c/custom-home-builds

My new kitchen sink drain failed the day after the plumber left, had to pull the whole cabinet apart.

I was set on a huge master closet until I saw my friend's setup

For months I told my builder I wanted a walk-in closet bigger than our bedroom, like something from a magazine. I mean, I had the whole layout planned with islands and built-ins. Then my friend Sarah showed me her new house in Charlotte, and her closet is maybe 8 by 10 feet, but it's all custom drawers and pull-down rods. She said, 'I spent the extra square footage on a bigger laundry room instead.' It hit me right then. I was chasing a picture instead of thinking about how we actually live. We do laundry every single day, but we just grab clothes and go. So I called my architect yesterday and asked to shift 50 square feet from the closet plan to the utility room. Has anyone else made a big change like that after seeing a real, lived-in house?

Question about radiant floor heating... we put it in our whole main floor and honestly regret it.

Remember when a builder's word was the contract?

Back in 2010, my foundation pour got rained out and the crew just showed up the next Monday without a single change order. Last month, my current project manager emailed me a $1,200 fee for a two-hour weather delay. Has anyone else seen trust get replaced by paperwork like this?

Heard a contractor in line at the hardware store say 'we never insulate interior walls', and it got me worried.

He was telling his buddy it saves money and time, but that's a huge red flag for sound control between rooms. My architect specifically called for sound batts in all non-load bearing walls on our Denver plan. Has anyone else had to push back on a crew skipping this spec?

Saw a house in Austin with a full wall of windows that opened like a garage door onto the patio.

It was a custom build on a tight lot, and that simple choice made the whole living area feel twice as big, which has me rethinking our own plans for a small backyard.

My wife said we should put the laundry room upstairs and I thought it was a dumb idea until she pointed out we do 90% of our laundry in the bedrooms anyway.

Now I'm looking at plans to move it up there and save a ton of steps, but I'm worried about water lines and noise, has anyone done this in a two-story build?

Question about a hidden cost I found in my Austin build last month

My builder told me the site prep for the steep lot would be $15k, but the final bill for just the retaining wall was over $25k. Has anyone else had a big surprise like that with grading?

Just found out how much a dedicated appliance garage can add to a kitchen budget

I was looking at some plans from a builder in Boise and they had a line item for a built-in appliance garage. It was a cool 4 grand, which really surprised me for what is basically a cabinet with an outlet and a door. My contractor friend said the cost is in the custom cabinetry and the electrical work to make it look seamless. Has anyone else priced one of these out recently and found a more reasonable way to do it?

Update: Our $8000 whole-house surge protector just paid for itself

We had a direct lightning strike on a transformer two houses down in our new build near Charlotte. The electrician said it sent a huge spike through the grid. Our neighbor's new fridge and garage door opener got fried, but our place was fine. The electrician showed us the logs on the Eaton unit, and it blocked the surge. Has anyone else had a major electrical event test their protection like this?

Unpopular opinion: I think the whole 'smart home' wiring chase is getting out of hand

I mean, just last week in a house in Charlotte, the low voltage guys ran their lines right through the same bay as the main electrical feed for the kitchen. It caused interference that made the whole lighting system flicker. We had to pull it all out and re-route it, which set us back almost two full days. Has anyone else run into weird problems like this with all the new tech stuff getting packed into walls?

My architect gave me the wildest choice for the master closet

It was either a standard walk-in or a 'secret' closet hidden behind a bookshelf door. I went with the secret one, and now my partner keeps forgetting where their shoes are. Anyone else add a fun hidden feature that backfired a little?

Watching a friend's custom build in Boise get delayed for six weeks over a window spec

The architect's drawing just said 'large kitchen window' but the framer needed the exact rough opening size down to the 1/8 inch. Now I make sure every single opening, even for doors, is fully dimensioned on my own plans before framing starts. Anyone else have a simple drawing detail that caused a huge holdup?

I was putting the vapor barrier on the wrong side of the insulation for years until a guy in Maine asked me why.

Our custom home's geothermal loop field turned into a 4-month nightmare

The plan was a simple vertical closed loop for our heating and cooling system. The driller hit solid granite 80 feet down and had to stop. We spent three weeks getting new permits for a horizontal field instead, which meant clearing an extra half acre we hadn't budgeted for. The excavator then found an old, unmapped septic tank from the 1950s buried in that exact spot. Dealing with the health department and a hazmat crew to remove it added another six weeks of delays and $12,000 in unexpected costs. Has anyone else had their site prep blow up this badly, and how did you handle the cost overruns?

PSA: A site visit in Portland completely changed how I think about window placement

I was walking through a spec house under construction in the Pearl District last month, and the architect pointed out something I'd never considered. They had placed a huge picture window facing a brick wall just 15 feet away, which seemed crazy at first. He explained they were planning for a future vertical garden on that wall, turning a potential negative into a feature. It made me realize we often pick window spots just for the view right now, not for what the space could become in five years. Has anyone else designed around a future landscape feature that isn't there yet?

