I recall coming across an article (Found on the internet while researching something else) that outlined how Darryl Apps prepared for the evaluation of thousands of AHS registered diploid & teraploid cultivars being performance tested. A high-volume New Jersey nursery operation wanted to focus on a selection of reliable strong long season blooming daylily performers out of the 60,000+ registered cultivars on record at that time. The evaluation checklist was reported to have 140 specific criteria ... The end result of this huge project was the introduction of the 'Trophy Taker Daylily' & 'Happily Ever Appster' trademarked daylily marketing lines of Blew Nursery, NJ. Keep in mind that they were selecting from known daylilies (Would it be any different for seedlings?) for the general gardening public who buy their plants from independent nurseries ... gardeners who would be unlikely to follow our familiar AHS & related databases & info resources. I have never encountered this evaluation list of 140 characteristics anywhere ... So far. Such a seemingly incredible diversity of daylily characteristics becomes more reasonable, more plausible, more realistic when one considers our chosen plant 'broken down' logically: Overall appearance (Balance); Roots; Crown; Leaves; Scape; Branches; Buds; Bloom; Vigorousness; Temperature (Zone) sensitivity; Recovery (Division); Seasonality; Disease resistance; Drought resistance; Metabolism efficiencies; etc. ... Considering 'Blooms' alone one can list easily 15-20 characteristics: - Coping with sun; rain; CMO; EMO; self-cleaning; hanging up; thrips effect; colour intensity; etc. etc. .... Realistically, I don't think it would be too difficult to arrive at such a list of 140 points to look for & to evaluate.

I've tried gift certificates, they certainly have advantages such as time savings and making decisions so much easier. However, for me they weren't money savers. Not to give and sometimes not to receive either. I tend to buy presents on big discounts, thus the actual amount I spend per person looks rather small on paper, and when given to someone else with the limitation of being able to spend it in just one store, it doesn't actually go that far. For example I can hunt around the stores and buy my sister a really nice jumper for perhaps £12.99, but if I give her a £12.99 gift certificate limited to just one store she won't be able to get a really nice jumper without adding at least another £10 to it. The certificates are often issued only by major retailers and most of them are quite expensive places to shop. The lower range of certificates such as £10 or even £20 will not entirely buy anything in many stores now. On the receiving end I don't mind certificates as I get to choose for myself, but often they mean going to places I wouldn't normally shop. This can be a positive thing, but other times it reaffirms why I don't shop there. Either I don't like the items or I don't like the prices. Prices shouldn't matter when you have a certificate, but often you have to make up the total price for an item with more money. I've had a few smaller certificates for £5 or £10 for shops, which I've been to only to discover that with the certificate the cost to me of any items I could use/want are only just starting to become average price, and honestly I haven't bought anything at average price for years. I almost never buy outside of sales. I live in a big city and have the internet, every day is sale day somewhere! Why be shopping anywhere else? I feel bad not using a certificate, but when it means I have to shop somewhere I find excessively expensive and I have to find the extra money to afford something, then it seems to be a bad financial choice. I have savings to build for university, I can't afford bad financial choices. I'll just pass the certificate on to someone else and hope they find a better use for it.

I absolutely love being able to stick to a budget, but you really don't have a cost issue, you have a budget issue. Making the changes necessary to get any meaningful reduction in cost is going to drastically reduce some of the features that make building appealing to be begin with. My advice is to either not build or pony up the extra money. If you can't increase your budget then I wouldn't build. To echo what Charles Ross said, $ per square foot is a very inadequate measure. It can be used effectively to communicate finish levels in similar homes but can do little else. Homes are a mix of fixed costs, variable costs and premiums. Fixed costs are the things that every house has to have regardless of finish level, variable costs are the actual raw cost of square footage, and premiums are costs associated with finish level (granite instead of formica, etc.) Even the actual raw cost of square footage isn't really variable. Adding one more foot to an 11 foot room may cost almost nothing. While adding a foot to a 12 foot room may cost a fortune (carpet comes in 12' widths). Also note that all under roof square footage has a cost, whether it is heated or not. When you have a house with a very high finish level cutting square footage can make sense. In a home that comes in at $400/ft² cutting out 500 ft² may save you $100,000. But when you are starting with a budget build then cutting out square footage can sacrifice too much. At $125/ft² the square footage that can be sacrificed is probably around $50/ft². To make meaningful cuts you are going to have to lose like 800 square feet of heated space. At that point why bother building? Just my 2¢

