Three Levels of Architectural Plans: What Homeowners Must Know

William Reid (: 00:00

All right, my guest today is Laura Davis, and I'm really excited because Laura is a licensed architect and interior designer, and she's co-owner of HPD Architecture Plus Interiors. And this is a woman-owned residential firm. She started way back in 2008, one of our favorite periods of time in the economy, with her partner Holly Hall. And Holly runs a Dallas office, and Laura leads the office in Denver.

And she's licensed both in Texas and Colorado. And she spent more than 25 years designing new homes, remodels, and additions with a real soft spot for older houses. And we're going to have some other episodes in the future, I hope, about historic renovations. She calls herself a house genealogist, because every old home carries the story of everybody who ever changed it.

Laura also co-hosted her own podcast for years, the Architecture Happy Hour. And I've spent 35 plus years on the construction side, and I wanted an architect's view of the decisions that get made before anybody draws a line on the set of plans. And that's why I'm really — Laura will actually be my first architect to be on the podcast.

So I'm honored to have Laura. Laura, welcome to the show.

Laura (: 01:19

Thank you so much, Bill. I'm really excited to get to talk to you. And I love the fact that we have this back and forth that we're ready to have as far as between an architect and a builder. I think that's gonna be really interesting to bring both angles to the discussion.

William Reid (: 01:33

Yeah, I've had some recent discussions and conversations with some builders. Actually one of them was in Aurora, Colorado, and one of them is in Lake Oswego, Oregon. And there's a lot of talk about architects and designers and what comes out of an architect's office to the builder. And there's a lot of different levels, we'll call it, of plans and details. And the conversation revolves around is the builder being provided enough information in order to even estimate the project to begin with? Or is the builder getting in the middle of helping the homeowner pick materials, look at details? You know, we had this whole conversation about a box beam ceiling detail, and the words on the plans were a couple of lines and it said box beam ceiling. That was it. Is it paint grade, stain grade? Is it a triple buildup crown detail? You know, what is it, right?

And a homeowner, they see that, yeah, I want a box beam detail. Maybe they showed you a picture, but they were in a hurry to get the plans going so they could get a permit. And so there's a lot of dynamics that go on here between the relationship between the homeowner and the architect, between the homeowner and the builder, between the architect and the builder.

And one caveat I would mention is I always operated a design build business model in my history. So I had my own designers on staff. And most of them were interior designers, but I would call them more like architectural interior designers, if you will. They're not architects. They were certified interior designers, degrees in interior design with emphasis in architectural interiors, that kind of stuff. And I never had a licensed architect on staff. We interfaced with architects sometimes on projects, but I had my staff doing the whole project. So I'm used to delivering a very comprehensive set of plans to the field because I am the field.

Yeah, so I wanted to, yeah, and I know the problems that can arise when things aren't specified. So I was hoping you could share a peek inside to your architecture office and how you work and the different options that you have, perhaps with a client, so that we can help the homeowners understand that there's more than one way to do this. So I was hoping you could dig in there a little bit.

Laura (: 04:05

Yeah, absolutely. I think that there is more than one way to do this and that's a pro and a con. We know that it can make it more complicated or hopefully it brings all the pieces together and it makes it a more simple, straightforward process. I think from your example with the box beam ceiling detail, the only thing we know for sure is that there are three very different ideas of what that box beam is going to look like and how it's going to get built. And it's the owner and the architect and the contractor and everybody probably is thinking it's something different, right? Unless it gets fully drawn and explained and discussed, then everybody would be on the same page.

And so when I tell people that I'm an architect, I also follow that up by saying I'm the quarterback of the team, of the project team, because I can't play every position on the field. You know, since we're in football season, I'll use a football analogy. I'm not the one that is gonna be necessarily doing everybody else's job, but I have to understand what everybody's strengths are and have to understand what job everybody else on the field is doing. And so by knowing all my team members and what they're gonna bring to this project, that's my job is to put all the pieces together and to communicate with the owner what their goals are, what are they hoping to accomplish, how do they want to live in this house? How do they want to entertain friends? Do they want to make sure there's room for future family members? You know, really diving into the details, which for me is the fun part, is really getting to know the owner.

And getting to understand what do they hope at the end of this entire project, as messy and complicated as it might be, what is that end game, that light at the end of the tunnel that's gonna make them realize, my gosh, this was so worth it? So really what we try to do, you know, I guess if you're talking about deliverables, we as architects produce the drawings, we produce the documents that are gonna help you, the builder, to get it built. So we have to follow all of the city's requirements or the county's requirements on making sure that we design that house to fit all of the hoops you have to jump through when you're looking at a piece of property. And I think we're actually going to talk about this on a future episode, but all of the — you know it's our part of our job to understand the zoning and the easements and the setbacks and all of these parameters that every single piece of property comes with. You can't find a piece of dirt hardly anywhere that doesn't have some kind of rules attached to it. So that's one of the very first things that we do before we even start drawing is we do our due diligence. And anybody that your listeners might be working with, they need to be asking those questions. Are you checking? Are you doing the due diligence to make sure that what we're asking for is even feasible?

I'm sure you've had projects where you've ended up with hiccups down the road and you get further into the project than you would prefer and realize, shoot, we're not allowed to do this, or we're gonna have to pivot and do something else. And that just causes confusion and it costs time and, you know, sometimes it can even cost money if construction's already started.

William Reid (: 07:30

Okay, yeah, no, I get it. You're talking about can we even build what they envision, right? Because of the lot they purchased. And you know, ideally somebody maybe talks with an architect before they purchase a lot, but they also may already own a home that they want to renovate or remodel, right? They want maybe they want to expand it. But one of the questions I have is — and this is really the big thing, this is the elephant in the room. When somebody comes in into your door or when you open up a conversation and they're excited, they've got these inspiration images perhaps. They've got these visions of what they want for their new home or their remodeled home. When do you start talking about the budget with a client?

Laura (: 08:12

In the first breath. If not sooner.

William Reid (: 08:15

Yeah, I'm glad you said that because I think a lot of people don't do that.

