Briana, I just had the very humbling experience of learning that I couldn't arrange two rooms (laundry room and powder room) on my own--I had something, but it wasn't right--and it took ARG to make it right. I think I did better with the bathroom and closet--but 'better' isn't good--it took ARG again to make it great.

If you intend to work with an architect, you already have plenty of details--what you're thinking of plus what bothers you about it. An architect should be able to work with that.

I understand the desire to talk about budget--but the truth is, without a plan, the builder can't do more than guess, and if you intend to go to an architect, then even the conceptual plan you'd be providing would be the wrong thing to base a guess on.

We had a builder tell us a few weeks ago that he could build a house for $165/square foot or $265/square foot--depending on what finishes we selected. It's not possible to get a real budget without details to base it on. We wish we could, too--but it just doesn't work that way :-(.

Seriously, start with an architect. Then you'll have something to talk with a builder about. There are those who especially spatially gifted even without the training and experience of an established architect. But most of us aren't--I really suggest you start with the architect.

Now is the time to find an architect. I think you will find how helpful they are.

From reading your post and your follow ups it sounds like you need someone to draw up a drawing for the building permit.

And mostly for the lurkers out there, here's a C&P from a past post about what a good architect will do:

A good architect, when given the chance, will provide a design that can give a client everything they want, but often in ways completely unexpected. But for that to happen it takes a critical element necessary on the part of the client in every successful project and that element is trust.

Often during our initial meeting, the client will reveal their ability or inability to trust others. If I feel the element of trust is not there they will likely be referred to a permit drafter. A creative person should explore other approaches with you in the spirit of "That's great but have you thought of this.......". But for that to be carried forward successfully it takes a trusting client to not only allow the architect to expand on alternative ideas but to objectively look at other approaches in a collaborative effort with the architect. And that's an intangible that all successful projects are born out of.

I can't tell you how many times a client sitting across the table from me has said "Wow! We never thought of that. We like your kitchen idea but how 'bout if we move the entry here and the pantry door there and...." As I hand them the pen. In some of those design sessions the client commands the pen almost as much as I do!

Just be ready to expect any preconceived ideas to be questioned. They may in fact turn out to be perfectly valid but at least they've been evaluated against alternates as any good architect should do.

Finally, regarding preconceived ideas, I've quoted on this board before these two quotes by two creative people.....

Henry Ford observed "If I had asked people what they wanted they would have told me "A faster horse".

And Steve Jobs mused “A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them. Everyone wanted an iPhone when they first appeared, but no one could have described what they wanted before seeing one".

So put trust in your architect to carry you through the process in the spirit of Mr. Ford and Mr. Jobs and you'll have a home that is the very best.

And speaking of the best, here's wishing you the best of luck with your project. Exciting times!

Come to think of it, that same element of "trust"is likely just as important in a realtor/homeowner relationship for a successful outcome. I'm sure you'll not disagree.

And when you design the house, account for wall thicknesses. They can significantly add up. For example in your house above, on the second floor they will take up around 2' across the width of the house.

What do the elevations look like? They need to be developed with the floor plans as well as accounting for the site conditions.

Discovering all the plans that don't work is not always the best way to find one that does. In the end, the architect will show you several possibilities where one of your criteria is secondary to the others and a satisfactory solution will emerge. Its a matter of creating a hierarchy of criteria and knowing when the best possible compromise has been reached. An architect has been doing that every day for many years so it might only take an hour to do it in a face to face meeting without the need of your sketches since they are so badly out of scale and ignore so many design opportunities.

Briana, I get where you are coming from. What you are doing is something that will work but you are putting to much detail into this rough draft.

It sounds like you have a pretty solid idea of what you what in the home. Your current drawings are enough to give a basic layout and to give the approximate square footage. Then find some existing internet plans that give your similar shape of the exterior, types of dormers, roof lines, etc. You can then list out how you would like to finish the home such as:

4 inch trim throughout, vinyl casement windows, windows full wood wrap, hardwood, tile in bathrooms, quality of cabinets, quartz counters, Hardi lap siding with 5 inch reveal, etc. The more details you already know about the house now the better this will be.

