I'm interested in how things turned out for you and your house. Are you done building? Back in 2002, I started looking for plans for our present home. Thousands of views later, nothing met our wants list. I mean nothing. So, I, too, liked the looks of Tee's and Poole's designs the best. Where they fail, imho, is their room sizes and not enough closets; which seem to be typical mistakes from most designers. It took a year and a half for my dh and I to settle on a plan; two months to draw it up; 14 mos. to build. The finishing techniques can always be added to a home after a home is constructed, if it must happen that way. What's important is that you get good bones: great framing, radiant barrier & foam insulation, good windows, ample room sizes, wider halls and doorways, smooth ceilings, and great flow in a kitchen with a terrific size island... and lots of lower drawers in kitchens instead of cabinets. What can't fit in a drawer, use a pantry or upper cabinet. I bought a few home designer CAD 3D programs and went at it. I built exactly what I imagined our home to be and more. I am self taught and very good using the programs. My bro suggested a local draftsman who could never get the roof like we wanted. He wasn't as good as I was! Truly. My design is smarter than what we have seen anywhere. Features in my home are usually found in $1M+ dollar properties. I know: I am a REALTOR®. I'm going to find out how much smarter this design is real soon because I am going to sell this home. So, we shall see what happens. We recently bought a waterfront lot in a small gated community here in NE Florida; and are going to build another 'retirement' home ... not quite as big as this one. I am going to draw up plans myself. We love the layout in this home, but it's two story. Going to *try* to keep it on one level... I really like the idea of having a couple of rooms 'upstairs'. DH said we'll have to put in an elevator if I did a second storey. We need to think of re-sell, too. ;) Last time, I found a local drafts-woman in Virginia, where we were living before we built in Florida. The draftswoman was terrific. She found out local Florida specs and incorporated to met building guidelines. Once in Florida, we hired an engineer to do 'the engineering' calcs, electrical, etc. There was very little tweaking or changes in our plans... and this is a complicated home with a cut-up roof. DH and I acted as GC because we had the money to build this home ourselves. There's over 6,000sf under roof and we built 4 blocks high, so it took a bit to build. We also did a lot of the grunt work while building. I don't know if we saved a whole lot of money, but we go it done. This time.... I *want* to hire someone to build... in theory. Yet, since I'm a control freak... we might end up doing it ourselves again. We'll just have to 'see' if we'll have the money to build -Vs- getting a CP loan. My brother's a builder and lives next door. He built a Donald Gardner plan about the same time we were building. Our homes compliment each others. A few years ago, someone built across the street from us because they like our homes; and built a similar style. We don't live in a neighborhood per se... but we've started something. Later on, three other similar styled homes have gone in on our road and all complimenting what we built: a quality home on about 1 1/2 acres. It looks terrific. Theirs look terrific. I just hate to sell this house... but we think we want waterfront property and lifestyle. (We got tired of hauling our boat to a ramp.) Another person built a 'Florida' style home and it just doesn't have the character that ours have... or the other new similar homes. I think people around here are wanting traditional, yet updated styles. I hate stucco and it's just everywhere in 'NE Florida' neighborhoods. Ours is a standout. Looking for a good draftsman in NE Florida if you know of someone. I will be extremely specific in my specs. Again, would love to see your house.

