Blog Post

The Construction Phase

The construction phase is obviously quite critical to the completion of your dream custom home, but you don’t necessarily have to wear a hard hat to get in on the act.

The good news is, that for you, by the time we enter the construction phase, your hard work is mostly over. You’ve participated in the planning phases, through conception and design, making hard choices about how to accessorize and even color each room inside and outside your house.

Now it’s time to see those plans become a reality. Don’t get me wrong, we still want—and need—your partnership through every phase of the process. The only difference is that now we kind of take the “handoff” and run with the ball to the end zone.

Believe it or not, my feeling on the construction phase is that it should be relatively easy and positively fun. This is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, where all your clippings and webpage links and home design magazine cutouts come to life, where all those forms you filled out, boxes you checked and decisions you’ve made, come to life.

We want to take as much of the work off your hands as possible while still letting you enjoying seeing each phase of the construction process develop.

The Process of Discovery: Your New Hobby?!?

I never forget that, for most people, building their dream home is the largest single purchase in their life. I know how daunting it can be, from visualizing that dream home, to conceptualizing it, to planning it and framing it out to, naturally, paying for it.

I call that whole process the “process of discovery,” and it truly is awe-inspiring to watch the faces of satisfied clients as they experience it for themselves.

What I find with most clients as that they begin this process of discovery is that they get hooked on it. Much like they got addicted to taking model home tours and scrapbooking living room designs or wall colors during the planning phase, during the construction phase they likewise get hooked on seeing each day’s progress.

Imagine driving up to the work site, seeing a wall that wasn’t there yesterday, a hill that used to be a flat patch of land, a window or a door that wasn’t there before.

Our hobbies are those things we do in our spare time, at night when we get home from work, or on the weekends or over the holidays; gardening, stamp collecting, reading or going to the movies. For many new home builders/ home buyers, watching the construction phase becomes their new hobby, and with good reason. Few things can rival the feeling of watching a home—especially your new custom home—being built from the ground up.

And, unlike a hobby such as watching TV, going to the library or sitting in a movie theater, there is some action to the construction phase. You’re there, in the fresh air, seeing the day’s developments live and in person. There’s an active element to it, like gardening, where you’re participating in the birth, and growth, of a living thing. We love it, but please be very careful around a job site.

The equation I shared with you last chapter–Fear + Excitement = Transformation–applies here, as well. There is naturally some fear, or at least concern, as the construction phase begins. The permits are all in order, the lot is buzzing with activity, and contractors are coming and going in their work trucks. But, the fear slowly turns into excitement as the foundation is laid, walls go up and activity increases. And finally, transformation–from blueprints, permits, hard hats and an empty lot to a home. Not just any home, your home; your dream home.

If watching that happen isn’t a worthy hobby, then I don’t know what is!