Laura (: 08:16

Early. Yeah.

Well yeah, so we talk about it. They may or may not know what their budget is. A lot of times we have to help them figure that out. And what's funny is sometimes people think, I want to build something or I want to remodel something. I need to go to a builder. And then we hope that the builders will say, okay, well the size of what you want to do is big enough that you're going to need drawings.

And we hope that's when they reverse course and come back and find somebody like us that can actually guide them through getting the drawings. And in that conversation of getting the drawings, obviously that has to reflect something that will fit in their budget. So it's a little bit of a circular conversation, but yeah, we try to have that absolutely immediately up front.

William Reid (: 09:06

So how do you approach that? Like you said, some people may not know what their budget is, but a lot of people I think they have an idea, how much they want to invest. The way I word it is, okay, yeah, you think you want all this, but how much do you want to invest in the property? Or how much dollars do you want to commit to this property?

Do you pose that? You said you asked that's one of the first questions you ask. What do you frequently see? Are people saying, well, I want to add 2,000 square feet to my 2,000 square foot house and I think I want to spend $200,000?

Laura (: 09:41

Right. Yeah, exactly.

William Reid (: 09:43

How do you approach that and then how do you help them get their head right when it comes to the budget so that nobody's wasting their time? Even though maybe you as architect get paid, you get paid at design, right? I mean that's what you're doing is you're getting paid at design, but you still could potentially be wasting time because you're not spending time with a client that has a realistic budget. I mean that's kind of what I'm trying to figure out is how do architects behind the scenes figure this out with a client so that it doesn't end up in the builder's lap, right? Where an owner could spend six months to a year or more with an architect creating this masterpiece. And they've spent tens, twenties, hundreds of thousands of dollars sometimes on plans and details.

I want to learn about how architects do that and how we can figure out to not have the customer find out way too late on that.

Laura (: 10:39

Absolutely. Yeah. Unfortunately we've had projects like that and it doesn't feel good for anybody. So I don't like letting a project get that far out of reality. Really what we do, we approach it in a couple of different ways and it depends on the owner, the homeowner that's coming to us. One, if they have an existing home and they want to add on, say extra bedrooms or they want to remodel or add whatever the project is, first of all we're going to ask if they have a budget in mind, just straight out of the gate, right? But then we also want to find out if they don't necessarily have a number, but maybe they do have some money saved up. If they've got say $300,000 they can put towards a remodel, but their home and their neighborhood can really only, it only makes sense to put $150,000 into it based on the value of the neighborhood, the equity that they have in their home, we don't want them to be the biggest, most expensive house in the neighborhood if that neighborhood is not going to catch up.

So we ask them, how long do you think you're going to be in the home? Is this your forever home and we're good for 20 or 30 years and that value then can catch up? Or is this, are you only here for about eight years until your kids graduate from high school and then you're going to move on? Because at that point, we want to make sure that you're not upside down in the value of that house. So we do have that conversation where we advise them to talk to a realtor to say, why don't you look at some comps, some comparable values in your neighborhood? Let's just make sure that this makes sense. Because we have had some clients where we've advised them that, you know what, you've only owned this house for a year. If you put another couple hundred thousand dollars into it, you're not getting it back.

Now the flip side of that conversation is if that's not really a problem for them financially, if they're like, well, we want the pool, we want the second floor, and we don't care. Fine, great, that's totally your decision. But really we feel like it's part of our responsibility to make sure that they don't unknowingly get into a situation where they can't get their money back when they go to sell that house and they've got too much invested in it and it doesn't make sense.

William Reid (: 12:55

How do you and your agency and your team design towards a budget? How do you make yourself feel comfortable that you are on track for the client's $300,000 budget with their big long wish list hanging on the whiteboard? How do you know? I mean, as you're going through, as you're working with a client in the early stages of, let's say schematic design is often called the very first step of design, right? And you start working and all these ideas are just coming out and everybody's excited and happy and what if we did this? What if we did that? And this is awesome and that kind of stuff. How do you know how much this stuff's going to cost?

Laura (: 13:39

Well, depending on where you're building, there's probably an average cost per square foot. And of course that varies. If you're doing a kitchen, your cost per square foot could be quite a bit higher than if you're just doing a bedroom addition. So we take into account what type of square footage are we trying to add on. And then we do, back of the napkin or a spreadsheet, we say, if we want a bedroom that's 12 by 14 and we want another bathroom and, we literally make a program is what we call it. We go through and we list all the rooms that need to be added or need to be remodeled and then we try to do a guesstimate on the cost per square foot. Really just it's a ballpark. It's not something you can send to the bank. But it's better than nothing. And it really gives us a good sense of are we close or, if we just sort of tweak this and fine tune it, can we get there?

Or is this so out of the realm of possibility, maybe we need to have a conversation. And that's where we like to get the contractor involved as early as possible if they know who they want to work with, then that makes it a really good partnership to really start to ask the contractor, what outside expenses are you seeing that we're not anticipating? Because of course the cost of materials changes all the time. We went through a period where lumber was off the charts, where we couldn't get concrete or steel because building in China was going crazy. I mean, there's all sorts of, believe it or not, in our little individual towns, global economic things affect us as far as getting, if we want to get a certain kind of plumbing fixture and it's from overseas, well that might be a 12-week lead time, which really doesn't fit our construction schedule.

So there's all those little things that we want to try to anticipate early in the process, and all of that affects the budget. We just want to give the owner a heads up. Here's where we might hit some bumps in the road. And if we can kind of navigate around those during design, that makes the rest of the project go smoothly. So really our first stab at the budget is that cost per square foot. We like to get input from the contractor and then really talk to the owner about the real spaces they need, not just what they saw in a magazine and they thought would be cool. We want to know, is this actually going to serve you in the way you want to live in the house? Or can we get to that result somewhere else?

Yeah, you hit on something that I've been talking a lot about recently about the builder contractor involvement early on during the design process. And I think for the homeowners out there listening, this is a really big one to me. Coming from the design build background, and then we have Laura who, you're talking about taking some kind of accountability to the budget. I mean, you're not the builder. You don't, is it true, do you think it's true that architects don't have as much of a pulse of construction costs as maybe a builder or a contractor who's out there in the trenches?