I love the exterior of the plan and many many things about the interior. But I do see some potential issues with building it "as is". First the stairwell. On the first floor level, notice that both ends of the staircase say "up". Based on the staircase shown on the basement level drawing, I THINK the "up" nearest the kitchen is supposed to say "down" to the basement. However, if you look where the staircase ends in the basement, you'll see that there is no room for a lower landing. You would basically step off the bottom step smack dab into a wall that is about 12 inches away. That is going to have to be fixed. I'm also not totally into the idea of an open "well" running from basement to second floor... especially in Wisconsin. Much of your heat will sink into your basement making it harder to keep the bedrooms reasonably comfortable. I do think however that keeping the space available for a future elevator is a great idea. You never know when someone in your family might become wheel-chair bound. Without an elevator, 2/3 of your home - and all of the bedrooms and tubs/showers - would instantly become inaccessible. Plus, with a U shaped staircase, it would probably cost you more to put in a chair lift alongside the staircase than an elevator. And, an elevator would both look nicer AND be more useful. Perhaps as chapnc says, you could close the "well" between the basement and first floor and tuck a desk or something in there for now. Know however that if you ever do build an elevator, it will block much of the light from those front windows from reaching the rest of the house. Next, the kitchen. I love the idea of all the windows but wonder if you've considered whether you will have enough "above the waist" storage space. I don't see ANY upper cabinets nor any spot to hang some open shelves...unless that dotted line along one edge of the island indicated upper cabinets? (It isn't clear whether that means upper cabinets or a raised bar section). Really think about whether you would want to have to bend down and pull drinking glasses and cups and spices and cereal boxes and cookies and all the other stuff that typically gets stored in upper cabinets out of you lower cabinets instead. I love the idea of a built-in booth breakfast nook. (I'm actually putting one in my own house b/c DH and I always choose a booth when we eat out so I figured we might as well have one at home!) But I'm not sure if the one on your plan is wide enough so that you won't be stepping on the toes of the person sitting across from you. Based on a comparison with the stairs - which have to be at least 3' wide - the booth is only 5 foot wide at most. I picture fights breaking out among the kids over who stepped on who's toe or which one kicked the other. :-( I also agree that you need some countertop beside the refrigerator as a staging area - even if it is only 16 inches wide. When you need to pull a gallon of milk out to reach behind it for something else, it is nice to have someplace handy to set the milk jug down temporarily while you get whatever else you needed out. Next, I don't think there is nearly enough closet space for the master bedroom. For resale value in a house this size, I would expect his and hers closets or at least a 7x10 closet so that each partner would have 10 ft of wall space in their closet. I agree that opening the secondary bath to the hallway is a good idea. J&J baths can be a pain in the neck with kids locking one another out. My last thought is that, building in Wisconsin, a plan that had a lot more windows on the south side would let you take better advantage of the sun. But I can understand wanting to orient toward your best views on the east. Still, it is something to think about. I do think most of the issues I see with this plan could be resolved without changing the exterior... at least not much. Will try to post some drawings later but have to go fix lunch for DH now!

We are trying to get our front porch prepared now and have run into a very costly issue I wanted to ask for input on. The porch is going to have a 4 inch slab and we are surrounded below the porch with poured concrete walls. The space below the floor level to the top of the poured walls is about 24”. So we have that distance to fill and prepare for the concrete porch. We first want to know if anyone has some thoughts on how to secure the exposed area at the top of the safe room in that 24” area between the pad and the wall? We just feel that a simple brick edge perimeter is not enough since we are coming up in a secure 8-10” thick poured safe room. We thought of putting concrete board on the exterior prior to the brick ledge coming up to cover for aesthetics? We also thought of metal plates for protection? This would not just be for security but to continue providing safety from storms or fire etc. The other part of this dilemma is our room has a span up to 15 feet between the walls. Our builder priced a fabricator making metal floor trusts to support the pad and build up the deck to floor level above the poured walls. The fabricator hit us with a $28,000 estimate to do this! (that’s not concrete or flagstone, ONLY steel) We know there is a much cheaper way. We are not totally opposed to putting some support posts within the room to save money if need be. Does anyone know what we can do to span this area and hold up the pad while not costing us a fortune in trusts? I was wondering if buying stock trusts and/or channels or even beams to support the pad decking would be far less than custom metal fabricating? Then we were also thinking of if LVL beams could be used for savings? We are obviously at a disadvantage here because it will take some knowledge of spans and weight calculation and I am sure we will have to get an engineer to approve as well. This is just a shocker in terms of cost because we plan on having a lot more metal and concrete elevated work in the rear of the house too and with this price for our front porch we are in shock. Anyone that can give some suggestions on the best way to resolve this be so appreciated!

I would also start asking around in your local community, and on Nextdoor. Have any of your friends/neighbors/coworkers/acquaintances used an architect they liked? Has anyone *they* know used an architect they liked? If you know any builders I might also ask them for referrals. We've worked with architects twice and had great experiences both times. The first was for a large addition on our home, and we worked with a guy who was a one-man shop working out of his home. Since he didn't have an office (and our house was near one of his favorite hiking trails) he came to us for all meetings. The second time we went with a "bigger" firm since we were doing a whole house with some complicated site conditions. By bigger, I mean they had one lead architect, two underling architects, and a part-time receptionist. My parents build a multi-million dollar house using an architect who had her own firm of about four people. Don't think you need to go with a big "name brand" architectural firm to get a great house design. I think you often get a better design from the small/one-person firms who are really listening to what *you* want and creating, rather than trying to fit what you want into the system they have and market.