People here don't always agree but you can then take this info to builders and they can give you a rough price to build on your land. If you have a good idea of you level of finish work and the overall shape and size of the house, yes a builder can give you an approximate square foot price. If you then find a builder that you like, you can have them involved at the beginning with the architect.

It's a fun exercise to try to draw out your ideas either on paper or with a program. Ultimately, it's only a expression of you imagination.

Once you have satisfied this itch, use some tools to organize your desires. I suggest you do a search on Bubble Diagrams. Once you understand the concept of the bubble diagram, try using that method to express yourself. This diagram exercise will prove to be useful and helpful when you get to the point of engaging professional help. Consider it as a creative process using another language to express your desires.

Once completed to your satisfaction, you will be ready to get serious and engage a professional to sweat genius for you. When we put a large addition onto our home, we had two or three must haves. Our architect sweated genius for us. We ended up with seven or eight wows. His and her showers, because he had the room for it. magically appeared in the plan. I didn't even know I wanted it. But, now that I have it, I am so happy. He was a genius. And, it didn't cost me a fortune.

You don't know what you don't know until you know it. Once you realize you don't know it, I recommend contacting ARG. He's worked with some real men of genius on this forum and done a hell of a good job for them. Trust him. He's proved his worth here many times.

I am like you and love love love to dabble with what I think I want and what I know I want and draw and redraw forever. That said the process of nailing it down ourselves also limits the creative genius that you'd be hiring later. I was so scared of the mystery of hiring an architect I thought I had to have it pretty nailed down too or else - or else what? I think I thought I'd freak over the cost if I was not able to explain myself well like it would cost more time and money trying to figure each other out?

I searched online forever and a day and couldn't get where I felt I needed to be. I am also visual so I was afraid I'd not be able to understand without a million drawings. Mostly I'd say all my time spent doing that was a waste of hours, days, months worth of time. What I knew from the start about my wants did not change or refine much after all of the internet searching. Truly.

Also - you yourself said you are stuck. The 'stuck' is the architect genius part that creates something out of nothing and I'd venture to say not just something but a wow something or wow something(s) to choose from. I think you are at that point now. I'd say if they give you exactly what you draw you are probably selling yourself short anyhow. Be sure to stay open to what they have to offer in spacial creativity - remedying the stuck could be a delightful experience.

I'll second: "you don't know what you don't know until you know it."

Looking again, I have to say you really don't understand about spatial relationships for houses based on what you've drawn. Let me explain why.

1. You haven't put in any wall widths. Walls are normally 4" wide with plumbing walls as wide as 6".

2. Your front porch is only 4' deep as you have it drawn. That's only wide enough for one person to stand.

3. Your "hallway" into the powder room is only 2' wide. Minimum hallway width is 3' and 42" is better.

4. Your powder room is 5' long. That's just wide enough for a toilet. Not a toilet and a sink.

5. You have your dining table 2' from the wall. Bare minimum with people not moving past is 3'.

6. Your kitchen layout is just poor design with you taking things out of the fridge, bringing it to the sink to prep and then moving it to the cooktop. If that's a 48" wide fridge, then you have no room on the side of your cooktop. And with such a large kitchen why would you want to shove your appliances into one small area.

7. Your kitchen aisles are too narrow. 3' again is the bare minimum and that's counter to counter edge, not cabinet to cabinet. With counters, your aisles are only 33" wide. 42" is minimum for a 1 cook kitchen, and 48" is for 2 or more cooks.

8. No bed is 9' long. (see your master bed)

9. Your hallways in your master suite, which I'm assuming is above the garage are the bare minimum at 36" wide.

10. Your toilet room in your master bath is too small. You have it only 24" wide. Code requires a minimum of 30" and even that is tight. 36" is more comfortable. If that is to be an enclosed toilet closet, then it's too short too at only 3' long.

11. Everything else in the master is crammed in but you have a 5' x 6' shower and only one 3' wide vanity?

12. I'm assuming the laundry is a closet and not a room? If it's a room, it's too narrow.

13. How do you intend to vent the dryer since it's on an interior wall?

14. Is that really an 18' x 6' closet? At 6' you can only have hanging on one side. Again because you need a minimum of 3' for walking aisles.

15. One of the worst places to enter a bedroom is so you walk into the bed as you have it designed.

16. Can I assume the bedroom suite is on the other side of the fireplace wall? If not, then I'm confused as to how the house itself lays out.