Yeah, that's very true, absolutely.

So do you, representing the owner, do you ever go out and invite a contractor, a builder into the project, or do you let the homeowner do that?

So we have contractors that we've worked with for years and we will introduce several to the owner. We ultimately want them to interview and make sure they have a good relationship, a good vibe with that contractor. So we let them choose. In fact, your listeners should understand that the contract with the contractor is only with the homeowner. The architect should have nothing to do with it if it's a true architect and then contractor or builder process versus design build, which is a different structure.

Right. Yeah, you're contracting directly with the architecture firm to do all the design work and everything, and then you're doing a separate contract with the contractor.

Well, and that actually is a unique and actually important arrangement, because if my contract is only with the homeowner, I have no contractual responsibility to the contractor. My responsibility is to be an advocate for that homeowner. And so I think that's a really important piece that the homeowners need to know is that your architect is there to go to bat for you. They're not there to make the contractor happy. They're there to make sure that you get the design that you paid for. And we're going to go to the building site. We're going to say, no, that's not how we drew it. We're going to say you need to redo that because we are advocating for the homeowner. We're not there, I'm sure much to the chagrin of the contractor, we're not there to make their lives easier. We're there to make sure that the design gets built the way the owners requested it.

Yeah, and there's a fine line there, because does the builder have enough information to do what you envisioned or what the client envisioned? And has the homeowner paid you to do that? And we're going to talk about that in a second. But going back to the builder involvement, do you find that a lot of the good contractors, the good builders, they're still pretty busy? Even in this day and age, October twenty-eighth, twenty twenty-six, when nobody even really knows what's going on in the world. But the good ones are still busy. Do you find that they're interested in coming in, not knowing if they have the project at all? Perhaps they're not getting paid for their time. The reason I'm asking this is because there's a lot of talk about pre-construction services by a contractor, by a builder, which is what we're talking about here, right? Let's, you don't have a contract to, I don't have a contract to build the project yet. I haven't even priced anything out yet. But yet here I am, maybe spending time sitting down with the homeowner and the architect and brainstorming, value engineering, doing all kinds of things, helping clarify design details. Even, you want a box beam ceiling? Let's talk about it. Is it cherry wood, glazed, distressed, or is it MDF, paint grade? Let's get into these little things. But that's one of my questions. Are builders really interested in doing that? The good ones?

So we've run into a mix on that, and that's interesting that you bring that up because I'm working with a client right now who is building a new home in a different state. And so they are located in Texas, the project is in another state, and so they are basically communicating remotely with the exception of one local visit to the area. They're trying to have conversations with a number of contractors and they've run up against every scenario. So some of them want an upfront fee to do that bid. They want so that they're not having that free consulting situation, which you're absolutely right, that can take a lot of time. And it's not just them, it's their subcontractors as well. So I completely understand that. We as the architect try not to get into that situation, but it happens and it's not great because we don't want to waste hours either if there's not a project down the road. So what you're saying is they, you are hearing more, are contractors leaning more towards that kind of pre-project consulting fee?

Well, it's being talked about, right?

Or for bidding, maybe?

Well, not necessarily bidding per se. It's more about before all that, right? What we're talking about. It's like let's bring in a contractor and here's some schematic design work that we've pulled together. Let's bring a contractor in and talk with him and see what he thinks about, maybe we'll meet on site. Maybe we'll spend a few hours and meet on site, so if it's a remodel, let's say. Here's what we're thinking about doing, and basically getting a consultation from a contractor before the bidding process, way before the bidding process. It's part of the design process, really.

Right.

So there's, yeah, there's it's already happening, but I think what's going on is the builder is brought into the project too late. Well, I shouldn't say too late, but they're brought into the project when all the plans are done or really far along. Let's say you're deep into design development or maybe you're even done with design development, which is commonly step two of the stages of the design process. And they're brought in and they're being asked to spend a whole bunch of time reviewing these plans and bidding the plans, eventually bidding the plans, but they're being asked to, or forced. I don't know. It's like, well, what do you want here? What do you want there? What do you want this? Where are the structural drawings? Is that done yet? How, what is the solution here? I have ideas. I'm the contractor. I have ideas how we could do this. I have ideas how we could do this less expensive and maybe get close to the same result. So there's a lot of that that goes on and it's because a lot of it is because the plans aren't fully developed yet or never developed fully.

Yes, you're correct. Yeah, it happens.

And they end up becoming part of the design team late in the process.

Right.

And Chad, a builder I've been talking with up in Oregon, he said what he has to do is he gets the plans in, and this is probably more often than not, and this might be a good segue to talk about the plans. But he gets the plans, he looks at them and he goes right back, he circles back to the architect. And in his case, there's always an interior designer involved as well. In your case, you're both, it sounds like. So,

So he ends up kind of forcing that or paddling back upstream to get the information that he needs in order to even price the project out properly. At least that's his process, which is the more responsible process. Another consequence. Yeah, I mean another consequence is let's say the homeowner's getting three estimates from a builder and the second guy says, I'm just gonna bid it off the plans, I don't care. I'm just gonna bid whatever's on the plans, box beam ceiling, okay. There's no detail, so I'm gonna do the cheapest way you can possibly do it and not tell anybody. I'm not gonna tell anybody.

Right, I'm gonna do it the way I've always done it. And there's no details. So then the homeowner walks on the job site, goes, I see these little boxes up there, but they look like my grandson did it or something. I mean it's there's this late evolution, late involvement coming in.

And it's because there was no builder involvement, both from a budgeting standpoint early on, or at least contribution to the budget conversations early on, and then as the architects and the designers get deeper involved, there's no builder involvement really to say, if you put a post here. I had this one story I've talked about, they wanted a forty foot wall. It was like a really long glass, high retractable wall, right?

