What To Do With All That Free Advice On Building A New Home

So you have decided to build yourself a custom home, you've found the perfect piece of property and you have hired an architect to create your dream onto paper. But everywhere you go, everyone you talk to has an opinion about what you are doing and a suggestion on what you should build in terms of style, materials, functionality, placement and building techniques.

You will receive so much unsolicited advice from people "who know", the longer you listen to the advice the more confused you will become as after a while it will start to conflict with each other.

You will be told the best way to keep the house dry from rain, the best way to position windows to deal with the sun, the best way to layout your kitchen, the only way to plan out your bathrooms, best way to construct the walls, the best way to insulate. Then people will tell you that the insulation that you were to told to use is not good, that there have been "so called problems" that its dangerous, that this type of window doesn't last, etc, etc, etc.

These people will be your friends, neighbours, brothers, sisters and all manners of relations. You will also get advice from people you don't know, friends of friends and everyone will tell you how "you have too do it this way, there's no other way!"

If you take all this advice to heart and decide to use it then you will be so confused that you will be paralyzed when it comes to making real decisions about your new home.

What you need to do is limit the amount of information from other sources to a minimum, you can listen to people, thank them and move along.

Who should really be listening too?

You should be listening to professionals, there are a lot of professionals out there, you will meet enough of them before your done building your new custom home that you don't need outside advise.

When I say professionals I mean your Architect, Interior Designer and of course your Builder. The sub-trades that the builder brings in are also good to listen too on certain issues.

Your Builder is the most important person, they are the one person that you should be listening too. If you hired the right builder then you should have no reason to not trust what your builder is saying to you. Remember that the builder has the most hands on practical experience with how your house functions, fits together and works for the people living in it.

If you have questions about parts or all of the house and its construction ask your builder, a good builder likes a lot of questions, when a homeowner asks a lot of questions that means that the homeowner is engaged in the build and they trust their builder enough to ask them important questions.

This type of relationship between builder and client is very healthy and important in the home building project.

So when you are given all that free unsolicited advice from everybody just smile and nod, once your new custom home is built then you can become that person giving advice that nobody asked for!

Rob Abbott
Village Builders Inc.