Photo by Brandy Somers Photography
How does a completed selection list prior to construction help the project budget?
By Jarod Sankar
When building a custom home, or renovating an existing space, there are many little details that all need to fit together, just like a puzzle. As most puzzles tend to be, missing even one tiny piece will distract from the entirety of what’s around it and make it look incomplete. No one likes an incomplete puzzle, and even more so, no one likes an incomplete house.
With this in mind, our firm is dedicated to providing you with a complete, thought-through, and well-designed set of drawings. To aid in this process, we provide our clients with a selection spreadsheet. This spreadsheet houses all the interior selections from the ground up. Having these selections prior to construction is a critical aspect in ensuring that a project remains on budget and avoids any unwanted change orders.
We work with some spectacular builders, but none of them are mind-readers. It’s important to remember that your builder won’t be able to accurately price a job without knowing the full scope. Just like you wouldn’t want your builder to start work from unfinished plans, the same is true for unfinished selections. While it may seem like you can pick things out during the construction process, most things need to be thought through beforehand, so that there are no unexpected issues with the selection. Material costs, labor costs, and timeline can all be affected by one specific selection. If any of these things change during construction, you end up responsible for paying for a change order.
To mitigate these potential problems, our goal is to provide your builder with a full detailed list of all the selections that make up your new home or renovation. Knowing what size and material of tile that you’re using, what window casing you desire, what front door you like, and all the other considerations are things that can drastically increase or decrease the overall price that comes from your builder. When a selection choice comes in over budget, it is much easier to adjust and rethink the selection before construction starts, not after.
Putting together a puzzle with missing pieces may be possible, but it doesn’t end up pretty. Let us help you complete the puzzle and work with you throughout the pre-design, design, and construction phases of your project.
