Designing Your Custom Mountain Home
Designing a new mountain home is exciting, however, it can also be a bit overwhelming. Yankee Barn Homes offers these 5 items to keep in mind as you prepare to design your new custom mountain home.
Gather Ideas for Your Mountain Home
Collect examples of mountain style homes you like and share them with your YBH Design Team. The more information you give them, the smoother the process will go. This is important as time spent figuring out what you like is often time better spent on helping you get the perfect mountain home design.
Size Doesn’t Matter As Much As You Might Think
Whether you want a larger mountain home or a smaller cabin-style build, Yankee Barn Homes will create what you need within the square footage you require. A word of caution: some people have the notion that a smaller design equals a less expensive design. That is a generalized statement that may work for ice cream cone sizes, but not when it comes to building a home. Granted if you’re building a 5,000 square foot home, it’s likely to be more expensive than a 1,500 square foot home. But that has more to do with what you’re putting into the structure rather than the structure, itself. Yankee Barn’s prefab mountain homes are one-of-a-kind custom builds, tailored specifically to meet the needs of each new home owner.
Cost Awareness
Be aware of the cost for building in today’s market prior to beginning your design. Find out about site work expenses and what the going rates are for general contractors in your build area. Look into the current cost of build materials (particularly windows). Custom mountain homes often use natural materials like stone, particular types of wood, and other elements that can be costly. The more you know about cost, the greater your understanding when it comes to designing a new home.
The YBH Design Team always suggests you research costs so you are aware of current market prices. Sticker shock can be an eye-opener when building a home.
Adjustments/Changes Will Happen
Once you begin the design process, there will be adjustments and/or changes that will happen. It’s all part of the process. Sometimes it’s an engineering issue that demands adjustment, other times it’s an issue revolving around a cost-prohibitive design concept. The good news is the YBH Design Team has years of experience in dealing with such occurrences and has yet to meet an issue they can’t resolve. Often times, the home owner returns to tell us their design dilemma resolution turned out being one of their favorite features.
Building Takes Time
While technically not a design “idea”, the realization that building a new home takes time will make your life less stressful. YBH often has potential clients who say they want to be in their new home within months of starting the YBH Build Process. In 99% of cases, this is an unrealistic goal that will only disappoint and frustrate everyone involved in your build, especially you.
Honestly speaking, at the time of this writing, general contractors in most of the U.S. (and definitely in the Northeast) are booked well into or through 2023. Good contractors are worth their weight in gold. Even when you don’t intend to build for a few years, it’s a good idea to begin researching and talking to GCs now. Find out their current rate and availability.
The more you know before you begin, the smoother the process will be for you.
