macv: You bring up a good point and one in which we had not considered. It is not fair to allow the higher bidder an opportunity to match the lowest bidder but mind you it was the builder and not us who asked if we would be willing to allow his "preferred supplier" an opportunity to match. We were/are not "shopping the job", nor were we looking for the lowest bidder but merely trying to get legitimate cost estimates. We are not just the "homeowners" but the ones who risk the bad consequence of cheap, subpar material and poor workmanship-not to mention the final amount of interest we must pay if there is a delay in the build. I failed to mention that we asked the builder for a list of his suppliers and subs but he never provided them which is one of the reasons we opted to go this route. We actually found the brick and lumber supplier we chose to be the mid-ranged and we chose only after talking to other homeowners, visiting several construction sites, open houses, model homes, and driving all over VA in order to narrow down what we wanted on and in our home. We are leaning toward one particular brick supplier because they were the ones who had the brick we had been searching forÂwhich is the second reason we wanted to look around-so we would not be limited by the builders "preferred suppliers" stock. We understand and did not want to subject the builder to subs he had never worked with nor would he have agreed to that but we compromised and sought out various subs we met at constructions sites and asked our builder if he was familiar with them and he had worked with mostÂand this only pertained to the masonry work and he will decide the subs he hires not us but we do know the average cost of labor and that was the point. The builder already has expense accounts at the suppliers of the brick, so it did not pose a problem for him at all Thanks for giving us a different perspectiveÂI actually think it is worth mentioning to our builder because we did not have the fact that we will give his "preferred supplier" and opportunity to match in the contract, only the part about us shopping around for the brick, lumber and cabinets.

I like the Birchwood plan a lot. No "keeping room" but you may not really need one since, in addition to the Great Room, it has a study AND a nice sitting area in the master bedroom AND a screened porch with a fireplace AND a huge bonus room over the garage that could be turned into a children's play area, a mancave, a game room, a media room, or just about anything else one can imagine. How many different "living areas" does one family really need anyway? LOL! The various ceiling treatments and varied ceiling heights should give you the drama you want and the plan is pretty nicely organized. There are a couple of things that I don't like about the Birchwood tho. They are: 1) the kitchen design with it's barrier island smack dab in the middle of the paths between sink, stove, and fridge; 2) the lack of a powder-room near the garage entrance; 3) the lack of a "mud room" or unloading area at the garage entrance; and 4) no powder-room easily accessible to the bonus room except by going into one of the two back bedrooms. I would either get rid of the kitchen island completely or make it a whole lot smaller. Or, alternatively, you could move the sink to the island, make the island a whole lot wider and get rid of the entire wall of cabinets next to the great room and open up that wall completely to get an "open floor plan." In fact, in the house they photographed of the Birchwood kitchen on the Gardner website, that is exactly what they did. (If you look closely, you'll see that the photographed kitchen is very nice but is definitely NOT the same as the one shown on the floorplan.) The folks over on the kitchen forum could probably give you some other suggestions for making the kitchen more user friendly. As for the other issues, first off, I'd turn the e-space into a mudroom/drop zone. Every family needs somewhere to drop coats, hats, bookbags, etc when coming in or that stuff always winds on the nearest flat surface! In this case, the options are: on top of the computer, on the kitchen counters or the breakfast table. So, I'd move the computer to the library - out of the way of traffic and where it wouldn't constantly be covered with dropped off junk and where I would have room to stretch out and get comfy when working at the computer. Then, I'd probably have the two back bedrooms share a single but slightly larger bathroom opening off the hallway. (I.e., incorporate the closet on the right side of that hallway into the bathroom on the right and make it a shared bath.) Then I'd use the space dedicated to the bathroom on the left and that left-hand hallway closet for a powder room and a pantry. Put the pantry in the half nearest the kitchen so you go right past it when traveling from garage to kitchen. That'll make dropping off bags of groceries convenient. Then, I'd take the original pantry area and e-space area and combine them to make a nice-sized mud-room. You would have plenty of room for half a dozen 18" deep cubbies which will help keep junk from landing on your kitchen counters. With a powder room opening off the