Big deal, right? And it wasn't forty feet, I think it was like twenty six feet or something long into the kitchen. Long enough to make a difference. And we ended up putting a post in the middle and creating two different sections, so therefore we didn't have to have steel and all kinds of stuff 'cause I was in that design build mode and I'm like, we just saved like twenty grand by doing that. So none of that's going on, right? So that's what I'm trying to figure out and help homeowners understand. And even it's coming from the builders and now it's coming from you as the architect, you're saying the more I can have a builder, it sounds like what I'm getting from it is the more I can have a builder involved earlier on, the better it is for everybody. Does that sound like I'm getting that right?

Yeah, absolutely, because that's how we approach our projects. We will advise our clients that our most successful projects are the ones where we have those conversations early in the process and for a lot of the reasons you mentioned. Not only like we will keep an eye out for those say like beam lengths where if you go over a certain threshold of length, all of a sudden your depth of your beam gets a lot bigger. It has to go from just being an LVL type laminated beam to steel or to a giant glulam. There's technologies to build just about everything, right? But there's also a dollar sign attached to that. And that's where that collaboration between the builder and the architect and the owner, where that teamwork makes for a better product at the end of the day. But like you're saying, you have no control over the level of quality of drawings that lands in your lap, right? Or any builder for that matter. So that's where we try to communicate to the owner who is trying to decide what kind of drawings do I need to get the house I want. We try to offer them a couple different budget price points to fit what they need and what they can do, but also explain to them the pros and cons of what they're gonna get.

So we offer a small, I would say a permit set or what we call a builder set where it's just the bare minimum to get the permit. And basically that's typically a site plan, a floor plan, the exterior elevations, which is basically what the outside of the house looks like. And then we do a roof plan and then typically they want to see an electrical plan with lights and outlets, that sort of thing, and a wall section. Where typically most of our projects, we would want a lot more than that, because the builder needs more than that. So what the city wants to see in order to check off a project is different than what a contractor would like to see in order to completely understand the design intent. And then we can produce as many or as few drawings as those two things require.

So from that builder set we go up to sort of a middle of the road where we offer interior elevations so that we can better describe walls with cabinetry. We do the bathroom drawing so that you as the builder can understand, okay, are we talking about fancy custom mosaic tile or are we going with the basic that we always do from more of a budget approach. And then from there we go to the third option is a fully custom drawing package and specifications. And so we have finished schedules and hardware schedules and lighting schedules and every single piece of anything that's going into this house, it will be decided on, it will be documented. So that you as the builder or the contractor has every piece of information. So they know exactly what light bulb is going in that fixture. They know exactly what countertop is going in the kitchen. They know the paint colors, they know the flooring tile, the wood finish, everything. And so of course that on the design side takes a lot more time and investment from our side, a lot more decision making with the client. But at the end of the day, I think it's worth it because they get the time and space they need before any ground is broken, before we start accumulating hours with the laborers or hours with the backhoe and all of the construction fees. We take the time and space to make the decisions on everything that's going to go into that house. And we do that in partnership with the owner. We walk those stone yards with them. We go to the tile showrooms. We go help them pick out their plumbing fixtures. And while it does take time and investment on that side, it makes for a much more complete project so that you know exactly what you're ordering and what you're bidding and what you're asking your subs to provide.

Which also on the flip side, once the bids come back, we know what they should have bid and we're able to sit with the owner and say, okay, let's go through this line by line and make sure that there isn't any additional information we need to add to the drawings. There isn't any clarification that's needed. Or the benefit of getting the builder's input is you guys might know, well, this line of light fixture is actually on back order and we can't get it. But we have a really good substitution. Let's talk about making that replacement. So that's where having that information in the drawings and in the specifications makes a big impact on your side of things. And I'm saying you because I'm looking at you in the camera. You representing every builder in the whole country. Yes, you, Mr. Builder or Miss Builder, you guys are able to then reflect and give us your expertise and experience in installing a certain fixture. You might say, well gosh, this might work better as this other model of sink, cabinet, whatever, fill in the blank, right?

And we appreciate that feedback. It makes for a better project. That's really our end game, is to let's just have a good project.

It goes to expectations, right? I mean, God, I use that word so much, right? So a homeowner coming into a project who's never done this before, not only do they not know what to expect, even worse, they've already built their own expectations. If that makes any sense, right? I mean, so and then the three tiers of the plans that you're talking about, it's pretty hard for I think it's pretty hard for people to understand the value of each of those one, two, three, the three tiers, until it's too late, right? Until they're

on the job site and their front door is three months delayed, right? So they can't get their final and they can't get moved in or whatever. I'm just making something up here. But going back to your three tiers, the builder set, right? So the builder set is kind of like what a strong relationship between an architect and a builder. So again, for those listening out there, both the builders and the homeowners, I mean, there's a lot of contractors out there that have a really strong working relationship with architects and interior designers. And there's so much so that they can read each other's minds, right, after they've worked together for a long period of time. So the architect doesn't necessarily need to go to the level two or level three because, in my belief, my opinion, is because there's a really strong relationship there and when Joe the builder says, yeah, they said box beam, I know what they mean. So this is what I'm going to put in. I'll double check, but yeah, I think that's what. Otherwise, if there's no relationship, box beam, yeah, whatever. I'll give you the price and then there'll be a change order later. Because eventually somebody's going to ask the question, but sometimes it's too late, right? Like after it's up, they go, wait, I don't like that. Now I want more detail, change order. Right? Because it's not on the plans. Yeah. So the builder set, people need to understand that the builder set is just that. And when you say builder set, what that really means is the builder's figuring a lot of this stuff out, right?

Right, it's on the owner. And we in fact we put that in our agreement that says if you choose this level, you're responsible for making all the selections with your builder. And if you have that relationship with your builder, that's awesome because maybe you've already built with them before. And like you said, maybe the owner and that builder have a kind of that mind meld. And we've had projects where that's just perfectly exactly what they needed and they didn't need much more input from us. They just needed the layout, really.

So what would you think would be the perfect profile, homeowner profile, to pay you to do a builder set?