Just saved a ton on our foundation by getting a second soil test

The first report said we needed a $25,000 engineered fill, but a second test from a different company showed the native soil was actually fine. Has anyone else had a similar experience with site prep costs?

Overheard a couple arguing about their custom home's 'energy vortex' at the hardware store

I was helping a customer find a specific type of door hinge last week when I overheard a couple in the next aisle. They were having a full-on debate with their architect about needing to shift their entire floor plan by 18 inches to avoid a 'negative energy vortex' their psychic had identified on the property. The architect kept trying to explain load-bearing walls, but they were adamant. It made me wonder how often builders have to work around truly unusual client requests that aren't in the code books. What's the most out-there special request you've had to accommodate in a custom build?

A client's flooded basement made me rethink how we run drain lines in custom homes

I was finishing a job in Springfield last fall when the homeowner called me back a week after move-in. Their brand new basement laundry room had flooded from a clogged main drain. When I opened the cleanout, I found a solid mass of construction debris and drywall mud that the crew had washed down a sink. The main line was only 3 inches, pitched fine, but it couldn't handle that kind of load. Now, for any custom build, I make the owners pick one basement sink as a designated 'cleanout sink' for the trades. We cap the others until drywall is done and put a big filter basket in the chosen one. It adds maybe $200 in parts and an hour of labor, but it saves a huge headache. Has anyone else set up a system like this to keep the drains clear during construction?

A talk with my plumber made me double-check my whole-house water filter plan

I was going over the final plumbing layout with my guy, Mike, last week for my build in Bend. I had picked a standard whole-house filter setup, the kind that goes right after the main shutoff. He just looked at it and said, 'You know, if you don't put a bypass loop around that thing, you're gonna be without water for a whole day when it clogs or you need to change the cartridge.' It hit different because he wasn't selling me anything, just stating a fact from twenty years of fixing other people's rushed jobs. I had totally missed that detail in all the planning. My plan would have meant shutting off water to the entire house for any simple filter maintenance. Now I'm adding a simple three-valve bypass so I can isolate the filter without cutting off supply. Has anyone else had a pro point out a small but critical flaw like that in their systems?

Visited a friend's new place in the new Pine Grove Estates and the window trim detail stopped me cold

I was over there yesterday helping them move some boxes in... and I just stood in the living room for a good five minutes. The builder did this custom window trim where the casing is set back a full inch from the wall, not flush. It creates this deep shadow line all the way around each window, and they painted the inside of that recess a really dark blue. It sounds simple, but the way the afternoon light hit it... it made the whole wall feel so much more solid and the windows just popped. I've never seen that detail in a spec home, only in old craftsman places. It's such a small choice but it changed the whole feel of the room. Makes me want to go back to our own plans and see where we could add one or two details like that instead of just more square footage. Has anyone else used a set-back trim detail like that? I'm curious if it's a pain to keep clean.

Saw something at the new Oakwood Ridge development that has me worried

I was driving through Oakwood Ridge in Springfield last week and stopped to look at a few custom homes going up. On one lot, I saw the crew using what looked like untreated pine for the bottom plates on the foundation. I asked the site guy about it and he just shrugged, said it was 'fine for now'. That's a big moisture risk waiting to happen. Has anyone else seen builders cutting corners like this in your area?

Just realized how much I miss the old way of getting lumber quotes

I was at the lumber yard in Spokane last week, and this older guy, maybe in his 70s, was looking at the same Douglas fir I was. He saw me checking prices on my phone and just shook his head. He said, 'Back in '92, I built my whole house from a handshake deal with the yard manager. We'd walk the stacks, pick the boards, and the price was fair because he knew I'd be back.' It hit me that now I'm just comparing numbers on a screen, and that personal trust is gone. I still got a good price, $4.20 a board foot, but it felt kind of empty. Does anyone else feel like the business side of building has lost that personal touch?

My builder said a 9-foot basement wall was impossible, but we found a way.

We wanted a walkout basement for our sloped lot in Asheville, and our first contractor flat out refused, saying the soil couldn't handle it. I called a geotech engineer for a $1200 site assessment, and his report showed we could use a stepped footing design. Has anyone else had to push back on a builder's initial 'no' with hard data to get what you wanted?

Warning: I built two houses with different window suppliers and the cost difference was huge

My first custom build in Austin used standard vinyl windows from a big box store, which cost about $12k total. The second one, just finished, used a local supplier for fiberglass windows, and they were closer to $22k. The fiberglass ones are way more solid, the install was cleaner, and they seal better against our heat. Has anyone else made a switch like this and felt it was worth the extra money?