mudroom, whatever you eventually decide to do with the bonus room, you won't have to run down the stairs and clear across the house ...or through one of the kid's bedrooms to reach a bathroom. Otherwise, you should probably plumb now so that you can easily add a bathroom upstairs someday. And that bath still won't be very convenient when coming in from the garage. Note also that by moving the pantry out of the kitchen, you can wrap cabinetry around the corner of the kitchen... which, if you look closely at the pictures, is what they did in the house that was photographed. You should also make sure of exactly how deep the garage parking BAYS are. If the 24' depth measurement includes the storage area, the actual parking bay may be less than 21 feet deep which could be a bit tight for parking a larger vehicle. You'll also want to verify the dimensions of the two master closets. To hang clothing on parallel walls you need a bare minimum of 6 ft which gives you 2 ft for each hanging rod and 2 ft for the aisle space down the middle. A two foot wide aisle in a closet with clothing on each side feels claustrophobic so for real comfort the closet needs to be 7 feet wide. Those closets look like they're maybe 5'6" wide. If so, be aware that you'll only be able to hang clothing in an L shape in the smaller closet and on three walls in the larger closet. That is still a lot of storage space but not nearly as much as the drawing suggests you'll have. In fact, with any internet plan, it is always a good to verify the actual wall-to-wall size of every room and closet before you buy. Some of the designs get pretty skimpy in rooms where they don't show dimensions. And, where rooms are not perfect rectangles, one can never be sure without asking if the listed dimension include the little bumpouts or the actual "useful" floor space. With those caveats, I think the Birchwood plan could make a very very nice home. As for the Betz Magnolia Springs, I can't say I like it at all. About the only thing about it that I like better than the Birchwood is that you have access to the outdoors via the laundry room... that can be nice for letting the family dog in/out of the yard when you don't want muddy paw prints on the living room floor. But you could easily add an exterior door in the laundry room of the Birchwood if you wanted one. Furthermore, the rear elevation drawing of the Magnolia Springs doesn't correlate to the floorplan AT ALL. Either the artist added a full second floor (complete with 2nd floor deck!) instead of the single bedroom and bonus room shown on the plan OR he added in an entire walk-out basement under the main floor. In either case, without extensive revisions to the floor plan, you rear elevation would not wind up looking anything at all like the one shown with the plan. It's misleading enough when sites post photographs of houses supposedly built from the plans but where so many revisions have been made to the original plan that the built house is a TOTALLY different house. But, when the artist's conception is this misleading, it is inexcusable.

This topic stressed me out a bit since we are the middle of work opening our kitchen to the dining room in our 1906 house. I'm already worried about whether everything will turn out ok. We thought a lot about this, though, so I'll weigh in. I apologize for the length - brevity may be the soul of wit, but it apparently is not my strong suit. We moved to our current 1906 Arts & Crafts house from a Victorian farmhouse which had the kitchen isolated from the dining room and living room, separated by a bathroom. We found it hard when we had people over since they were either crammed in the kitchen without enough room to participate in the cooking or they were way at the other end of the house. We saw that we had a pattern of having people over in the summer when we could congregate outside by the grill, but not much in the winter. We have a very close community of friends and we enjoy sharing meals in a very casual, family sort of way with kids playing, adults talking and cooking. We also found the dining room more difficult to use for everyday meals. Additionally, it was not possible to carry on conversations when in the two spaces or moving between them for setting, clearing etc. I enjoy cooking, but also like interacting rather than being isolated. When we decided to move we were looking to resolve this split and have a more connected common space. We saw many houses (and almost bought one) with family room additions connected to the kitchen which left unused living and dining rooms. These rooms had become merely somewhere to walk through, heat and cool. Some had little or no furniture in the abandoned formal rooms. We realized that we did not really need this redundant space. There is an excellent book by Sarah Susanka (Taunton Press), The Not So Big House. It talks quite eloquently about using space in an efficient manner. I personally like having one place to eat all meals. I like eating at the dining room table for just the reasons mentioned in posts above - slowing down, sitting on a chair instead of stools, in a space designed for eating, around a table (preferably round) which facilitates a relaxed, shared