Begin by measuring things in your own house to see how big things really are. For example, you don't really want 24" doors ... anywhere. You can't put a toilet in 24". Pretty much no back door is 4'. Your guests need more than 24" on the back side of the kitchen table. Switchback stairs will not fit in a 6' deep pocket. You don't want any of your rooms to be only 9' wide.

Work on sizes and proportions ... then come back to arranging things.

Mine and Mrspete's point being you're talking small details and you don't have the overall feel right yet. I was giving you examples so you started to understand.

From what you've drawn it's quite clear you do not really have a sense of design or thinking in 3d. Sorry to be so blunt. Do yourself a huge favor and stop playing with your drawing and start reading here on the boards. There are tons of great threads that talk about design, etc.

New to kitchens?

We fit an architect

Designing a custom home

Book Suggestions

What makes a house have good design?

5 Rules for better design

Did you hire an architect

House plans using bubble diagrams

Then put together a list of your wants, needs and how you want to feel when you come home to your house and take that to a person of design talent. Have them come out and walk the property with you. Let them observe what you find so special and also where the light is best.

Then let them do what they do best, which is to design a house. As JDS is fond of saying, you don't take a baloney sandwich to a banquet. And in the same vein, as a non professional, you don't need to do the architect's job.

You can lead some horses....

The plan that ARG drew for us is nothing like I'd imagined. That's a good thing--it's more open, more beautiful, more interesting..... I made tweaks (kept the kitchen/utility one and he fixed what I was trying to do in the powder/laundry and master bath/closet). Even when I knew what I wanted I couldn't make it happen.

I know I should go to an architect first! I am really trying to get what is in my head down on paper.

The best way to get it "on paper" is with a bubble diagram--what do you want to have connected? How do you want to live? What rooms need to lead into each other and which need to be totally separate?

But you say yourself you know you should go to an architect first. Listen to that thought.

From there, we will make sure we are on budget with a builder, measure out the floorplan on the site to make sure we are happy with it....then go to either an architect or draftsman.

This approach is totally putting the cart before the horse--if you intend to hire an architect. If you want to hire someone to draw your plan, regardless of how well it works or doesn't work, then a draftsman could well be the right solution for you. But you're much less likely to get a house you'll be happy with if you wait until you have a floor plan and a site plan before talking to an architect!

You may well have your mind made up. Several of us have tried to suggest that an architect first rather than last is the right way to go about it--you're buying design talent as well as the practical draftsman part--that design talent should be the input to the floor plan, site plan, and exterior, not the afterthought.

Hi briana I'm going to chime in and say, that I was once where you are now. Actually, it was Dh who was where you are now. We had a few arguments about the design process. Like you, he wanted or insisted as getting to as close to a design as possible. He felt that he wanted to 'help' the architect. He reasoned this would save time and of course money. He did the design, and why not? We are not computer savvy so he just drew it the way he wanted. However, we hired an architect...and I convinced DH NOT to submit his drawing, but to put faith and trust In our architect and To my surprise he listened (hehe).. if you want, you can read the rest of the story here; (Hint compare the 2 plans.). http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/4449548/the-journey-for-the-plan-has-finally-been-realized-long?n=40

If you need to draw out a plan to take to an architect then you shouldn't waste your money on one; you've effectively established your expertise as superior to theirs and your plan as better than what they could produce without your valuable insights. It's kind of like getting all the pipes lined up for the plumber to come in and just solder, because you know what kind of piping you want better than they do, irrespective of their education and experience.

In my experience as a designer/builder, when a client comes to us with a plan they've drawn on graph paper for our architect to "just draw up" it's a clear indication that they neither understand nor appreciate the value added by an architect. They spend a lot of time defending their design no matter how poorly conceived.

Hi Charles Ross. In our case we drew up the plans but held off showing them till after we received the concept drawing from our architect. (ARG) He obviously studied mind reading as part of his education. And interestingly, so did Mark from this forum. Who knows, Maybe mind reading is a component of an architectural education. !:)

It was a useful class, but doesn't always work on my wife, to my detriment.

Too funny, Mark. Didn't you know it only works for moms, how else do we know what our kids are thinking !