It would be somebody who already has experience with construction. So maybe they have done previous renovations. They have a relationship with their builder. So hopefully they've done projects with their builder before. I think a builder set is not a good fit for a first-time homeowner or a first time relationship with their contractor, and I'm using contractor and builder interchangeably in this conversation. So yeah I think it's for somebody that basically just needs the ticket to get through the city to get that piece of paper and they essentially already know what they want. That's really all we're giving them in a builder set is enough to get through the city to get the construction started and they'll take it from there. But somebody that's like gosh I don't know if I want a built-in tub or a standalone tub and I don't know what the consequences of that are. And I don't know what color temperature I want in my lights. All of those little decisions that they probably don't even realize they have to make eventually. If they don't already know their contractor, because the contractor can guide them through those questions as well. But they need to know that they can pick up from the drawings and carry on with the project with the contractor and that that's taken care of. If they don't already have confidence in that, then we probably need to spend some time and put all that information in the drawings. Does that is that kind of compatible with what you've experienced?

Yeah, I think you hit it right. Totally. Yeah, that's exactly how I feel about it too, is the homeowners need to know that and they don't understand even if you say in your agreement you have to pick all the selections with your builder, they don't realize how much goes into that. I mean I have a project right now where I was just invited to build a custom home in a resort community where I live in the mountains. I don't know the architect, but he's an architect out of the Truckee Tahoe area, and he does a lot of work for builders. But this homeowner, they have an acquaintance there, but they're provided a set of plans and I started looking at the plans and there's nothing on them. There's no specifications for windows, for doors, for roofing, for siding, for just the general architectural elements, right? None of that is specified on the plans. The stone and masonry work that's drawn on the plans. None of that's specified on the plans. There's lines drawn on the plans, but there's nothing. Would that be, that would kind of fall into a builder set, wouldn't it? Category.

That would be like builder light. Yeah. I think the builder set works if say you're a house flipper and you're going to make all the decisions in the field, that's fine. That's all you need is a permit, right? If you have any dream of making this a custom home, anything beyond spending an afternoon at Home Depot, walking the aisles and just picking, that I would say would be builder set. If you have any aspirations of making this special or specific to your family, specific to your needs, custom anything beyond kind of typical pre-made, prefabricated materials, then yeah, you need more than just a builder set.

Okay, that just struck a chord with me. The way I think about that is a homeowner needs to know what type of homeowner they are. What type of client are you? Are you just, like you were just saying this is what a builder set is, are you that type of client? Or have you, do you have a mound of inspiration and you like this detail and you like the way this transitions and you like the overall cohesive look of this library and gallery and wine cellar? It just depends on what you're building, right? To what extent. And that's probably also a factor to what level. Are we building a fifteen hundred square foot house or are we building a seventy eight hundred square foot estate with ADUs and shops and basements and whatever. So that can also drive you but what kind of client are you? And this is the kind of thing that homeowners need to think about and they don't know to think about that. They don't even know to think about that.

Yeah, that's such a good point. Yeah, that's a good way to explain it. Yeah, if you're somebody that actually notices whether the finish on a wood floor is matte or satin or gloss, if you're somebody that notices that, you're not a builder set client. Because that level of detail is not going to be specified in a builder set and you're going to get whatever the builder builds. And you better be okay with it.

Yeah, and there you go. You've lost control. Again, going back to my theory that people have their own set of expectations that are really kind of based on nothing. I mean, they're based on their dream, their vision, their inspirations. But they have these expectations set, not knowing what the process is in order to achieve those expectations, other than the fact that your level one plans are half the price of level three. I don't know if that's true, but it might even be a third.

Laura: It's yeah, a third, threefold.

William Reid: It might even be a quarter and some. So you look at the plans, you go, wow, I can get my plans done from a licensed architect that seems to care for the level one. This is great.

They don't understand. And then they see the message that says, well, just so you know, you're responsible for all of the materials, all the details to make it look like the pictures you showed me. I'll draw the drawings to get you a permit to get you through the process. But now you're depending on the builder who's not a designer.

I mean, there's a lot of good builders out there that can envision things and know product and know details and that kind of stuff. Don't get me wrong. But they're not designers. A lot of them aren't designers. They're not thinking about necessarily a project as cohesively and theme-oriented and style-oriented as an architect and an interior designer team, right?

So the expectations are set, but not knowing going in that you're going to get that, but being attracted by the low price plan set is where I think people get mixed up. And they get themselves in trouble. Another question I have for you is when a project isn't fully specified, meaning the level two or three, especially the three, what consequences other than the fact that people aren't getting what they thought they were getting, what other consequences have you seen during the construction of the project because of the lack of information provided to a builder? Not to say that's your fault. I'm just saying like you gave the options and they said, I like the cheapest one. But what kind of consequences have you seen?

Laura: Yeah, we, let's get this done quick, yeah.

William Reid: Yeah, but what kind of consequences have you seen?

Laura: Yeah, so I think some of the things that we run into or that we hear after the fact from the owner if they decide to take on that post-drawings part of the project, take that on on their own, things like they probably don't have their refrigerator picked out while we're doing. We ask them to. We want to know what their appliances are, but they may not. So, for example, they fall in love with a refrigerator that's two inches wider than the standard 36 or 42 inch that we put in the plan as a placeholder. All of a sudden they've got to redo their cabinets. They have to go back to their cabinet provider and say, this doesn't fit. And then they're having, you know, then they might be away from what we had planned on a three-inch module for a cabinet. That's sort of the entry level least expensive way to do it is we try to plan on three inch increments. But if they go change something that then affects, it's a trickle effect, right? You change one thing, you start pulling on that loose thread in your sweater, and all of a sudden you've got to rebuild your sweater because it all starts unraveling. And you know, you might have to then resize a window. And then you have to move your plumbing. And then, you know, now your electrical's not in the right place.

