it will look very awkward in my personal opinion. I will tell you that of some of the more complex plans, the O'Neal is a fairly medium to medium-high complexity for the roof and foundation layout compared to other homes with similar curb appeal in my opinion. Many builders would tell you that it will be too expensive to build, but that's a relative term. There are 18 corners in the foundation which isn't all that many for a house this size when you compare it to say the "Harmony Mountain Cottage" plan by Garrell & Associates which has over 30 foundation cuts in a 2300 sq.ft. design (see it here: http://houseplans.designsdirect.com/disp_pic.asp?sf=GAR%2Frenderings%2F06110FrntRndrng1.jpg&planid=5995&planName=Harmony+Mountain+Cottage&viewName=First+Floor+Plan&filename=GAR/floorplans/06110FrstFlrPln1_f.gif). You can easily have more than 20 in a 1500 sq.ft. house if you start picking out plans that have tremendous curb appeal. Another higher cost in this plan will likely be the hipped roof design versus a traditional gabled end design, but that debate is one that should be saved for another day b/c a gabled roof and a hipped roof have two very distinctly different looks and it all depends on what "look" you want overall for the house. I personally would like the O'Neal and Luxembourg much much less if it were a traditional gabled end roof design. Anyways, I'll move on from that. I would say look into roof trusses and see if the truss company your builder uses (if they even use them at all) can truss the roof you want as it will save you money and time versus traditional framing and you can use attic room trusses in a lot of instances and what can't be trussed can then be stick framed on site by your framing crew. As for the potential savings, I look at it this way: your garage gables are going to be the same on almost all plans (some may only have one large gable, but adding the 2' bumpout doesn't add that much to the cost of building, at least not enough to not do it on a house like this as the added appeal is well worth it in my opinon.) So far so good! You'll also likely have another small gable like the one over the bathroom window on the O'Neal somewhere on the plan, so still no real additional costs. The gable over the front second level bedroom is going to be there on almost all two story plans that have a bedroom over the dining room or else they look very funny. Even if no bedroom on the front of the house in the second level you'll likely still have a couple of dormers or one large oversized gable highlighting the two story foyer. Still not going above and beyond in my opinion. The large columns and the additional gable/pitch over the entry is the "knock-out-punch" on the O'Neal and Luxembourg plans and if you lose those you change the entire appeal of the house. Yes, it will cost you more than not doing it, but to tell you how much it costs would be nearly impossible. Your builder will be the one to ask based on your finishing materials. It would really still be a "it depends" answer. B/c it depends on if you do the columns in stone and the exact way the plan calls for like in the Luxembourg_southmountain.." photo in the link I posted above, or if you buy pre-assembled columns made from pvc or other similar material like the ones in the picture of my friends house that is labeled "December_17...". The front entry my friend built will likely cost a good deal less than the other, but he spent a good bit on the real stone for the front, which is awesome and so he hasn't really sacrificed the look by doing the pre-made columns. I just think it's important to keep overall scale in mind when choosing the columns b/c you can make a big house look very awkward very fast by changing the scale of important features like these bold front entry columns. You could always lose the arched window over the front door that illuminates the grand foyer and reduce the height of the arched gable over the front door to save money, but without drawing that out I wouldn't be able to tell you that would look okay, although I'm sure it would still look nice. If I were building this house, I'd keep the big archway above the door just like it is, not just for exterior looks, but for the massive impact it has from the inside as well. The back of the O'Neal house will always need to have the gable where the bedroom is on the second level because there is no other way to get the bedroom in without adding the additional roof clearance in the gable. The additional bump-out for the great room could be squared off to match the rear wall in the master bedroom and breakfast nook, etc. if you wanted to take out that gable to save some money. You would also take out some of the grand windows in the rear of the great room, which also makes this plan so great, but if you don't have people gazing at the rear of your house all day, every day then you may not care. As I mentioned, he lives on the tee box of a nice golf course and so more people see the rear of his house than the front so that wasn't really an option. One way you could essentially reduce some of the cost to build this and up/meet your sq.ft. requirements would be to square off the back of the house by adding another couple of feet to the master bedroom and breakfast nook, additional main level bath and back bedroom/garage if you needed more width in garage, etc. and that would remove 2 corners in your foundation (save a little $$$) and also remove the additional gable and siding that goes on it, painting the siding or the cost of stone if you were to stone it like my friend did, etc. which would also save $$$. It wouldn't be enough to justify building this plan if you were $25k off, but each little bit you can make a little easier will help you get your costs in line. One more thing I noticed in his plan is that he has additional unfinished and un-floored attic space over his master bedroom and master closet area because he did a tray ceiling like the plan calls for in the master bedroom. If you were to nix the tray ceiling or start with the 9' ceiling in the center and build the tray down to 8' on the sides versus the traditional way its done of starting with 9' on the outsides and building up to 10' in the middle you could have additional sq.ft. above the master that otherwise would be wasted. You already have the roof, foundation, primary wiring ran, ductwork to master, etc that you could easily tie into and add cheaper sq.ft. to get you to your goal. You would have more carpeting and sheetrock and lighting, painting, wiring, and may need a little more "uumph" in you HVAC unit for the added space which would add, but those are the cheaper things in the total cost of adding square footage. Just something to keep in mind. It wouldn't be an enormous room because of the hipped roof line, but it would add more that is otherwise unused or some might say wasted. I'm also linking to another great Gardner plan called the Newcastle that has an awesome "overall look & appeal" in my opinion and I would consider it a milder roof and foundation design with only 12 corners in the foundation (I didn't count the window boxes either since you can cantilever the bumpout/window-boxes if you chose to instead of building the foundation around them). The Newcastle looks great inside as well and has pictures on the site you can look at. It takes advantage of the additional attic space under the gabled roof versus the hipped roof on the O'Neal upstairs and has bedrooms on opposite sides of the upper landing versus all on one side like the O'Neal which is also why you don't need the additional gables on the front & rear of the house like in the O'Neal, but like I said earlier, you still have the two dormers on the front, but not as much as that larger gable dormer & entrance archway. Again, saving $$$!! I hope this isn't info overload, but hey, you asked!!! Here is a link that might be useful: View Newcastle Plan

