Can I move the interior walls in my custom home

Q:

I’m going to have a custom home built but I’m worried that the placement of the interior walls isn’t exactly where I want them on the plan. Is it possible to change there location when the house is being built or do they have to follow the plan exactly?

A:

This is a common problem for many people when they are designing a home. They have trouble visualizing the space when it is a 2 dimensional item on a page.

When we build a custom home for people, once we start building interior walls we usually give the homeowner a walk-through of the potential wall locations as per the plan. When you build a custom home you frame the outside walls first and then you work your way in assembling some essential interior load bearing walls and then the roof. Once the roof has been framed we then continue the interior wall framing of the non bearing walls. Its at this point we have the homeowner walk through with us to make sure the locations on the walls as per the architectural drawings work for them. This walk-through helps the homeowner get the feel for the flow and size of all the rooms before the interior walls have been installed.

During these walk-through's we typically find that homeowners make a lot of changes; changes are usually door positioning, closet placement, closet sizes and overall flow from one section of the house into another.

Changing wall locations after this time is when it will start costing you extra. Moving walls after they have been framed and stood up in place requires cutting of nails and depending on how much change is required to the length and height can force us to completely re-frame some walls. Even when there is a change that costs money because of the moving of interior walls it is not a large charge, it is mostly the time for the workers to cut the nails and move the wall to it's new location.

My advice to you would be not to get too wrapped up in the smaller details like the interior wall placements.

The only walls that can’t be moved during the build process would be the walls that are load bearing, load bearing walls are the walls that are essential to holding the structure of the house up. As long as you can live with the placement of the load bearing walls you can almost have whatever layout you want inside for your interior walls.

Rob Abbott
Operations Manager
Village Builders Inc.