So there's so many interlocked systems. Every single one of those subcontractors that your contractor is bringing onto your job site, they are dependent on the guy that was there before them. And the guy that comes after them is hoping that this guy does the right thing, because he's based his work on the two guys that came before him. So yeah, when you don't plan ahead for all those little variables, you just open yourself up to a whole lot of uncertainty. And for some people, they can handle that. They just roll with it, they make decisions on the fly, and somehow the project comes together. But we have a lot of clients that they need the certainty. They want to know that those what-ifs are planned for and that the construction can go a lot more smoothly if we don't, if we're not having to shift in the middle of every single decision. Because if you changed the, like say you want the extra wide ovens, okay, well that makes your pantry smaller, and all of a sudden that platter that's 20 inches long that we built that entire pantry around, and now your pantry's 18 inches. Like, well, what the heck was the point of designing around that 20-inch platter? Do you see what I mean? It can have consequences that you can't even anticipate, but at the end of the day, you don't want to be frustrated by the finished product.

William Reid: Yeah, and I think that's one of the big missions here is to share with homeowners what the consequences could be. And like what you just described between the refrigerator and the ovens, that's like a little microcosm, little micro example. Think about bigger, think about bigger things like, I thought the ceilings were gonna be taller. I mean, you know, when they walked in there's, it can get really big. You know, in my experience, and again, like I said, I've done design build. So it's funny, I've been doing this like 35 years and it's all been design build and fixed price contracting. And a lot of my buddies have done cost plus, time and material, off of level one plans or level one light plans. Budget, you know, the builder set.

So I come from, I'm more of a control freak being, you know, design build. And it has a lot to do with what you just said about what a client's, a lot of clients are like, I want to know exactly what I'm getting. And all my work was done in Silicon Valley area of Northern California. They were all high tech people and they were very particular, and in a good way. I mean it was great. It drove me to be the type of builder I ended up being. But the one thing that I know can occur in a set of plans that are not fully developed and then therefore not addressed fully during the preliminary stages with the builder is the budget. So a year ago we talked about the budget. And you know, we've got four or five hundred dollars a square foot for your 3,500 square foot home.

And the plans got done. They decided to do the builder set plans or maybe the level two plans, the middle set, and then it's time to go out and look at all the stone and look at the fireplaces and look at the kitchen cabinets. Cabinetry's a big one. Cabinetry is a big line item in a custom home. And all of a sudden they start working with the cabinet maker. And you're out of the picture, you're the architect, you got paid for your builder set. They, I bet you, I wouldn't be surprised if they circle back with you and say, God help me, I don't know what I'm doing now.

But the budget, so when a homeowner elects to use the builder set or you know, minuscule or light details in the plans, the margin for error is greater. And the error isn't just budget. It's also schedule. It's delays. It's also expectations of the visual you have of your new home. But going back to the budget for a minute, all of a sudden you're starting to make decisions, a lot of times during construction, for the tiles and the tile design. Tile's another big one. You can spend just a ton of time on tile and cabinetry and, let's talk about the window product. Nobody specified the window product. We know what the energy calculations need to be, the specs for them as far as the performance. And you know, the builder said, well, I just budgeted vinyl, you know, white vinyl windows. And you as the homeowner said, I

I don't — that's not what I want. I want a wood clad window with red exterior and stained on the interior. All of a sudden the windows are triple the price. So multiply that. So you as a homeowner listening, multiply that situation times four hundred, three hundred decisions, thousands of decisions sometimes that have to be made in building a home. And it's because you didn't figure it out early enough, meaning the homeowner didn't figure it out early enough, right? So you end up your $1.5 million budget, all of a sudden it's $1.7, $1.8, here comes two million, right? And you're under construction.

You've lost control of your project because you're trying to — you're scrambling to achieve your expectations. This is the consequence, in my opinion, of not thoroughly thinking out the project ahead of time. And my big story there is that you're no longer in the driver's seat. You're at the mercy of the process. If you'd paid an extra twenty thousand — I don't know, I'm just making up numbers — but if you paid an extra twenty thousand dollars to the architect to figure out all of these details, you can then say, okay, you know what? Let's not go with the high-end windows. Let's go with the lower end windows, but let's upgrade the fireplace mantle to that one that we have to import from Italy or something. That's another 10 grand. You're able to be in control. But that's kind of where I'm trying to get to, and I'm trying to get to the homeowners. I want them to understand the consequences before they jump in.

It's a lot cheaper to change a number on a spreadsheet before it's actually in a warehouse somewhere than literally standing on site trying to make a decision or waiting for that next panic phone call. Investing the time in the beginning makes a huge difference.

And the Italian mantle, it takes three months to get. So that project's delayed. So it goes back to what type of homeowner are you, and what are your expectations. If you think you're gonna build your house in 12 months — if it's a 4,000 square foot house and you want to build it in 12 months — then gosh, I'd have every single I dotted and every T crossed. So the builder perhaps could just focus on executing rather than designing. But if you're a homeowner, like you said, you know what you're doing. You got the time to do it. Time. That's another one we didn't talk about. The time to do it. It's a full time job for a homeowner.

Yeah, I think if you think about a vessel, you know, like say a line chart that is a hundred percent and you've got the owner's column on one side and the architect's column on the other side and you only want the architect to do twenty five percent of that column, you as the homeowner have to be prepared to make up the rest of that seventy five percent of effort, of decisions, of time, of committing to owning the rest of that project development so that it can get to construction, versus if you have us do the seventy five, eighty, ninety percent of all that decision making and putting all that information in the drawings, then your input during construction only has to be that ten percent that makes up the rest of that hundred percent.

That's a great way to put it.

I've had this visual as we've been talking and I thought, yeah, if I do less, that puts more on your plate as far as you, the homeowner and the contractor. But if I work with the homeowner to put as much of all that into the drawing package so that we've got as many decisions made that we can anticipate, that makes the whole bidding process go much more accurately. It makes your ordering materials go much more smoothly. And then the building, the construction of it can go a lot more smoothly. Because we're not stopping every time something new shows up at the job site going, gosh, is that what's going in? And then having to return things and order new things and that just is disruptive.

Well that's — yeah. And that's where I think that, paying a design team two thirds more or whatever, triple — I'm just again, I'm double, triple, whatever it is — probably will save you money.

