Best House Floor Plans

How to design your own home

Designing your own home is a voyage into the unknown. Everyone has their favorite space etched in their mind. For some, it’s a majestic media room fully loaded with wireless technology, gadgets and toys. Epicureans prefer to fantasize about the kitchen, featuring a Viking 8- burner stove, eco-friendly counters situated close to an outdoor terrace. For relaxing and entertaining, the great room and outdoor deck are other focal points.

Regardless of what your favorite room is — research, planning and decisiveness are the key elements to design your own home. Between the rising cost of building supplies, labor horror stories and mining through municipal bylaws and regulations, many homeowners find the process too overwhelming for consideration. To help organize the steps entailed in planning the design of your own house, Best House Floor Plans gathered a few details and tips provided by House Floor Plans and more.

Before you are carried away, reviewing awe-inspiring floor plans, start your research at city hall. Find out how much the builder’s permit costs. Inquire whether residential taxes are assessed according to the size of the lot or home. Investigate every single cost involved in building the new home.

Determine if there are any specific restrictions (i.e., electricity, plumbing water, etc). Make a copy of your town’s building codes and standards.

Next, review the budget. How much do you have put aside and how much can you realistically afford without delving into the savings account?

Plan for the worse case scenario. Can you afford to design your own home if the household income suddenly changes?

Budget and Finance Tip – To account for the unknown, add or set aside an additional 10 to 20 percent to the design your home budget.

Next, start familiarizing yourself with house floor plans.

Design your home tip: For more than 14,000 dream house floor plans, Houseplansandmore.com has a profusion of amazing home design ideas.

Where to find home design resources, information and complete house floor plans?

While HGTV complements the information seen on its line-up of television programming, online consumers depend on an exclusive, site resource for comprehensive house design and useful advice: HousePlansandMore.com. As a division of HDA, Inc., the site presents a smorgasbord of data, facts and solutions for starting a home design project. We found the site to offer an affluence of learning tools, creative ideas, and other helpful house planning related intelligence:

•    The Legal Kit — For only $35, the Legal Kit is loaded with just about every legal contract vital to preventing confusion with contractors. The legal package includes bid proposals, contractor proposal forms, construction contracts and other legal contract forms.

•    Library of Home Design Plans — From A to W, HousePlansandMore.com showcases a comprehensive library of just about every architectural rendering known to mankind (i.e. Waterfront, Plantation Houses, Cape Cod New England and other house plans].

•   Special discounts — The site’s online identity  is all about simplifying home design for the new property, room addition or remodeling project. House Plans and More demonstrates this philosophy on their special discount page, where certain drawings can be purchased at ridiculously low discount prices.

•    Project Plans — For the home design enthusiast, House Plans and More is loaded with fun project ideas for the deck, gazebo, and garage—to name a few. The site’s unique and affordable yard artwork is well worth a perusal.

•    Live Support — Interact with House Plans and More live customer home design specialists. Questions pertaining to designing ideas are answered 24-hours a day, seven days a week.

Although the above aforementioned list is a brief sampling of what House Plans and More has to offer, the site’s most redeeming quality is its attention to the home design budget. Meanwhile, be sure to stop by next week, when we’re reviewing an ultra affordable home design.