@devonfield, the pantry is 5'10" x 6'11". My husband and I designed the pantry using wireframe software -- he's a software architect so he uses wireframes to design software and we used the same software to design our pantry! We designed this with huge detail, basically deciding where everything we own will go, and then we handed it to the trim guys and they built it exactly as we specified. It turned out even better than we imagined!

Unless you have significant trade skills and will help to construct your own home, I think building a custom home is something for the rich who want what they want at a premium price. Most people cannot afford the premium in a custom home, and it certainly is a losing investment nine times out of 10. Reading your remarks, I think you are clearly the person who should be looking for a premium-built used home that is selling below its cost to build. Such homes can occasionally be purchased at steep discounts. I was toying with the idea of retiring to Nevada, and one home I saw had outrageous build quality. They had high-end stone masonry everywhere and things like custom arching beams. They spent about $375/square foot to build but because the neighborhood had homes with $150 to $200 build cost, the resale value of the home was $240/square foot. I would rather pay $250/square foot as an investment, and buying $375 for $250 is the way I would want to invest $250. I think the problem for people building a custom home with a tight budget is they can be easily fleeced on the home build quality without ever knowing what hit them. For example, to get costs lower the builder may switch to 2x4 framing on 16" centers instead of 2x6 framing on 24" centers. The 2x4 home will be much less insulated and will have very shallow window bays. It will feel cheaper. The odds are you would never ask about the framing. The homebuilder saves a ton of money on his material costs by switching to 2x4. You end up with a home that does not feel quite right and never know what hit you until much later down the road. Where custom home building really shines is in the ability to select high-end materials and building approaches that are never seen in tract homes. For example, when you do the framing you can use new stud designs that incorporate closed-cell foam into a truss design inside the studs. Normally a wood stud in the framing has very poor insulation and directly acts as a heat/cold sink that bypasses your home's insulation. The newer style studs (e.g., "T-Stud" is a brand) have an R-value of 20 (versus 6 for a normal stud) and have four times the strength because of the engineered design. Alternately, you can insulate the outside wall of the home and use SIP insulated panels on the roof, to directly overcome the insulation problems with normal studs. These things can greatly increase the comfort of the home, but they also increase build cost, and in any case, they are rarely done outside of a custom build environment. In a perfect world, in addition to an architect, it would be great to find a home builder that you could hire as a consultant - at an hourly rate - to help educate you about key variables in building a home, and that person could help you to understand budget impacts of various build choices, as well as help you specify things to the builder and architect. I wonder if there are retired home builders who do this on a consulting basis, even remotely.

J Beth joy: don’t feel bad about the lumber price jump. Ours had gone up $21,000 between our contract in May and delivery in September—and our price was 75% of the cost hike; builder paid 25% per contract. In their 30 years in business, nothing had gone up more than 25% that the builder pays that they had to pass that cost on to the homeowner.

There is no standard as mentioned above. We have a great builder, loved by everyone he's worked with, but even some of his estimates calculated from the building plans were way off. We are double on what was budgeted for cabinets, so instead of 5 figures we went into 6 figures. Front door twice as much. Electrical we went way over. Garage doors twice as much. Irrigation well four times as much. Etc. I think some of it is because the area we are building in, had in the past been a cheaper area to build in, but due to many reasons the last few years, the demand and pricing have creeped up to match some metro areas in the northeast. I would guess that the estimated price per sq.ft has gone up roughly $70-100 since we bought the lot 2 years ago. We are able to deal with these extra expenses, but not something you really want to have happen. You have to put things in perspective too ... we used to live in CA and built a large guest house 10 years ago. Even the elevated cost/sq.ft we are paying now, in our new area, will be less than what we paid 10 years ago in CA! The other cost you have now during covid, with the delay of getting materials, is having to come up with money/deposit for orders much earlier than you would have in the past. You have to do this or you won't have materials arrive in time to get the house built. For example some window orders are out 7 months, when normal lead times would have been 6 weeks. The bank hasn't changed their process to account for this, so we are the ones who have bankrolled all this extra cash that normally wasn't needed as early in the process. It is what it is, but definitely a roller coaster ride many of us didn't anticipate when life plans were set into motion a few years ago! Bottom line, don't take on a custom home build unless you have the flexibility to handle similar, or worse, events. Good luck!