Well and we're not talking three times the cost of the house. We're talking five percent of the cost of construction versus ten percent of the cost of construction versus maybe twelve to fifteen percent of the cost of construction for design fees. And when you start looking at the costs and overages, all of a sudden you're having to call your banker to go, you know what, you know that number we got approved for for a construction loan? We need to talk. 'Cause our budget just went up by 25%. So that's not a fun conversation to have. And I've been through projects where the owner had to do that and they're scrambling at that point. And then you risk the contractor walking off the job because they can't pay their subs. The subs go find another project to work on because they need to keep busy. So the whole thing can kind of fall apart if you have to make adjustments during the process, during construction.

That's funny, Chad, that builder I was telling you about, mentioned the same exact thing about the lenders. You know, all of this could be fun and games, but ultimately if you're doing a construction loan, they're the decision makers.

Right? And they wanna see the pay applications and they want before they cut a check, they wanna know that everything's being done correctly.

Yeah, you mentioned design fees too there. And I think I wanna do an episode on that. You know, just general industry standards. There's different options that you can do, whether it's hourly or percentage or fixed fee or whatever. I think that'd be good maybe we take a sample project, example project and kind of look at that because I think people need to understand that. I have one last thing and we're probably getting to our time limit. But have you ever had clients where they did the builder level, builder set, and then it came back to you after and said, Okay, I need your help now. Has that ever happened?

Yeah, in fact I think I've got one right now where we did a builder set because they were fairly confident in their contractor that they selected. They said, Yeah, we're good. We'll pick the windows with him, we'll figure out, we'll match the brick with him. And they seemed very comfortable and confident and so I said, Great, let me just finish this up for you. I'll make sure we have a window schedule, we have a door schedule, we have all the information you need to be able to make sure things are sized correctly. But then you guys are — they felt very confident in selecting their cabinetry and their sinks and anything else that went into it. And then I just got a call back and the contractor was having trouble with — he was like, Well, the city's telling me we need gas and plumbing line drawings. We need I need more information for the energy code review. I need — I mean he had a list of

six things that he needed help with. And I thought, okay, interesting. Because typically that kind of contractor just handles all of those things. He said he had his own structural engineer. Well, one of the questions had to do with the structural plans. And if I'm out of the loop, because all of that happens after the plans leave my office, I can't run interference. It's out of my hands at that point.

So now that they're coming back to me with questions, I have to backtrack and go, okay, you guys send me everything that you tried to get the permit with. Let me see where the holes are. Let me see where I can fill in a little bit of information. And then let's see if we can get you back on track. So yeah, it's some of that. It's not to say, because every city has their own requirements and we go and we do our research, make sure that we've got our checklist. But there's always things that perhaps if we had done the next level up we would have spent a little bit more time. We would have done those interior elevations to show where all of the return air vents and air vents, just the next level of detail.

So you mentioned just a minute ago, it caught my ear there, the structural engineering. So when you say builder set level one, are you not providing structural engineering as part of that builder set?

No, the owner always contracts separately with their engineer. So it could be an engineer that we give them the name of, but they are the one paying the engineer's bill. It's not included in the architect's fee. Now we will coordinate with the engineer. If it's happening concurrently with when we are finishing our drawings, we definitely have a partnership with that engineer. But they are hired separately by the owner.

Now I'm curious about that. That's not what I'm accustomed to. At least in my experience, the architects always brought in the consultants, all of the structural, the civil, the MEP, mechanical, electrical plumbing, if that gets into really big projects usually. But does that, that's not how you work under your umbrella?

Well, so we have a lot of the consultants, we have all the consultants that we've worked with in the past. We will introduce them to the owner. Technically on the paperwork side, the owner pays them individually because we don't do a markup on their fee. What their fee is, their fee, and they get paid directly from the homeowner. So we don't want to be involved. We don't want to have to pay the engineer and then mark up the engineer's fee to then bill it to the owner. It's just cleaner if the owner pays them directly. However, though, on the collaborative side, as far as a project team goes, like I said in the beginning, I'm the quarterback of the team. I know what that engineer's doing if it's happening before the final plans are released.

And this particular contractor that I mentioned before, he had his own engineer. So he said, I've got that covered, we're good, just send me the CAD drawings and I'll send it to him. So because we were going that route, that's how we handled it. Typically though, I am collaborating with the engineer. And if there is, like say a beam needs to be deeper than what we had kind of planned for, I want to know that before I finish my drawing so that I can adjust my architectural drawings and accommodate that beam size.

Okay. So in your level one plans you've obviously put in an allocation of time to do that collaboration, or has that come extra?

Correct. Yeah, no, that collaboration is included and we want to make sure that when they do go, when they get that permit set, that they have what they need. This was sort of a one-off situation where the contractor said, I've got my own guy, so that was fine. But I don't love that only because I'm not aware of what that engineer was putting out, was producing.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking about too.

And had it been, it was a single story addition on a slab, I pretty much could anticipate exactly what the structure was going to be. So I didn't, and on my plans I noted new beam refer to structural. And so that gives the engineer a heads up that we know there's going to be a beam here, we just need him to size it. And so that kind of coordination I typically would have done, but because it was fairly straightforward and the contractor was providing that, that's just how that one particular project went.

Do you ever bring a structural engineer early, during schematic design when you're creating solutions, moving walls, do you ever consult with an engineer?

I mean, every once in a while if it's a really complicated solution, we might ask for some advice early on. But we've been doing this long enough and we are 100% residential design, so that we can pretty much anticipate and in our experience we usually can pretty accurately size the beams only to the point where we can design around it. So we know if a beam is deep, we know we have to accommodate a drop-down, that we're not going to have a flat ceiling, we might have to wrap that beam from a design standpoint. If the design will not, like if a drop-down beam doesn't make sense in the middle of a room, then we make other adjustments to make sure we can conceal that beam. Does that make sense? We accommodate it. But we want to make sure that engineer is signing off and sizing it correctly.

Right. Okay, gotcha. Okay. Wow. We could probably go on all day here.

Well, you could.