Anyone? Would love to see some more pictures of either of these places!

Gopintos, Your policy probably contains from several categories: 1. dwelling (your house) 2. other structures (like barn, etc) 3. unscheduled personal property ( your possessions) 4. loss of use ( a cost to rent your FORMER property, not current + furniture rentals, utilities, etc) For #1 Dwelling coverage usually consists of base coverage - "fair market value", plus (usually) - 50% more of extended coverage (will be paid if you actually rebuild). Good luck getting 100% of your base coverage without a public adjuster - hard to believe. With a public adjuster you'll get 1.5*X (where X is your dwelling coverage limit) minus 10% of their fee - roughly 1.35*X - much higher than 0.75*X you mentioned. For #3 Public adjuster will help you to create a list of things you overlooked and you can easily present a list of things which were in you possession like 1.5*X of total coverage - in that case (and it was in mine) you don't have to itemize anything - insurance will just pay 100% of coverage limit - again - minus public adjuster's fee of 10% and you end up with 0.9*X (where X is your unscheduled personal property coverage) and you didn't have to itemize. There are many other things public adjuster will help you as well. Just get a reputable one and listen. They are salesman, and most likely will pressure you as time sharing people do, but it will be for your good. Our experience was very positive. Without them we wouldn't be able to get even a half of our money. Regards.

I recently purchased Don Gardner plans for $7600, after customizing costs and wouldn't do it again because it wasn't a pleasant experience. In fact, I just registered a complaint with the BBB after exhausted efforts to resolve my dispute with them. During the entire design process, we told our DAG designer one thing and she did another. For example, the original plan called for a bathroom near the rear entry of the room and, based on some changes we made, she relocated the bathroom to the far side of the house even though we expressed to keep it near the original location. After several versions back and forth, which you pay for by the hour, the house kept getting bigger so I had to design the downstairs to accommodate this request myself. The bathroom design was nothing like that of the pictures I sent her and it took several versions for her to get it near right. When the plans were finally finished, they charged me an additional $1400 for roof changes that I believed were a part of the original quote. Upon receiving the plans and submitting them to several general contractors for a quote, numerous errors were pointed out; some of which were quite costly mistakes. For example, in the downstairs and upstairs, we requested 9' and 10' fold away doors for our upstairs and downstairs great rooms, which overlook a gorgeous lake view, that cost $17,000 each. The designer put 8' doors in the plan and made them more narrow than we spoke about. Upon bringing this matter to her attention, she resent out a revised plan but only sent 1 copy when we purchased 5. Anyone with a brain and has built a custom home before knows that one copy of the plan is impossible to work with and, DAG does not permit you to copy their plans. To rectify the roof charges of the $1400, they gave me a credit and the CAD program so that an architect could change the plan and errors. Since then, more errors have been pointed out and, after attempting to get quotes from a number of GC's, the numbers were coming in so high that we went to speak to a local architect. He stated that DAG did not design the house to be cost effective in any way and used excessive cement driving the home price up to very high $ per square foot. When I asked DAG to make changes they wouldn't and they could care less that after spending the sort of $ I did on the plan, now I had to spend an additional $2,000 - $3,000 to be able to afford to build the home. When I learned of these issues, I asked DAG to refund me the difference between what I would have paid for the CAD program, around $3400, so that I could use the balance to fix the plan. They refused and have not responded to an email since then. I believe in this economy and for as costly it is to build a new home with inflation for commodities, they should work with their customers to not only make a home efficient and cost effective, but also make changes if problems are incurred. I will post the outcome of the BBB result, which might I add I have never gone to the BBB to register a complaint in my life. Keeping my fingers crossed that the issue will get resolved.