Hi kjblock,

I lost count on all the revisions! It took us over a year to get a finalized concept. And our plans are very basic, small (just over 1,700 sq ft).

The frustration you expressed at the designer 'not getting your ideas' at first is so common. It takes a long time to sort through desires, idea & such and to ignore personal tastes & biases on the designer's part.

We hired an architect from the South...we're in Alaska. We have very different needs up here. We have to withstand way over 500"+ of snow a year - sometimes in the 700's.

Good luck & looking forward to seeing your progress.

Forgot to add...you are fortunate in that the husband can stamp the drawings. We worked with an Engineer in Alaska since our requirements are much different than the South. There was a lot of downtime & changes made because of a lot of needed communication between them.

We went through a lot of revisions as well but I would say that the first version was still about 80- 85% of what we envisioned. One of the things we did that helped the process along was to pick out several stock plans that had parts that we liked. Even then it took us 6 months to hammer out the plan that best suited our needs. I should add that the designer that planned our house was not first one we met with. That designer had experience and was well qualified but we just weren't on the same wave length. We decided to look at other options and it was easily the best decision we made through out the whole building process.

One thing I should mention is that we were spoiled when we did two major remodeling projects. We lived in MN then (now in NY) and our friend/neighbor/architect lived next door. He just quickly "got" what we wanted and we worked so well together. We did remodels of two different houses with him (we sold one and moved to the other side of his house!).

I really wish we could work with him but since the plans need to be stamped by an engineer or architect in NY, it just seems like a better idea to have someone here do it. I just wish we could quickly establish the same kind of relationship with someone here as we had with him!

I have asked him informally as a friend to take a look at the stock plans and recommend ways to do the things we want to change, because I can't imagine doing this project without getting his opinion in some way.

I appreciate your responses--and I hope it's not going to take months or a year to get the plans in order since we hope to move this along! We've already delayed for the over 3 years that we've owned the land, trying to decide if we really should build or not. I am determined not to spend another summer in this house without air conditioning, LOL!

Tweaking house plans is sometimes like "robbing Peter to pay Paul". You want a bigger closet for your daughter. OK, where is the space for that to come from? It has to come from somewhere and there's always a tradeoff for getting one thing at the expense of another. If keeping your master closet at it's current size is a priority, then which other adjacent room can lose some space? Every single change you make will work this way. You're not just changing one single thing. You're changing the whole matrix. That's why there are so many revisions while you work out what would be "nice to have" vs. "must have".

I just wanted to echo what GreenDesigns said. We worked for about two years on our plan with an architect. It was sometimes frustrating when we would get a draft and say "We like it, but change A to B," and then the revision would come back with A changed to B but C changed to D as well when we didn't want that change. It was really just a long process of us along with the architect sorting out our priorities.

One example: we have a long but not terribly wide lot, and one of our priorities was to preserve as much back yard as possible for our kids to play in. We also wanted the pantry, a mudroom, and a powder room next to the side entrance. Well, it turned out that we couldn't get all of those things where we wanted them to our satisfaction without eating into the back yard. We ended up keeping the back yard and moving the powder room, but without going through several revisions we would never have understood why we had to choose!

We ended up NOT building.. I was sooooo totally frustrated with the drafting stage! I did the drawings myself in a drawing plan, which the drafter could import, the only thing I couldn't do was the upstairs and all the technical parts of the plan the engineer would need. 5 months into the drafting stage... we fired the first drafter, as we realized he was clueless. Found a 2nd one, who was GREAT, knew what he was doing and within a couple weeks, we had basic plans.. but he suddenly became busy, and a few more months past. 9 months of drafting a plan I already had designed, with a few months left to go before we even started to apply for permits.... I started to look at existing houses online. I was stressed (and we had built 4 other homes previously - but they were all builders stock plans) This custom home seemed like it would be years before it might be finished... I really was looking to build a home with "an old fashion" feel... and houses like that in FL are hard to find, but I found ONE! It was the ONLY house we even looked at.. it needs a ton of work, and it feels like we are building (as we don't even live in it yet) but a big part of stress has been eliminated. Good luck.. if the 2nd draft doesn't come close, I might consider finding someone else!

Our process was not as arduous as many. I think that's because we started with an existing plan (a home that our builder built previously) and made a few modifications. It took about 2 months and 3 drafts to get what we wanted.

I'd echo GreenDesigns' thoughts, though. You simply cannot get EVERYTHING you want. We ended up with a floor plan that is about 85-90% right for us. The remaining 10-15% simply wasn't possible without screwing up something more important.

Took 7-8 months, many drafts, and I would say our designer was on the ball and listened quite well. First couple of drafts were nowhere near usable even so. It helped when I showed him a concept I really liked, things picked up a lot from there on but ironing out details takes time. Since you are starting from a concept you really like, it should go faster than many others. But it will take at least several rounds. You can help, if you are good with computers, by editing the drawings to show what you would like instead. Even just pasting rectangles over to show new wall lines can help.

I'll chime in and agree with GreenDesign. We have our 90% finished plans and will get the blueprints Monday. It's been tedious. The client goes to the architect with all their wants. Just like jeff2718, we are on a lot that is longer than it is wide. With our constraints and wants, there were things that could be done and couldn't.

Plus, after you take budget, square footage, etc. into consideration, something has to be given in order to take from somewhere else. And if you move a wall here, you have to shift entire lengths of walls and other walls are shifted b/c of that length of wall. With us, We started wanting our master downstairs, turned stairs that did NOT face the front door and we wanted our living area, dining, kitchen to be one open "L" shaped area with the breakfast/dining and living all against the backyard wall so you could see right out to the backyard (and the kitchen would be part of that eating area). My DH's guy space would also be downstairs. Well, we then started thinking about how my mom comes to stay with us a lot and decided in the end, to try to fit the guest suite downstairs instead of up w/ the kids' spaces, which then moved my small exercise space (that was right off of the master) UPSTAIRS and it got bigger as a result. Also as a result, the L-shaped living area became a long open space instead of the L ...kitchen then dining/breakfast and living in that order with the living open to the backyard. It's still one big space but with the eating area between and a window seat bump-out bay-window with hutches on either side. It wasn't my ideal lay-out in the beginning at all (when we were deciding between the L and this and could do both) but I've grown to like the layout now that I've "lived" with it on paper. However, with this change, my turned stairs changed into a straight staircase that you walked right into from the front door. THAT was a deal breaker for me. Back to the drawing board he went and somehow maneuvered things to put the stairs sideways again and with the turn. Yay! But I think a closet shrunk in doing that.

There's been a LOT of other adjusting but it's just things like that that happen. It's like a big puzzle...all the pieces have to fit in the end, PLUS fit into the entire shell of the exterior and into your budget. So you will go through drafts and figure out what are the most important things to you and what you can give up and what you can't.

Everyone thinks it's so fantastic to build. And it is great to be able to have a lot of control over what you want. But there's also the misconception that when one builds, they get to have everything they want! Unless one has a really large lot and a really large budget, there will be give and take in order to keep things realistic and to make things fit.

I'd say the typical number is: however many you need, especially if you're planning on doing it once (like us).

We had the good fortune of having a good and very reasonably priced drafter and it took about a year with about 5 iterations (plus about 5 small changes between them) to get to that magic 90% perfect.

Only people without a budget should venture into those last 10 percentage points... ;-)