Well, I think we should probably hit the finish line so what I kind of like in summary is you've joined us to give us some insight into how an architectural office, agency, team works on a project and there's a lot to it. And our goal is to pull back the curtain a little bit so homeowners can understand how important the builder-architect relationship really is. And some of the things we talked about is the budget. Right. That is the big conversations out there. It's just the chicken before the egg, right? The cart before the horse. Are we designing a masterpiece and can't afford it or don't want to invest in it? So that early discussion of the budget. A responsible architecture firm like yours, like you said earlier, it's the first thing that comes out of my mouth, right? It's like, yeah, you could pay me all day long to design whatever you want, but are you going to be upset at the end? I don't want that.

Right. Yeah. We don't want to design something that can't be built. That's no good.

Yeah, so the budget. So you as a homeowner need to be looking for that question. And if you don't get that question, bank that and then ask the question. Would you like to understand what I want to put into this project financially? And then the other one we talked about is builder involvement as early on as possible, whether the architect have a team of builders that you've worked with in the past and most do. They may not recommend all of them, but they've worked with a lot of them. There might be a handful that they would feel comfortable bringing them in to the project early. And they're usually project specific on what the architect thinks a builder can handle, frankly. And the homeowner, you as the homeowner, should be looking for that engagement early.

And you should almost be willing to pay for that engagement to what we call pre-construction services. Even if it's just two, three, four, five thousand dollars or forty hours of time, or however you want to look at it, to pay a builder to come in early, they can save you twenty times that sometimes, ten times that, twenty times your investment in the pre-construction services for smart decisions that everybody puts their heads together. So getting a builder involved early and entice them to want to be involved, right? And keep in mind too that that's also from a homeowner's perspective, you get a chance to be interviewing and qualifying this contractor early on in the stage of design.

And also the builder from their side, they get a sense of, do I want this project? Do I like this client? Honestly, the guys that have been doing it a long time, you only do so many custom projects per year, per career. So although, yeah, they're in it to make some money, but they also are interested, the good ones are interested in having a good end result, right? For both sides. Contractor wants to feel good about what they've done and they want the homeowner to feel good about it too. So that's kind of the other takeaway today.

And then there's different levels of plans and design work that you as a homeowner can get and you could save money by paying more. I mean

It's not intuitive but it really is true.

Yeah. Okay. Well I think that's what I had today. Is there anything else other than I want to learn, so you and Holly are doing, tell us just a real quick what you ladies do and how you could serve clients in your markets.

Absolutely. So we started our firm in Dallas, but we have also now had a Denver office for four years. And it's working out really well because my position here, so I think when we chatted earlier, I was born and grew up in California. Then my family moved to Utah and I went to high school and college in Park City, Utah, or that's where my family was while I was in college. So I lived in a resort town. So a lot of what you're talking about, these mountain homes and you design differently in Colorado and Utah than you do in Texas. And in Texas it's very much about how the outside of the house looks. A lot of times people will choose Mediterranean or choose Tuscan or choose English country, and then they'll make the inside of the house work versus in a mountain community where we are, a lot of times you are more influenced by your view or by the light angles or where the natural ventilation's coming from. So it's really unique that in our firm we have both. And we have the aesthetic, more traditional driven, or even contemporary driven style architecture versus the really location specific and nature driven. It's two very different approaches. But I love that we can bring both insights into a project. And then we custom fit that to the owner, to what their priorities are. We're not gonna apply our opinions on their project. We want to hear from the homeowner what's important to you?

At the end of the day, what do you want to get out of this project? This is your investment. This is where you're gonna live. So we want to make it so that when you wake up in the morning, you are so glad that we put that window where we did. And you're so happy that we added that extra foot to your bathroom vanity. And every step during your day, we want it to be joyful and we want it to be an enhancement on what you ever even imagined your living could be.

So really we approach every single project individually and we don't necessarily come with just one style. We want to hear from you what really lights you up and what you've been dreaming of. And we welcome that huge stack of photos or that Pinterest account or that Houzz account with a million photos saved. We love that. We want all of that input because we want this specific project to be specific to you and your family, now as well as ten years into the future. So we do a lot of conversation in the beginning. We take a lot of input. We actually ask a lot of questions. And so I tell a lot of my clients, I can design you a beautiful home and a beautiful kitchen, but it won't be yours until you tell me how you want to live in it. Are you, do you love to bake or do you love to grill out? Or is your kitchen just pretty and you do takeout? Maybe you don't even cook. And it's just a place to hold your leftovers. It's all good. You just tell me how you want to use it and I'm happy to design it any way that fits you.

So you guys do projects in Texas and Colorado and it sounds like you were doing other states too, but not as often it sounded like, maybe.

Yeah, we have, so we have a project in Tennessee right now. We've done several projects in Colorado. We are specifically in the Dallas, Dallas Fort Worth area of Texas, in North Texas. But I've done plenty of projects in Houston, I've done a project in Kentucky. So really it just for the right client, the right project, we can almost go anywhere because our license we can get reciprocity. Not to get into too much detail, but we're happy to go where the wonderful projects are.

And what's a little bit unique too is you also offer interior design, which is different. It's different than architectural design. So and I think that's critical.

Yeah, Holly and I are both registered interior designers as well as licensed architects. And really we both embrace that because of the level of custom design that we do in our architecture, you can't ignore the interior design decisions. So if we're gonna design a custom cabinet, we need to know what the countertop is and what the backsplash tile is and is there a repeating pattern that we have to change the height of that upper cabinet? There's, like we talked about before, every little decision impacts the next one. So that's why interior design and architecture are very much seamless in our mind, because they work so well together. That's level three, yeah, exactly.

That's the level three design, everybody. Don't be afraid to do it. Okay, everybody. I'm gonna put Laura's and Holly's contact information in the show notes with a website and email address. If that's okay, Laura, I'll put that in there so they can reach out to you. And all right, everybody, that's what I had today. What a great episode. I think we could, we could go on and on and on, and we probably will at some point. But that's what I had for you, everybody, today. So as you guys know, I'm Bill Reid, Your Home Building Coach, and my mission is to enlighten, empower, and protect you. Let's go make it happen.