experience. The truth is that since we do not have servants, we often need to go back and forth between the spaces. Houses at the turn of the last century were often built to fit a more formal way of living which placed servants (even modest homes) or the women of the house out of the way while the hosts entertained in formal rooms. They were also built prior to the use of refrigerators. When we moved into this new-to-us 1906 house it had a (tiny) butler's pantry for staging serving, while the refrigerator was crammed into the food pantry in such a way that required near-contortionist moves to get a carton of milk. The only storage was open to mice or around the corner in the butler's pantry cabinet. Counter space was limited to the two drainboards of the 1950's metal sink. This was not the room of efficient post-work cooking and cleaning, much less any pleasant shared time. One of us would quite frequently get trapped in the pantry by another trying to get something. The rest of the first floor of our beloved home showed signs of the revolutionary changes that were happening in houses at the time, shifting from formal double parlors to more flowing open rooms with wide framed openings between them. I am in Oak Park, home to Frank Lloyd Wright, though our home was part of a far more modest working class development. It is stunning to see the differences among the different houses being built during the first part of the century. As central heating and radiators allowed rooms to open up, a social shift away from formality and toward more relaxed, real connection was also under way. Now that the social and technological changes that have transpired over the last century have ushered in a time of shared cooking, I welcome kitchens and floorplans that facilitate that. There are other times in history and other cultures today in which the communal kitchen holds a significant place in a community. Our new kitchen provides inward facing space where people can prep around an island. In our open floor plan I envision friends and family cooking and talking together, either within the de-cramped kitchen or between it and the dining room next to it. We are also concerned about creating something that respects the house's history, fits in with the architecture and creates a sense of two spaces with different but related activities. The disfunctional pantries were ommitted in favor of refrigeration and dish storage near the new dishwasher (uses less water than hand washing). We removed the wall between the kitchen and the dining room and are replacing a portion of it with shallow (12 inch)cabinets that create a partial division and open to both sides. There will be a 6 foot visual opening on top,stepping in to a 3 foot walking space at the bottom in a sort of key hole shape. As much as we love the big pocket door in the large opening between the dining room and the foyer, I doubt that we will use it. I just can't see part of our family sitting in the living room smoking cigars while another part of the family or servants quietly set the table out of sight. It has been a delicate dance trying to mesh the eras. We are having a duplicate of the missing original built-in hutch along one side of the dining room built, but it will have some wood doors in place of the original glass to house some less aesthetic items that have no other storage on the first floor since the one closet was turned into a WC in the 50's. We got a picture of the original at an open house across the street and noticed gloves and scarves displayed where china and silver of another time once shone. Life is not static and it seems to me that a key component to navigating the ever-shifting impermanence is to be flexible. I cross my fingers hoping that my ideas about homes and people actually work out in this re-working of our lovely old house. I do not disagree with any of the prior posts, I just wanted to add some thoughts.

A Certificate of Occupancy is granted by the city when the builder has met all of their requirements. You will not be involved in that process. Definitely ask for a key if you want it but don't be surprised if the builder wants to be sure nothing gets scratched or a window or door doesn't get left open at this late date. Don't let anyone rush you; say you need more time if you feel rushed. They signed a contract saying they would deliver a completely finished and working house so make them meet that obligation. Turn everything on and look in every corner, check every switch, door & knob and sight along every wall with a strong LED flashlight. Bring someone along to take notes. I don't know how to schedule a private home inspector; you need to ask the builder about that. I'm an architect and a builder would expect me to have inspected the house every few weeks especially before things were covered up. At this stage all you can discover are poor finishes or things that don't work and your contractor should have already found them. Remember, signing off on the house does not in any way relieve the contractor of his responsibility for building to the requirements of the contract documents. Don't sign anything that says otherwise. A walk-through should only be a courtesy.