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How To Make A Changes

HousesExplore our website and you’ll see hundreds of well-designed stock home plans. It’s a good bet that while you’ll find several plans that you really like, you may not find your perfect plan, the one that does it all. But what if it were possible to change the location of the garage, add a closet, convert the den into a bedroom, or make some other custom change to get the exact home of your dreams? Well, you can. And modification is the key.

Most home plans are available as a reproducible master, which could be either erasable vellum blueprints or digital CAD files. These reproducible masters come with a license that allows you to make actual design changes to the plan. With a draftsman’s mechanical eraser, your design professional can erase and then redraw lines on the vellum. The vellum, which is semi-transparent, can then be run through a blueprint machine to produce the working drawings for your new home. And in that way, the design can be altered to meet your exact requirements.

A few things need to be considered. Once you’ve figured out what you can spend, take a look at what you really want to do and whether it’s practical. For example, think about how you and your family will use the home. Think about things like traffic flow and which rooms are heavily used. What types of individual space and lifestyle demands will there be on the house? Think about the proposed size of your rooms and whether your furniture will comfortably fit.

DenTo cozy up the living room and take further advantage of the wooded view and natural light, this homeowner added clerestory windows and a fireplace to the back wall of the living room. If you already have a builder, talk to him about the changes you want to make. If the changes are minor, he may well suggest that he do the changes on-site, sparing you the cost of a plan modification. But once you decide to get your plans modified, make a clear list of what you want and then get an estimate for having the changes made.

We talked to the design team at the Garlinghouse Company, which has marketed home plans to consumers since 1907. Designer Mark Sawyer said that “Minor changes are the best. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel.” He suggests “making a simple list of your favorite home characteristics: consider your lifestyle, design style, and any budget restraints. This list will help to narrow down the field of home plans and identify your ambitions.”

Designer Jeanne Devins suggested that you should first look for a plan that comes as close as possible to meeting all your needs, then to carefully consider the extent of changes you want to make. She warned of making changes that will impact the scale, balance, proportion, and symmetry of the structure. “These are the very things that attracted you to your particular house. We generally tell our customers that although most changes are possible, extensive revisions may become cost prohibitive and run the risk of undermining the architectural integrity of the house. If you need to make too many alterations to the existing plan to achieve your dream home, it is probably advisable at this point to keep looking for a closer match.”

Most modifications fall into some common categories. Ben Larochelle, Director of Customer Service at Drummond Designs, said “There’s no limit to what we can do,” though he agreed with Sawyer and Devins that extensive changes lead to a total redesigning of the plan. He also said that it’s much more realistic to turn a den into a secondary bedroom, for example, rather than to add another secondary bedroom to the upper level. Remember that every change you make will have repercussions.

These two plans show a major modification, so much that the modified design became an entirely different plan. The more obvious changes are seen in the treatment of the exterior, with an extended deck, garage shift, and gabled Palladian window. The interior follows the same basic room arrangement, although flipped, but every dimension has changed.

According to Larochelle, the most common modification request is to change the location of the garage, or to transform a front-load garage into a side- or rear-load garage. People ask for this change for a number of reasons, from a need to adapt the design to a narrow lot, or out of feelings that garage doors shouldn’t dominate the exterior design of the home. Also, many people want to increase the size of their garage, for example from a two-car to a three-car structure.

The next most common alteration is a foundation change. Three different foundation types are available with many plans, but if the foundation option you want is not available on your favorite plan, you can get exactly the foundation you want for a modest fee. Choosing a foundation depends on a number of factors including the area of the country where you plan to build, the type of landscaping you want, and the type of soil found on your site.

Master suite modification is the third most-requested plan change. If the plan doesn’t have a master suite, the homeowner will often want one designed into the plan. If the plan has a master suite, usually the homeowner will want to increase its size.

Whatever changes you want, Larochelle suggests that you “get all of your information together. Talk to all the people involved. Talk to the professionals. Let them know all the details—such as if you have children or particular lifestyle needs—so they can help you plan. Make everyone involved a part of the process.”

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