We like it because it's different then others we've looked at and we love the two story living room area. It's also super open and bright. Those are true statements, though the two-story living room isn't really a positive. It'll be expensive to heat/cool, and sounds will echo. How old are your children? Will they be safe in a two-story room, or will all that height be a temptation to throw things (or jump ... I was a jumper ... so were my four siblings). which will mean dragging groceries through the home. The other two things I'm not totally sold on are the master bedroom over the garage and the split master bath. You can improve the grocery issue by opening up a "back door" in the pantry -- this will allow you to go straight down the hall /not through the dining room. A couple people said the pantry was too far from the kitchen. I disagree. You typically begin cooking by bringing out all your dry goods ... so that's just one trip to a pantry only a few steps away. What I don't like about the kitchen is the long line of bar stools at the island. The island is a great place for a couple stools, but it's an awful place for family meals. Don't believe me? Take the family to Waffle House for dinner, sit at the bar, and see if you enjoy the family interaction. 1-2 stools for a child to sit on occasionally are great ... but you have space for a table RIGHT THERE. I agree that the master -- from its long dark entry hall to its weird bathroom to its over-garage location -- is a huge mess. That would be a no-go for me. Additionally, will this house have enough tucked away storage space for a family of 5? This new house will be a bit over 3,000 sq ft. We are coming from a 2400 sq ft house. 3000 square feet is a huge house -- a lot to pay for initially, a lot to maintain, clean, heat/cool, and pay taxes upon. And this house contains LOTS of bloat; you could get the same (or even better) function in a smaller space. As for storage: That corner to the left of the office door is begging to become a closet (or open shelves). I'd move the laundry upstairs /allow that space to enlarge the mudroom or have a hobby closet downstairs. The huge storage in the basement isn't all that useful ... its not convenient to the majority of the house. You can add bookshelves on both sides of the fireplace for books, movies, board games ... but allow space for windows above. The reason I asked about the snow is, how I'm seeing it, The snow will come down the roof above the front door, along with snow from the left side and right side, and all will pile up right in front of your front door. I see many homes in our area in that situation every winter. It's always nice to have a dormer over the porch to direct that snow to either side. Being a good Southerner, I think more about flip-flops and pools than snow ... so I never would've considered this point. However, I do note that the front door is kinda "buried" in all this exterior. Perhaps if it were a bright color it'd stand out better. I agree with these statements: - The bathroom in the basement is also oddly compartmentalized - The garage bumpout makes for an odd roofline. - So you don't have to walk downstairs with tons of laundry and then worry about where it will vent. (My own addition: This is a very big deal. Venting a dryer from the middle of the house is expensive, hard to clean, and a fire hazard!). - So you don't have what looks like 20' of hallway after you enter the master suite. - So you don't have two spaces labeled Rec room and then a third labeled playroom because they couldn't figure out what else to call it. - There are definitely some odd spaces We would have the house placed so when you pull up you see the main part, not the garage side! No, no, you're not understanding the above poster. We need an illustration: Imagine that the red line is the main road, and the green lines are your driveway and your sidewalk. No matter which direction they approach the house, your guests will "pull up" next to the garage /park in that area. They will then be forced to walk alllllll the way arooooounnnnnd two sides of a bloated garage. While walking, they will have no view of their goal (the front door), and they will potentially be exposed to rain /snow /dark. This is absolutely not welcoming, and it can't be fixed ... not with a front-protruding, side-entrance garage. Let's look at it from a different perspective. Your guests would park on the side of the house /by the garage (marked with a red star) ... and they'd have to walk around the garage /with no sight of the front door until they'd turned two corners. Don't you see how that'd be uncomfortable? I say it all the time: Driveways /the approach to the house don't get nearly enough attention. These things set the tone for your house. You could add a second driveway (perhaps circular) to the front of the house for guests ... but then guests won't be sure which driveway is for them. The garage is just a very poor design. Isn’t the inside so pretty though? I think the interior pix are rather average for a new build. They are, however, very trendy and up-to-date, especially the color scheme. Regardless, this statement is a hint that you're responding to finishes /trims ... not functional layout. Pinpoint the items you like, and you can use these finishes in a house with a better layout. Better to feel bummed before building it than after. SO MUCH! As I sit in my living room, reading... In contrast, no one has entered my living room ... probably since we used it as a "staging space" for my daughter's back-to-college move last month. The real question isn't, "Do you need a room labeled living?" It's, "How many public spaces are you building?" My living room never gets used because it's the THIRD public space in our house -- we've been here 18 years, and we've used it fewer than 10 times -- it's a waste. Most families will be well-served with ONE big room in which they can all gather (might be called a living room, den, family room, whatever) ... and a SECOND smaller room in which someone can be separate from the family. This second space (whether it's called an office, a playroom, a sunroom, or whatever) needs to be visually and acoustically private from the main family space, which allows one person (or a few people) to get away to read, do homework, watch a TV show in private, or whatever. This second space could be the place to contain the kids' loud video games, or it could be the place to escape from the kids' loud video games. Once the kids become teens, this second space can become the place for them to host friends, or it can be the place for parents to "disappear" while the kids are in the main family space. Few of us need a third public gathering space. The floor plan we're discussing contains SIX public gathering areas ... plus a private sitting space for the parents. My own additional thoughts: - That bay wall is a stunning feature, but it will be expensive ... do you like it that much? - Will you actually use fireplaces in two different rooms? Fireplaces are quite expensive to build and aren't used that often in most homes ... if you want them "for looks", consider that you could put in a mantle /fill the fireplace with flowers or candles seasonally. - Imagine your path to bring laundry up to the master bedroom: through the mudroom, through the foyer, up the stairs, turn, down the hallway, down the long dark master hallway, and FINALLY you're in the closet. It's just too long a path. - Imagine the house were on fire. Imagine trying to escape from that master. You're far-far from any door. Imagine you're elderly in this house. Imagine navigating these steps and two long hallways to reach your bedroom on a daily basis. - The kids' closets look good. - How will the kids feel about their bedrooms being different sizes? - The kids' bathroom will be dark ... all rooms are so much better with natural light. You definitely can't have two sinks in this vanity (and why would you even want two sinks between three kids?). Instead go with one sink /drawers on both sides for ample storage. Storage trumps duplicate sinks every single time. - Who will live in the weird downstairs bedroom that cannot be reached without walking through another room? - Note that the playroom has no natural light. It won't be a pleasant space.