Washington Home Builders tend to build either exclusively from a set of stock plans that the company owners have approved, or let the homeowner hire a custom home designer or architect to design a house for them.
At True Built Home, we offer you the best of both worlds. Our plans are intentionally designed to be very customizable. Perhaps you find one of our stock plans that you really like, except that you’d like a different kitchen layout, or there’s one window that you would like moved or a room you’d like to be larger or smaller. We have a team of home designers on staff that can modify one of our floor plans to fit your needs. And our archive of flexible floor plans is large enough that we are sure to have something that can fit your needs, perhaps with some modifications.
How Does the Customization Process Work?
- Meet with Our Home Consultants. Please make an appointment beforehand to ensure that we schedule the time to discuss your ideas and collaborate with you. If one of our home plans isn’t the perfect fit for you, make your own customizations.
- Choose Your Upgrades or Customizations. Communicate all of your upgrade choices and changes with our Home Consultants. Almost all of our upgrades do not require any change to the design of the home plan. If you want to make changes such as moving walls, adding extra space, adding doors, adding on a basement, or modify the layout of a kitchen or bathroom, a redraw fee will apply to customize the home plan.
- Start Your Order. Submit your processing payment, along with any applicable redraw fee, to get your order started. Our Home Consultant will need to visit your home site, verify the slope and road conditions, and prep for our subcontractors and vendors. Your order will then be submitted to our Sales Manager for review and completion.
- Review and Completion of Your Order. Our Sales Manager will verify that all of the details of your order are correct. They may need to communicate with you to double-check on your details. Once they have completed the order, the Sales Manager will create your project in our Co-Construct program, load all of your document and submit the project for production. You can contact the Home Consultant and the Sales Manager with any questions about your order before your home is submitted for production.
- Design of Your Home Plan. If you made customizations to your home plan, your project will be sent to our Home Designers to redraw the plan to your specs and create a first draft. Depending on our Designer’s workload, it could take several days to several weeks to complete your first draft. We have a team of Home Designers on staff that work on plan redraws in the order that they are submitted. In order to make this process as smooth as possible, please be aware of the following:
- All communication regarding changes will be sent through our Co-Construct platform. Please reply to correspondence promptly. If you do not respond promptly to questions from our Designers, your project may get pushed back.
- Be clear in your responses to the Home Designer and be sure to approve or reject changes that they send to you.
- The more changes that you made to the home plan, or due to the complexity of the changes (e.g. adding a basement or modifications to the kitchen), the longer it may take to complete.
- Any additional requests from you for modifications to your plan after your project has started may result in additional charges.
- Engineering Your Home Plan. After you have agreed to any changes from the Home Designer and signed off on the Home Plan, your project will be submitted to an engineering firm to complete the plan. The engineering firm may take anywhere from 3 days to 3 weeks, depending on their workload. If requested, the engineering firm can rush your project for an additional fee. Please do not make changes to your project once it is engineering, otherwise, your project will be delayed and could incur extra fees.
- Final Blueprints. Once the engineering firm has completed your blueprints, we will notify you and either send them to you or have you pick them up at one of our offices.
- Start Working with Your County or City. Your project is ready for you to start working with your county or city to get the building process started!
AFFORDABLE HOME DESIGN
By hiring a home designer or architect to prepare a floor plan for you, you might pay over $10,000. At True Built Home, we make it affordable to live in the home of your dreams! The fee starts at a minimum of $750 for minor changes and is bid per plan for more major changes. This fee is due at the consultation, is non-refundable, and does not include the cost of engineering the plan if this is required by the local building department.
You can always upgrade from our upgrade list (if the changes that you have made to the plan are complex, this price may be higher than what is stated on the upgrade list). This is all part of the True Built Home advantage!
